The things which belong—

by Constance Holme

Yet almost without knowing what she was doing she was setting her hand to the lever which Fate had so tardily thrust into it. Even while she was making the breakfast she was moving a few things here and there, rejecting this and accepting that, and hunting for paper and string with which to pack them. It was more than likely that they would have to be unpacked again, later on, even if, in a future scheme of things, they were not left behind altogether. But the excitement of putting the work in train was impossible to resist. With each parcel she packed her heart rose a little higher. Every change in the standing order of things was an added assurance that that order was at an end.

The desire to alter it even further grew upon her when breakfast was over and Kirkby had returned to his duties. A great restlessness possessed her. It was almost as if the long strain of waiting for what she wanted had sapped her power to believe in it when it came; as if she feared that, unless she instantly took advantage of it, it might still manage to evade her....

It was this fear that drove her to shifting the furniture, to dragging out hidden treasures, and reducing the house generally to a chaotic state worse even than in the yearly whirlpool of spring-cleaning. Pushing and tugging, she performed feats of strength which she had thought beyond her, even in youth, and which sent her gasping to a chair for a few moments’ relaxation. She raced up and down stairs fetching and carrying, and then did not know what to do with things, and had to take them back again. The tide of life within her rose to its fullest height in the necessity for proving to herself that at last the longed-for miracle had been accomplished.

She was standing on a chair by the dresser, measuring the pot-rail with a tape, and in constant danger of losing her balance in her efforts, when the postman’s whistle came shrilling up to her as he climbed towards the gardens. In the sudden start that it gave her she lost count of what she was doing, and, getting down rather stiffly, she went to the door to wait for him.

For how many years now, she said to herself, still flushed and panting, had she listened, morning by morning, for Dick Nelson’s whistle! For how many years now had it had power to thrill her, carrying with it, as it so often did, the possibility of a Canadian letter! Even when there was no chance of such a thing it could set her heart leaping and her eyes shining. The single, climbing note of it had always been for her a call straight from the Great Beyond.

So many mornings she had longed and listened, and now she could almost count on her fingers the mornings that were left! She wondered whether she would still find herself listening when she was over the water,—going to the door, perhaps, to stand waiting and watching. It would be some time, no doubt, before she would get used to doing without those constant letters. She had lived for them so long that the loss of them at first would be almost like the loss of meat and drink.

She would not need them, of course, when she had the children,—so much nearer and dearer than any letter could make them!—but she would miss them, all the same. There were things people told you in letters which they never told in the flesh; things they felt for you when they wrote which they did not think of when you were by. And, once written, you had them to turn to, even if they never said them again. The very handwriting of those who loved you was in itself a loving speech....

The postman was getting nearer now, she could tell, and he had not whistled again. He had known for many a year now that he did not need to whistle more than once when it came to Mrs. Kirkby!... Like a wise man, he was saving his breath for the last steep little pull that led to the gardens. She could hear him wheezing and puffing, as it was, and the shuffle of his step which betrayed the slow lifting of his feet. Dick Nelson was getting old, she thought idly, and then remembered with a start that he was the same age as herself. She knew that was so because he had told her his age on his last birthday, and, looking at his wrinkles and his bowed back, she had been startled, even then. To-day, listening to his puffing and pausing as he climbed the gardens path, she was more than startled. To-day, faced as she was with new conditions which would make such trial of her strength, Dick’s loss of vigour seemed an actual menace.

She tried to console herself with the thought that age was purely a personal matter, and that people did not necessarily grow old at the same rate because they were born on the same day. Dick, as she knew, had been a weakling in his youth, whereas she had never known ache or pain. A walking-post’s job was a trying one, too, especially in this northern climate.... Nevertheless, she found it an effort to look at him as he came in at the little gate.

He was still wheezing as he stopped in front of her, and, diving into his bag, produced a flat packet, which she saw to be addressed to her in Ellen’s writing. He fumbled a little with it before he handed it over, and for the moment, curiously enough, she felt no impulse to take it from him.