The things which belong—

by Constance Holme

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!