The things which belong—

by Constance Holme

For he had been a boy on this river, and nothing that life had so far attempted to give him had ever equalled that. He had been a boy, climbing among its rocks, swimming in its pools, watching its hidden life and learning its hidden lore. He had known it empty almost as a sand-channel is empty when the water alters its course; seen it foaming and full, a swirling engine of destruction. It had been the playground of his youth, and at the same time it had been his friend, for to his young mind it had had all the personality and importance of a dominant human being.

He was a boy again now, as he grounded the raft softly, and softly stepped off on the other side, as if stepping into a church. Here, where he had spent so many hours with other lads, or alone, there lingered for him still the holy touch of youth. It was in the water and in the air, in the colour and shape of things, and in the peculiar values of the light. Above all, it was in that atmosphere of childhood which never changes, and which is so distinct from any other that it can be recognised even in the dark.

He stood for a moment or two after he had landed, surrendering himself joyfully to the ancient thrill, and seeking from point to point for reminders which should serve to accentuate it. Here, where a low bough, along which he had often walked, still thrust out its bold and crooked arm over the racing water.... There, where the salmon rose in the summer ... where the bathing-strand lay firm and dry ... where the long curve of the rose-gardens against the river even at this time of the year showed a velvet line. It seemed to him as he stood, quivering to the thrill, that never until now had he grasped the meaning of its peculiar comfort. Its virtue lay in that easy leap back to childhood, which made of life such a little thing, and at the same time held such a vivid assurance of a life that should be eternal.

But you could never hope to receive that comfort except in the home of your youth. No other place would do; not Canada, nor another.... In any other place you would have to grow old patiently without that blessed assurance, and to bolster up your faith in a future existence as best you might.

He had planned to get face to face with the Canadian problem as soon as he was safely across the river, out of reach of the staring eyes of his staff and of Mattie’s exultation. He had meant to set forth to himself the advantages of the change, to conjure up the presence of his children and to dwell happily upon the interest of their garden. He had meant to meet, once for all, the call of the things he would have to leave, so that, no matter what else might lie before him, he could never suffer as much again. He had intended to return from his round already passed over in spirit to the new life in the new country, having said good-bye once and for all to the life he had lived in the old.

But he found that he could not think of either his lasses or his lads as he climbed the shallow steps which guided him up the rock-garden, strive as he might to picture them in their far homes under that high sky of which Mattie had spoken so often and so fondly. They were not real to him on this ground where, the instant he set foot on it, he relinquished his own manhood. Always they slipped away from him as ghosts might slip away. He had, indeed, one rather frightening moment when he found that he could not even remember their names.

He wandered for a long time in his country of the past, including both past and present in his gesture of farewell. At point after point along the paths he stopped to dream and stare, seeing the long, plant-carpeted terraces which he had planned, and could not have told whether they were the old or the new things that he saw. But in any case it did not matter. The old and the new were fused for the time being to make a greater loveliness, a finer air; that special atmosphere in which he lived again his own enchanted youth, and was permeated, as he looked, by the happiness which is a foretaste of the happiness of eternity.

Some inward monitor brought him back again at last to the raft, set his fingers to the stiff handle, and pushed him off across the quiet water. The mist was high above the river by now, so that, as he passed into it, he was lost to sight from either bank, with only the melancholy creaking of the machinery to locate his whereabouts. But he did not feel lost, because of the coloured picture of youth which still glowed and moved upon the vaporous canvas before him. He was still at peace, still sure both of this world and the next, when he met the further bank with a sudden shock.

There came back to him with the shock the realisation not only of his physical but of his mental position. Climbing up the wood-edged steps, he rose both out of the mist and out of the boyhood dream which had so contentedly ensnared him. He looked back for a moment before turning resolutely towards the Hall, and saw the mist lying like a shroud, not only upon the river, but upon the precious things of his own past.

He had lingered and dallied during the last hours as if time had suddenly ceased to be, so that he was forced to hurry now in order to make up for it. All day, he thought, he had been behaving like that, alternately dawdling and hurrying, and then forgetting and dawdling again.... The men had disappeared who had been working in the grounds, and were no doubt up at the kitchen garden, waiting for him. It was pay-day, too, he remembered suddenly, with quick dismay, and they would not be best pleased at being kept waiting for their money. They would say it was time he went, he told himself, as he skirted the still-silent house, and came again to the steep path which mounted his own hill. They would echo the words which Machell had all but spoken, that morning,—that it was patent to all and sundry that he was getting too old for his job.