PART I

THE THINGS WHICH BELONG--

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

CRUMP FOLK GOING HOME

THE LONELY PLOUGH

THE OLD ROAD FROM SPAIN

BEAUTIFUL END

THE SPLENDID FAIRING

THE TRUMPET IN THE DUST

THE THINGS WHICH

BELONG--

(“_The things which belong unto thy peace_”)

BY

CONSTANCE HOLME

MILLS & BOON, LIMITED

49 RUPERT STREET

LONDON, W.1

_Published 1925_

Made and printed in Great Britain at

_The Mayflower Press, Plymouth_. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The author wishes to say that, in spite of the “local colour” in this

book, the situation between the characters is purely imaginary.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PROLOGUE 9

PART I--HIS 19

PART II--HERS 125

PART III--THEIRS 229

THE THINGS WHICH BELONG--

PROLOGUE

He dropped the pen.... More strictly speaking, it fell as if weighted

from his fingers. He had an extraordinary feeling that he would never

use a pen again.

A flush came into Mattie’s face, but she said nothing. He had always

expected that, if ever this moment arrived,--impossible as it had

seemed that it ever _should_ arrive,--she would meet it with a flood

of joyful speech; but now she was silent. It was the second time this

evening that she had surprised him by her silence,--this wan and weary

early-spring evening which marked the finish of a bleak and soulless

day. Searching vaguely, however, among recollections which had left

impression without form, he remembered that people often did fall

silent at the late fulfilment of a long desire....

Instead of speaking, she sighed. It was such a sigh, he thought, as the

dying give just before they pass on into new life. In that last breath

there is everything that they see before them, and everything that they

leave behind. Mattie’s sigh was like that.

Not that she looked like dying, as she got to her feet at last,

heavily a little, but pushing her chair from her more quietly than

usual, not in the almost rough way she used sometimes, as if the very

furniture of the house clogged and held her ardent spirit. She stood

beside him a moment, looking down at the letter he had just written,

a splendid woman, growing old,--and older in the evenings than in the

mornings,--but still full of vitality and fire. Again he expected her

to break out into some form of expression, either of satisfaction or

relief, but still she said nothing. Sometimes, as he knew, on occasions

of this kind, relief took the form of a recapitulation of past

miseries, and he would not have been surprised if Mattie had shown hers

in that fashion. But dumbness seemed to have fallen upon her. Even her

face had grown strangely inexpressive. There was no hint in it that she

was thinking either of old sorrow or new joy. It was simply blank, as

if it was no longer able to register the workings of the mind that lay

behind it.

Turning away from him, she moved almost aimlessly across the kitchen.

It was as if she had been switched suddenly on to another plane, and

did not know any longer what to do on this. Stooping, she put out her

hand for the poker, as if meaning to stir the fire, but she put it

out to the wrong side. That seemed to paralyse her more than ever.

She seemed incapable of reaching across to it where it stood in its

accustomed place, but remained stooping, her hand dropped loosely at

her side. It was only after a long pause that she straightened herself

slowly, and, swinging round, stared about the room with eyes which

hardly seemed to recognise it.

He continued to watch her, fascinated. It was all so _different_, he

was saying to himself; not in the least what he had expected. If only

she would speak!... It couldn’t be that she was disappointed?--he found

himself thinking, startled; and suddenly there came into his mind the

absurd fear that, in giving her what she wanted, he had perhaps taken

away from her something that she wanted more....

She moved away from the hearth, and as she did so the firelight shot

up, so that her shadow on the wall shot up, too, and became huge and

menacing in the kitchen. Too big for the room, it pressed itself

against ceiling and walls, as if trying to force a way out of what was

no longer able to contain it. He watched it struggle for a moment, saw

it sink and leap in a still more furious effort, and then the fire

dropped and it dropped with it. He waited for it to shoot up again,

expecting every second to see it beat and battle afresh. But it did

not shoot up again. Instead, there came presently into the stillness

a little tinkling sound which showed that the fire had dropped still

lower.

The window of the cottage had long since gone black, making a dark

velvet background for the gold flower of the lamp at his elbow. The

gardens outside were as blank as Mattie’s face, gone out as completely

as if it was only in the daytime that they had any concrete existence.

The letter on the table looked a white, untouched square, with the

impress of his handwriting barely visible upon it.

There was very little in the letter, but it had taken a long time to

put it down. They had been so long over it, indeed, that already it was

time for bed. The kitchen clock told them that, breaking the silence

almost impertinently, and Mattie started. And then she, too, broke

silence.

“Eh, well! So that’s the end of that!” she said, from the stairfoot,

speaking apparently not so much to him as to a hundred other things

about her; and, turning determinedly towards the stairs without further

comment, mounted them with her strong though heavy step, and vanished.

He sat still for some time after she had gone, feeling a little

defrauded and more than a little exasperated. Even now, when she had

spoken, her voice had told him nothing. It was rather unfair, he said

to himself.... It seemed incredible that the great moment of her

life should have come and gone, and that she should have had so few

words,--and none too comprehensible words, either,--with which to greet

it.

But she was glad,--he did not need telling that; so glad, perhaps,

that only tears could really express her gladness. Probably she was

crying upstairs, even now, weeping the tears which it is better not to

stop. Because it was wiser to let her weep he stayed on where he was,

watching the night deepen over the gardens and droop closer upon his

cottage.

He was glad, too, he said to himself; relieved, too, even though he

did not feel inclined to weep about it. He felt instead that lightness

which comes with choice after a long and difficult approach to a

parting of the ways. He told himself as he waited that he had only

hesitated until now because he knew that the moment had not arrived. He

had hesitated and rebelled, and therefore he had suffered; but he did

not suffer now. On the contrary, in this curious, almost unbelievable

way, he actually felt glad.

He got up, after a while, and on a sudden impulse went and opened the

house-door. He knew that the gardens were there, the moment he did

that. It was only through the window that they seemed to have faded

away. He could feel them stretching about him on either hand; could

see, without knowing how he saw, the actual shapes of bed and tree. But

to-night he felt no thrilling link with the place which had been in

his charge for the last forty years. He had passed on, as Mattie had

long ago passed on. He had written the letter, and he was glad.

Without being conscious that he had done so, he left the door still

open when he went upstairs to bed.

PART I

HIS

I

The letter was still there when he came down....

He had known that it would be there, of course,--had, indeed, lain

awake half the night, thinking about it,--but he was surprised to see

it, nevertheless. More and more, as he thought, it had taken upon

itself the quality of a dream; so that, when he saw it again, a white

shape set upon an expanse of red-clothed kitchen table, it met him with

a shock.

He put it away from him, however, at once. After that first glance,

which was not so much a glance as an actual physical encounter thrust

upon him as he came in, he did not look at it again. But he was aware

of it even while he refused to recognise it. He ignored it, indeed,

with something of the self-conscious effort with which one ignores a

vivid human presence, going about his tasks as if under actual human

eyes. That he was oppressed by it was evident from the way in which he

flung the window wide and the door wider, as if in an attempt to get

rid of something which threatened to take up its permanent abode.

For this morning he was not quite so sure that he was glad....

Lighting the fire, he set the kettle to boil, afterwards going into the

shadowy little larder to look for milk. His wife would be awake before

long, and he would take her up a cup of tea as soon as the kettle

permitted. Both he and Mattie were getting on in years,--he seventy

and she sixty-nine--but they were able to do for themselves yet. It

was a good thing, he said to himself, considering all that lay before

them, that they were able to do for themselves yet.... He said it to

himself more than once as he found a cup and saucer and the sugar that

Mattie loved; passing about the house with the careless precision of

practice, as well as with something more,--the delicate, kindly step of

one accustomed to move in narrow and crowded places, and among fragile

things like flowers.

And never once did he look at the letter.

The kettle was slow in boiling, for the fire burnt lazily, this

morning. Fires were sensitive things, people said, which knew when

those who lighted them were in trouble.... He checked himself guiltily

when he found himself thinking that, because of course there was no

trouble. On the contrary, there was a great deal of happiness ahead,

as well as excitement and adventure and reunion and new life. The last

especially appealed to him, because, as head gardener at Ings Hall, he

was continually bringing new life into existence. It was surely always

a wonderful thing to be about to greet new life!

Mattie would think it wonderful, at all events, in spite of her

wordlessness last night. She had continued to keep silence even when

he had joined her upstairs, and as he had refrained from looking at

her, in his delicate, sensitive way, he would never know now whether

or not she had cried. But while he had lain awake she had slept

peacefully,--peacefully, silently, graciously,--slept as he had hardly

ever known her to sleep, for she was too active a woman, both in body

and mind, to sleep very well. Indeed, for months before the letter came

to be written, she had hardly slept at all.... But last night she had

slept as those sleep who for years have felt themselves to be behind

bars, until the time comes at last when they lie down with relaxed

limbs and smooth brows, knowing themselves free.

It was a great thing, of course, to be free. Mattie had said it so

often that he supposed it must be true. He supposed it, just as he

supposed that he himself was not free, because she had said that so

often, too. He had never been able really to understand what she

meant, because he could not think of a freer life than one spent among

trees and fruit and flowers. But she must know better than he did what

freedom meant, because she had thought about it so much. Talked about

it so much, too, year in and year out.... Yes, it was a great thing to

be free.

The day coming in at the door was going to be a fine one, he saw,

although he had known that, indeed, as soon as he opened his eyes. But

it was a shrouded day as yet, with the mist still high above the river,

and threaded in and out among the woods which surrounded the gardens.

In any case, he could not have seen either the river or the Hall, for

they were a hundred feet below, but even his usual glimpse of the fells

across the valley, beautifully vignetted by the stems of larch and

beech, was hidden from him by the mist.

It was very quiet in his special domain on its steep little hill,--very

quiet and very shut-in. There were the walls round it, first, the big,

mellow, kitchen-garden walls, and then there were the mist and the

trees, and then there was more mist again. The men had not yet come to

work, and there was not even the sound of an approaching footstep. The

sun had not yet broken through, bringing with it that sense of movement

which is largely the play of light and shade. Only the birds were awake

and beginning the day in their usual rushing way; and the river, which

never slept at all, but ran and talked all night.

It was quiet in the house, too, except for the lazy crackle of the idle

fire, and the loud, determined strokes of the tactless clock. Mattie,

he knew, must be still asleep, for if she had stirred he would have

heard the bed creak in the room above. Even if she had not stirred he

would have known if she was awake, for her vitality would have flowed

down through the house and touched him as if with an actual hand.

He loved the quietness. He loved being shut in on the top of his

hill, and would have been only the better pleased if there had been

thirty barriers about him instead of three. This was the time when

the place was wholly his, before his staff stirred in the bothy or

climbed the hill from the park. The men, when they came, had an air of

possession even in their tread, and in the way they handled things and

struck spades into the soil. It was natural, of course, but he felt

that it robbed him a little. He had to share the gardens with them.

His employers had the possessive air, too, although not so much as

the men, both because they knew their place better and because they

did not strike tools into the ground. But he had to share the gardens

with them, all the same. They said: “What are you going to grow just

here, Kirkby?” Or: “Don’t you think we might have so-and-so, this year,

instead of this-and-that?” So they robbed him, too.

Not that he was one of those jealous gardeners who grudge the stuff

they grow even to the people for whom they grow it. He was not foolish

about the gardens, or greedy in any way. He grew things for a purpose,

and he liked them to fulfil that purpose. Only he _was_ the gardens,

so to speak, after all these years, and when anything was taken from

them it was part of him that was taken away.

He was certainly _like_ a garden, as he stood at his house-door,

looking out. When most people open their doors and stare, the things

outside come awake, but they took no notice of Kirkby. The gardens,

as it were, did not even look up. They were no more disturbed by his

appearance than by one of their own shadows lying under the bushes, or

by the long, ghostly lines of the green and crystal hoar-frost.

He was old and gentle, like an English garden, but he was hale, too,

and not by any means run to seed. His clothes, good clothes, now

pleasantly shabby, had a mellow tone which blended softly with their

setting. His fresh complexion and faded but clear eyes had the pale

tints of some of his own blossoms. The very droop of his shoulders was

less like the slow curve which comes with age than the gentle stoop of

a flower.

Especially he loved the quietness because it was at this hour that he

had a vision of the gardens as he planned them for the year. This was

his creative time, these few moments before the men came and broke and

scattered his thoughts. It was then that he saw the long succession

of colours and kinds with which the gardens would sum up their rich

total before the winter came again. He would lose some of it later, of

course, owing to other people’s follies and fancies, and the stolid

frustration of concrete facts. But some of it would persist, even

through worries and contradictions and the hard blows of the northern

weather; so that, by the time the resting-months for the gardens came

round once more, he would always in some measure have fulfilled his

dream.

He was not always able to snatch these god-like moments in which he

controlled the future. Often enough, Mattie was downstairs first, and

he could not call up his pictures while she was working and talking.

Husbands and wives were so near to each other that they got in each

other’s way over things like those,--things that had to have you all to

themselves, or they would not come. But he always took his moments when

he could get them, because he needed them. His days were poorer without

them and the assurance they brought him, as days are poorer without a

prayer.

And just now was the time when the vision was strongest and clearest,

when there was promise of new life all around, and still it was only

promise. Like all artists, he saw his creation best when there was

still nothing but a blank page in front of him. It had then a clarity,

a sweep, a combined passion and restraint which it never achieved again

after he had once begun to work upon it. It altered, no matter how he

tried to preserve it. Alien ideas crept in, upsetting the balance of

his scheme. Beautiful ideas they were, too, sometimes, but they were

alien, nevertheless. Often he had tried to convince himself that the

altered plan was all for the best; but as soon as the springtime both

of the gardens and of his inspiration came round again, he knew that

the thing which he saw then was the finer and purer.

The whole panorama of the seasons passed in colour and shape before

his inward eye, running at the same time through his brain like a

well-known piece of music. Familiar as it was, however, it was also

highly intricate, with its many different parts overlapping and

intertwining. Not only was there the kitchen garden to think of, but

there were the glass-houses as well, fruit grown inside and out,

tomatoes, orchids, carnations, violets. Then down at the Hall there

were the rose-gardens and lawns, tennis-courts and flower-borders, and

the long yew and beech-hedges to be kept trim and close. And besides

all these there was the big rock-garden across the river, full of

plants which, however much you might suppress them, grew as giants grow

in a single night.

He saw the vegetables he would grow with the warm, homely thrill with

which the farmer sees his crops, and the housewife her stores of linen

and jam. The fruit he saw as an artist sees his finished task,--as

gleaming jewels of price which you can hold and weigh in your hand. But

the flowers he saw as the mystic and the dreamer see Heaven,--not in

concrete form, but as sheer colour and light, and an ecstasy of shaded

tones.

He had, too, the knowledge which enabled him to see under the soil,

as the geologist sees the strata under his feet, and the drainer sees

where the streams run under the apparently dry surface. Beneath the

quiet beds and the still grass he saw the forces of life already waking

to work, sending the spring-urge through the seeds which had slept

there during the winter, or conserving their energies for those which

should be given into their charge later.

But for that insight and knowledge there would have seemed little

enough encouragement from the brown waste lying before him, and curving

away behind potting-sheds and glass to come back to him again along

empty borders. The gardens were not actually empty, of course, for

there were evergreen climbers and shrubs, patches of colour made by

the remains of the winter greens, jasmine in flower, and the wing-like

flashes of snowdrops and crocuses. But by comparison with his vision it

was altogether desolate and barren, for in that he saw all the miracle

of each season at once, smiled upon by a cloudless heaven.

First--and this he always saw first, and indeed it was already hard

upon the heels of his vision--he saw the crimson _ribes_ glowing over

the countryside, that precious pink flame which appears so suddenly

and amazingly among the pale yellows of the spring. Then--a quieter

beauty, but equally as thrilling--the infinitely pure green that comes

creeping over the brown thorn. He saw the purples of lilac and iris,

the cool white and green of lily-of-the-valley, the vivid yet delicate

spirit-stains of the azalea. He saw red and white jewels hung by the

thousand on raspberry canes and currant bushes, and the creamy ovals

of new potatoes. He saw roses, not singly, but in arches and flung

handfuls, and a cloud of sweet peas like pinioned butterflies. Backing

it all he saw green again, the young live green of the early spring,

and the deep, sap-running green of the flush of summer. But above all

he saw blue, that colour so precious in a northern county which is

kept short of blue skies. Lupins and forget-me-not and delphiniums and

periwinkle, and the blue that is never quite blue of the hydrangea.

When he looked across the gardens it was chiefly blue that he

saw,--blue against the brown of the soil and the green of the shrubs

and the mist-wrapped sepia of the wet tree-trunks.

Not every other gardener, he found, had the passion for blue to

anything like the extent that he had. All of them grew blue flowers,

of course, filling their borders with them, and flinging them

profusely about their rockeries. But they did not worship them, as

he did,--did not wait and watch for them, feeling, as they looked

at them, that what they looked at was pure spirit. Mostly they

preferred deep-coloured roses and rich carnations, the tawny hues of

chrysanthemums or the flaming shades of rhododendrons and dahlias.

They did not seem to see the wistfulness of blue against a northern

landscape, and how it was answered by the smoke-blue of far-off

mountains and the steel-blue of frozen tarns.

This year, however, they were to have a new blue flower which had

attracted quite a lot of attention at a northern show, last summer. It

had been brought into being by a north-country horticulturist, and so

naturally the northern papers had made a great to-do about it. One of

them had said that the new “dawnbell,” as it was called, had a certain

quality which only a northern mind could have infused into it; and

another said that it seemed to contain all the fundamental blues of the

world, as the rose seemed to contain all the fundamental pinks. Kirkby

had not quite understood what either of the papers was talking about,

but it did not matter. All that he knew, as he paid his homage to the

dawnbell in its airless tent, was that, set against the background of

his fells at home, it would have the exquisiteness and the appeal of a

little child.

But not only did he see the glory of the garden unrolled before him;

he saw the daily work, the infinite pains which led to the production

of it. He saw the trenching, the sowing, the thinning, the potting and

pruning, the staking and tying, the watering and weeding. He saw the

daily fight with the myriad living creatures which strive to share the

results of man’s labours with him. And when he had finished with the

growing, there was still the cropping, the gathering for the Hall,

the London house, the shooting-box, the market. And when the heaviest

work in that way was beginning to get over, there was the layering and

manuring and dividing; and always the continual battle for order with

the leaf-storms flung upon him by the autumn gales.

Not that he saw this side of his vision as mere drudgery, or in any

way secondary to the rest. It was all one to him, indeed, and of equal

interest and beauty, for to the artist the craft is as fascinating as

the dream. _He_ knew, who had done every job in a garden in his time,

the contentment that may wait upon a man when he is working out even

the smallest detail of a great conception. Long ago he had learned

that the whole is implicit in the part; so that, while he broke his

way through stiff soil, or toiled patiently with the knife, he felt

his material quiver with the message of all that was yet to come, and

saw, not the apparently trivial task upon which he was engaged, but the

beauty that should be.

He was so still during the few minutes in which his vision passed

before him that the very bushes and trees, chained and weighted with

heavy drops, seemed by comparison to be full of animation. It was as

if the actual life were being drained out of him in order to supply

vitality to the temporarily vivid picture. The light had brightened a

little, and the mist was lifting. Far below, from the direction of the

park, a sweet-whistled snatch swam up to him through the mist as the

faint chimes of sunk church-bells are said to swim up through the sea.

The men were coming to work. Behind him the kettle boiled over with a

sudden angry hiss, and at the same moment he heard the bed creak in the

room above.

Turning, he saw the letter....

II

Once again, however, he shut it out, firmly refusing to look at it as

he stepped across to the kettle. Yet again his awareness of it was

apparent in his every movement. His hand shook as he made the tea; and

when the bed upstairs creaked again, with that sharp, emphatic creak

which he had come to regard as actually emanating from his wife rather

than as the mere protest of a piece of furniture, he hurried out of the

room as if thankful to get away from it.

Cup in hand, he went upstairs, and entered the low bedroom, with its

window looking out on to the little plot of ground which was private

to the house, separated from the rest of the gardens by a privet hedge

which he had planted forty years ago, and which had now grown thick

and high. He had never ceased to feel surprised when he looked at that

hedge, not because it had done so well, but because it was there at

all. He would never have thought of planting it but for his wife,

because it would never have occurred to him to feel the need of it.

Either the whole place was his, or else none of it was,--that was how

he looked at it. Nevertheless, he had planted the hedge to please her,

because she wanted a spot where she could “get away.” In the same way

she had chosen the bedroom which looked out on that particular side,

because it made her feel that she “wasn’t there.” He had had some

difficulty in understanding either of these rather puzzling statements,

but he had made no bones about them. He himself had never wanted either

to get away or to feel that he wasn’t there; but of course it wasn’t to

be expected that he and Mattie should always feel the same.

She was sitting up in bed when he went in, and leaning forward a

little, as if some eagerness in her had sent her spirit before her

to unburden itself to him. The paralysis which had seemed to afflict

her on the previous night,--the result, perhaps, of over-emotion or

fatigue--had completely dropped from her. This morning, indeed, she

looked alive to her very finger-tips. Her strong, buxom figure looked

hale and wholesome in its good longcloth nightgown. Her plaited hair,

run through with silver, was still silky and thick. Her eyes were

shining and her cheeks flushed. She took the cup from him in a grasp

that was as firm and capable as when he had first known her.

“Eh, but I’ve slept sound!” she announced, yawning and smiling in a

breath, while the vibrant tones of her voice, running through the room,

seemed to stir up the atmosphere of the house, and even to assist at

the awakening of the world outside. “I don’t know that I ever remember

sleeping like that before.”

He nodded, looking at her affectionately as he stood beside the bed

in one of those still attitudes of his which suggested the poise of a

flower on a windless day.

“Yes. You’ve slept grand. You were tired, likely, with all that

settling and such-like.”

She laughed at that, showing teeth that were still fine, and stirring

her tea with a steady hand.

“Nay, not I!” she said in the same voice, the very strength of which

was an added denial. “It’d take a deal more than that to knock me out.”

Then suddenly she sobered, staring thoughtfully at the cup before her.

“I was just sort of--satisfied--I suppose.”

He said: “That’s right! That’ll be it,” in his quiet tones, nodding at

her again, although this time she wasn’t looking at him; the little

action and the repeated phrase seeming to warn off something inside him

that was making him feel guilty.

“I was dreaming a deal, although I was so sound....” She lifted her

eyes to him once more in their shining eagerness. “I dreamt I was

There!”

He grew, if possible, a trifle more still. So far, he had evaded the

letter successfully, but he could not evade this. In another minute,

and in spite of himself, he, too, would be There....

“I saw the whole spot as plain as plain!” Mattie went on rapidly.

“There was Luke’s house, first of all, and then Joe’s, and then

Maggie’s and her husband’s,--all nearabouts together, just as they’ve

always said.”

He murmured, “Yes, yes! Yes, yes!” trying to hold himself back, but

feeling that he was going, all the same.

“Ellen was there, too, though she lives a good bit off....” She

ruminated a little, as if trying to work out in her mind how Ellen had

managed it. “It was all just as they said, only a deal bigger. All of

’em together, just as they used to be, and things as snug as snug!”

“Yes, yes! Yes, yes!”

She paused a moment, contentedly sipping her tea, and staring at the

knitted quilt on the bed as though she saw the whole pattern of her

dream laid out there before her.

“There was another house as well,” she said presently, still

staring,--“a house you and me know of, as isn’t built yet, but will be,

before long....”

“Yes, yes! Yes, yes!”

“And between the houses there was that garden they talk so much

about,--a great big stretch of a place as seemed to go on for ever and

ever.”

He did not say anything to that, for the simple reason that he was

no longer present to say it. He was There now, just as she had been

There, all during those night-hours when he had lain awake and she had

slept so sweetly. The garden had taken him, as he had known it would

take him, if she began to speak of it. He could fight against all the

rest,--the houses and their occupants, even that other house which was

going to be so important, although it was not yet even built; but he

could not fight the garden. The very mention of it was sufficient to

drag him out of the safe place in which he had lived so long, and to

carry him overseas.

“It was all just as we thought,” Mattie was saying again,--“only a deal

bigger.” She had forgotten her tea, for the time being, and her gaze at

the quilt seemed not so much to be seeing pictures upon it as to pierce

through it and beyond. “There was that much room,--more room than I’d

ever thought there was in the whole world! Even the sky seemed bigger

and higher than our sky over here.” She drew a deep breath, as if even

in imagination it was a delight to fill her lungs under that higher and

wider sky.... “The children were there and all,” she went on, after a

pause, her voice softening. “You’ll hardly believe it, but I knew ’em

as well as well, even though I’ve never seen no more of ’em than just

their photos! There was Luke’s Joe, and Joe’s Luke, and little Sally,

and Daisy May; little Eric, too ... and Maggie’s last, as hasn’t done

as well as it should.... I couldn’t have known them better if I’d

brought them up myself! And the queerest thing of all was that they

knew _me_!... Just before I woke up I told ’em I’d got to go, and they

set to and cried fit to break their hearts.”

“It was only a dream,” he tried to console her, speaking with an effort

as if from a great distance.

“Yes, but it wasn’t like dreaming; it was like _being_!” she said

quickly, and suddenly her eyes filled with tears. “It was _that_ real!”

He came back then from his leap across the ocean, and, reaching out his

hand, patted her on the shoulder.

“It’ll be real enough soon,” he reminded her gently. “It’s only a

matter of being patient a few weeks more.”

“Only a few weeks, that’s all,” she repeated after him in a curiously

childlike fashion, heartening herself both with the words and with a

sip of the cooling tea. “But it’s a long while, all the same.... Seems

strange, doesn’t it, you should feel as if you couldn’t wait a few more

weeks, when you’ve waited for years and years?”

“You won’t notice you’re waiting,” he pointed out. “You’ll be too

busy. There’ll be a deal to do.”

She brightened at that, her vitality mounting at the very thought of

the approaching period of activity. “Ay, and I’m keen to be at it!”

she retorted briskly. “I shan’t feel it’s really real until I begin to

pack!”

She was launched now upon a subject of which the possibilities were

endless, and was already deep in its details when the same whistled

snatch reached them which Kirkby had heard earlier from the park. He

moved automatically. “There’s the men. I must be off,” he said, turning

towards the door.

Mattie nodded, her mind still full of delightful problems.

“It’s time we were both moving,” she agreed, though vaguely. “I’m

late this morning.... It’s that dream, I suppose,” she added, passing

her hand over her eyes as if to remove something which still lingered

before them, “but I don’t rightly feel as if I was back!”

“Oh, you’re back, right enough!” he smiled at her from the door; and at

the words the thing which had stayed in front of her eyes fled, and she

looked across at him.

“Ay, I’m back,” she said in a curious tone, and looked away from him

and about her. “Back!”--and her glance went to the privet hedge beyond

the window.... He waited a moment, staring at her uncertainly and

rather uncomfortably, and then slipped quietly from the room. Half-way

down the stairs, he heard her say “Back!” again, and hesitated in his

step as if meaning to return to her; only to hurry on afterwards more

rapidly than ever.

III

As he entered the kitchen he was met by the letter with the now

familiar shock, but this time he did not attempt to evade it. On the

contrary, he went deliberately across to it, and stood by the table,

looking at it. A glance at the clock had shown him that he was earlier

than he had imagined, and he was in no mood to meet his staff before

he was obliged. That whistling first-comer would be Len Machell, a

skilled gardener and his right-hand man. Len was always early, and he

had always liked him for it; but he was not so sure that he liked him

for it, this morning. Deep down in his mind lurked an uncomfortable

suspicion that Len had a reason for coming early to-day....

The letter, addressed in his small but flowing handwriting, was

directed to his employer at the Hall. He was always slightly ashamed of

his pale, delicate script, especially when he happened to see it beside

his wife’s black and sturdy hand. The scant imprint of the one seemed

almost a purposed reproach to the brave intensity of the other. It was

true that Mattie, in helping to draft the letter, had used so much of

the ink, writing and re-writing, and underlining and exclaiming, that

there had been very little of it left by the time he came to it; but of

course that was no excuse. _She_ would have got her effect, he knew,

even with a dried-up bottle and a broken nib!... He felt unhappily

that his effort looked even feebler this morning than it had done last

night, as if it had faded for lack of volition on the part of the

writer.

Yet, after all, he said to himself, straightening himself as he stood,

it was his weak pen which had altered their destinies. Mattie’s

handwriting, superior though it was, could not in this case have had

the weight of his. The ink that was left had been more than sufficient

for the few, colourless words in which, after forty years’ service, he

had sent in his notice.

It had seemed so impossible a thing before it was done, and, now that

it _was_ done, it seemed so easy. Simple and easy, as death seemed,

when you saw it close.... But it was wrong of him to keep on thinking

of the change that was coming in terms of trouble or death. Once

already that morning he had had to remind himself that what it really

stood for was new life.

Yet it was only in terms of death, he said to himself obstinately, that

he could think of the actual break. It seemed absurd that the snapping

of a tie like that could be brought about by the mere scraping of a

rusty pen. It should be accomplished, he thought, in some more dramatic

way, like the call to attention of clean shot, and the lowering of

something into a grave.

Forty years’ service was in that letter, but there was so much more

besides. He had been bred on the estate, like his parents before him,

and he had never left it. All that was in it, too. Old customs and

ways of thought, closer and closer growth to human beings and to the

soil,--links that had loosened and even broken, but had always welded

again,--all these were there. Not in the actual wording of the letter,

of course, but in its very texture; so that it seemed as if one man

alone could never carry its weight of association and memory, and its

long tale of the years.

And more besides.... Not only was there forty years’ service in the

letter, but there was forty years’ struggle ... all that long contest

between himself and his wife, which had begun in the first year of

their marriage and never stopped,--never, that is, until last night

with the writing of the letter, when it had stopped as a clock stops in

a house where somebody dies.

Even this morning he had that same feeling as of a clock stopped

somewhere in the house, followed as it always was by a silence that

could be heard....

Well, it was all over,--the talks, the disputes, the discussions as

to ways and means. She had always wanted to go, and he had never been

able to go; first, because he hadn’t the money and, second, because he

hadn’t the heart. He had grown to believe that the discussions would go

on for ever, and now they were at an end. It almost seemed as if they

would have nothing to talk about any more.

She had never liked the place from the very start; never settled or

learned to look upon it as home. He had waited for the years to work

their magic upon her, and they had never worked it. She had never

settled.... Always she had gone on longing and reaching out for

something that wasn’t there, something that in the very nature of

things couldn’t possibly be there.

It had taken him a long time to understand, and he was not sure that he

understood, even yet. All that he had definitely learned from the clash

of wills was that the heart must face its own way; that one man’s meat

may be another man’s poison, and that the holy, inhabited place wherein

one soul can find its peace may be nothing but an airless vacuum to

another.

Yet it was not, he sometimes argued with himself, as if he had taken

her from such a very different existence. She was a gardener’s

daughter, as he was a gardener’s son, and had been born to the

same tranquil round and lovely isolation. He had thought her happy

enough when he saw her at home, cheerful and busy and making her own

interests; but that, as he knew now, was merely because of her youth.

The soul can lay out its own pleasure-grounds when it is young. Later,

when it ceases to do so, it sees the little ring-fence surrounding it

only too plainly.

Right up to the time of her wedding, indeed, Mattie had been so busy,

one way and another, that she had never realised her own requirements.

Even if she had thought about them, she would have taken it for granted

that marriage would mean a wider life, and instead she had found life

narrow down upon her. Existence in her native place had been narrow,

too, as she was ready to admit, but not _so_ narrow; for in the home of

one’s youth there is always a way of escape through the magic door of

childhood.

It was tragic that she had not known that she needed a wider

scope,--tragic for both of them. But she had not known, and there had

been nobody--apparently--to tell her. It was the gardens which told her

eventually,--his dear, charmed circle of the gardens,--when it was too

late.

He had found her, one evening,--as very soon after their marriage he

had come to look for her,--sitting beside an upstairs window. The

window was open, and by putting out her head she could see between

the trunks of the trees to the coloured canvases of the fells. It was

a circumscribed view at the best, with only a section of the hills

visible when the weather permitted, together with a strip of sky laid

nun-wise across their foreheads; but it was better than nothing. He

had called up to her laughingly to ask her “what she was at,” and she

had told him in reply that she was “shoving the walls away.”

“Shoving what walls? And whatever for?” he had enquired, puzzled, and

she had flung out her hands with a thrusting movement towards the walls

surrounding the gardens.

“_Them_ walls!” she had said vehemently. “They make me feel sort of

choked. There’s times I feel I could hag ’em down with my own hands,

brick by brick!”

He had been so surprised by that that he had stayed under the window,

staring, and wondering whether she wasn’t well, or whether something

had happened to upset her. It seemed incredible to him that people

should think of garden walls as shutting them in, when everybody knew

that what they were really there for was to shut things and people out.

“What, there was walls at home, wasn’t there?” he reminded her, at

last. “Ay, and a deal higher than ours, too, now I come to think of it!”

It had been her turn to stare, then, turning the problem over in her

mind.

“I never thought of ’em as high,” she returned slowly, pondering.

“Anyway, I never felt shut in. Likely it was just because things seem

that much bigger and wider to a child, but I remember thinking the

garden was nearabouts as big as the whole world!”

“Well, I’m not saying this here’s quite as big as that!” he had tried

to laugh her out of her brooding. “But it’s a fairish size. You’ll not

find a better kitchen-spot anywhere in the North.”

“It’s terribly shut-in, all the same,” she persisted obstinately.

“And terribly small. _That_ small,” she added suddenly, with a

characteristic flash which might have stood equally for bitterness or

humour, “I could happen put it inside my wedding-ring!”

It had grown no bigger for her, either, as time went on. She had never

ceased to find it small and shut-in, never ceased to rebel against its

limitations. Many a day she had sat by the upstairs window during the

years that followed, but she had never succeeded in pushing the walls

away. It was he who had done it in the end by writing the letter,

laying them flat with his pen as effectively as with any Jericho

trumpet.

Still, it was her will that ran behind the pen, even though it was his

hand that held it. He knew that well enough, even while his loyalty had

no intention of admitting it. The disputes and discussions had seemed

futile enough at the time, but they had done their work in the end. Her

hours of silent revolt, equally with her passionate clamourings to be

free, had accumulated at last into a dynamic force which seemed able to

move mountains.

Once, before, indeed, she had almost succeeded in getting her way, only

to find, just as she was on the point of turning into it, that it led

to a dead end. The affair was so long ago now that he had practically

forgotten it, but it came back to him, this morning. Contemplating it

to-day, he was struck by one curious fact,--that what he had nearly

done then seemed to him now far more incredible than what he had

actually done, last night. The sudden reassertion of that distant point

of view showed him how much he had altered since that date; how far he

had travelled, although unknowingly, along the road to Mattie’s desire.

It was at a local flower-show that the opportunity had come, tumbled

from Heaven, as it seemed, in answer to Mattie’s pleading. He had been

present at the show in the capacity of judge, and a visiting landowner

had taken a fancy to him. At the end of the afternoon, his new friend,

without actually offering him the post, had yet managed to convey to

him that his own head gardener’s situation, which happened to be vacant

at the moment, could be Kirkby’s for the mere formality of asking.

He had forgotten the incident, as has been said, but at least he had

no difficulty in remembering how his wife had taken the news. It had

acted upon her like a charm, turning her, even at the mere prospect

of escape, into a different creature, so that already she moved and

spoke as if breathing a freer air. All evening they had debated the

question, and had gone up to bed resolved upon accepting the unspoken

invitation. He recalled Mattie’s elation over their luck, her gratitude

to Providence, her almost childlike happiness. Yet it was he who had

slept, that night, even under the sword of impending change; while she,

for all that her prayer was about to be granted, had lain awake.

And in the morning the whole of her evening dream had fallen to

pieces.... She had come downstairs silent and apathetic, dimmed as a

candle is dimmed by the coming of daylight. She ignored any reference

on his part to the decision of the night before, and when he definitely

tried to reopen the subject, she pushed it away. Later, when he

insisted that the matter should be settled, one way or the other, she

told him that she had given up all idea of leaving.

“It’d make no difference, even if we did go,” she had said dully. “I

didn’t see it, first thing, but I do now. It’d be the same thing over

again, that’s all, and happen worse.”

His heart had leaped in spite of him at the unexpected reprieve, but he

had tried to encourage her, nevertheless.

“What, it’ll be a fresh spot, anyhow!” he reminded her bravely.

“That’s something, surely? Fresh folks and a fresh house, as well as a

different sort of air, as’ll likely suit you better.”

She shook her head.

“It’d only look fresh on the outside. It wouldn’t _be_ fresh in any way

as really mattered.”

“If it’s the walls as is still bothering you, they’ve no call to, as

I’ve told you already. The house at the new spot is outside the gardens

altogether. I asked Colonel Brangwyn special.”

But she refused to be heartened.

“It’d be the same thing over again,” was all she would say, repeating

herself endlessly. “Just exactly the same. You and me and the gardens,

and me choking myself to death.”

“What is it you _do_ want, d’you think?” he had asked her at last

patiently, and she had shaken her head again, looking away from him

almost shyly.

“Nay, I don’t know. I’m daft, I suppose. It’s just _room_.... Ay,

well, it’s no use talking about it any more. But you needn’t apply for

Colonel Brangwyn’s.”

Much the same situation had recurred at intervals, later on, but it had

always ended in the same way. Always she had drawn back again at the

last moment. Always it had seemed to her that she had found the right

road at last, only to realise that it led nowhere. Always she had seen

in time that, no matter where she went, to this country-house or that,

she would always have the little ring of an English garden round her.

Things had been better for her after the children began to come, but

they had also been worse. The gardens had grown fuller for her, after

their arrival, but they had grown no larger. Moreover, the increasing

family had put a stop to any chance of retirement as well as to the

occasionally-discussed project of “setting up for ourselves.” Money had

continually grown tighter. With each fresh child that appeared, they

were forced to “plough a furrow nearer the fence.”

Yet if it was the children who in the first instance had closed the

door to escape, it was the children who in the long run had thrown

it open. One by one, as they grew up, they had all of them left the

gardens. They had loved them,--all, perhaps, except Ellen,--just

as they loved their parents; but they had left them, nevertheless.

Something of their mother’s longing for space must have entered into

them at birth, making it impossible for them to remain. And not only

had they found the gardens too small, but England itself, so that they

had allowed Canada to swallow them up, as it swallowed so many.

It was not long, however, before they began to regret this wholesale

snapping of ties. Not only did they get together as soon as possible on

the other side, but, the moment they were on their feet, they wrote,

urging their parents to join them. Sometimes it was Luke who wrote,

and sometimes Joe; Maggie, sometimes, and sometimes Ellen. Later on,

when they were all married, the boys’ wives wrote, too, and the girls’

husbands; and, later still, it was the grandchildren who, with their

first handling of a pen, added their unsteady scrawls to the general

petition.

It was really the grandchildren who had beaten him in the end....

IV

All the same, a long time had elapsed before he had finally given in.

He was middle-aged and over even when the letters first began to come,

and he had not felt able to face the venture. Mattie was all agog for

it, of course, seeing it as the chance for which she had waited all her

life, but he refused to consider it. He had said “no” so often, indeed,

that it had seemed as if he could go on saying it for ever. But he had

not gone on saying it for ever, or anything like it. Quite suddenly he

had blotted out all those accumulated “noes” with a single “yes.”

Yet, perhaps, now that he came to think of it, it had not been as

sudden as he imagined. It seemed to him now, looking back, that the

“noes” had had no significance at all; that, in point of fact, he had

been defeated from the very start. Right from that first occasion upon

which he had found his wife upstairs, pushing the walls away, he had

known that he would go....

Nevertheless, for ten years at least he had successfully resisted

both Mattie’s persuasions and the calls from over the sea. It seemed

extraordinary to him now that he should have been able to hold out so

long. But then it was not he himself that had been able to hold out,

but something outside him,--something that would not break, that never

_could_ have broken, so he had firmly believed, until it had given way

on the previous evening.

Still, it had not been an easy matter, keeping his ears and his heart

shut, all those years. Not only were there Mattie’s arguments to

contend with, and of course the letters, but there was a constant

succession of photographs as well. Snapshots of the party across the

ocean were always arriving,--pictures of his children, of their wives

and husbands, their homes, their families. And besides all these there

were photographs of the nursery garden which they ran among them, and

which they were rapidly turning into a big business. For in this one

thing at least they had remained true to type. Without hesitation they

had turned naturally and successfully to gardening.

At first he had felt little more for their far-off efforts than

the aloof if kindly contempt of the finished workman for the crude

beginner. He was glad, of course, that the children had kept to the

old trade, but conditions were different “out there,” and at first

he found them difficult to follow. As time went on, however, and the

photographs showed the garden to be increasing in size and scope, his

interest began to quicken. He had it fixed in his mind now what they

were planting and when, and what they were growing for the different

markets. Presently he was even trying some of their new-fangled ideas

on his own account, although he was careful not to say very much about

them. Thinking about that distant garden while he worked in his own,

he came at last to that point where the mind passes so easily between

place and place that the body might equally well be in either.

Mattie, of course, had reached that particular state long since. Her

dream of last night had been only a vivid extension of it. Often,

for instance, she would talk of the grandchildren as if they were no

further away than round the corner. “Little Joe’s first day at school

to-day,” she would say, bending over her sewing. “I hope they got him

off in good time.” Or-- “Maggie’s May’s not so grand with that cough

of hers. I must see about getting her a bottle of something from the

chemist’s.”

He had done his best to conceal from her his growing absorption in the

Canadian enterprise, but it was not long before she discovered it.

Dropping her talk of the grandchildren to some extent, she concentrated

upon the business, surprising him, times without number, by her

intimate knowledge of it. She, who had never shown even the faintest

enthusiasm for his particular job, seemed to know every seed that was

sown in that nursery across the Atlantic.

“Potatoes have done well for them, this year,” she would inform him,

glibly reeling off a list of varieties. “‘Grand Elephant’s’ the best,

though, they say. I’d like to try ’em. That sort we had ourselves

wasn’t worth the planting.”

“Main crop _was_ ‘Grand Elephants,’” he would remind her mildly, but

without arousing her to any excitement.

“Eh, now! Fancy that!” she would answer, in a tone of polite wonder.

“And I never knew!... Likely it’s the soil or something as makes the

difference. Anyhow, all I can say is I thought ’em right poor.”

For some time she had contented herself with merely stimulating his

increasing interest, but after a while she came out into the open with

it as a weapon.

“You’d settle sharp enough, you’d see,” she was saying presently, when

the eternal subject came cropping up again. “It’s the same job, when

all’s said. ’Tisn’t as if you’d be going to something different.”

“It’d _be_ different, though, in lots of ways,” he had replied firmly,

much in the same hopeless but obstinate tone in which she had so often

asserted that “it would be just the same.” “Come to that,” he had

added with spirit, “I wonder you’re so keen on it yourself if it’s not

to be fresh, seeing you’ve always been so set against gardening and

such-like?”

She had laughed without resentment at his mild attack, too enchanted

with her happy project to be stirred to anger.

“It’d be different in _my_ way,” she admitted,--“I give you that--but

I don’t know as it’d be that much different in yours. It’d be

bigger-freer--nay, I can’t explain! But sticking things into the

ground and taking them out again seems to me much the same job all the

world over.”

He had said nothing to that, partly because it did not seem worth

while, but also because his mind instinctively retreated when

she mentioned size. She liked to think of the Canadian garden as

prairie-wide, a great, untrammelled stretch of a place under an arching

sky,--but that view of it repelled him. The photographs, of course, had

shown him something of what it was like, but he chose to ignore them.

Hidden away in his imagination was his own impression of the place, as

a time-mellowed, sheltered circle of anciently-tilled soil....

It was perhaps because he had been dwelling upon the garden in that

particular guise that yesterday he had given in. Also he had had an

annoying day, spoilt by several of those tiresome little incidents able

even to take the glamour out of the work which is nearest to one’s

heart. But it was chiefly the weather which had overset his mind, hard

and clear as it was with that sinister hardness and clearness which

scarifies the soul. It was the only weather that ever made him feel

really old, stripping as it did the veils from his various shrines. He

had gone indoors for his evening meal, feeling that his life, under its

present conditions, had nothing further to offer him.

The mail was in, he found, as he sat down,--it had seemed to him, of

late years, that the mail was always in,--and a letter from Canada was

lying on the table. Mattie had opened it, apparently, and presumably

read it, but she made no attempt to force it upon his notice. She

neither mentioned it, indeed, nor even as much as pushed it towards

him, and perhaps because of this lack of coercion, he found himself

eyeing it longingly. In his momentary state of depression it seemed to

offer him the exact stimulant which he needed, and after resisting the

impulse for a short time, he reached out and drew it towards him.

The atmosphere changed around him almost as soon as he opened the

letter. Canada leaped out of the pages at him as he read,--Canada, live

and free, and with red blood rushing in its veins. It had always seemed

to him a country where everybody was young, and to-day more than ever

it seemed peopled with radiant youth. The letter was full of vitality,

of hope, of healthy happiness and success. He forgot his annoyances as

he read, and his depression vanished. By the time he had finished the

letter he, too, felt young, breathing the air of that land which seemed

to know nothing of growing old....

The garden was in the letter, too, needless to say; in fact, it might

almost be said that it was more garden than letter. It was almost as if

the writer had posted a piece of the actual soil.... Kirkby, holding it

in his earth-sensitive hand, found it an amulet transporting him so far

that he lost all sense of his present surroundings.

He looked up after a time to find his wife’s gaze fixed upon him, and

the teapot suspended in her hand. Apparently she had been about to

speak, and then had been checked by a realisation of the importance

of the moment. He stared at her as if he found some difficulty in

focussing her, and she lowered the teapot slowly to the table.... He

tapped the letter.

“Mattie,” he said. “We’d likely best go....”

It was really the garden which had beaten him in the end.

V

He came back from re-tracing the slow trend which had led to the

writing of the letter to find Machell staring at his open doorway

from across the garden. From that distance, as he knew, the man could

see nothing of what was happening inside; yet he bestirred himself

sharply and moved away from the table. Len’s attitude affected him

unpleasantly, just as his coming early had done; so that, when he went

out at last to join him and give him his orders for the day, he had an

uncomfortable feeling that this morning he was an enemy rather than a

friend.

The feeling passed, however, as soon as he came into contact with him.

Len was apparently his usual genial self, with nothing more sinister

at the back of his mind than the preparations for peas and potatoes.

The rest of the men arrived presently, and the gardens fell into their

usual routine. By the time the sun had broken through, Kirkby was again

beginning to wonder whether the letter and all that it stood for had

been anything more than a dream.

The very weather of yesterday, that soul-troubling weather which had

helped so largely towards his decision, now seemed like a dream,

too. Looking at the fresh yet quiet colouring of to-day, at outlines

diamond-clear and yet soft as human breath, he found it impossible to

re-imagine it. But that was the worst of weather, as he knew, even

although at the same time it was the wonder of it. You were happy on

the good days, feeling that they would go on for ever; but, on the

other hand, the bad days seemed as if they would go on for ever, too.

And the bad days were very dangerous, because they were apt to make

you lose heart. On the bad days, if you were not careful what you were

doing, you might find yourself signing the whole of your life away....

Yesterday had been a destructive day, so bitter and killing that it

seemed as if this morning everything should have been withered; but

instead of being withered things were pulsing with new vigour. Even

where there was no life showing above the soil, life spoke to him from

below. The air, vivifying yet soft, had that baptismal touch which

comes only at one time of the year. And running all through Nature was

the thrill which comes out of nowhere, like the Spirit, so that the

quiet land seemed to heave and thrill like sunlit waves of sea.

It came to him now that, next year, when the thrill was in the air,

he would be in Canada. It would be the same thrill, he told himself

hurriedly, because Nature’s magic was the same everywhere; and yet it

would not be quite the same. On the soil where you had been born and

bred there was always something more. Not only did you feel the thrill

of the spring that was coming, but the thrill of the springs that were

gone; so that, with each fresh spring on your native ground, the thrill

deepened because of the past.

_That_ thrill, at least, if he went to Canada, he would never feel

again....

He had been right about Machell, he discovered later.... He discovered

it after breakfast,--a breakfast which seemed to him more like a

meal in a railway station than anything else. Beyond removing a few

things from the mantelpiece, and routing a few other things out of a

cupboard, Mattie had not actually begun her preparations for packing,

but she managed to give the impression, nevertheless. The ebb and

flow of her talk, rising and falling as she passed between kitchen

and larder, came to him like the signals of approaching or departing

trains.... Finishing his meal more hurriedly than usual, he went out to

find Len again standing staring at the cottage.

This time, however, Machell made no attempt at concealment. Instead, he

came forward to meet his chief awkwardly but eagerly.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” he began hastily, as if unable to contain

himself any longer, “but there’s something I’d like to ask you. It’s

all over the place you’re giving up your job, and I thought happen

you’d put in a word for me if I was to apply for it.”

For a moment or two after he had spoken Kirkby did not know how to

answer. He should have been prepared for the shock, he knew, but the

fact remained that he was not prepared for it. Absurd as it seemed,

it had not yet occurred to him that this sort of thing would follow

naturally upon his “notice.” It would have come to him, of course, with

the actual sending of the letter, but so far he had not progressed

beyond the actual writing of it. His intuition had been trying to warn

him, it was true, but he had not been able to grasp what it wished to

tell him. But it was clear enough to him now why Len had seemed to him

like a stranger who might possibly do him harm....

“What makes you think I’m meaning to give up?” he enquired at last,

evading the question, and shifting his gaze from the man’s face to the

greenhouse behind him.

Len wriggled uncomfortably.

“Nay, I don’t know ...” he began, looking down. “But it’s been all over

the spot for a long while now. They’ve got it down at the village, too.

Mrs. Kirkby’s always talked a deal about leaving, you see,” he added,

rather more confidently, “and lately it’s seemed to me you were leaning

that way yourself.”

“How d’you mean--‘leaning’?” Kirkby questioned him a second time, and

Machell wriggled again.

“Well, sir, you haven’t been like yourself for a bit now, if you’ll

excuse my saying so. Absent-minded and such-like, and not hearing when

folks spoke.... And, begging your pardon again, sir,” he finished,

with a nervous burst, “but you’re getting on. It’s only in reason you

should be thinking of retiring before so long....”

He found himself presently on the further side of the greenhouse,

without quite knowing how he had got there, or what he had said to

Machell before he went. He felt pretty sure, however, that he must have

promised him his support, for he could still see the smile on the man’s

face, though distorted by panes of glass. But he had got away quickly

because he had not felt equal to smiling at him in return. Indeed,

never in his life had he come so near to experiencing the emotion of

positive hate.

He understood now that he had never known how much he had valued his

position until he was on the point of losing it. He had done well at

his job, of course, arriving early, and achieving a horticultural

reputation, not only in his own immediate neighbourhood, but in a

wider district. Visitors to the Hall treated him with deference, and

consulted him as an authority. He was invited to lecture, to judge at

flower-shows, to sit on the committees of various societies. He had

also written pamphlets,--one, upon an Alpine plant which nobody else

in England had been able to grow, but which grew quite simply and

easily for Kirkby, merely, as far as one could make out, because he

wished it to do so.

Successful, however, as he had been in his own little world, he had

never allowed it to upset him. He had never been over-elated about his

doings, or tried to create an impression. Indeed, he had hardly ever

thought about himself at all. He had taken the rewards of life, when

they came, as simply as he took the fact of the pollen in the ripened

flower.

But he had grown used to the situation, all the same. He had grown

to expect the deference and the recognition, without knowing that he

expected them. They had ended by creating a special atmosphere of his

own in which he moved and breathed as naturally as in the air around

him.

That atmosphere would be one of the things which he would have to

leave behind him when he went to Canada. He would be nobody,--out

there. People might be kind to him, of course, might even like him, but

they would know nothing about him. If they thought of him at all, it

would probably be only as somebody’s father, old-fashioned and rather

a nuisance. They would never know that he had done anything or been

anything,--out there.

He felt ashamed of himself at first for caring so much about the loss

of a thing like that, but as he pondered the question further, he

saw deeper. It was not just conceit and vanity that made people want

recognition when they were old. What they were looking for when they

asked for it was a definite confirmation of their personality,--a vital

necessity, without which they were apt to wither away. They were like

cut flowers, he thought, once they had lost their special identity.

That was why so many lingered on in the place where they had lived and

worked, feeling that they would die if they were taken away from it.

Even those who had been neither pleasant nor useful in their lives

received some sort of recognition in the place where they had lived.

The new folks whom you met when you were old often seemed tacitly to

deny that you had ever lived at all. You fought against it, at first,

but you could do nothing about it. Presently, perhaps, you even came to

see yourself through their eyes as a sort of ghost,--a ghost who would

never have any future, and who had never had any past....

And along with your life, of course, they denied your work,--that work

which was part of you and yet was so much bigger than you, and which

you had fondly imagined would still live on in people’s minds, even

after you, who mattered so much less than the work, were dead and

crumbled away....

One of the several garden-cats appeared at that moment around a corner

of the greenhouse, and twined itself lovingly about his legs. He could

see another inside the greenhouse, sitting on one of the stages, and

still another sunning itself happily inside one of the frames. They

were an old breed now, which had been in the gardens for years--so old,

indeed, that he had ceased to distinguish between the generations. For

the same reason, and because of their puzzling likeness to one another,

they had no individual names, but were known collectively as The Cat.

They were an ugly breed, he supposed, although he admitted it

grudgingly,--brindled, with the darker spots of the brindling

appearing invariably in the wrong places,--but he liked to see them

about. It gave him a sense of pleasure to watch the sun bringing out

on their glossy sides the tawny hues which went so well with wood and

soil. He had grown so accustomed to them, indeed, that a cat of any

other description about the place would have offended his artistic eye.

The Cat was another of the things which he would have to leave behind

him when he went to Canada,--the things which already he was beginning

to count over and to weigh before the time came to let them go. He

wondered for a moment or two whether it would be possible to take one

of the breed with him, but came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t do.

Mattie might not like it; the people at the other end might not like

it; and most certainly the cat wouldn’t like it. No, it would never do.

He pulled himself together, after a while, and went off about his

business, but the beauty of the young spring day was largely spoiled

for him. He even shrank from it, now, especially when it called to

him, attracting his attention with scent and sigh in the fashion

peculiar to the spring. Instead of soothing and heartening him, as it

had always done before, it now seemed almost to attack him. He shrank

from The Cat, too, especially from the sight of the sun touching it

as it stalked across the gardens; and, going into his little office

to examine his post which had just arrived, he shrank when he found

catalogues and circulars addressed to “The Head Gardener.”

But most of all he found himself shrinking when he had to approach any

of his men, fearing to find some other of them with Len’s petition

ready upon his lips. As it happened, indeed, not one of them as much as

hinted at his going, let alone applied for his post; but he continued

to shrink from them, nevertheless. Self-conscious with his staff for

almost the only time in his life, he felt that they talked about him

when they saw him coming, and talked again when he went away.

He felt sure, at all events, that they knew what was happening or about

to happen, together with the fact of Machell’s application. Discreet

as they might choose to be on their own account, they must at least be

aware of that. He wondered how long the question of his retirement had

been discussed among them, and how much time they had given him. It

humiliated him to think that the struggle between himself and his wife

should apparently be common knowledge. Perhaps they had even betted

upon the contest, he said to himself, bitterly, backing first one and

then the other? Or, perhaps, he added, with a cynicism which was very

foreign to him, they, too, had known that he would be defeated from the

start?...

VI

The impending change, he found, was already at work upon the house when

he went in to his dinner. The whole place was upset. Cupboards and

doors stood open; shelves had been stripped; while the contents of the

parlour looked as though they had been having a waltzing competition.

There was a large packing-case in the coal-hole, and another in the

larder. Things which were usually upstairs had somehow managed to get

down, while other things, which he had not seen for years, were strewn

about the kitchen. The very atmosphere of the house seemed to have been

shaken and churned,--to have been stirred up as violently as Mattie

stirred her puddings. If he had felt at breakfast as though they were

already at the station, he was now absolutely convinced that they were

actually on the steamer.

Only in one instance, however, did he make any comment upon the

upheaval. Mattie, as far as he could see, had moved almost every piece

of furniture in the house, merely, it would appear, in order to prove

that it was possible to move it. He ventured to point out that some

time would have to elapse before they could even hold their sale, and

she answered him rather curiously as they sat down to their meal.

“Nay, I know it looks rather silly to be moving the stuff so soon, but

I’d a reason for doing it. We’ve got to settle what we’re going to

take, you’ll think on, and what we’re going to sell; and I thought the

sooner I started in at the job, the better. But I found when I came to

think about it that I couldn’t _see_ the things in any spot but this!

In fact, it wasn’t till I’d started pushing and pulling ’em about that

I could do anything with ’em at all!”

“You do get used to seeing things in the same spot,” Kirkby said,

feeling at the sight of the “pushed and pulled” objects surrounding him

much as he would have felt before a bed of uprooted flowers.

“You do that!” Mattie agreed, passing a hand over her heated face.

“That used you forget what they’re like altogether. Why, I found I

didn’t even know the shapes and sizes of things when I came to look at

them!”

“They get part of a place,--that’s what it is,” Kirkby said. “You don’t

see them as if they were by themselves, but as if they were built in.”

“Ours seemed built in right enough, this morning, anyhow,--I know that!

I never remember them taking such a lot of managing before. It was

almost as if they knew what it was all about, and didn’t mean to budge

if they could help it!”

It was warmer this morning, Kirkby said, and likely she was feeling it

a bit,--looking out as he spoke at the thin, young, spring-glow lying

over the gardens, and wondering again how yesterday could have been so

different.

“Nay, it wasn’t that altogether, though I’m not saying it mightn’t have

something to do with it....” Getting up, Mattie set an open tart, light

as an autumn leaf, on the table between them. “But I can tell you I was

real taken aback when I found I didn’t even know my own furniture! I

made sure, for instance, as that dresser of ours would be first-class

for the new house, but now that I’ve had a right good look at it, I

doubt it’s over-big. Then I thought as how that corner-cupboard we

bought would do nicely for our pots, but as soon as I got it down I

saw it was too small. It’s a queer thing, it seems to me, when you’re

so far out with your own stuff! It’s like living with folks that long

you don’t even know their faces.”

“They get part of you,” Kirkby said once more, as he had said about the

house. “Faces or furniture, it’s the same thing. They get that much

part of you, after a while, you don’t rightly seem to notice them.”

Mattie looked about her at the disordered fittings with a mixture

of affection and distaste, much as a mother might look at a host of

unruly children. “Ay, they do get part of you,” she agreed reluctantly.

“I never thought I should mind parting with anything in this house.

I never liked the things, as you don’t need telling, even though we

bought ’em together; nay, nor the house, neither. But I found, when it

came to it, that I wasn’t over-keen on letting any of ’em go. It seemed

sort of cruel, somehow, to go leaving them behind.”

“You’ll not think twice about ’em,” he assured her, “once they’re out

of the road. There’s no need to go fretting yourself over a thing like

that.”

“I’m not fretting myself, not I,--nor likely to be!...” She laughed

across at him, her lips curving and her eyes shining. She had always

been a woman of a fluid temperament, easily up and down, but of late

years it had seemed to him that she had grown a little dry. “Dry”

seemed particularly the right word, he thought, looking at her to-day,

reminding him as she did of a thirsty plant that was lifting its head

in the rain.

“I’d be likely to fret, wouldn’t I, on a day like this?”... She leaned

towards him, laying her arms on the table, and emanating so much sheer

radiance of spirit that it almost seemed as if there were an actual

halo round her. “Why, I’ve been rubbing my eyes half the morning

thinking it couldn’t be true! That was why I was in such a hurry to get

things sorted out. It seemed as if it helped to bring it all that much

nearer.”

“It’s near enough, as it is,” he answered, in perfectly good faith, and

then looked up guiltily, startled by something in his tone which he had

not intended to be there. But she was too busy thinking to notice it.

“You’re right there! In fact, it beats me how we’ll ever be ready

if we’re to get off, this spring. Old folks like us can’t afford to

be kept waiting about.... It won’t be too soon for them Over There,

anyhow,--I know that!” She laughed contentedly, looking past him over

his shoulder as if she saw welcoming hands reaching towards her, and

welcoming eyes turned her way. “They’ll be sending word, like enough,

as we’re to go by flying-machine!”

“You’ve not got word written to them yet we’re meaning to come?” Kirkby

asked. “We ought to let ’em know by the first mail.”

“Well, I’ve not got as far as putting pen to paper, yet, if you mean

that; but the letter’s written all right! What, I had it off as pat as

you like before ever I’d had my breakfast!... Come to that,” she added,

“I’ve written that letter many a time in my head during these last ten

years,--ay, and set it down as well, just to liven myself with the

sight of it!... In fact, I’ve done it that often, it seems almost as if

there’d be no need to do it now.”

“If you go thinking about it like that, you’ll likely never get it done

at all,” he warned her, but she only smiled.

“There’s no fear of that! I’ve never had a bonnier job to do before,

and I’ll likely never have as good again!... Every spring when it came

round I’ve prayed as this might happen, and it’s happened at last. It

was always worse in the spring. You can stand a deal of things in the

winter when you’re comfortable like, and you’ve your own hearth-fire;

but you want to be stirring in the spring.”

He did his best to nod sympathisingly at the wistfulness in her tone,

but he could find no answer to give her. He had never known what it was

to be afflicted by the fever of spring-wandering. He had never wanted

to leave his gardens at any time, but especially not in the spring.

Leaving a garden before the spring-sowing was finished would have

seemed to him like leaving a child before it was able to walk....

It was true, of course, that last night he had signed his gardens

away, and that, too, in the spring. But he had only signed them away

in exchange for another garden, and the work would be well on its way

before he went. It was not restlessness but weariness which had forced

him to a reaching-out towards new life; not the spring-fret but the

overwhelming pressure of years which was driving him overseas.

“I just can’t believe we’re really going!” he discovered Mattie to

be saying, when his mind returned to her. “It don’t seem possible.

To think we’re going to see the lads once more, and hear ’em speak!

They’ll have altered a deal, I reckon, especially Joe. I always said

Joe would make something to look at, if he once got going, and it’s

queer if he hasn’t, out there. They say the air’s that grand, it’s

like fine wine. I don’t know much about wine, but I’ve always hankered

after the sort of air that sounded like it. I’ve sometimes thought I

could breathe a bit of it, after reading the letters.... Then there’s

the girls, too,--I fair ache to set eyes on ’em. Maggie, now,--she was

always a good sort; but I don’t know how I’ll contain myself when I see

Ellen. I thought a deal of ’em all, as you know, and lads is always

lads, but I’ve sometimes thought I kept the softest spot of all for my

little Ellen!”

He heard the words at first as one hears a familiar tune played from

afar off, familiar but unmeaning; but presently the intensity of her

feeling got home to him, and his outlook brightened. He had been

troubled when he first came into the house, jarred both by its chaotic

state and by the events of the morning, but as the meal proceeded he

found himself calming gradually. It was impossible, in any case, not to

find something infectious in Mattie’s attitude; to feel, if only as a

pale reflection, something of her ecstasy. With a deliberate effort he

adjusted his angle of mind, setting aside his preoccupation with the

things that he must lose, and forcing himself to turn his attention to

the things that he would gain.

“They’ll be taken aback, Over There, when they hear we’re coming!” he

contributed presently, more cheerfully. “I doubt they won’t credit it,

at first, we’ve been so long about it!”

“Nay, they’ll credit it all right!” Mattie laughed contentedly. “Many’s

the time Maggie’s told me she’s dreamt we were on the road. All the

same, they’ll be on pins till we’ve actually arrived. They’ll be

thinking every day as we might go and change our minds.”

He shook his head without looking at her.

“Nay, we’ll not do that. It’s too big a thing, is this, to go playing

about with.”

“Too big a thing, and too short of time. It’s got to be yes or no with

folks when they get to our time of life. Just yes or no.... Anyway,

they’ll know it won’t be _me_ as’ll be likely to change,” she added,

with a touch of defiance. “It’s you they’ll be afraid of, if it’s

anybody.”

“They’ve no call to be afraid, nor you, neither. I’ve passed my word,

and I’m going to keep it. I shouldn’t have written that letter if I

hadn’t meant it.”

“There’s many a letter gets written as is never sent,” Mattie said,

half-mischievously, dallying, as human nature loves to do, on the very

threshold of happiness. “I was saying something of the sort only just

now.”

“This here’ll get sent right enough, don’t you fear....” He

straightened himself a little, and his mouth set firmly. “Where’s

it got to, by the way? I’ll be making the round of the place, this

afternoon, and I could leave it as I pass.”

She nodded a trifle vaguely in the direction of one of the cupboards.

“I sided it away, so it wouldn’t get lost.... I could likely run down

with it for you if you’re busy?”

He said “no” to that, however, speaking with the same air of

determination which sat so strangely upon him. It might be Mattie who,

in the long run, had brought about the present position, but dignity

demanded that at least he should hand in his own notice.

“I’d best see to it myself,” he told her, getting up from the table.

“Mind and give it me before I go.”

“Likely I’d forget to give it you, isn’t it?” she laughed; and then,

still laughing, shivered.... “It fair gives me the creeps to think how,

if that letter never went, things’d be just the same as before!”

“They wouldn’t be quite the same, no matter what happened. Folks pass

on, somehow. Even _trying_ to do things makes a difference.”

“A deal o’ difference it’d make to me, I’m sure,” Mattie answered him

cynically, “if I found myself still landed in this one-eyed spot!...

Ay, well, I won’t go fretting about things, just when they’re shaping

so nicely,” she corrected herself quickly. “Anyway, I’m glad you’ve

seen your way to facing the job at last.”

There was a hint of interrogation in her tone as to how he had arrived

at his decision, together with another and fainter one as to how he

was taking it. Standing, he looked away from her through the window

while he answered her unspoken questions.

“It just came over me, as it were, that I might never see the lads

again if I didn’t do something about it. You go on thinking there’s

time enough and to spare, and then all of a sudden there comes a day

when you think there’s no time. That was how it was, yesterday. I just

sort of felt I’d be rare and glad to see ’em all again.”

The tears came into Mattie’s eyes.

“You’ll never know _how_ glad till you _do_ see ’em!” she said, with

a break in her voice. “There’s nothing like your own flesh and blood,

when all’s said and done. And there’s the grandchildren an’ all.”

“Ay, and the garden....” He turned to her then, smiling a little shyly,

a little shamefacedly. “I’ve never let on to you about it, Mattie, but

I’ve been fair wild to see that garden!”

She laughed back at him and his hesitation, triumph and good-humoured

affection mingled on her countenance.

“You’d no need to let on.... It was plain enough, I’m sure! I’ve known

for a long while now you were thinking a deal about it.”

“Ay, well, it’d be queer if you hadn’t, I suppose,--you’re that sharp!

But I’ve often thought I’d like to take a look in and see how the lads

were framing.”

“You’ll be seeing how all right before you’re a couple of months

older!...” She got to her feet, too, and began sweeping the pots

together in a series of joyous movements. “Eh, but I hardly know how to

hold myself in about it! I was fair tongue-tied, last night, when you

said as we’d best go, but I’m that full of it all to-day, I can’t keep

it from wagging! What, I’ve been clacking to the furniture all morning

for want of anything better,--telling it all about it as if it was

human beings! You’d have laughed fit to crack if you’d seen the way I

went on. Len Machell popped in for a word and catched me doing it, and

he looked scared out of his life!”

He stiffened a little at Machell’s name, feeling a cold wind blow in

upon him and his manufactured enthusiasm. As before, the situation had

remained more or less in the air until Len touched it; but as soon as

he laid a finger upon it, it became concrete.... He said “Machell?”

after her, not as a question, but as if weighing a sound which, in the

space of a morning, had grown sinister and threatening. But she took no

notice.

“I was making pretence this house was Over There, and the furniture

was the lasses and lads. ‘Eh, Ellen, my girl,’ says I, hugging the

grandfather clock, ‘I’m that glad to see you I could cry!’... ‘And is

this little Sally?’ I says, kissing yon little stool. ‘She’s grown

rarely since her last photo!’ Right daft I must have looked, and no

mistake, but I couldn’t help it. I was that chock with it all I had to

get shot of it, one way or another.”

She was laughing and crying as she talked, busy living over again the

absurd scene which had yet been so vivid and poignant, but for once she

did not receive the kindly smile with which he usually rewarded her

attempts at humour. Instead, he turned away from her again, almost as

if he had been wounded and wished to hide it.

“What was Len doing, hanging about the place?” he enquired, surprising

her both by his words and by his faintly-sharp tone, for he was a

lenient master with his men.

“Nay, what, he was only in the house half a minute or so! You’ve no

call to be vexed with him, I’m sure. He just looked in to say you’d

told him we were leaving, and to ask if there was anything he could do.

He said his missis would be glad to come up any time to lend a hand

with the packing, so I said the sooner we set about it, the better.”

“I never told him we were going,” Kirkby said, in the same almost angry

tone, making her stare again. “It was him as said it.... He said it was

all over the spot, and had been for long; and he wanted to know if it

was true.”

She answered him soothingly as she carried off the pots to be washed in

the back kitchen.

“Ay, well, it doesn’t matter, does it, one way or t’other? He’d have

had to know, anyway, before so long. I must say I was a bit surprised

to find you’d been so glib about it, but it makes no odds. He didn’t

tell _me_ it was all over the spot, but I might have guessed it. Folks

always seem to know what you’re meaning to do a deal sooner than you do

yourself!”

He picked up his hat from a side table, and moved towards the door.

The impulse was strong in him to tell her of Machell’s application, but

he restrained it, being uncertain of her attitude. He was longing for

sympathy on the subject, despising himself as he did for the bitterness

in his heart, and knowing that sympathy would assuage it. But she had

never seemed to value his position as head gardener,--had, indeed,

constantly made him feel that it was something to be ashamed of,--and

he dared not risk the reference. Yet he lingered before going out,

still playing about the question, as if hoping that something or other

might occur to ease the trouble in his mind.

“I can’t say I’m best pleased to think Len’s been settling our business

for us,” he said, as she came back into the kitchen. “He’s paid to

attend to his own job, and not to go prying into ours.”

“He hasn’t settled it for us,--not he! We’ve settled it ourselves. And

as for a bit of gossip and such-like, I don’t see how you’re going to

keep folks from taking an interest in those about them.”

“I don’t look for Machell and the rest of the staff to go taking an

interest in my private affairs.” He lifted his voice a little, and

felt a flame rise in him as she laughed. This was the second time

to-day that he had felt that sudden spurt of hate, and in his horror at

its recurrence his bitterness deepened. He hastened to get outside the

door in case the hate should suddenly decide to vent itself in angry

words.

Mattie followed him to the threshold.

“It’d be queer if the whole place didn’t know I’d wanted to go!” she

said briskly. “There’s been times, I’m sure, when I’ve felt like

telling it all round England. It isn’t a crime, anyway,--not as far

as I know. We’d a right to go if we liked. As for Machell, he’s a

decent-enough lad. I don’t see why you’re so mad with him. Mrs.

Machell’s a good little soul, too, though she hasn’t much about her.

Let ’em talk if it pleases ’em! A deal o’ difference it’ll make to us

what they’re saying and doing here, once you and me are a thousand

miles away!”

She stopped to draw breath both for fresh laughter and fresh speech,

and in the pause he managed to break away from her. He went slowly, it

is true, still longing for the consolation which he had been denied,

and bowed by her last words as though she had set a weight upon him.

The thousand miles of which she had spoken were laid like lead about

his neck. But he went, all the same.... By the time she was speaking

again he had rounded the corner of the greenhouse and was lost to

her. He heard her voice continuing for a moment, as if not even the

consciousness of his departure could force it into silence, and then

break as if something had snapped it. He walked on blindly, not heeding

where he was going.

And neither of them had remembered the letter.

VII

He had intended to set off on his round as soon as he had finished his

dinner, but in the end it was half-past two and after before he finally

started out. Something seemed to detain him, whispering in his ear

that this was the last time, and he could not bear that it should be

the last time. It was not true, of course, since he would be certain

to make the round of the gardens many times yet before he left, but he

felt as if it was true. It _was_ true, in point of fact, in so far as

it was the last round of his period of settled service. In any case,

he shrank and lingered a little before setting out, as a man shrinks

and lingers a little before starting upon a world-circling journey from

which he may never return.

Yet all the time he was longing to be gone, and to be able to ease the

strain upon his nerves by fresh scenes and steady movement. He was

still nervous of the men; the kitchen garden still irked him; the sight

of The Cat stealing softly across the soil still foolishly made him

ache. But it was not until the gilded freshness of the short spring

day began to dim a little that he roused himself to action, hurrying

now where he had loitered and fretted, as if in a sudden panic lest he

should be too late.

Passing the last of the greenhouses, he crossed between borders of

box to an arch in the high wall, where there were cherry-trees nailed

flat to left and right like the sticks of so many fans. There was a

little wicket-gate beneath the arch, and as he laid his hand upon it he

turned. Even from that distance he could discern the figure of Machell

in one of the houses, and by the stillness of his attitude he could

tell that he was watching him. Watching to see the last of him, he said

to himself, bitterly!... Watching as he would watch him on that last

day, when he saw him leave the home of his youth for ever.

Even when he had passed along to the right, so that the wall came

between him and Len, he could still feel his eyes fixed upon him,

following him. They troubled him, making him nervous and uncertain

in his movements, conscious that his back was bent and his step

not altogether steady. He became so obsessed by them, at last, that

suddenly he swung round, certain that Len had followed him across the

garden, and was watching from the gate. There was no one under the

arch, however, and he moved on again, feeling hot and foolish; yet

nevertheless the intolerable sensation of being spied upon remained.

Down the steep rush of the hill he went beneath tall, splendidly-spaced

trees, the smooth grass between which would presently be coloured and

starred by daffodils and wild white hyacinths. Under the leafless

boughs of beech he could see the hills,--the mountain-land and moorland

which ring in all this part of the country, except where, on the one

side, it runs rolling to the sea. In the natural arches to his right

were framed the long slopes of the park, and almost beneath his feet as

he came down were the massed roofs of the Hall.

He had never thought very much about the Hall before, even though

the greater part of his life had been spent in its vicinity. He had

accepted it, of course, as the central fact of the situation, the

reason for which he and his work existed at all; but he had not thought

much about it. The gardens were his world, especially the kitchen

garden, and once outside their limits things were apt to seem a little

blurred. There were many days when the Hall, empty and still, and

wrapped in rain or mist, seemed almost as far away from him as his lads

in Canada.

But to-day he looked at it as he came down, trying to see it, to take

it in, so that, once safely photographed on his memory, it should never

afterwards escape him. And at once he found, as Mattie had found with

the furniture, that he could not see it. Instantly association was

upon him, refusing to allow his mind to focus on shape or size. He

could not decide whether the house were beautiful or ugly, dignified

or insignificant, of this period or that. As he had said to Mattie of

her household gear, it was no more possible to judge it than it was to

judge a familiar face.

He had, it is true, an impression of fine stone, of moulded windows

and doors, a wide courtyard, pillars, steps, and soft-coloured, slated

roofs. But always he found it impossible to see it as it would have

looked unclad and without its background. Always his eye went to the

creepers which he had tended upon it, to the shelter of the woods

behind it, the run of the park before it, to the long lawns and the

gravel sweep and the curving boundary of the river. And even those he

could not see as another person would have seen them, for he had looked

at them so long that it was only the spirit he saw, and never the

bodily forms which contained and expressed that spirit....

Yet this place, grown so impalpable to him that he could not even focus

it, had him closely welded to it. He knew vaguely that you could not

separate him from it without hurting him, any more than you could strip

the creepers from the walls without leaving a scar. House and land had

grown impalpable to him because between him and them moved the pictures

of his past, so that you could not sever him from them without damaging

him, because what you would really be separating him from was his own

life.

There was a centralising power about the mansion of a big estate

of which those who had never been connected with one could have no

knowledge. It was like a huge buoy to which you were attached,--so

safely attached that, no matter what came or went on the ocean

outside, you, at least, could never slip away. Those outside must often

feel a little lost, he had sometimes thought, shrinking from that

possible isolation even in his mind. But, anchored to a place like the

Hall, you had no fear of getting lost. Although you could not see it

because you knew it so well, it was at all events a background against

which you could see yourself,--as small, indeed, and comparatively

unimportant, but still more or less plainly. Once broken away from that

background, however, and out in the open,--in Canada, for instance,--it

seemed highly probable that you would not be able to see yourself at

all.

He spoke to one or two of his men who were busy about the grounds,

rolling the gravel or trimming the turf, but always with the same

anxiety and suspicion which had afflicted him all the morning. They

were not Machell, it was true, but each one of them seemed to him to

represent Machell, and, when he left them, he felt that they followed

him with Machell’s searching eyes.... It seemed an incredible thing

that he, who had always taken his fellow-beings so simply and so

kindly, should now be unable to meet them with an open mind. It made

him ashamed and angry, so that his glance refused to meet theirs, and

his voice sharpened when he spoke to them, as it had done with Mattie

during the scene in the cottage. Even the Hall servants he would have

regarded doubtfully if he had chanced to come across them, feeling sure

that they, too, knew what was about to happen to him, and would spring

their knowledge upon him before he was ready to meet it.

But he saw nobody as he passed in front of the house, walking with

what he felt to be a furtive step which he was yet unable to alter,

and pausing only to inspect the rose-bushes fronting the long line of

the low terrace. Nobody opened the door and came to him, or hailed

him from the stone verandah. He glanced nervously at the windows over

his shoulder, but nobody looked out. The whole place, indeed, had a

strangely hushed appearance, almost as if it had veiled its eyes while

this its servant went on his last round.

Hurrying in the same almost slinking fashion along the central walk,

he came to the cliff-side, and stood looking across the beautiful,

dangerous stream to the mountain-wall beyond. He could scarcely

remember a time when, passing through the grounds, he had not paused

just there, with the great trees around and above him, and the rocky

river below. The wide view, passing over the wooded cliff across, and

rising by green and russet slopes to that last long line of loveliness

above, sometimes many-coloured and strong, and sometimes faint and

phantasmal as a cloud, had been all that he had ever wanted by way of

“escape.” It seemed impossible now that, yesterday, when he had needed

it so much, he should never even have thought of it. One look at the

open fells, at the swift river running black between its carved banks,

at the endless crossing and re-crossing of fine bough-traceries against

the colourless sky, and his sudden revolt against his environment would

have been as suddenly stilled. Just that one look, and things would

have found their proper balance again; one look, and he would never

have dreamed of writing the letter....

He swung round on his heel when he remembered the letter, and stood

staring towards the Hall as if through its solid structure he could

see Mattie waving to him from the hill beyond. Mattie would think that

he had forgotten the letter on purpose, and he did not want her to

think that. He could hardly believe that, having spoken of it just as

he was on the point of leaving the house, he could yet have managed

to come away without it. He even searched his pockets, as if feeling

that, by sheer determination, he could persuade it to materialise;

stared at his hands, as if thinking that they might contain it without

his knowledge. But it was obvious that he had not got it, and with

a curious inconsistency he felt furious and frustrated. He said to

himself that he wanted the matter over and done with,--that he could

not bear to have it hanging on like this. He even retraced his steps

for a short distance, as if meaning to climb the hill again in order

to fetch the letter. If he had discovered it in his possession at that

particular moment, he would have thrust it in at the Hall not only with

relief but with actual triumph.

But almost at once he turned again as though somebody had tugged at his

jacket. He was tired, this afternoon, and knew that he would regret the

extra effort before he was half-way up the hill. Time was getting on,

too, and if he lingered much longer it would be dusk before he was back

from across the river. And Machell could take the letter.... He smiled

a wry little smile as he reflected with what keen delight Machell would

take the letter!...

He cast another glance at his view as he came back, remembering how

often he had tried to persuade Mattie to find in it the release which

he found in it himself, and how dismally he had failed. Mattie had had

no use for it either as a view or as an outlet. She had liked the space

and the height, but she had disliked the hills. For her they had merely

been other and greater walls, which she could not push away. And she

had hated the river.... Besides, nearly the whole of the view was to

the north and east, and Mattie had spent the greater part of her life

with her heart turned towards the west....

Also she had not cared much for being seen about the Hall grounds,

even at those times when the owners happened to be away. It was only

with difficulty that he had induced her to attend any of the Hall

functions,--the cottage-garden show, the tenants’ garden-party, or

the servants’ ball,--and then she had only appeared under protest.

His employers had sensed the protest, he felt sure. In as close and

delicately-dovetailed a corporation as that of an estate, it was always

easy to detect the person who deliberately stood outside.

Nor had she ever attempted to make intimate friends of any of the

people in the district. They would have accepted her all right, for

she was both amusing and clever, as well as a hard worker. But right

from the first she had either rejected her neighbours’ overtures,

or accepted them against her will, and gradually they had come to

acknowledge the situation, and to realise that they could get no

further.

He had spoken to her quite early upon the subject, seeing where she was

drifting, but he had not succeeded in changing her mind.

“What’s to do you won’t take tea with Mrs. Grisedale?” he had enquired

one afternoon, as he came in. “I met her just now when I was down at

station after some weed-killer as hasn’t turned up, and she was right

grieved about it. They’re having a few friends in, she says, for that

christening-party of theirs, and she’s keen for you to be there.”

“I just didn’t fancy it, that’s all,” Mattie had said, although taking

care not to meet his eye. “It’s a bit of a trial, I always think,

talking to folks as you don’t know.”

“Well, that’s easy mended, isn’t it, and the sooner you start in at it

the better? Mrs. Grisedale, for one, ’ll not take you long. She seems a

decent little soul.”

“Oh, ay, she’ll do.”

“There’s Mrs. Ellwood an’ all,--she’s asked you time and again. She

told me she’d never taken to anybody as she’s taken to you.”

“And she’ll do, too.”

“Well, then, what’s to do you can’t make friends with the pair of

them?” Kirkby had blundered on. “You couldn’t have a nicer couple of

folks than them two, and you’ll be wanting somebody.”

But he had had to probe for some time before she would give him the

explanation.

“It’s like this,” she had said at last, half-ashamed, as he could see,

and yet determined upon her line of action. “It just isn’t worth while.

Making friends takes a deal of time and a deal of patience, and once

you’ve got ’em made, it takes a deal of getting over if you’ve got to

leave them. Well, it isn’t worth it. I’m set on getting away from this

spot, as you don’t need telling, and if I take up with any of the folk,

it’ll all be wasted.”

“Nay, what, friendship and such-like is never wasted, surely!” he had

affirmed stoutly. “I don’t hold with gardeners getting too thick with

folks, nor their wives, neither. There’s some as’ll seek you out just

for the sake of what’s behind you. But it isn’t good, all the same,

to be always by yourself, and a few nice friends’d likely help you to

settle down.”

But, unfortunately for his cause, he had hit on the one plea that was

least likely to weigh with her.

“Nay, but that’s just what I don’t want to do,” she had said, looking

past him, with the effect, which he was later to know so well, of

seeing beyond him into great distances. “I don’t know how to put it,

but it would be wrong for me, would that. It’d be losing something as

is right down necessary to me. If making friends with folks is going to

mean settling down, then I’m best without it.”

That part of the explanation he had been quite unable to understand, so

he had concentrated upon the other.

“I don’t see there’ll be that much wasted just by you going to Mrs.

Grisedale’s christening-party!” he had said humorously. “It seems a

real pity you shouldn’t have a pill-gill now and then. I’ve always

thought you were just cut out for going amongst folks and keeping ’em

all lively.”

At all events he had succeeded in making her laugh at that, changing

her, to his relief, from the far-gazing woman who chilled him with her

strangeness to the brisk, cheerful girl whom he had sought in marriage.

“Ay, I generally manage to make a stir, wherever I am!” she had said

gaily. “I’m not one for sitting mum in corners, and never was. If I’d

had luck to hit on a spot I liked, I’d have done as much as anybody to

keep things going; but it’s no use thinking about it here.”

And she had never swerved from her determination during the years which

followed,--never swerved at heart, that is, for she had not been hard

and fast about it. She had got to know both Mrs. Grisedale and Mrs.

Ellwood in the end, as well as the usual run of people in the district.

She had gone to parties in her time. She was never behindhand, either,

when help of any sort was required, for she was a kind enough woman, in

spite of her discontent. But she had never got to the point of making

intimate friends. Always she had looked beyond her neighbours to that

distant thing in which they had neither lot nor part.

Descending the steep steps which led to the water’s edge, he came

to the catamaran moored in its pool between the wooded sides of the

worn gorge. Going aboard, he began to wind himself from bank to bank,

the light, wooden raft moving easily on its steel pulleys. The water

was quiet enough here, black and almost still, but on either hand he

could see the fretted rush of one of the fastest streams in England.

A beautiful river, winding and sweeping and leaping.... A river which

could rise in a few hours and become a broad, flying torrent, with

crisp, curling waves like those of the neighbouring sea.

And at once, almost the very moment, it seemed, that he pushed off, the

ache at his heart left him, succumbing to that curious influence which

water has upon the human mind. The detachment it breeds worked upon him

even in that black pool which could for no more than a moment give

pause to the sea-going mountain stream. The smooth rush out across the

unrippled surface was a steady rush into peace. His nerves eased in

the gliding movement of the raft, held to earth though it was by that

velvet pull on its under side. He drew deep breaths as he worked at the

creaking handle. His released mind took to itself wings.

For he had been a boy on this river, and nothing that life had so

far attempted to give him had ever equalled that. He had been a boy,

climbing among its rocks, swimming in its pools, watching its hidden

life and learning its hidden lore. He had known it empty almost as a

sand-channel is empty when the water alters its course; seen it foaming

and full, a swirling engine of destruction. It had been the playground

of his youth, and at the same time it had been his friend, for to his

young mind it had had all the personality and importance of a dominant

human being.

He was a boy again now, as he grounded the raft softly, and softly

stepped off on the other side, as if stepping into a church. Here,

where he had spent so many hours with other lads, or alone, there

lingered for him still the holy touch of youth. It was in the water

and in the air, in the colour and shape of things, and in the peculiar

values of the light. Above all, it was in that atmosphere of childhood

which never changes, and which is so distinct from any other that it

can be recognised even in the dark.

He stood for a moment or two after he had landed, surrendering himself

joyfully to the ancient thrill, and seeking from point to point for

reminders which should serve to accentuate it. Here, where a low

bough, along which he had often walked, still thrust out its bold and

crooked arm over the racing water.... There, where the salmon rose in

the summer ... where the bathing-strand lay firm and dry ... where the

long curve of the rose-gardens against the river even at this time of

the year showed a velvet line. It seemed to him as he stood, quivering

to the thrill, that never until now had he grasped the meaning of its

peculiar comfort. Its virtue lay in that easy leap back to childhood,

which made of life such a little thing, and at the same time held such

a vivid assurance of a life that should be eternal.

But you could never hope to receive that comfort except in the home of

your youth. No other place would do; not Canada, nor another.... In any

other place you would have to grow old patiently without that blessed

assurance, and to bolster up your faith in a future existence as best

you might.

He had planned to get face to face with the Canadian problem as soon

as he was safely across the river, out of reach of the staring eyes

of his staff and of Mattie’s exultation. He had meant to set forth to

himself the advantages of the change, to conjure up the presence of

his children and to dwell happily upon the interest of their garden.

He had meant to meet, once for all, the call of the things he would

have to leave, so that, no matter what else might lie before him, he

could never suffer as much again. He had intended to return from his

round already passed over in spirit to the new life in the new country,

having said good-bye once and for all to the life he had lived in the

old.

But he found that he could not think of either his lasses or his lads

as he climbed the shallow steps which guided him up the rock-garden,

strive as he might to picture them in their far homes under that high

sky of which Mattie had spoken so often and so fondly. They were not

real to him on this ground where, the instant he set foot on it, he

relinquished his own manhood. Always they slipped away from him as

ghosts might slip away. He had, indeed, one rather frightening moment

when he found that he could not even remember their names.

He wandered for a long time in his country of the past, including

both past and present in his gesture of farewell. At point after

point along the paths he stopped to dream and stare, seeing the long,

plant-carpeted terraces which he had planned, and could not have

told whether they were the old or the new things that he saw. But in

any case it did not matter. The old and the new were fused for the

time being to make a greater loveliness, a finer air; that special

atmosphere in which he lived again his own enchanted youth, and was

permeated, as he looked, by the happiness which is a foretaste of the

happiness of eternity.

Some inward monitor brought him back again at last to the raft, set

his fingers to the stiff handle, and pushed him off across the quiet

water. The mist was high above the river by now, so that, as he

passed into it, he was lost to sight from either bank, with only the

melancholy creaking of the machinery to locate his whereabouts. But he

did not feel lost, because of the coloured picture of youth which still

glowed and moved upon the vaporous canvas before him. He was still at

peace, still sure both of this world and the next, when he met the

further bank with a sudden shock.

There came back to him with the shock the realisation not only of his

physical but of his mental position. Climbing up the wood-edged steps,

he rose both out of the mist and out of the boyhood dream which had so

contentedly ensnared him. He looked back for a moment before turning

resolutely towards the Hall, and saw the mist lying like a shroud, not

only upon the river, but upon the precious things of his own past.

He had lingered and dallied during the last hours as if time had

suddenly ceased to be, so that he was forced to hurry now in order to

make up for it. All day, he thought, he had been behaving like that,

alternately dawdling and hurrying, and then forgetting and dawdling

again.... The men had disappeared who had been working in the grounds,

and were no doubt up at the kitchen garden, waiting for him. It was

pay-day, too, he remembered suddenly, with quick dismay, and they

would not be best pleased at being kept waiting for their money. They

would say it was time he went, he told himself, as he skirted the

still-silent house, and came again to the steep path which mounted his

own hill. They would echo the words which Machell had all but spoken,

that morning,--that it was patent to all and sundry that he was getting

too old for his job.

He had no difficulty now in thinking of his children over the sea,

less than no difficulty in remembering their names. The whole Canadian

project came back to him, with all that it entailed, together with

the memory of yesterday’s fatal promise. He could no longer hide from

himself that, for him, at least, that promise had been fatal, whatever

it might mean for Mattie. It was a knife set at his own throat, a pair

of shears at his own roots. Even if he had not known the truth before

he started on his round, he could not have helped but know it after

those hours across the river.

The men were waiting for him, as he expected, and he paid them

hurriedly, taking care not to look at them, and without any of the

little kindly enquiries and comments which he often had for them. He

had hoped that Machell, being the first paid, would be the first to go,

but instead he lingered behind the others. Coming out of his office, he

found him waiting for him outside, looking rather unhappy.

“If you could spare me a minute, sir ...” he began, looking more

abashed than ever by Kirkby’s movement of recoil. “I just wanted to say

I hope I didn’t put you about by what I mentioned to you this morning.”

“Why should it put me about?” Kirkby asked, looking, not at him, but at

The Cat, which, moving tawnily between the white purity of the evening

light and the warm brown of the soil, had developed an unearthly beauty

of its own.

“No reason at all, I’m sure, if you’re really meaning going. But

it struck me afterwards, thinking about it, that perhaps I’d been

over-smart.”

“You’ve got to put in early, these days, if there’s a job going

begging,” Kirkby said, wishing so earnestly that the man would go that

he felt as if he were pushing him.

“Yes, sir, I know. And there’s others to think of, too.... But I should

be sorry if I’d put you about. It’s seemed to me all day as you were a

bit down----”

But to be told that he looked “down” was more than Kirkby could

bear,--more than he could bear to know that he carried the mark of his

defeat.... Waving both Machell and his consolation away, he turned on

his heel.

“You’ve no call to worry yourself, my lad,” he found himself saying,

both his sense of justice and his native politeness forcing him to the

speech. “You get off home. If I do send in my notice, you’ll be more

than welcome to the job.”

He heard Machell begin to speak again as he walked away,--broken but

grateful phrases, ending bravely with: “If you’re stopping on, there’ll

be nobody better pleased than me ...” followed presently by the sound

of the man’s footsteps receding along the path. He turned then, and

watched him walk across the gardens, noticing, as he thought, the

already-possessive glance which he cast on either hand. At the gate

Len stopped and looked back towards the elder man, and even at that

distance their glances seemed to meet and mingle as over some prone

and coveted body. When finally he had closed the gate and disappeared,

there came from Kirkby’s lips a little sound that was like a cry....

It occurred to him presently that Mattie would be waiting for him, as

other people had already waited, that day, and he turned mechanically

towards the house. He shrank, however, as he remembered the state of

the place as he had found it, earlier on, as well as from the fresh

transports which Mattie would have in store for him. He felt, as he

had felt about Machell’s rough attempts at sympathy, that he could not

bear them just now.... Swerving away to the right before he reached his

home, he took a path which led him beyond the walls into the healing

quiet of empty spaces.

The spring evening was very still, so still that, as he stood, he could

hear the faint cry of new-born lambs from across the river. All over

the land was that cool silver light which is so much more mystic,

and at the same time more intimate, than any other. An incredible

gentleness had come upon the earth under its touch. Bathed in that

heavenly light it became suddenly more human. Beneath it, the brown

plough lay warm and rich, while the grassland looked springy and deep,

a comfort to eye and foot. The woods to the west showed silver palings

between their trunks, while down on the flat the plantations looked

like clumps of sepia feathers. In the soft yet clear air everything

seemed to draw together, the white-faced farm-houses, the woods, the

hills, the gentle, coloured earth ... gathered to hear the happy

message with which the whole world seemed to thrill.

High on a bough above him a blackbird began to sing, and again there

came from Kirkby’s lips that sound that was like a cry....

In the drawn dusk he wandered about the gardens, seeing the

glass-houses, which were so brisk and coloured in the day, ghostly as

water is ghostly under the first finger of the dark. Mattie had made

no attempt to look for him, so that he was alone, as he had been in

the early hours, but without the solace of his vision. The procession

of the year no longer marched in strength before him, sounding its

coloured trumpets as it passed. When he came to the place where the

dawnbell was to stand, he could no longer picture it blue and exquisite

against the soil.

For the third time that day rage seized him as he stood looking down at

the dark ground which had blossomed so easily for him in the morning,

but from which he could now conjure nothing but despair and gloom. He

knew definitely now that he had been trapped by fate, and felt none

the less bitter because he had sprung the trap with his own hand. He

thought of his children with love, but knew that for such as himself

there were things which were more than children. Closer to him than

breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.... His children had grown

away from him and made a life for themselves; but he, if he was to

follow them, could do nothing but pine and die.

He made up his mind as he stood that he would go back on his word, and

that after to-day he would shut his ears to Mattie’s pleadings for

ever. If she must go, she must go alone, and he must manage as best

he might. The letter had not been delivered yet, as far as he knew,

and, even if it had, he could always withdraw his notice. They would

not be hard on him at the Hall, knowing well enough as they did what

had brought him to this pass. For in writing that letter he had been

trapped ... trapped! The rage in him was so great that he shook with

it as he stood, clenching and unclenching his hands and grinding his

teeth. This time he actually cried aloud, and it seemed to him that the

cry rushed out and over the walls, so that even down at the Hall they

could hear him shouting that he was trapped....

And then suddenly Mattie’s face came to him as he had seen it, that

morning, fresh and sweet and glad after her dream-tryst of the night.

He saw the light in her eyes, and heard the break in her voice. He

thought of her years of beating against the bars, and of how for

her the trap he had sprung for himself meant the opening of her

prison-gate. Remembering these things, he knew that he could not break

his promise.... Slowly his rage subsided and his hands unclenched.

He stood, an indistinct figure in the dusk, with drooped shoulders

and bowed head. He had promised Mattie, and he could not fail her.

Perhaps, once safely Over There, he might be allowed to find peace, and

forget.

* * * * *

Turning towards the house, he saw Mattie running and stumbling towards

him across the gardens.