The things which belong—

by Constance Holme

There was a photograph in the packet, as she had thought, and presently she had unwrapped it and had it lying before her. There was no accompanying letter that she could find; but there was nothing in that, as she had had one only yesterday. Taking the picture in her hands, she made a determined effort to fix her attention upon it.

After that first glance at it, however, she made as if to throw it down, for the woman in it was not Ellen. This was a middle-aged stranger, with traces of hard work in her face and hands, a little droop to her head and a slight stoop to her shoulders. The lips smiled, it was true, but behind the attempt at gaiety the face was tired. Even the clothes she wore had something a little strange about them to Mattie’s English eyes.

Yet for all that it was still Ellen.... Even as she looked she saw the likeness stand out, first, in the curve of the cheek, and then in the curve of the mouth. They were Ellen’s eyes, when she came to study them, though the laughing and dancing in them had sunk deeper. They were Ellen’s hands, too, which, even to this day, had kept their old childish habit of clutching at her gown.

Her heart swelled as she looked, both on her own account and on her daughter’s, thinking of the light, laughing thing that had gone out of the cottage, to return to her in this guise. She had known that she would look older, of course, and, as far as she could, had taught herself to expect it. But she could never have believed that the years would make so much difference. She remembered that Ellen was younger than Dolly,—Dolly, with her plump, straight, little figure and cheerful, unlined face,-and felt the tears that were in her heart rise up and fill her throat.

A horror of Canada seized her,—horror and fear of the land which had played such havoc with Ellen, and which had taken her away from her in more senses than she knew. For it was neither the added years nor the look of endurance which troubled her, after the first. People grew older in England, as well as anywhere else, and Ellen had never been very strong.... What frightened her was the unmistakable air of another country, turning her daughter into a stranger.

She sat for a long time trying to will the young Ellen back into the picture, and saw the youth come into it by degrees as the spring green comes upon the hedgerows. And presently, when she had her again, the longing to see her grew greater than she could bear. Silently and unknown to her, as she stared, the tears ran down her face....

She must see her, at all costs, she said to herself, in spite of Ellen’s lack of confidence and the bitterness of betrayal. It would be harder to go now, both because of her own clearer vision of things, and because of the fading impulse from Over There which had done so much to sustain her. The glamour had gone out of the enterprise for ever. But she could not afford to wait until Ellen should find both money and opportunity for her visit. At all costs, she must go to Canada.

But even as she made her decision she remembered the sea, and shrank from it in her mind as if from an actual presence. It had frightened her even in her morning freshness; in her evening weariness it became a stalking horror. Her passion for size and space, together with her power of visualisation, turned upon her now to her own undoing. The Atlantic rose up against her in its sullen depth and strength, in chain upon chain of endless, rolling mountains. Presently, as it seemed, the advancing terror was in the garden and in the house, and under the waves of her huge vision she saw herself sink and drown....

She came back at last to find herself twisted in her chair, with her eyes fixed upon some half-seen but definitely soothing object. As her mind cleared she found that she was looking through the open larder door, and out through the window beyond which vignetted the privet hedge. She could see the lawn, too, shadowy and mysterious with the evening, and the rosebush, slimmed and thinned to almost elfin proportions. Over the hedge-top there still lingered a segment of silvered, tranquil sky....

Her heart stopped pounding as she looked, and the choking terror which had sprung on her out of the ocean slowly loosed its grip. The peace of the garden reached her even in the house, making an exquisite stillness where the sea had roared and rolled. She sat drinking in the quiet, watching the sky fade and the lawn dim as veil after veil was laid upon them.... And then again she remembered Ellen.