Right up to the time of her wedding, indeed, Mattie had been so busy, one way and another, that she had never realised her own requirements. Even if she had thought about them, she would have taken it for granted that marriage would mean a wider life, and instead she had found life narrow down upon her. Existence in her native place had been narrow, too, as she was ready to admit, but not so narrow; for in the home of one’s youth there is always a way of escape through the magic door of childhood.
It was tragic that she had not known that she needed a wider scope,—tragic for both of them. But she had not known, and there had been nobody—apparently—to tell her. It was the gardens which told her eventually,—his dear, charmed circle of the gardens,—when it was too late.
He had found her, one evening,—as very soon after their marriage he had come to look for her,—sitting beside an upstairs window. The window was open, and by putting out her head she could see between the trunks of the trees to the coloured canvases of the fells. It was a circumscribed view at the best, with only a section of the hills visible when the weather permitted, together with a strip of sky laid nun-wise across their foreheads; but it was better than nothing. He had called up to her laughingly to ask her “what she was at,” and she had told him in reply that she was “shoving the walls away.”
“Shoving what walls? And whatever for?” he had enquired, puzzled, and she had flung out her hands with a thrusting movement towards the walls surrounding the gardens.
“Them walls!” she had said vehemently. “They make me feel sort of choked. There’s times I feel I could hag ’em down with my own hands, brick by brick!”
He had been so surprised by that that he had stayed under the window, staring, and wondering whether she wasn’t well, or whether something had happened to upset her. It seemed incredible to him that people should think of garden walls as shutting them in, when everybody knew that what they were really there for was to shut things and people out.
“What, there was walls at home, wasn’t there?” he reminded her, at last. “Ay, and a deal higher than ours, too, now I come to think of it!”
It had been her turn to stare, then, turning the problem over in her mind.
“I never thought of ’em as high,” she returned slowly, pondering. “Anyway, I never felt shut in. Likely it was just because things seem that much bigger and wider to a child, but I remember thinking the garden was nearabouts as big as the whole world!”
“Well, I’m not saying this here’s quite as big as that!” he had tried to laugh her out of her brooding. “But it’s a fairish size. You’ll not find a better kitchen-spot anywhere in the North.”