She shook her head again, but almost at once she was launched upon her tale, as if the little movement had flung her into the tideway. As well as she could she described to him her reactions during the day, beginning with the little cloud which had shadowed even the dream itself, and which had grown to such proportions by the evening. Her talk halted and turned upon itself and wandered to and fro, until not only the tale but the hours themselves seemed twisted into a tangle. Something, however, of the actual state of things emerged finally from the muddle, together with a fairly definite indication of how it had come about.
She told him, still shielded by her hands, how the house and the garden had caught at her unawares, rising up against her with armed memories which she had not known to possess the power to wound her. She told him of Dick’s grumbled warnings, of her passion for the privet hedge, of the jealousy and injured pride with which she had found herself facing Mrs. Machell. She told him at great length of the underminings of Cousin Jessie. And at the last, sighing and half-sobbing, she told him of the betrayal of the children, and the greater treachery of Ellen.
“That’s what’s getting at me most,” she finished, hating her own voice as she heard it quiver. “That’s what’s done me down. T’other things was bad enough, of course, fretting me right and left till I was near frantic. But I’d have got over ’em, likely, after a bit, and when I was feeling better. Likely I would, that is. I’m not so sure.... But what beats me is the children going back on us and thinking we wouldn’t come. Folks as stop believing in a thing like as not stop wanting it,—that’s how it seems to me.”
Kirkby had stood silent during the first part of the recital, and had seated himself silently when he found it promised to be a long one. Once, later, he got up to look for the lamp, only to find that Mattie had forgotten to fill it. This oversight on the part of one usually so methodical and efficient told him more than even the hurried and broken talk with which she was assailing him. Lighting a candle which he discovered on the mantelpiece, he sat down again, setting the light between them.
He was not thinking much as he listened; only allowing her to pour her story into his mind, so that, when the time came, and she was silent again, he might find the right words with which to cheer her. Still less was he feeling.... He had already exhausted his own powers of emotion, first, in that journey into the past which he had taken, across the river, and then in his final revolt and recession in the garden. He felt utterly detached from the situation which was riving Mattie in twain as if it was with an actual devil that she strove. Whether they went or stayed made no difference to him at the moment. He had passed, for the time being, to a plane where the things of this world could no longer affect him, either for good or evil.
“It’s Ellen bothers me most,” Mattie was saying, the quiver in her voice becoming more and more pronounced. “I’d have thought Ellen would have looked for me till I was in my coffin,—ay, and after that! Jessie says she talks nowadays of coming here instead, but I doubt she never will. Likely she’ll wait and wait and never come, same as I’ve waited and waited and never gone.... And if she puts it off a deal longer I won’t answer for it we’ll know her. That’s her photo she’s sent, over there, and for more than a while I made sure it was somebody else.”
Kirkby turned his eyes towards the photograph on the table, and turned them away again. He had no desire to look at it just then, or to test the truth of what Mattie was saying. His power to interest himself in such things would return to-morrow, when he would welcome even a doubtful presentment of his absent daughter. But to-night he had passed beyond his children, and felt no bond with them. They were no more to him at the moment than the transplanted sapling is to the parent stem from which it was once grown.
“You’re taking a deal for granted, it seems to me,” he said, at last. “You’ve only Len’s wife’s word for it about Ellen and the rest, and not at first hand, neither. Yon cousin of hers needs taking with a deal of salt.”
Mattie nodded drearily.
“You’re right, there! She’s one of them do-nowts as has always a sight to complain of, wherever they are.... But I feel it’s true, all the same. It’s only natural folks should give up looking for you when you’ve been so long on the road.”