The things which belong—

by Constance Holme

IV

SHE passed with a sigh of relief to the thought of all that would have to be done before she could get away. Her heart rose to the task as she remembered it. Work,—and especially organising work,—had always been a pleasure to her, and this would mean more than pleasure. In the rush of planning and packing, of solving the many problems which would undoubtedly arise, she would easily lose sight of the few burdens that were weighing on her spirit.

At the moment, however, she had no intention of beginning to pull the house to pieces, or even of starting upon such minor operations as going through drawers and cupboards. There would be no sense in making the place uncomfortable before she was obliged. The day would be full enough, as it was, what with the ordinary routine and the letters which had to be written; not to speak of the long hours of dreaming and gloating to which she would certainly fall captive.

There would be plenty to do, of course, when the moment arrived, but it would be done all right, and done like so much clockwork. In any case, her house, always in order and always clean, was not the sort that had almost to be built over again before it was fit to leave. It was not overcrowded, either, with those things which accumulate as the years go on, so unconsciously, sometimes, that they seem to have grown out of the very stuff of life itself. Broadly speaking, she was almost as free of unnecessary belongings as a seabird poised for flight on the edge of a naked cliff.

Yet almost without knowing what she was doing she was setting her hand to the lever which Fate had so tardily thrust into it. Even while she was making the breakfast she was moving a few things here and there, rejecting this and accepting that, and hunting for paper and string with which to pack them. It was more than likely that they would have to be unpacked again, later on, even if, in a future scheme of things, they were not left behind altogether. But the excitement of putting the work in train was impossible to resist. With each parcel she packed her heart rose a little higher. Every change in the standing order of things was an added assurance that that order was at an end.

The desire to alter it even further grew upon her when breakfast was over and Kirkby had returned to his duties. A great restlessness possessed her. It was almost as if the long strain of waiting for what she wanted had sapped her power to believe in it when it came; as if she feared that, unless she instantly took advantage of it, it might still manage to evade her....

It was this fear that drove her to shifting the furniture, to dragging out hidden treasures, and reducing the house generally to a chaotic state worse even than in the yearly whirlpool of spring-cleaning. Pushing and tugging, she performed feats of strength which she had thought beyond her, even in youth, and which sent her gasping to a chair for a few moments’ relaxation. She raced up and down stairs fetching and carrying, and then did not know what to do with things, and had to take them back again. The tide of life within her rose to its fullest height in the necessity for proving to herself that at last the longed-for miracle had been accomplished.

She was standing on a chair by the dresser, measuring the pot-rail with a tape, and in constant danger of losing her balance in her efforts, when the postman’s whistle came shrilling up to her as he climbed towards the gardens. In the sudden start that it gave her she lost count of what she was doing, and, getting down rather stiffly, she went to the door to wait for him.

For how many years now, she said to herself, still flushed and panting, had she listened, morning by morning, for Dick Nelson’s whistle! For how many years now had it had power to thrill her, carrying with it, as it so often did, the possibility of a Canadian letter! Even when there was no chance of such a thing it could set her heart leaping and her eyes shining. The single, climbing note of it had always been for her a call straight from the Great Beyond.

So many mornings she had longed and listened, and now she could almost count on her fingers the mornings that were left! She wondered whether she would still find herself listening when she was over the water,—going to the door, perhaps, to stand waiting and watching. It would be some time, no doubt, before she would get used to doing without those constant letters. She had lived for them so long that the loss of them at first would be almost like the loss of meat and drink.

She would not need them, of course, when she had the children,—so much nearer and dearer than any letter could make them!—but she would miss them, all the same. There were things people told you in letters which they never told in the flesh; things they felt for you when they wrote which they did not think of when you were by. And, once written, you had them to turn to, even if they never said them again. The very handwriting of those who loved you was in itself a loving speech....

The postman was getting nearer now, she could tell, and he had not whistled again. He had known for many a year now that he did not need to whistle more than once when it came to Mrs. Kirkby!... Like a wise man, he was saving his breath for the last steep little pull that led to the gardens. She could hear him wheezing and puffing, as it was, and the shuffle of his step which betrayed the slow lifting of his feet. Dick Nelson was getting old, she thought idly, and then remembered with a start that he was the same age as herself. She knew that was so because he had told her his age on his last birthday, and, looking at his wrinkles and his bowed back, she had been startled, even then. To-day, listening to his puffing and pausing as he climbed the gardens path, she was more than startled. To-day, faced as she was with new conditions which would make such trial of her strength, Dick’s loss of vigour seemed an actual menace.

She tried to console herself with the thought that age was purely a personal matter, and that people did not necessarily grow old at the same rate because they were born on the same day. Dick, as she knew, had been a weakling in his youth, whereas she had never known ache or pain. A walking-post’s job was a trying one, too, especially in this northern climate.... Nevertheless, she found it an effort to look at him as he came in at the little gate.

He was still wheezing as he stopped in front of her, and, diving into his bag, produced a flat packet, which she saw to be addressed to her in Ellen’s writing. He fumbled a little with it before he handed it over, and for the moment, curiously enough, she felt no impulse to take it from him.

“Another letter from your folks, Missis,” Dick said, with the familiarity of the old country postman, which pays for itself by a genuine sympathy in either joy or sorrow. “It should ha’ been here yesterday, but I took it to Mrs. Crosby’s, by mistake.”

Mattie looked rather vexed at that, both because she did not like Mrs. Crosby, and because she was unaccountably troubled by the sudden appearance of the packet.

“I should think it was a mistake!” she answered him rather sharply, though at the same time trying to tone down her reproof for the sake of old acquaintance. “There’s not much likeness between Kirkby and Crosby that I can see!”

“Nay, nor between the folks, neither!” Dick chuckled, setting her flushing again, though now it was from flattered vanity instead of anger. Mrs. Crosby was a thin little rat of a woman, with a red head and a blue nose,—about as different a person from Mattie as you could find in a day’s march.... Dick might be stupid and short of breath, she reflected, softening, but he still knew a fine woman when he came across one.

“It’s my eyes, d’ye see?” he was saying, when she attended to him again, and emphasising his remarks with sharp flaps of the Canadian packet. “I’ll have to be seeing about getting glasses. Anyhow, the letter’s here all right, and none the worse for a bit of extra travelling.... It’ll be a likeness, I reckon, from the look of it,” he finished, handing it to her at last with an air of making a concession.

It probably was a likeness, Mattie told him, holding it in her hands with the same curious sense of reluctance in her fingers. She might have told him more but for that remark of his about his eyes, reminding her as it did of the increasing disadvantages of age. Dick had seen many a snapshot of her family in his time, and had not thought twice about giving his own opinion of them, either.... “My folks Over There are always sending me something to look at.”

“They’ll not be sending much longer, if all tales is true!” Dick’s eyes seemed keen enough now, as they lifted themselves, twinkling. “There’s barely a house I call at but somebody asks me when Mrs. Kirkby’s off to Canada!”

Mattie laughed in return, but with a slight nervousness that surprised her. She had only to mention the “notice,” and the whole place would be agog, making it, with every reference to the subject, more certain and more “real.” But something, which she took to be loyalty to Kirkby, held her back from speaking. “Ay, well, and what d’you say to that?” she compromised, by way of answer.

Dick shifted his bag and shuffled his feet, finally clearing his throat like one preparing for an oration.

“Well, if you want to know, ten year ago I said you’d be off as sharp as a dog to its kennel. Five year ago, I said—‘Ay, well, less likely things has happened.’ But to-day, when they ax me, I say I wouldn’t believe it even if I was to see it.”

The colour rose higher yet in Mattie’s face, but the thing that lay close in her heart was too warm for a show of temper.

“Whatever makes you say that?” she queried innocently.

For the first time Dick showed signs of discomfort, turning about a little, and looking away from her. “Nay, it’s just that you’re not so young, these days,” he returned at last, bravely. “Same age as myself, I’ve heard my old mother say, and you’d not catch me crossing t’ ocean if you give me Canada!”

“Folks are as young as they feel,” Mattie said, trying to repress the pang which had seized her when he mentioned the ocean. “The sea’s nothing to me! As for age and such-like, there’s folks go abroad when they’re a deal older than us. What, I remember Mrs. Dugdale going off to New Zealand when she was nigh on ninety!”

“Ay, but they go sudden-like,” Dick said, wrinkling his brow as if to help the working of his brain. “They don’t sit planning a sight o’ years. Things is sudden-like when they’re meant.”

“Things always seem sudden when they come,” Mattie retorted briskly. “Planning makes no difference. Look how folks know they’re going to die from the very minute they’re born, and yet they’re mighty surprised about it when it happens!”

“Folks don’t plan to die.... Leastways, them as does seldom brings it off. And that brings me back like to what I was trying to say. If you stop over long on the edge of a jump you take root afore you think.”

“I shan’t have much root to bother about if I go to Canada!” Mattie laughed. “Saving your presence, Mr. Nelson, there’s precious little I’d mind leaving behind.”

The old postman shook his head.

“You strike roots afore you know. Everything as you do each day is a root o’ some sort. Even folks as has been in prison knows what it is to strike roots.”

The privet hedge came into Mattie’s mind, together with that past look on Mrs. Grisedale’s face, and the clinging touch of Mrs. Ellwood’s hand.... But she laughed again.

“They’re roots as is easy pulled up, I should say!” she said cheerfully. “Folks in prison, I mean.... As for me, I’ve always been on the go, so to speak. I’ve never settled down.”

“You can’t not settle!” Dick said suddenly, in a loud voice that was almost threatening. “Don’t you make any mistake, Mrs. Kirkby. Life settles you. Time settles you. You can’t not settle!”

The annoyance she had been keeping in check rose at that to a strong head, but it was succeeded almost at once by a feeling of pity. Dick looked so old, standing there, weighed down by his heavy bag, and with the fine spring sunlight showing up his wrinkles. He was jealous, she said to herself, because he felt old, and because, perhaps, he, too, had wanted to go to Canada. She could have laughed now at the thought that they were the same age. In the pride of her new joy she felt like a girl beside him,—a girl with her strength to draw at, and the whole wide world before her.

“Ay, well, I don’t see as we need quarrel about it,” she said amiably. “Likely what you say’s right most of the time, if it isn’t always. Anyway, Canada or no Canada, it’s a bonny morning!”

But Dick was already shambling away towards the office, wheezing as he went, and grumbling to himself as an old dog grumbles when he meets a young one. She smiled as she saw him stumble over a stone, and stop in a rage to kick it from him. Thrusting the letters in at the office with a shaky hand, he swung about crossly and disappeared round a corner of the building.