The things which belong—

by Constance Holme

She opened the window before going downstairs, her glance falling, as she did so, on the privet hedge, and she was amazed by the sudden rush of affection which took her as she looked at it. The shadows were still on the little lawn which it sheltered, giving it that air of seclusion for which it had been planned. A flower-bed ran all round the lawn under the hedge, and in the middle of the grass was another bed with a standard rose. At one end of the little plot was a rustic seat, set with its back to the rest of the gardens and its face towards the west.

The Mattie looking out of the window saw many Matties walking in that little plot, and making it, by dint of years of dreaming, into an orchard of escape. She saw a young Mattie, first of all, and a little hedge, too thin and too small to fend off the curious glances of the men working close at hand. But the years fled before her mind little faster than they had fled in actual truth. Almost before you could turn round there was an older Mattie and an older hedge, with flowers in the trim border and a green closeness about the lawn. And presently both Mattie and the hedge were growing old and stout, and the turf had grown thick and soft, and there was a snug richness about the soil....

The little place, where, as she had told Kirkby, she was able to “get away,” had very soon become the real centre of her married life. To it she had taken both her early discontent and her later bitterness of frustration. Many a hard speech, which otherwise might have been Kirkby’s portion, had been tossed off at the privet hedge; many a salt tear had been wept into that lawn! Sitting and sewing in it, she had been a girl again, in her home towards the west. Walking in it, with her Canadian letters in her hand, the tiny spot had resolved itself into that broad country where her soul went free.

Going to Canada would, of course, mean leaving that little home of memories behind her. Somebody else would have the right to walk in it, to sit and sew and dream.... She felt a jealousy that was almost fierce as she thought of that somebody, and her throat contracted a little. If it had been possible, she would have gathered up the lawn and the privet hedge, and taken them away with her.

She continued to feel amazed by her sudden feeling for the place; or, rather, by the sudden revelation that it meant so much to her. She had thought of it only as a refuge, a makeshift for want of anything better, and now it had become something that actually belonged to her. She tested herself, looking away from it and then back to it again, and felt always the same rush of affection and the same jealous ache. She had always thought that she hated every inch of the ground on which her married life had been spent; but in spite of herself these few square yards of it had stolen into her heart.

Perhaps it was only, she thought, that the place looked different because she was leaving it. It was a well-known fact that people often regretted even the worst of things when the time came for them to part with them. (Why, she had had a cousin of her own with a broken leg, who had cried when her crutches had been taken away from her!) Or else it was just because she had not been free that she had not been able to see things properly. It was her mind, even more than her body, that had been in chains, and now she had shaken the chains from her. Perhaps she was seeing things now as she would see them in Canada, when at last she had got away from them....

She went downstairs, still thinking about the privet hedge, and feeling her first ecstasy a little tarnished. She knew now, what she had not realised before, that, in spite of the joy that was coming, there were things that would make her suffer. She had fondly imagined that she had paid for the joy long since, but apparently she had been wrong. Life was piling its debts against you all the time.... Already there had been the questions and the thought of the sea; and now had come the shock of the privet hedge. They would plant another hedge for her, if she wanted it, Over There, but they could not ensure her another forty years in which to watch it growing. They could not make each leaf and twig speak to the memories of a whole life. They could not give her back the English soil which she had salted and watered with her tears.

III

BUT even before she set foot in the kitchen her mind had recovered its tone. The mere fact of rapid movement, of swift passage from one room to another, had, as always, the power to cheer her. As for the letter, the presence of which had so intimidated Kirkby that it had taken him at least half an hour to look at it, she found it little less than a magic spell. To see it lying there on the table was almost to hear her children’s voices bidding her good morning, to meet their faces turned towards her as she entered, and to feel the warm reality of their hands.

So far, at least, Kirkby had not repented of his decision, she thought, relieved, finding a fresh resting-place for the precious object. He had let the letter lie.... It was true, of course, that he had seemed to have no regrets when he came to her upstairs, but you could not always tell. There was time, as she had just proved, for a whole change of heart between the first stair and the last. And he had never really wanted to go, in spite of his hankering after that distant garden and a fresh sight of his lads.