She said nothing to that, and presently he went on again, speaking in a dreamy tone as if he were weaving a spell of some sort about her, and as if the sentences were being dropped by something outside him into his tired brain.
“We’ve not done so badly together, Mattie, you and me, when you come to think of it. We’ve quarrelled a deal about this Canadian business, I know that, but we’ve not done so badly, all told. We’ve had a good life together in a beautiful place, which is more than a lot of folks get. We’ve been God-fearing folk, on the whole, and we’ve as good children as ever stepped. We’ve had a good life, Mattie, and we’ve been together a long while. Children matter a sight, I know, but we matter to each other more. We’ve made something between us in this spot as we’ll never have anywhere else. We’ve made our lives.... When folks get to the end of things, all that they’ve got left to them is just their lives....”
She had ceased crying long before he stopped, only sighing and bowing her head upon her hand as she had done at the beginning. Her mind, utterly wearied and over-strained, had for compensation that curious quality peculiar to extreme exhaustion of seeing clear in flashes. By virtue of those flashes, so much more vivid and poignant than those of the normal course of thought, she was able for the first time to see life as Kirkby saw it. For the first time she saw the dignity and the beauty of the life to which he clung, and to which such characters as his own owed their inward essence. Canada had gone out of her, as he had hoped, and into the great space which it had left flowed Kirkby and his gardens.
She remembered now that he had not been in the dream, and felt again the sudden shoot of fear with which she had first realised it. The violence of that pang showed her what she had never known until now, that Kirkby was more to her than the children. He had not been more to her once, as she had to admit. In her vigorous youth and middle-age she had found him tiresome, with his gentle ways and lack of push. But the years had done their work.... They had grown nearer together as time went on, while the children had grown further. They had been through things together of which neither the children nor anyone else could ever have any knowledge. Their very quarrels had brought them together, as if in fighting each other they had merely been fighting in order to get to each other. Now, in this last struggle of all, the last veil had been cleared away, and they saw each other close....
Kirkby was right when he said that all that you had at the end of your life was just your life. This was their life, which they had made together in this place, a completeness and a dearness, now that they came to look back upon it, formed, not only out of their happy hours, but out of their grim ones. It was theirs, and theirs only, shared by nobody else in the world; a thing so much their own that it seemed as if even God Himself must refrain from looking at it.... It was this life, which was all that they had, that Kirkby had feared to lose if they went away....
She drew her hand across her eyes, and, taking a deep breath, pulled herself into an upright position.
“Well, that’s over,” she said bravely enough, though her voice shook. “Over for good.... You needn’t fear I’ll ever bother you about Canada again.”
“You’ll feel better to-morrow,” Kirkby said, falling back, after his flight of eloquence, on that eternal and feeble consolation; and she laughed a little, though without rancour and without bitterness.
“Better—or worse!... Ay, well. Never mind about that. It’s over, as I said.... It seems queer to me now, though, always being so sure that I should go.”
Her mind went back to the dream, with all its richness and reality, and in one of those strange flashes she saw both its meaning and its hidden comfort. She had always known that some day she would go to Canada, and she had gone, although not in the body. Nor would her body ever be able to go now, because she herself would prevent it. But the dream had shown her a way by which her spirit, at least, could sometimes gain release. One of these days, if life pressed too hardly upon her, she might be permitted to go again.