The things which belong—

by Constance Holme

Dick Nelson had been right in saying that, no matter how you might fight against it, you were bound to settle, in the end. She had been angry about it, at the time, angry and contemptuous, but she saw what he meant now. The gardens had grown no wider for her as time went on, but they had grown deeper. She had taken root.... It seemed as if the place where you had suffered held you as surely in the end as the place where you had been content....

And in the same way people got hold of you, after a while ... even those you disliked, let alone people like Mrs. Grisedale and Mrs. Ellwood. In spite of yourself they became part of your life,—that life which you had not wanted, perhaps, which had either been thrust upon you, or which you had chosen by mistake, but which nevertheless you had steadily gone on living. You could not keep yourself away from people, no matter how you tried. Even if you shared nothing else with them, you shared the same countryside. Your life was marked by the milestones of their happenings, just as their lives were marked by yours. And when the time came to die, you lay down together to sleep in the same soil....

She was too old for Canada, she said to herself, accepting the fact calmly because as yet it had not come home to her. Not too old in body, perhaps, in spite of her age, but almost certainly in spirit. You could not fret and fight, year after year, as she had fretted and fought, without something wearing out in you. And even her body felt too old to-night for the land of which she had always thought as a place of vivid youth. She would feel better in the morning, of course,—better and more equal to things,—because you always did feel better in the morning. It was one of the lessons of life that you could face things in the morning which you could not face at night. But always the night came again.... In any case, something told her that to-day she had touched what was for her the highest point of living. After to-day she would begin definitely to grow old.

Safety was what you needed most when you were beginning to get on; not to be high adventurers and pioneers. Pioneers and adventurers weren’t safe,—couldn’t be, in the nature of things. Whatever happened, she and Kirkby would have certain dangers to face, even though they were not going actually into the wilds. Dangers from people and food, from climate and travel and strain.... There were dangers everywhere, of course,—even here; but long custom had taught them how to avoid them. You got used to most of your dangers, except for those unforeseen; and when you were used to your dangers they were no longer very dangerous.

Safety and peace and quiet, and a certain amount of ease; not hen-hulls and yelling children, such as Cousin Jessie had pictured. Jessie, of course, had been drawing the long bow, even if she had not been telling absolute untruths. But it would be different from England, nevertheless. Whatever Luke’s home might be like, it would not have the settled dignity of the home in which he had been reared. As for their own, which had yet to be built, it would have even less than Luke’s. It would have no dignity because it would have no memories and no past. It would be empty, and they would not have time to fill it. They would barely have grown used to it, and it to them, before death, with a crooked finger, would beckon them both out.

It was too late, she said to herself again, and felt through her calm the upstriking pang which the words inevitably evoke. It was true, as Dick said, that you could wait too long, so that, when the time came, and the chance offered, you were not able to take it. And the reason you were not able was because you had nothing left with which to meet it. The strength which you needed for new conditions had been squandered long ago, frittered away, day by day, in striving and rebellion.

The children thought it too late, too.... Her heart contracted as she remembered that, and she drew in her breath sharply. They had ceased to look for her long since,—if it was true what Jessie had told Dolly. It seemed a betrayal beyond pardon that they should not have gone on hoping as long as they could; at all events until she, who had lived on that hope, had finally resigned it. But she had never hinted at such a thing, not even in the latest of her letters. Perhaps they had laughed at the letters, she thought, shrinking; had mocked, even if ever so kindly, at the old mother who would not own herself defeated....

At least they had not mocked her when they wrote, nor had they ever implied that they had ceased to expect her. They had kept it up, just as she had kept it up, and with all the old happy anticipation. And for long enough now it had been just pretence ... that is, if you could believe Jessie. She felt suddenly that she hated letters and the things that they could do.... Jessie’s letters, which had brought about this present trouble ... the letters from the children, without which she might possibly have settled down long since....

She came at last to the thought of Ellen, and forced herself to meet it. It was Ellen who had hurt her most,—Ellen, who had been nearest to her, and had always understood her. Not only had she ceased to believe that she would come, but, with the plan for her own visit growing in her mind, she must also have ceased to hope for it. She had told a complete stranger that she was breaking her heart, longingly looking back to the home she had left so gladly. She had not told her mother that she was breaking her heart.... Mattie felt the desolation of one who, dedicated to some cause, finds that the comrade with whom he has travelled has secretly turned back.

She remembered Ellen’s packet now, and, getting up to look for it, returned with it resolutely to the table. She opened it slowly, fumbling with paper and string, and without any interest in what she was doing. Her mind, persistently turned inward upon its sorrow, refused to focus for more than a second upon any external object. All that she could think of at the moment was the hard fact of Ellen’s backsliding, and the breaking of the bond which had so long existed between them.