She shook her head.
“It’d only look fresh on the outside. It wouldn’t be fresh in any way as really mattered.”
“If it’s the walls as is still bothering you, they’ve no call to, as I’ve told you already. The house at the new spot is outside the gardens altogether. I asked Colonel Brangwyn special.”
But she refused to be heartened.
“It’d be the same thing over again,” was all she would say, repeating herself endlessly. “Just exactly the same. You and me and the gardens, and me choking myself to death.”
“What is it you do want, d’you think?” he had asked her at last patiently, and she had shaken her head again, looking away from him almost shyly.
“Nay, I don’t know. I’m daft, I suppose. It’s just room.... Ay, well, it’s no use talking about it any more. But you needn’t apply for Colonel Brangwyn’s.”
Much the same situation had recurred at intervals, later on, but it had always ended in the same way. Always she had drawn back again at the last moment. Always it had seemed to her that she had found the right road at last, only to realise that it led nowhere. Always she had seen in time that, no matter where she went, to this country-house or that, she would always have the little ring of an English garden round her.
Things had been better for her after the children began to come, but they had also been worse. The gardens had grown fuller for her, after their arrival, but they had grown no larger. Moreover, the increasing family had put a stop to any chance of retirement as well as to the occasionally-discussed project of “setting up for ourselves.” Money had continually grown tighter. With each fresh child that appeared, they were forced to “plough a furrow nearer the fence.”
Yet if it was the children who in the first instance had closed the door to escape, it was the children who in the long run had thrown it open. One by one, as they grew up, they had all of them left the gardens. They had loved them,—all, perhaps, except Ellen,—just as they loved their parents; but they had left them, nevertheless. Something of their mother’s longing for space must have entered into them at birth, making it impossible for them to remain. And not only had they found the gardens too small, but England itself, so that they had allowed Canada to swallow them up, as it swallowed so many.