II
SHE was still wondering why Kirkby was not in the dream when she had got herself out of bed and was beginning to dress quickly, although not so quickly as she was in the habit of dressing, for her limbs felt heavy, this morning, as if her body also had travelled in the night. Her mind, too, was still inclined to wander, so that at intervals she found herself losing touch with what she was doing. In the very act of fastening button or tape, sewn on with that efficient sureness which was her distinguishing characteristic, she would pause to answer some question put by a voice which could not be less than three thousand miles away.
She felt disconcerted by the fact that Kirkby had apparently had neither lot nor part in last night’s expedition. She was also rather glad, with a queer, jealous gladness which she did not understand, and which made her slightly ashamed. But his absence not only detracted from the reality of the dream; it rather frightened her. The superstition always dormant at the back of the country mind rose up to persuade her that Kirkby would never live to cross the ocean with her.
But the shadow soon passed, as the other shadows had passed, and the rush of excitement returned more headily than ever. She even sang as she dressed, and then stopped with a laugh, feeling that even the walls of the house must come alive to hear her. She was the type of woman who sings naturally as she moves about, but the number of times she had sung in that house she could count on her ten fingers.... Not only had she not had the heart to sing in a place so hostile to her, but it would have seemed to her rather false, implying to all who might hear it that she was beginning to “settle down.”
She had not known that she was going to dislike the place when she first came to it; indeed, she had never even thought about it. She had taken it for granted that she would “settle,” as everybody else, apparently, settled. She had been too young, at that time, to know much about wives who wanted to “move on,” although she had come across more than one (and thought nothing of them) in later life. And she had certainly not known that the place you lived in could be either your enemy or your friend.
Yet she might have guessed that it would not do for her to be dumped down just anywhere; that, like so many of Kirkby’s precious plants, she needed a special soil on which to thrive. And at least she might have guessed that she needed room.... Quite early on her mother had noticed the fact, and commented upon it.
“Look at her now,” Mattie could vaguely recall her saying, pointing her out to some on-looker as she sat at table, “pushing and shoving at t’ pots till she’s got ’em away from her! She did the same as a babby, and a sight o’ mugs she broke an’ all! She can’t abide to be cluttered up, or to have folks pressing on her, can’t our Mattie.”
She had said the same to the school-teacher, when, calling indignantly to demand the meaning of some trifling punishment, she was told that Mattie had insisted upon annexing more of the school-bench than she was entitled to.
“She’ll never do as she’s meant if you don’t allow for it,” was her parting advice. “Best give her two folks’ room, and then you’ll have done with it. She’s a big child, to begin with,—as fine a one as you’ll see anywhere, though I says it as shouldn’t,—but it isn’t only that. It’s just she can’t do with feeling she hasn’t room to breathe and spread about in.”
Later on, of course, she had learned to adapt herself better to the conditions in which she lived, so that pots were no longer broken, or schoolfellows thrust aside. But her love of space continued to grow with her, although more or less unconsciously, showing itself mainly in a liking for long walks, and for open windows and doors. It was during a dispute with her mother over the latter that for once she had caught a faint glimpse of the life for which she was really intended. An aunt of hers had been staying with them, who knew a little of the world, and she had taken a hand in the family quarrel.
“Folks can’t all think the same,” she had said, in reply to the mother’s statement that, “if our Mattie had her way, roof would be off afore you could say Jack Robinson!” “They’re different, all the world over. Your Mattie’d likely do rarely in one o’ them new countries they’re talking of opening up.”
Mattie’s mother had been altogether vague upon the subject of “new countries,” having, indeed, sufficient difficulty, as it was, in realising that there was more of England beyond the one little spot in which she lived and moved and had her being.... “Eh, now! What countries?” she had enquired incredulously, rather as if she suspected the visitor of inventing them on the spur of the moment.
“Colonies, they call ’em,” the other had said firmly, although almost equally vaguely, and speaking the word as people spoke it in those days, before such names as Canada and New Zealand had become living realities to the public mind. “Fine big spots wanting big strong folk as like fresh air and a bit o’ work. Your Mattie’d do grand for Colonies, from what they tell me.”
“They’re big, d’you say?” Mattie herself had asked, fixing upon the one point which had intrigued her imagination, and in that one word, had she but known it, assessing the whole of her life’s trouble.
The visitor nodded.
“Big, every way, so I understand. Mountains and rivers, and great pieces as they call—nay, I can’t think on, except that I know it made me think o’ church. Trouble is, though, they’re such a sight of a long way off,—t’other side of the ocean, though I’m sure I can’t say which.”
Mattie’s mother had laughed when the ocean was mentioned, as though the very sound of that awe-inspiring word had put a full stop to the conversation.
“Nay, now, it’s no use your talking Colonies to the lass, if there’s oceans and such-like mixed up in it! She can’t abide the sea, can’t our Mattie, and never could. I don’t know where she gets it from, I’m sure, unless it’s my mother, as was once right near drowned, falling off a pier at Morecambe. She had a terble down on the sea, after that, and I reckon our Mattie’s the same. What, she can’t even abide a picture of it in the room,—says it puts her off her meat! Nay, if Colonies means crossing the ocean and such-like, I reckon they’ll have to do without our Mattie.”
Remembering this speech of her mother, ominously clear as speeches seem which have been long forgotten and then are suddenly recalled, she felt disconcerted for the second time, that morning. It was true, of course, that she had always dreaded the sea. Every kind of evil of which it was capable had seemed at one time or another to fasten upon her imagination. Accounts of shipwrecks held her as no other literature had power to hold her,—tidal waves, broken embankments, water-spouts moving like monstrous spectres.... The sea was the only thing in life which had so far been able to intimidate her, and she had not yet mastered her fear of it. Not easily would she forget those bad days after her children had sailed, or the unbelievable relief with which she had heard that the ground was firm again under their feet.
And now she was definitely committed to cross that very ocean which had driven the Colonies out of a cottage talk all those years ago! Even in the midst of her luminous satisfaction she shivered as she remembered it. The sea frightened you, made you sick, heaved you about, and then finally drowned you.... Not, of course, that she anticipated being drowned,—the dream alone seemed surety enough for that—but she knew that she would suffer it a hundred times in her mind before she was safely landed.
Yet it had to be faced if ever she was to know the happiness that was waiting for her, Over There.... She felt a pang of impatience because she could not make the journey as she had just made it in the night,—as she had made it many and many a time over her cooking or her needle. Yet what were a few days of misery, after all, compared with the long heart-breaking years through which she had struggled already?
The picture called up by her aunt had faded as soon as it was painted, not only blotted out by the terrors of the sea, but dwindling from sheer vagueness. She had had that one hint of a door wider than any of those which she opened daily, and then it was closed again before she could see beyond it. One glimpse, followed by a single pang of recognition and disappointment ... and presently she had forgotten it. In any case, she would have had little use for the Colonies, just then, for already she was aware that she meant to marry Kirkby.
Looking back, she could see him coming into her life as softly as the river mists which lay so often upon the gardens, and which she so much dreaded and hated. She could not remember either the day she had first met him, or the still more important day when he had asked her to marry him. All that she knew was that he had not been in her life, and then suddenly he was all of it. She could no more trace the moment when that had happened than she had ever been able to catch a tulip closing for the night.
She had neither hated nor dreaded Kirkby, in spite of his home mists, and even now the memory of their courtship had the power to thrill her with its sweetness. But he had been the wrong mate for her, nevertheless. He and all that he represented had muffled her spirit as the mists had muffled her body. The bold driving-force that was in her had been irritated by his reserved and delicate ways. It was amazing that they had pulled together as well as they had,—she always reaching outward, and he always holding back. Many a couple as badly suited would have parted company before now.
She winced a little in her new happiness, remembering how often she had felt bitterly towards him. She was ashamed, now, of their many quarrels.... In the great peace that had come to her it seemed impossible that there could ever have been anything but peace. Even when they were not disputing, she had raged against him in her heart. She flushed as she recalled that she had actually sunk so low as to try to set the children against him....
She flushed and she was ashamed, but these troubles out of the past had already vanished so far that they could not really hurt the present. Already they were gone as the wrinkles in a cloth were gone as soon as a hot iron was passed upon them. With the new peace had come to her also a new vision. She had not meant to hurt Kirkby any more than he had meant to hurt her. She would do her best to make up to him for it in the little time that was left to them Over There.
It seemed strange to her now that her mother, who had read her so plainly when she was small, had yet not seen fit to warn her when she most required it. Perhaps she was one of those people who could see things clearly in a child, but never thought about them again directly they grew up. Even if she had thought, she would only have said that a good husband like Kirkby was not to be sneezed at. Mattie herself would have said it if a child of her own had asked her. He was a decent, steady young man in a job to which she was accustomed. You did not sneeze at a man like that if you had any sense of values.
She had not sneezed at him, and she was not sneezing now, though she had sneezed often enough at what he had had to offer. It was a better position, of course, than might well have fallen to her lot; a better one, for instance, than had fallen to her sisters. It was not Kirkby’s fault that the longing with which she had been born had finally got on her mind; and it was certainly her fault, if it was anybody’s, that the children had been born with it, too!
She opened the window before going downstairs, her glance falling, as she did so, on the privet hedge, and she was amazed by the sudden rush of affection which took her as she looked at it. The shadows were still on the little lawn which it sheltered, giving it that air of seclusion for which it had been planned. A flower-bed ran all round the lawn under the hedge, and in the middle of the grass was another bed with a standard rose. At one end of the little plot was a rustic seat, set with its back to the rest of the gardens and its face towards the west.
The Mattie looking out of the window saw many Matties walking in that little plot, and making it, by dint of years of dreaming, into an orchard of escape. She saw a young Mattie, first of all, and a little hedge, too thin and too small to fend off the curious glances of the men working close at hand. But the years fled before her mind little faster than they had fled in actual truth. Almost before you could turn round there was an older Mattie and an older hedge, with flowers in the trim border and a green closeness about the lawn. And presently both Mattie and the hedge were growing old and stout, and the turf had grown thick and soft, and there was a snug richness about the soil....
The little place, where, as she had told Kirkby, she was able to “get away,” had very soon become the real centre of her married life. To it she had taken both her early discontent and her later bitterness of frustration. Many a hard speech, which otherwise might have been Kirkby’s portion, had been tossed off at the privet hedge; many a salt tear had been wept into that lawn! Sitting and sewing in it, she had been a girl again, in her home towards the west. Walking in it, with her Canadian letters in her hand, the tiny spot had resolved itself into that broad country where her soul went free.
Going to Canada would, of course, mean leaving that little home of memories behind her. Somebody else would have the right to walk in it, to sit and sew and dream.... She felt a jealousy that was almost fierce as she thought of that somebody, and her throat contracted a little. If it had been possible, she would have gathered up the lawn and the privet hedge, and taken them away with her.
She continued to feel amazed by her sudden feeling for the place; or, rather, by the sudden revelation that it meant so much to her. She had thought of it only as a refuge, a makeshift for want of anything better, and now it had become something that actually belonged to her. She tested herself, looking away from it and then back to it again, and felt always the same rush of affection and the same jealous ache. She had always thought that she hated every inch of the ground on which her married life had been spent; but in spite of herself these few square yards of it had stolen into her heart.
Perhaps it was only, she thought, that the place looked different because she was leaving it. It was a well-known fact that people often regretted even the worst of things when the time came for them to part with them. (Why, she had had a cousin of her own with a broken leg, who had cried when her crutches had been taken away from her!) Or else it was just because she had not been free that she had not been able to see things properly. It was her mind, even more than her body, that had been in chains, and now she had shaken the chains from her. Perhaps she was seeing things now as she would see them in Canada, when at last she had got away from them....
She went downstairs, still thinking about the privet hedge, and feeling her first ecstasy a little tarnished. She knew now, what she had not realised before, that, in spite of the joy that was coming, there were things that would make her suffer. She had fondly imagined that she had paid for the joy long since, but apparently she had been wrong. Life was piling its debts against you all the time.... Already there had been the questions and the thought of the sea; and now had come the shock of the privet hedge. They would plant another hedge for her, if she wanted it, Over There, but they could not ensure her another forty years in which to watch it growing. They could not make each leaf and twig speak to the memories of a whole life. They could not give her back the English soil which she had salted and watered with her tears.