The things which belong—

by Constance Holme

I

HE came hurriedly to meet her, forgetting himself and his personal misery in this sudden alarm. “What’s to do, Mattie? What’s wrong?” he enquired anxiously, as they drew near to each other in the shadows.

She stumbled the last few yards, and clung to his arm. He could feel her shaking. Even in the dusk he could see the marks of tears upon her face.

“What’s to do?” he said again.

She made an effort to control herself then, and heard her voice come out as if from some other person.

“We can’t go,” she said, and her voice broke. “It’s no use! We can’t go.”

He felt, as it were, a sudden lightening of the atmosphere about them; as if the sun, already gone some time, had for the moment broken out afresh.... But he was too tired to feel more; too tired, certainly, to feel glad. Indeed, he was conscious, rather, of a faint resentment that the problem which had cost so much to settle should be about to be reopened.

“Best come into the house, hadn’t you?” he said, evading it for the moment, and gently urging her back again in the direction from which she had come. “It’s getting damp out here.”

She nodded her head with a docility which sat strangely upon her, and, still holding to his arm, allowed him to lead her back. She said nothing more as they went, only catching at her breath from time to time with little signals of distress which awoke in him a succession of answering quivers. The gardens saw them enter the house together, and disappear into the further gloom of the kitchen.

The sight of the red tablecloth aroused her temporarily, as it had done before. “Eh, now! You’ve never had your tea,” she sighed, shocked out of her preoccupation by that great forgetfulness.

“I’ll get a bite of something presently,” Kirkby said, taking off his hat with the limp gesture of a man whose weariness had long since passed the stage of desire for food and drink. “It’s you I’m bothered about. What’s been to do you’ve gone and got yourself in such a state?”

She dropped back into the seat from which she had raised herself in order to go to him, and sank her head on her hand.

“It’s just that,” she said. “We can’t go.... I’ve seen it coming on like all day, and now it’s come to bide.”

He eyed her thoughtfully, not daring to take what she said literally,—scarcely, indeed, wishing at that moment to take it literally.... “You’re over-tired, that’s what it is,” he said, at last. “You haven’t hurt yourself, have you, pulling that furniture about?”

“Nay, I’ve taken no harm.”

“Likely you haven’t thought on to get your own tea, neither?” he enquired.

“Ay, but I have,—and a rare good tea an’ all!” She winced at the remembrance, recalling the happy half-hour which she and Dolly had spent before Cousin Jessie had struck her to the heart.... “But we can’t go.”

He stood hesitating in front of her, his mind wholly occupied by the need to get her comforted. She was tired, he said to himself, and folks didn’t always mean what they said when they were tired. His heart ached as he looked at her, remembering as he did the fine joyfulness of spirit with which she had parted from him at noon.

“You’d best tell me about it, hadn’t you, Mattie?” he ventured presently. “You’d feel a deal better if you could tell somebody.”

“There’s nothing to tell....” She avoided his eyes, feeling the colour rise in her cheek. She was ashamed that even Kirkby should see her in this moment of defeat. “Nothing much, I mean,” she went on, in a dull tone, “and what there is you’d likely not understand.”

“I could try, anyway, Mattie.”

She gave a deep sigh and put her hands before her face. He waited patiently, standing with that still poise of his in which he seemed to breathe as quietly as a flower. And almost at once she began to speak, jerkily at first, but gradually gathering smoothness and speed, and keeping her hands always on either side of her face as if they guarded her.

“It’s just we’ve waited too long.... Things alter if you wait. You stop wanting things you’ve always wanted, and you get to like things you used to hate. And you get old, waiting. I didn’t know till to-day I was getting old.”

“You’re not old, Mattie.”

“I’m old inside,—old in my heart. Folks as keep their hearts up never get old, but I’ve not kept mine. If I could have kept my heart up I’d have been young, even at a hundred, but I’ve not kept it up. I’ve been letting go all the time, though I didn’t know it.”

“How d’you mean—letting go?”

“Giving up about going to Canada,—that’s what I’m trying to say. I’ve been thinking all these years I’d be mad to go when the time came. I thought I’d be that glad I wouldn’t mind what I found Over There or what I’d to leave behind. And it isn’t like that at all. Now it’s really come to it, I’m—afraid.”

“How d’you mean—afraid?”

She gave a little laugh that was more dreary than any sob,—the laugh of the naturally brave person who for the first time in life comes under the domination of fear.

“Afraid of near everything, it seems to me!... Afraid I’ll get hankering after things, this side, when it’s too late to come back. Afraid of breaking my heart Over There, as I’ve broken it over here.... Afraid of all the new folks and new sights. Afraid of the sea——”

She shuddered as she said the last word, seeing, even as she spoke, the first wave of her vision come rolling back upon her. Kirkby looked surprised.

“What’s put that into your head?” he asked, puzzled. “You’ve never let on before you minded the sea?”

“I’ve always minded it,” Mattie said. “First time I set eyes on it,—ay, and long before that. But I wouldn’t let on about it even to myself. I made out it wouldn’t matter, just as I made out other things wouldn’t matter. But I was only cheating myself all the time. They do matter, and I do mind; and now I’m old I haven’t the courage to face ’em.”

“You’ll face ’em right enough to-morrow,—see if you won’t! You’re over-tired to-night. I’ll be bound you weren’t bothering about the sea when you woke this morning!”

He spoke purposely in a light, bantering tone, hoping to stir her out of her trouble; but she shook her head.

“There’ll be another night to-morrow.... It’s the nights you’ve got to think of, when you’re getting old. And it isn’t only the sea. There’s other things as well.”

“Tell me the other things, Mattie.”

She shook her head again, but almost at once she was launched upon her tale, as if the little movement had flung her into the tideway. As well as she could she described to him her reactions during the day, beginning with the little cloud which had shadowed even the dream itself, and which had grown to such proportions by the evening. Her talk halted and turned upon itself and wandered to and fro, until not only the tale but the hours themselves seemed twisted into a tangle. Something, however, of the actual state of things emerged finally from the muddle, together with a fairly definite indication of how it had come about.

She told him, still shielded by her hands, how the house and the garden had caught at her unawares, rising up against her with armed memories which she had not known to possess the power to wound her. She told him of Dick’s grumbled warnings, of her passion for the privet hedge, of the jealousy and injured pride with which she had found herself facing Mrs. Machell. She told him at great length of the underminings of Cousin Jessie. And at the last, sighing and half-sobbing, she told him of the betrayal of the children, and the greater treachery of Ellen.

“That’s what’s getting at me most,” she finished, hating her own voice as she heard it quiver. “That’s what’s done me down. T’other things was bad enough, of course, fretting me right and left till I was near frantic. But I’d have got over ’em, likely, after a bit, and when I was feeling better. Likely I would, that is. I’m not so sure.... But what beats me is the children going back on us and thinking we wouldn’t come. Folks as stop believing in a thing like as not stop wanting it,—that’s how it seems to me.”

Kirkby had stood silent during the first part of the recital, and had seated himself silently when he found it promised to be a long one. Once, later, he got up to look for the lamp, only to find that Mattie had forgotten to fill it. This oversight on the part of one usually so methodical and efficient told him more than even the hurried and broken talk with which she was assailing him. Lighting a candle which he discovered on the mantelpiece, he sat down again, setting the light between them.

He was not thinking much as he listened; only allowing her to pour her story into his mind, so that, when the time came, and she was silent again, he might find the right words with which to cheer her. Still less was he feeling.... He had already exhausted his own powers of emotion, first, in that journey into the past which he had taken, across the river, and then in his final revolt and recession in the garden. He felt utterly detached from the situation which was riving Mattie in twain as if it was with an actual devil that she strove. Whether they went or stayed made no difference to him at the moment. He had passed, for the time being, to a plane where the things of this world could no longer affect him, either for good or evil.

“It’s Ellen bothers me most,” Mattie was saying, the quiver in her voice becoming more and more pronounced. “I’d have thought Ellen would have looked for me till I was in my coffin,—ay, and after that! Jessie says she talks nowadays of coming here instead, but I doubt she never will. Likely she’ll wait and wait and never come, same as I’ve waited and waited and never gone.... And if she puts it off a deal longer I won’t answer for it we’ll know her. That’s her photo she’s sent, over there, and for more than a while I made sure it was somebody else.”

Kirkby turned his eyes towards the photograph on the table, and turned them away again. He had no desire to look at it just then, or to test the truth of what Mattie was saying. His power to interest himself in such things would return to-morrow, when he would welcome even a doubtful presentment of his absent daughter. But to-night he had passed beyond his children, and felt no bond with them. They were no more to him at the moment than the transplanted sapling is to the parent stem from which it was once grown.

“You’re taking a deal for granted, it seems to me,” he said, at last. “You’ve only Len’s wife’s word for it about Ellen and the rest, and not at first hand, neither. Yon cousin of hers needs taking with a deal of salt.”

Mattie nodded drearily.

“You’re right, there! She’s one of them do-nowts as has always a sight to complain of, wherever they are.... But I feel it’s true, all the same. It’s only natural folks should give up looking for you when you’ve been so long on the road.”

“I don’t see it matters whether they’ve given up or not. They’d be just as glad to see you, once you’d got across.”

“It would matter,” Mattie said. “Something’d have gone ... broken ... nay, I can’t explain!” She stopped, hunting vainly for words with which to convey to him that the motive power would be crippled, the circuit hopelessly snapped.... “But it wouldn’t be the same.”

He gazed at her with his clear, faded eyes, wondering to himself how far it was wise to attempt to argue with her.

“You’ll not take kindly to stopping, Mattie,” he said presently, tentatively but bravely. “You’ve got to remember that.”

“I’m not likely to forget it.”

“It isn’t as if you wouldn’t feel different in the morning, you know. You’re tired, to-night. You’ll get hankering again, I doubt, as soon as you’re rested.”

“I doubt I will.”

“Folks don’t change that easy,” Kirkby persisted. “You’ve been set on Canada so long, you’ll find it hard to put away from you.”

“I’ve got to try.”

“There’ll be letters coming an’ all——” he continued firmly, and she put out her hand, crying, “Nay, now! Don’t, don’t!” but he steeled himself against her. However it hurt, they had both of them got to be sure that she knew what she was doing.

“And there’s the grandchildren, you’ll think on; you’ve not forgotten them? You’ll likely never set eyes on them if you don’t go. It costs a deal to go back and forwards, these days, and there’s time as well. Sally’ll likely come, if Ellen’s bringing her to stop, but not Joe’s lad or the rest——”

She stumbled to her feet, throwing out her hand a second time as if to lay it across his patient, relentless mouth.

“Nay, now! Don’t, I tell you! D’you think I don’t know what it’ll be like, and how it’s going to hurt before I’ve finished with it? Day and night I’ll remember,—day and night. But it’s got to be borne. Some way or other I’ve got into a trap, and I doubt I’ll never get out.”

“You can get out, Mattie,” Kirkby said gently. “You’ve only to say the word.”

“Nay, but I can’t.” She looked down at her hands as she rested them on the table, as if already she saw ghostly fetters forming about her wrists.... “Words won’t make any difference, nor letters, neither. It’s my own self makes the trap,—being too old, and being afraid of things. You should have let us go when I was younger and able to face it. You’ve kept us here too long.”

“’Twasn’t me, Mattie,” Kirkby said, wincing a little for the first time. “’Twas just life.”

“Nay, it was you, all right!” she said, lifting her head again. She sent him a look which he had seen more than once before, a hard, sneering look which called him an enemy and hated him as it said it. He met it quietly.... “It was you kept us. And now I’ve got to go eating my heart out till I die!”

Moving away from the table, she began to walk up and down the room, clasping and unclasping her hands.

“And it’ll be worse now than it was before,—a deal worse, a deal harder to bear. There’ll be nothing to hope for, now.... It’ll be just prison again, and the same old life right on to the end. If I’d known things were going to turn out like this, I’d have finished myself long ago!”

She was crying now and wringing her hands, stumbling blindly from point to point, and blundering against things in her passage. From time to time she looked wildly from side to side, as if she saw the cottage-walls closing in upon her. From his seat by the table Kirkby sat and watched her, as only the night before he had watched the firelight beat against the ceiling....

She came suddenly to a pause, and, putting out a clenched fist, struck it against the mantelpiece.

“I can’t bear it!” she said in a loud tone. “I can’t bear it, and I won’t! There’s my children waiting for me Over There, and I’ll get to them, if I have to walk. It’s my life that I ought to have had, and that I’ve been cheated out of, and I mean to have it.” Her voice rose higher. “What is it goes wrong with things when folks get cheated out of their lives?”

Her tone lowered itself then as suddenly as it had risen, and became passionate and pleading. “I take back everything I said just now,” she told him gently. “I want to go....” Turning unsteadily, she came to him, holding out her hands. “You’ll not think any more about what I said? You’ll let us go?”

“We’ll go, Mattie. Don’t you fret.”

“It’ll be just as it was, this morning?” she pursued, unsatisfied. “The same as it was, last night?”

“Just as it was, Mattie.”

A smile touched for a moment her tear-wet face, and for the first time he felt the tears spring to his own eyes. She looked at him kindly.

“You mustn’t be wild with me for chopping and changing like this. I can’t help it. I’ve got to see ’em all again, and the grandchildren and the houses. I’ve got to see them. You can’t plan and work for a thing all your life, and not get it in the end. It’d kill you, if you didn’t get it,—leastways, it would me.... But I shan’t chop and change again. I’ll get the letter written first thing in the morning, and the one for the passage as well. We must begin thinking about the sale, too, as soon as may be. I did a lot of planning, this afternoon, along with Mrs. Machell. I don’t know that I’m best pleased to think of her living in this house, though she’s pleased enough, to be sure! I near told her to think on it was my home and not hers, and would she kindly remember it? There was the jam an’ all,—I’d nigh forgotten the jam....” Her voice wavered as she spoke, and she looked away from him. “And the privet hedge,—I don’t know how I’ll abide her having the privet hedge.... Len, too, swaggering about the spot, and thinking he’s as good a man as you.... I reckon they’re thinking already we’re as good as overseas——”

She stopped then, and into her eyes came the fixed stare of one who regards a great and imminent danger. The cry which came out of her throat was no longer the cry of one beating against walls, but the cry of one who drowns....

“Nay, but we can’t! We can’t! I’m cheating myself again. Just cheating myself, that’s all.... I’ll never get to Canada, not this side o’ the Judgment!”

Flinging herself heavily into her seat, she laid her head on her arms, and her great sobs shook the silence. Outside in the darkness a little wind got up, sighed along the paths and was gone again into the darkness. An owl called, flapping with clumsy wings across the square of the window, and went out towards the river. A sweet breath came in from the gardens, where there were no flowers as yet to scent them.

Kirkby sat where he was for a long time, with his gaze fixed upon his wife’s bowed head and labouring shoulders. It was the only way, as he knew, to put a real end to the business, to exorcise, by those cruel tears, the demon of her forty years’ obsession. Canada went out of her as she wept, and all the beautiful hope which for so long it had represented. Through every pore of her, as it were, ran out the poison of her misery and discontent. She would be broken, perhaps, when she came to herself, but she would no longer be tormented. She would be older, perhaps,—perhaps permanently grown old,—but she might also have found the things which belonged truly to her peace....

Yet even in the restraint of his measured wisdom he could not refrain from making some attempt to comfort her. From time to time he put out an apparently unnoticed hand, and drew it back again. Presently, when he could bear the situation no longer, he got up and stood beside her.

He said: “Don’t cry, Mattie!... Mattie, don’t cry,” smoothing her roughened hair and patting her shoulder and cheek. She paid no attention, as far as he could gather, until presently the sobs quietened and the shaking lessened. And instantly, as if at some signal for which he had patiently waited, he began to speak.

“I just want to say again, Mattie, that we’ll go if you really want. Likely you’d rather leave it over until the morning, but I doubt it wouldn’t be wise. I couldn’t go through this sort of thing very often, nor you, neither. We’d be best to fix it to-night.... And you don’t need telling that, if you could make up your mind to it, I’d a deal rather not go. I’ve had as bad a day thinking about it all as I ever remember.” His detachment broke a little, and pain crept into his voice. “I’ve loved the place, and I doubt I can’t leave it.”

“I’ve hated it, and I can’t leave it!” Mattie sobbed, lifting her head a moment and letting it drop again.

“There’s some sorts of hate as is very near love,” Kirkby said absently, without hearing what he was saying. “Only just now you said that to-day you’d seen it different.”

Mattie sobbed again, remembering the enraptured hours in which that miracle had happened, and realising that, now that she was a prisoner once more, the enchantment would have passed for ever.

“It was just because I was going to get away from it,” she wept; “that’s all. To-morrow it’ll all be nasty, just as before.”

“It’ll never be just as nasty, Mattie, whatever you think,” Kirkby said firmly. “Once you’ve looked at a thing with love, you never rightly forget it. It comes creeping back into your heart, no matter how often you turn it out.”

She said nothing to that, and presently he went on again, speaking in a dreamy tone as if he were weaving a spell of some sort about her, and as if the sentences were being dropped by something outside him into his tired brain.

“We’ve not done so badly together, Mattie, you and me, when you come to think of it. We’ve quarrelled a deal about this Canadian business, I know that, but we’ve not done so badly, all told. We’ve had a good life together in a beautiful place, which is more than a lot of folks get. We’ve been God-fearing folk, on the whole, and we’ve as good children as ever stepped. We’ve had a good life, Mattie, and we’ve been together a long while. Children matter a sight, I know, but we matter to each other more. We’ve made something between us in this spot as we’ll never have anywhere else. We’ve made our lives.... When folks get to the end of things, all that they’ve got left to them is just their lives....”

She had ceased crying long before he stopped, only sighing and bowing her head upon her hand as she had done at the beginning. Her mind, utterly wearied and over-strained, had for compensation that curious quality peculiar to extreme exhaustion of seeing clear in flashes. By virtue of those flashes, so much more vivid and poignant than those of the normal course of thought, she was able for the first time to see life as Kirkby saw it. For the first time she saw the dignity and the beauty of the life to which he clung, and to which such characters as his own owed their inward essence. Canada had gone out of her, as he had hoped, and into the great space which it had left flowed Kirkby and his gardens.

She remembered now that he had not been in the dream, and felt again the sudden shoot of fear with which she had first realised it. The violence of that pang showed her what she had never known until now, that Kirkby was more to her than the children. He had not been more to her once, as she had to admit. In her vigorous youth and middle-age she had found him tiresome, with his gentle ways and lack of push. But the years had done their work.... They had grown nearer together as time went on, while the children had grown further. They had been through things together of which neither the children nor anyone else could ever have any knowledge. Their very quarrels had brought them together, as if in fighting each other they had merely been fighting in order to get to each other. Now, in this last struggle of all, the last veil had been cleared away, and they saw each other close....

Kirkby was right when he said that all that you had at the end of your life was just your life. This was their life, which they had made together in this place, a completeness and a dearness, now that they came to look back upon it, formed, not only out of their happy hours, but out of their grim ones. It was theirs, and theirs only, shared by nobody else in the world; a thing so much their own that it seemed as if even God Himself must refrain from looking at it.... It was this life, which was all that they had, that Kirkby had feared to lose if they went away....

She drew her hand across her eyes, and, taking a deep breath, pulled herself into an upright position.

“Well, that’s over,” she said bravely enough, though her voice shook. “Over for good.... You needn’t fear I’ll ever bother you about Canada again.”

“You’ll feel better to-morrow,” Kirkby said, falling back, after his flight of eloquence, on that eternal and feeble consolation; and she laughed a little, though without rancour and without bitterness.

“Better—or worse!... Ay, well. Never mind about that. It’s over, as I said.... It seems queer to me now, though, always being so sure that I should go.”

Her mind went back to the dream, with all its richness and reality, and in one of those strange flashes she saw both its meaning and its hidden comfort. She had always known that some day she would go to Canada, and she had gone, although not in the body. Nor would her body ever be able to go now, because she herself would prevent it. But the dream had shown her a way by which her spirit, at least, could sometimes gain release. One of these days, if life pressed too hardly upon her, she might be permitted to go again.

She took up, after that, the encouraging thought of Ellen’s coming, and the short but beautiful happiness that her visit offered. For already she was fast recovering her natural poise. Her mind, clearing and gaining in strength, fastened upon hope after hope, as a child, strange to its feet, fastens and clutches for support. Already she saw Ellen in the house, and after Ellen the little girl; and she rose up out of her desolation and grasped bravely at the future.

Kirkby was asking for the Hall letter when she heard him again, that letter upon which so short a time ago the whole of her salvation had hung, and which now seemed as remote and immaterial as if it had never existed. They hunted for it together, and discovered it at last in a spot where they could only have come across it by the merest accident. She could not remember putting it there, nor had she seen it handled by Mrs. Machell. It was almost as if some inner self of her own had secretly put it away, knowing long before she knew it herself that she would have no use for it.

Going to the hearth, where the fire, though low, was still red and smouldering, Kirkby made as if to tear the letter across.

“I’d best burn it, hadn’t I?” he paused first to ask her, looking at her. “It’s better not left about.”

For one last moment a pang shot through her as she stood there, staring at it, seeing the chance which she had foregone made concrete and passing from her for ever. She put out her hand as if meaning to snatch it from him, and then dropped it again. “Nay, burn it,” she said, turning away, and quivered at the tearing of the paper. Even turned away she saw the little flame which the letter made before it died down and was no more....

“I’ll see about getting you a bite,” she said then, moving away from the hearth, and remembering with a housewife’s shame that Kirkby must be nearly starving. Candle in hand, she went to and fro between kitchen and larder, and soon had the belated meal set and waiting on the table. When it was ready she called to him where he stood at the house-door, staring into the darkness.

“I’ve just remembered I’ve promised my pink vases to Mrs. Machell!” she laughed ruefully, her voice, in spite of all that she had been through, sounding natural and brisk. “That’s if I went to Canada, I mean; and now that Len won’t be getting the job I don’t like to disappoint her.”

“I’ll buy you another pair if you want ’em,” Kirkby answered, without turning. “Mason and Mawson’s in Witham is as full of them as it can stick.”

Mattie laughed again, with cheerful disgust.

“Nay, then, I’ve no use for ’em if there’s that many going begging!... Your supper’s ready for you now if you feel like having it.”

He made no movement, however, to come within, and after a moment she went across to her jam-cupboard and threw it open. For several minutes she stood gazing soberly at its contents, while Kirkby, staring into the dark, saw his dawnbell rising blue and exquisite against the soil....

She fastened the cupboard again presently, and turned about with a little shiver.

“Best shut the door, hadn’t you?” she called to Kirkby. “It’s getting a bit chilly.”

He shut it.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber using the original cover and is entered into the public domain.