HERS
I
Mattie never forgot what she had felt when she awoke on that
miracle-morning,--never forgot, and never allowed herself to
remember.... She came back to consciousness still swathed and steeped
in the sweetness of her dream, arriving presently, with a little shock
of joy, at the thought of the sweeter fulfilment which was to follow.
At the moment, however, she found it difficult to believe that the
latter could possibly be more concrete than the former. So real, so
intense had been that experience of the spirit, that the senses also
seemed to have been satisfied by it for the time being.
She lay on for some time after she had told Kirkby of the beautiful
journey which she had taken in the night, living it over again to fresh
thrills of delight which were like little inward cries of pleasure.
(_So_ they had looked and spoken, and held, and kissed....) It was not
often, except in the case of illness, that she had allowed herself the
luxury of staying in bed. Very occasionally she had yielded to it when
life was pressing too hardly upon her, watching the hours drift by with
a hopelessness which was in itself a sort of hope, knowing as she did
that, when that phase was over, she would be able to take up existence
again a little more cheerfully. But she had never yet stayed in bed
because the moments in front of her were so rich and wonderful that
she could afford to waste them.... A sort of radiance seemed to her to
pervade the room, in which the earthly day had not yet quite prevailed,
so that she felt that, if anybody should look in upon her, just then,
they would see her through a wall of light.
She had said to Kirkby that she was “back,”--back in her prison, she
had meant,--speaking the word with a bitterness which had first driven
him out, and then almost brought him back to comfort her; but he was
barely out of the room before she was gone Canada-wards again. She
had forgotten so much about Them, she said to herself, half-ashamed
to have forgotten, and wholly enchanted by the reminder. She had
forgotten Luke’s habit of cocking his head on one side as he talked,
and Joe’s love of humming a tuneless tune, while he drummed out the
beat of it on his knee. Maggie’s shrug of the shoulders, and Ellen’s
trick of half-closing her eyes when she laughed, together with that
little way she had of touching you affectionately when she sat beside
you.... Joe’s eldest boy hummed, too, and Ellen’s baby shut its eyes
in the same fascinating fashion. It put out its hands to you in the
same way,--little, round, baby hands groping half-consciously for the
comfort of human touch.
It was astonishing, she thought, that people who cared for their
children should forget so much about them. Not, of course, that you
forgot _them_. You had only to think of them,--sometimes it happened
without your thinking,--and their faces came up before you, in a sort
of halo of light. But the little tricks and ways which held so much of
their character seemed to fade if you were parted from them for years.
Perhaps it was as well that they should fade, seeing how much they
could hurt you to remember.
It had not occurred to her that she might be going to dream about the
children when she went upstairs to bed. Indeed, to be perfectly frank,
she had hardly thought about them at all. A great exhaustion had fallen
upon her as soon as she realised that her forty years’ struggle against
circumstances was over. It had been hard to realise it, too. Even while
Kirkby was writing the letter, she had found it difficult to believe
that he was really doing it. Each moment, also, she had expected that
he would break off and refuse to finish, and had found it incredible
that he should continue calmly to the end. Indeed, he had puzzled her,
last night, as much as she had puzzled him. To her, too, as to him, it
had seemed impossible that the mere writing of a letter could bring so
much to a close.
Even when it lay before her, addressed and sealed, and Kirkby, without
any sign of repentance, had let it lie, she had felt no sensation
either of joy or triumph. Instead, she had felt that great weariness,
as after a heavy burden at last laid down, together with a curious
impression of being out in a great space, without any sense of
direction. She had seen herself, during those few moments in which she
groped aimlessly about the kitchen, as a coloured balloon, broken
suddenly from its tether, and drifting out across the world at the
light mercy of the winds.
Nor, when she was alone upstairs, had she felt any glow of happiness
over her victory. She had not cried, as Kirkby, sitting and waiting
below, had imagined her to be crying. She had simply undressed as
rapidly as possible, still feeling that curious unsteadiness as she
moved about the room; and, once in bed, had seemed to pass instantly to
that far-off place which was still more real to her perceptions than
anything that she saw around her.
She had not visualised herself as going, nor could she remember
anything about her actual arrival. She had merely found herself There,
already a settled member of the little community. But she had known
well enough when the time came for coming away; perhaps because, after
all those years of longing, it was easier to get There than to leave.
She had seen herself passing between the houses, moving from one to
the other with the assurance of long custom, and never once feeling
that anything was strange. She had known which paths to take, which
windows to look through, which rooms to enter. She had known that you
always had trouble with Maggie’s doors, and that Ellen’s water-supply
wasn’t as good as it might be. She had known that Luke had a piano,
and that Joe (who hadn’t risen to one yet, in spite of his fondness
for humming), sent his children to Luke’s to practise. She had known
the hours they kept, the clothes they wore, their furniture and their
meals, their neighbours and their hired men. And they had known that
she knew. She had fitted into their midst as a glove fits a hand which
has never taken it off.
And other things, too,--the sort which nobody told, and which couldn’t
by any chance have got into their letters. Just when Maggie’s husband
was a bit tiresome with Maggie, and where Joe’s missis failed in being
just what he had hoped she would be.... Those queer sisters-in-law of
Ellen’s; and Luke’s father-in-law, who was the sort you could quite
well do without.... The trouble about the bit of money which Joe had
lent Maggie’s husband.... The trouble about the bit of money which
Ellen had lent Joe....
It surprised her to remember how much at home she had felt, how
completely in tune with conditions which she had never experienced in
the flesh. Why, she had even felt at home in the house which she had
seen as already built for herself and Kirkby, although in point of fact
it was not yet in existence! Just by closing her eyes she could see
herself in, it again, could feel, as she had felt in the night, her
pleasure in her environment. It was a small house, of course, with no
more than four rooms in it, at the most, but it was a smallness which
made for comfort and not constriction. She had felt so happy in it, so
snug, that she laughed contentedly at the very remembrance. It was a
queer thing, when you came to think of it, and rather uncanny, that you
could feel at home in a house which hadn’t even been built!
There were more than four rooms in the cottage in which she had lived
so long, but she had always felt pressed in upon by it, and as if she
could hardly breathe. It was a good place, of course, and a big one, as
cottages went,--almost too big, indeed, when it came to single-handed
work. But she had never yet felt at home in it, or known the intimate
joy of the home-lover and the home-maker. She had done her duty by
it, that was all. She had lived and worked in it merely as a caretaker
might have lived and worked, and on the few occasions when she had gone
away from it she had felt as if it had ceased to exist....
There was only one thing which had troubled her in the dream, and
she had not said anything to Kirkby about it. Indeed, she had almost
forgotten it when she awoke, safe in her hopes as she was, as if
ringed by shields; but now it set her mind wondering and her brow
wrinkling.... She had been troubled and puzzled because of the
questions which They had asked her.
Maggie, for instance, had wanted to know all about the people at
home,--who lived in this place and that, and a lot of other things
which she had been put to it to answer.
“Who’s got Beck Edge, nowadays, Mother, and Field Howe? Beck Edge
belonged to the father, didn’t it, and t’other to the son? I remember
hearing they wanted to change about, but I don’t know if they ever did.”
Her mother, however, had been quite unable to clear up the mystery,--if
mystery there was,--about Beck Edge and Field Howe. She had never
been interested in the matter, and she cared nothing about it now.
But Maggie was so interested that she couldn’t stop talking about it.
Her colour rose and her eyes shone. Digging up vague details from a
quite improbable past, she proceeded to shape them into an unreliable
present. You might almost have thought that she had a personal bias in
the affair; whereas the truth was that she had never been nearer either
of the houses than a crow’s flight on a fine day.
Luke’s questions had been chiefly about the staff,--who was working for
his father, these days, and what had happened to the rest. “I always
thought Nicholson wouldn’t last so long,” he had said. “He was a bad
egg,--sure! Tommy Rigg’ll be getting an old man now, and likely past
his work. What? D’you mean to say he’s been gone five year back and
more? Gosh! How time does scoot!”
He had said another thing after that which had annoyed her sorely in
the dream, and which even in remembrance made her fume a little.
“Len Machell’s still hanging on, isn’t he?” he had asked. “Father
thought a lot of Len. I never let on to you about it, Mother, but he
once applied to me for a job. When we were on our feet, it was, and he
knew we’d something to offer; but of course I told him that I shouldn’t
think of sniping him like that from the old dad.”
She had been pretty short with him, she remembered now,--had implied,
whilst busy commenting upon Machell’s “cheek,” that there had been
“cheek” on Luke’s part as well. He had only laughed in his cheerful
way, and the dream had melted and changed, but the flame of her
indignation was still at work within her. She had not known that she
could care so much about a thing like that, or that she could resent so
bitterly a slight on Kirkby. And not only Kirkby himself, but Kirkby’s
job, which she had always imagined that she despised and hated!... She
was surprised by her own attitude, and lay for some time brooding over
it. It was only with difficulty that she reminded herself that it was
“only a dream,” and that in all probability Machell had never applied
at all.
Joe’s questions had been much the same as Luke’s, with now and then a
family resemblance to some of Maggie’s. He, too, had wanted to know
about the staff, and who was now at the Home Farm. But he had also
wanted information about some of his old-time sweethearts, and that
with his wife sitting by and not looking over-suited!
“Where’s Bessie Dale, these days, Mother, and Carrie Sharpe? Married
long since, both of them, I’ll be bound,--nay, don’t tell me you’ve
never heard! Carrie was a school-teacher, you’ll think on, and Bessie
in Morton’s office. There was Dolly Dale, as well, but, of course,
_she_ married Len Machell....” It was queer how the Machells kept
coming into the dream!
She had done her best to suppress Joe, both because of his wife’s
crab-apple look, and because of the hot little ache at the heart which
mothers feel at the mention of girls who have wanted their sons. But he
had refused to be silenced, at first, and had gone on chattering about
Dolly. “Dolly was the best of the bunch,” he had said, laughing, “and
more than a bit fond of yours truly. Len would never have got her, I
know that, if I’d stopped at home instead of hitting the trail!”
But They had got tired at last of asking her about England,--even
Joe, who saw it sunned by the bright smiles of his lost lasses. They
had understood that she did not want to talk about it, and had stopped
teasing her, realising also that she had very little to tell them. But
it had been impossible to explain that it had ceased to be real to her
as soon as she had left it,--that she had clean forgotten such things
as that Machell had married Dolly!
It was Ellen, amazingly, who had been the worst of all, because it
was Ellen who had asked about the house and gardens. This was the
more surprising because she had been the one child who had seemed to
share her mother’s dislike of them. Many a pleasant chat they had
had together, abusing the dull, shut-in place, and feeling greatly
enlivened. And now it was Ellen who was bringing it back to mind, tying
her down to it again when at last she was safely shot of it!
“Have you got that extra window put in, Mother, you were always so keen
on? Does the kitchen fire still smoke in a west wind? Privet hedge’ll
have grown to a grand size, nowadays, I expect? Does the dad still grow
‘Creeping Jenny’ over the front door?”
She had tried hard to find answers for Ellen, sitting on a stool at
her knee, and fondly fingering her skirt. There had been a distant
look in her eyes as she put her questions, as if her mind had jumped
to her mother’s side of the ocean, as her mother’s had jumped to hers.
Mattie had felt it a trifle disloyal of Ellen to have gone away, so to
speak, the moment she arrived. It was almost as if they had been nearer
together when those heaving miles of Atlantic had lain between them....
But those were the only shadows which had blurred the exquisiteness
of the dream, and the effect of them, after all, had been to make it
even more real. For, as she had to admit, those were the very questions
that They _would_ ask, Over There, until their excitement over their
parents’ arrival had sobered down a little. Later on, too, they would
ask, at intervals, again, for even in the busiest lives there are hours
when, the body quiet, the mind insists upon travelling. But she would
not mind it so much, then.... It was only Ellen who had given her
something of a shock,--whose questions, now that she came to think of
them, did not seem quite real.
The rest of the experience, however, had been pure joy, so full of
laughter and sweet looks and tender touches that it seemed as if the
sensation of them must last for ever. There were the grandchildren,
too,--but she must give an hour or two, later, to thinking about them.
They were too many, and too dear, to be hurried over when she ought to
be getting up and seeing to Kirkby’s breakfast.
But the biggest thing in the dream had been the feeling of
escape,--together with that exhilarating sense of space after which
she had always hankered, without rhyme or reason. Other places, no
doubt, could have given her that same sense, but it was Canada that
had captured her imagination. Canada as a whole seemed to have got
into the dream, with its strong air, its mountains and lakes, and its
long stretches of land reaching to the great line of its horizon.
She thought of prairies and woods, and great rivers, and ice-bound
harbours. She saw the glint of gold, and dog-sledges racing over frozen
country. She saw the soft colours of ripened orchards, and a fresh wind
running for miles over the stooping heads of wheat.... All that she
had heard and read about the Dominion seemed to have merged into one
single setting for that keen adventure of her spirit.
It had all been wonderful beyond imagining, joyful beyond ecstasy;
perfect,--no, not quite perfect. There had been just one thing
lacking,--one person who had not been present. Kirkby was not in the
dream....
II
She was still wondering why Kirkby was not in the dream when she had
got herself out of bed and was beginning to dress quickly, although
not so quickly as she was in the habit of dressing, for her limbs felt
heavy, this morning, as if her body also had travelled in the night.
Her mind, too, was still inclined to wander, so that at intervals she
found herself losing touch with what she was doing. In the very act of
fastening button or tape, sewn on with that efficient sureness which
was her distinguishing characteristic, she would pause to answer some
question put by a voice which could not be less than three thousand
miles away.
She felt disconcerted by the fact that Kirkby had apparently had
neither lot nor part in last night’s expedition. She was also rather
glad, with a queer, jealous gladness which she did not understand, and
which made her slightly ashamed. But his absence not only detracted
from the reality of the dream; it rather frightened her. The
superstition always dormant at the back of the country mind rose up to
persuade her that Kirkby would never live to cross the ocean with her.
But the shadow soon passed, as the other shadows had passed, and the
rush of excitement returned more headily than ever. She even sang as
she dressed, and then stopped with a laugh, feeling that even the walls
of the house must come alive to hear her. She was the type of woman
who sings naturally as she moves about, but the number of times she
had sung in that house she could count on her ten fingers.... Not only
had she not had the heart to sing in a place so hostile to her, but it
would have seemed to her rather false, implying to all who might hear
it that she was beginning to “settle down.”
She had not known that she was going to dislike the place when she
first came to it; indeed, she had never even thought about it. She
had taken it for granted that she would “settle,” as everybody else,
apparently, settled. She had been too young, at that time, to know much
about wives who wanted to “move on,” although she had come across more
than one (and thought nothing of them) in later life. And she had
certainly not known that the place you lived in could be either your
enemy or your friend.
Yet she might have guessed that it would not do for her to be dumped
down just anywhere; that, like so many of Kirkby’s precious plants, she
needed a special soil on which to thrive. And at least she might have
guessed that she needed room.... Quite early on her mother had noticed
the fact, and commented upon it.
“Look at her now,” Mattie could vaguely recall her saying, pointing her
out to some on-looker as she sat at table, “pushing and shoving at t’
pots till she’s got ’em away from her! She did the same as a babby, and
a sight o’ mugs she broke an’ all! She can’t abide to be cluttered up,
or to have folks pressing on her, can’t our Mattie.”
She had said the same to the school-teacher, when, calling indignantly
to demand the meaning of some trifling punishment, she was told that
Mattie had insisted upon annexing more of the school-bench than she was
entitled to.
“She’ll never do as she’s meant if you don’t allow for it,” was her
parting advice. “Best give her two folks’ room, and then you’ll have
done with it. She’s a big child, to begin with,--as fine a one as
you’ll see anywhere, though I says it as shouldn’t,--but it isn’t only
that. It’s just she can’t do with feeling she hasn’t room to breathe
and spread about in.”
Later on, of course, she had learned to adapt herself better to the
conditions in which she lived, so that pots were no longer broken, or
schoolfellows thrust aside. But her love of space continued to grow
with her, although more or less unconsciously, showing itself mainly in
a liking for long walks, and for open windows and doors. It was during
a dispute with her mother over the latter that for once she had caught
a faint glimpse of the life for which she was really intended. An aunt
of hers had been staying with them, who knew a little of the world, and
she had taken a hand in the family quarrel.
“Folks can’t all think the same,” she had said, in reply to the
mother’s statement that, “if our Mattie had her way, roof would be off
afore you could say Jack Robinson!” “They’re different, all the world
over. Your Mattie’d likely do rarely in one o’ them new countries
they’re talking of opening up.”
Mattie’s mother had been altogether vague upon the subject of “new
countries,” having, indeed, sufficient difficulty, as it was, in
realising that there was more of England beyond the one little spot
in which she lived and moved and had her being.... “Eh, now! What
countries?” she had enquired incredulously, rather as if she suspected
the visitor of inventing them on the spur of the moment.
“Colonies, they call ’em,” the other had said firmly, although almost
equally vaguely, and speaking the word as people spoke it in those
days, before such names as Canada and New Zealand had become living
realities to the public mind. “Fine big spots wanting big strong
folk as like fresh air and a bit o’ work. Your Mattie’d do grand for
Colonies, from what they tell me.”
“They’re big, d’you say?” Mattie herself had asked, fixing upon the one
point which had intrigued her imagination, and in that one word, had
she but known it, assessing the whole of her life’s trouble.
The visitor nodded.
“Big, every way, so I understand. Mountains and rivers, and great
pieces as they call--nay, I can’t think on, except that I know it made
me think o’ church. Trouble is, though, they’re such a sight of a long
way off,--t’other side of the ocean, though I’m sure I can’t say which.”
Mattie’s mother had laughed when the ocean was mentioned, as though
the very sound of that awe-inspiring word had put a full stop to the
conversation.
“Nay, now, it’s no use your talking Colonies to the lass, if there’s
oceans and such-like mixed up in it! She can’t abide the sea, can’t our
Mattie, and never could. I don’t know where she gets it from, I’m sure,
unless it’s my mother, as was once right near drowned, falling off a
pier at Morecambe. She had a terble down on the sea, after that, and I
reckon our Mattie’s the same. What, she can’t even abide a picture of
it in the room,--says it puts her off her meat! Nay, if Colonies means
crossing the ocean and such-like, I reckon they’ll have to do without
our Mattie.”
Remembering this speech of her mother, ominously clear as speeches
seem which have been long forgotten and then are suddenly recalled,
she felt disconcerted for the second time, that morning. It was true,
of course, that she had always dreaded the sea. Every kind of evil of
which it was capable had seemed at one time or another to fasten upon
her imagination. Accounts of shipwrecks held her as no other literature
had power to hold her,--tidal waves, broken embankments, water-spouts
moving like monstrous spectres.... The sea was the only thing in life
which had so far been able to intimidate her, and she had not yet
mastered her fear of it. Not easily would she forget those bad days
after her children had sailed, or the unbelievable relief with which
she had heard that the ground was firm again under their feet.
And now she was definitely committed to cross that very ocean which had
driven the Colonies out of a cottage talk all those years ago! Even in
the midst of her luminous satisfaction she shivered as she remembered
it. The sea frightened you, made you sick, heaved you about, and then
finally drowned you.... Not, of course, that she anticipated being
drowned,--the dream alone seemed surety enough for that--but she knew
that she would suffer it a hundred times in her mind before she was
safely landed.
Yet it had to be faced if ever she was to know the happiness that
was waiting for her, Over There.... She felt a pang of impatience
because she could not make the journey as she had just made it in the
night,--as she had made it many and many a time over her cooking or her
needle. Yet what were a few days of misery, after all, compared with
the long heart-breaking years through which she had struggled already?
The picture called up by her aunt had faded as soon as it was painted,
not only blotted out by the terrors of the sea, but dwindling from
sheer vagueness. She had had that one hint of a door wider than any
of those which she opened daily, and then it was closed again before
she could see beyond it. One glimpse, followed by a single pang of
recognition and disappointment ... and presently she had forgotten it.
In any case, she would have had little use for the Colonies, just then,
for already she was aware that she meant to marry Kirkby.
Looking back, she could see him coming into her life as softly as the
river mists which lay so often upon the gardens, and which she so much
dreaded and hated. She could not remember either the day she had first
met him, or the still more important day when he had asked her to marry
him. All that she knew was that he had not been in her life, and then
suddenly he was all of it. She could no more trace the moment when that
had happened than she had ever been able to catch a tulip closing for
the night.
She had neither hated nor dreaded Kirkby, in spite of his home mists,
and even now the memory of their courtship had the power to thrill
her with its sweetness. But he had been the wrong mate for her,
nevertheless. He and all that he represented had muffled her spirit as
the mists had muffled her body. The bold driving-force that was in her
had been irritated by his reserved and delicate ways. It was amazing
that they had pulled together as well as they had,--she always reaching
outward, and he always holding back. Many a couple as badly suited
would have parted company before now.
She winced a little in her new happiness, remembering how often
she had felt bitterly towards him. She was ashamed, now, of their
many quarrels.... In the great peace that had come to her it seemed
impossible that there could ever have been anything but peace. Even
when they were not disputing, she had raged against him in her heart.
She flushed as she recalled that she had actually sunk so low as to try
to set the children against him....
She flushed and she was ashamed, but these troubles out of the past had
already vanished so far that they could not really hurt the present.
Already they were gone as the wrinkles in a cloth were gone as soon as
a hot iron was passed upon them. With the new peace had come to her
also a new vision. She had not meant to hurt Kirkby any more than he
had meant to hurt her. She would do her best to make up to him for it
in the little time that was left to them Over There.
It seemed strange to her now that her mother, who had read her so
plainly when she was small, had yet not seen fit to warn her when she
most required it. Perhaps she was one of those people who could see
things clearly in a child, but never thought about them again directly
they grew up. Even if she had thought, she would only have said that
a good husband like Kirkby was not to be sneezed at. Mattie herself
would have said it if a child of her own had asked her. He was a
decent, steady young man in a job to which she was accustomed. You did
not sneeze at a man like that if you had any sense of values.
She had not sneezed at him, and she was not sneezing now, though she
had sneezed often enough at what he had had to offer. It was a better
position, of course, than might well have fallen to her lot; a better
one, for instance, than had fallen to her sisters. It was not Kirkby’s
fault that the longing with which she had been born had finally got on
her mind; and it was certainly her fault, if it was anybody’s, that the
children had been born with it, too!
She opened the window before going downstairs, her glance falling, as
she did so, on the privet hedge, and she was amazed by the sudden rush
of affection which took her as she looked at it. The shadows were still
on the little lawn which it sheltered, giving it that air of seclusion
for which it had been planned. A flower-bed ran all round the lawn
under the hedge, and in the middle of the grass was another bed with a
standard rose. At one end of the little plot was a rustic seat, set
with its back to the rest of the gardens and its face towards the west.
The Mattie looking out of the window saw many Matties walking in that
little plot, and making it, by dint of years of dreaming, into an
orchard of escape. She saw a young Mattie, first of all, and a little
hedge, too thin and too small to fend off the curious glances of the
men working close at hand. But the years fled before her mind little
faster than they had fled in actual truth. Almost before you could turn
round there was an older Mattie and an older hedge, with flowers in the
trim border and a green closeness about the lawn. And presently both
Mattie and the hedge were growing old and stout, and the turf had grown
thick and soft, and there was a snug richness about the soil....
The little place, where, as she had told Kirkby, she was able to “get
away,” had very soon become the real centre of her married life. To
it she had taken both her early discontent and her later bitterness
of frustration. Many a hard speech, which otherwise might have been
Kirkby’s portion, had been tossed off at the privet hedge; many a salt
tear had been wept into that lawn! Sitting and sewing in it, she had
been a girl again, in her home towards the west. Walking in it, with
her Canadian letters in her hand, the tiny spot had resolved itself
into that broad country where her soul went free.
Going to Canada would, of course, mean leaving that little home of
memories behind her. Somebody else would have the right to walk in it,
to sit and sew and dream.... She felt a jealousy that was almost fierce
as she thought of that somebody, and her throat contracted a little.
If it had been possible, she would have gathered up the lawn and the
privet hedge, and taken them away with her.
She continued to feel amazed by her sudden feeling for the place; or,
rather, by the sudden revelation that it meant so much to her. She
had thought of it only as a refuge, a makeshift for want of anything
better, and now it had become something that actually belonged to her.
She tested herself, looking away from it and then back to it again, and
felt always the same rush of affection and the same jealous ache. She
had always thought that she hated every inch of the ground on which
her married life had been spent; but in spite of herself these few
square yards of it had stolen into her heart.
Perhaps it was only, she thought, that the place looked different
because she was leaving it. It was a well-known fact that people often
regretted even the worst of things when the time came for them to part
with them. (Why, she had had a cousin of her own with a broken leg, who
had cried when her crutches had been taken away from her!) Or else it
was just because she had not been free that she had not been able to
see things properly. It was her mind, even more than her body, that had
been in chains, and now she had shaken the chains from her. Perhaps she
was seeing things now as she would see them in Canada, when at last she
had got away from them....
She went downstairs, still thinking about the privet hedge, and feeling
her first ecstasy a little tarnished. She knew now, what she had not
realised before, that, in spite of the joy that was coming, there were
things that would make her suffer. She had fondly imagined that she
had paid for the joy long since, but apparently she had been wrong.
Life was piling its debts against you all the time.... Already there
had been the questions and the thought of the sea; and now had come the
shock of the privet hedge. They would plant another hedge for her, if
she wanted it, Over There, but they could not ensure her another forty
years in which to watch it growing. They could not make each leaf and
twig speak to the memories of a whole life. They could not give her
back the English soil which she had salted and watered with her tears.
III
But even before she set foot in the kitchen her mind had recovered its
tone. The mere fact of rapid movement, of swift passage from one room
to another, had, as always, the power to cheer her. As for the letter,
the presence of which had so intimidated Kirkby that it had taken him
at least half an hour to look at it, she found it little less than a
magic spell. To see it lying there on the table was almost to hear her
children’s voices bidding her good morning, to meet their faces turned
towards her as she entered, and to feel the warm reality of their hands.
So far, at least, Kirkby had not repented of his decision, she thought,
relieved, finding a fresh resting-place for the precious object. He had
let the letter lie.... It was true, of course, that he had seemed to
have no regrets when he came to her upstairs, but you could not always
tell. There was time, as she had just proved, for a whole change of
heart between the first stair and the last. And he had never really
wanted to go, in spite of his hankering after that distant garden and a
fresh sight of his lads.
He had never yet broken a promise to her that she could remember; yet
she knew that she would feel a good deal happier when the letter had
really gone. For a moment she thought of stamping it and giving it
to the postman if he should happen to call, but abandoned the idea
instantly. Kirkby, as she knew, would prefer to give it in by hand.
In these out-of-the-way places it was still considered insulting to
persons of high degree to send them a letter of that sort through the
post.
There would be other letters for the post, anyhow, she thought
gleefully, as she prepared breakfast. Letters to her sisters, telling
them that she was leaving England ... to one or two old friends still
surviving in the neighbourhood of her home. Letters about passages and
passports ... about her single tiny investment.... Above all, the great
letter to Them, Over There, announcing their speedy coming.
She would write to Luke, she supposed, he being not only the eldest
of the family, but the head of the firm. It was to his house that they
would probably go, until their own could be got ready for them. But she
had it at the back of her mind that she would write to Ellen, as well.
Ellen was the one who would be the most pleased about it, she thought
fondly, if it was fair to say that any one of them would be more
pleased than the others.
The phrasing of the letter, some of it new, but most of it so old as
to have become almost mechanical, raced and hammered through her brain
to a triumphant close, only to begin again the moment it was finished.
Always she saw it written, not in ink, but in scrolled and burnished
gold; with certain extracts, such as “see you again,” “really coming,”
and “hoping to find you as this leaves me,” rising above the rest like
rocks in a golden sea.
She had had moments when she had thought that a quieter method would be
more appropriate to the occasion,--a few, quiet, colourless sentences,
easily filled in by those to whom they were sent. She had waited so
long and so bitterly that it seemed almost indecent to make a song
about it.... But now that the time had actually arrived she was too
happy to be restrained and tasteful. The only letter that would satisfy
her would be vivid and underlined, with exclamation-marks scattered
here and there like little shouts of joy.
The quieter method, however, would do excellently for her sisters and
the few old friends. Too great a show of excitement would seem out of
place to them. They would sympathise, of course, with her desire to see
her children, but otherwise they would be sure to think that she was
making a mistake. Folks who never moved more than a yard from their own
spots all their lives always did think that others who moved a yard or
two further were making a mistake.
In any case, they had always been inclined to think her “a bit wild,”
although why it should be considered “wild” to want to live in one
country rather than another it was difficult to see. Anyhow, it was
lucky for the Empire that somebody had been wild enough to do it
sometimes! Occasionally she had tried to point this out both to the
sisters and the friends, but she had never convinced them that it
applied to her personally. Perhaps the folks among whom you were
brought up never did understand that things might apply to you just as
much as to the people outside.
No doubt the neighbours here had thought her “a bit wild,” too, and
discussed her disapprovingly over their tea-cups. The village was a
small one, little more than a hamlet set on the edge of the park,
and no member of the limited community would be likely to escape
its gossip. The thought of their shaken heads did not distress her,
however, for she had found them a kindly enough lot, on the whole. More
than one of them would have a good word for her, she knew, when the
message got round to them that she was leaving them for ever.
She had known some of them now for nearly forty years, and yet there
was not one among them she could really call a friend. They were
on good enough terms, of course,--such terms as other people would
undoubtedly call friendship; but in this, as in other things, she
had asked more of life than it had so far seen fit to give her. A
friend was a person you settled down with, side by side, and whose
life dovetailed into yours as board dovetailed into board. She had
never been able to have a friend like that because she had never been
able to settle down. Always she had lived like someone starting on a
journey, for whom at any moment the signal may be dropped.
It was not only that, in her first years of homesickness and revolt,
she had not cared to know the people in the place; or that, having
come from a village which was the hereditary enemy of this, she was
naturally disposed to dislike its inhabitants. There was jealousy
between villages as bitter and lasting as there ever was between
individuals. Nobody knew what started it, as a rule, or why it
persisted from generation to generation. But the moment the people
from these two places happened to get together, there was bound to
be trouble. Before you could turn round, they were at work belauding
themselves and belittling each other, whether it was about football
or the quality of the land or the amount of money in the Sunday
collection-bag.
Kirkby had been not only too gentle but too much in love to make
trouble of that kind, although she herself had made it unashamedly in
their quarrels. But that particular feeling of animosity had died in
her to some extent as time went on. The real bar to friendship had
been the fear of being tied down,--the necessity for keeping herself
free against the hour when she should go.
Well, she had not tied herself down, and for all those years of keeping
herself aloof from people she would find herself repaid. There would be
no tears on either side when the time came to say good-bye. She would
be able to slip away without bitterness or regret, without a single
pull at her heart, or a hand snatching at her own.
She would be sorry to part with some of them, all the same, even though
there would be no sharpness about the sorrow. Things came back to
her now which had long since dropped away, but which had touched her
nearly, at the time. Kindnesses, which, for the time being at least,
had seemed to make life brighter.... Gifts with the kind of thought
behind them that was better than any gift.... Jokes which had stayed
persistently in her mind, and made a sort of laughter there, even if it
could not reach her lips.
And other things, infinitely more poignant, which, impossible as it
seemed, she was beginning to forget.... That year when Ellen had
nearly died, and Mrs. Grisedale had come unasked to help her with the
nursing.... She could still see her face as she bent over the sick
child, could hear the note in her voice to which, as to an actual
arm, both she and Ellen had clung. She had done her best to repay the
kindness, although she had not maintained the intimacy, and she had
thought the matter cleared. But she knew now that, when the time came
for saying good-bye to Mrs. Grisedale, she would also have to say
good-bye to the bitter-sweet memory of which she was a part.
The things which you did for others were even worse in rising up
against you at farewell moments.... It was she herself to whom Mrs.
Ellwood had clung, during those first bad weeks after the poor thing
had lost her husband. Ignoring her own people, she had asked firmly
for Mattie, and Mattie had gone to her, as one always did go, in these
cases. They had drifted apart long since, but they would remember
when she said good-bye.... She felt absurdly that she was in some way
forsaking Mrs. Ellwood, even though for twenty years at least they had
been nothing more to each other than just ordinary good neighbours.
No doubt she would have other if lesser pangs to bear before she was
finished with her acquaintance. Of course, it was open to her to go
without saying good-bye at all, but she was not willing to slink off as
if ashamed of what she was doing. The pangs would be lost soon enough
in the happiness ahead of her. But she saw once again that, no matter
what you paid, there was always something to pay. No matter how you
kept yourself free of life, life would never leave you free....
IV
She passed with a sigh of relief to the thought of all that would have
to be done before she could get away. Her heart rose to the task as
she remembered it. Work,--and especially organising work,--had always
been a pleasure to her, and this would mean more than pleasure. In the
rush of planning and packing, of solving the many problems which would
undoubtedly arise, she would easily lose sight of the few burdens that
were weighing on her spirit.
At the moment, however, she had no intention of beginning to pull the
house to pieces, or even of starting upon such minor operations as
going through drawers and cupboards. There would be no sense in making
the place uncomfortable before she was obliged. The day would be full
enough, as it was, what with the ordinary routine and the letters which
had to be written; not to speak of the long hours of dreaming and
gloating to which she would certainly fall captive.
There would be plenty to do, of course, when the moment arrived, but it
would be done all right, and done like so much clockwork. In any case,
her house, always in order and always clean, was not the sort that had
almost to be built over again before it was fit to leave. It was not
overcrowded, either, with those things which accumulate as the years go
on, so unconsciously, sometimes, that they seem to have grown out of
the very stuff of life itself. Broadly speaking, she was almost as free
of unnecessary belongings as a seabird poised for flight on the edge of
a naked cliff.
Yet almost without knowing what she was doing she was setting her hand
to the lever which Fate had so tardily thrust into it. Even while she
was making the breakfast she was moving a few things here and there,
rejecting this and accepting that, and hunting for paper and string
with which to pack them. It was more than likely that they would have
to be unpacked again, later on, even if, in a future scheme of things,
they were not left behind altogether. But the excitement of putting the
work in train was impossible to resist. With each parcel she packed
her heart rose a little higher. Every change in the standing order of
things was an added assurance that that order was at an end.
The desire to alter it even further grew upon her when breakfast was
over and Kirkby had returned to his duties. A great restlessness
possessed her. It was almost as if the long strain of waiting for what
she wanted had sapped her power to believe in it when it came; as if
she feared that, unless she instantly took advantage of it, it might
still manage to evade her....
It was this fear that drove her to shifting the furniture, to dragging
out hidden treasures, and reducing the house generally to a chaotic
state worse even than in the yearly whirlpool of spring-cleaning.
Pushing and tugging, she performed feats of strength which she had
thought beyond her, even in youth, and which sent her gasping to a
chair for a few moments’ relaxation. She raced up and down stairs
fetching and carrying, and then did not know what to do with things,
and had to take them back again. The tide of life within her rose to
its fullest height in the necessity for proving to herself that at last
the longed-for miracle had been accomplished.
She was standing on a chair by the dresser, measuring the pot-rail
with a tape, and in constant danger of losing her balance in her
efforts, when the postman’s whistle came shrilling up to her as he
climbed towards the gardens. In the sudden start that it gave her she
lost count of what she was doing, and, getting down rather stiffly, she
went to the door to wait for him.
For how many years now, she said to herself, still flushed and panting,
had she listened, morning by morning, for Dick Nelson’s whistle! For
how many years now had it had power to thrill her, carrying with it, as
it so often did, the possibility of a Canadian letter! Even when there
was no chance of such a thing it could set her heart leaping and her
eyes shining. The single, climbing note of it had always been for her a
call straight from the Great Beyond.
So many mornings she had longed and listened, and now she could
almost count on her fingers the mornings that were left! She wondered
whether she would still find herself listening when she was over the
water,--going to the door, perhaps, to stand waiting and watching.
It would be some time, no doubt, before she would get used to doing
without those constant letters. She had lived for them so long that
the loss of them at first would be almost like the loss of meat and
drink.
She would not need them, of course, when she had the children,--so
much nearer and dearer than any letter could make them!--but she would
miss them, all the same. There were things people told you in letters
which they never told in the flesh; things they felt for you when they
wrote which they did not think of when you were by. And, once written,
you had them to turn to, even if they never said them again. The very
handwriting of those who loved you was in itself a loving speech....
The postman was getting nearer now, she could tell, and he had not
whistled again. He had known for many a year now that he did not need
to whistle more than once when it came to Mrs. Kirkby!... Like a wise
man, he was saving his breath for the last steep little pull that led
to the gardens. She could hear him wheezing and puffing, as it was, and
the shuffle of his step which betrayed the slow lifting of his feet.
Dick Nelson was getting old, she thought idly, and then remembered
with a start that he was the same age as herself. She knew that was
so because he had told her his age on his last birthday, and, looking
at his wrinkles and his bowed back, she had been startled, even then.
To-day, listening to his puffing and pausing as he climbed the gardens
path, she was more than startled. To-day, faced as she was with new
conditions which would make such trial of her strength, Dick’s loss of
vigour seemed an actual menace.
She tried to console herself with the thought that age was purely a
personal matter, and that people did not necessarily grow old at the
same rate because they were born on the same day. Dick, as she knew,
had been a weakling in his youth, whereas she had never known ache or
pain. A walking-post’s job was a trying one, too, especially in this
northern climate.... Nevertheless, she found it an effort to look at
him as he came in at the little gate.
He was still wheezing as he stopped in front of her, and, diving into
his bag, produced a flat packet, which she saw to be addressed to her
in Ellen’s writing. He fumbled a little with it before he handed it
over, and for the moment, curiously enough, she felt no impulse to take
it from him.
“Another letter from your folks, Missis,” Dick said, with the
familiarity of the old country postman, which pays for itself by a
genuine sympathy in either joy or sorrow. “It should ha’ been here
yesterday, but I took it to Mrs. Crosby’s, by mistake.”
Mattie looked rather vexed at that, both because she did not like
Mrs. Crosby, and because she was unaccountably troubled by the sudden
appearance of the packet.
“I should think it _was_ a mistake!” she answered him rather sharply,
though at the same time trying to tone down her reproof for the sake of
old acquaintance. “There’s not much likeness between Kirkby and Crosby
that I can see!”
“Nay, nor between the folks, neither!” Dick chuckled, setting her
flushing again, though now it was from flattered vanity instead of
anger. Mrs. Crosby was a thin little rat of a woman, with a red head
and a blue nose,--about as different a person from Mattie as you could
find in a day’s march.... Dick might be stupid and short of breath,
she reflected, softening, but he still knew a fine woman when he came
across one.
“It’s my eyes, d’ye see?” he was saying, when she attended to him
again, and emphasising his remarks with sharp flaps of the Canadian
packet. “I’ll have to be seeing about getting glasses. Anyhow, the
letter’s here all right, and none the worse for a bit of extra
travelling.... It’ll be a likeness, I reckon, from the look of it,” he
finished, handing it to her at last with an air of making a concession.
It probably _was_ a likeness, Mattie told him, holding it in her hands
with the same curious sense of reluctance in her fingers. She might
have told him more but for that remark of his about his eyes, reminding
her as it did of the increasing disadvantages of age. Dick had seen
many a snapshot of her family in his time, and had not thought twice
about giving his own opinion of them, either.... “My folks Over There
are always sending me something to look at.”
“They’ll not be sending much longer, if all tales is true!” Dick’s eyes
seemed keen enough now, as they lifted themselves, twinkling. “There’s
barely a house I call at but somebody asks me when Mrs. Kirkby’s off to
Canada!”
Mattie laughed in return, but with a slight nervousness that surprised
her. She had only to mention the “notice,” and the whole place would
be agog, making it, with every reference to the subject, more certain
and more “real.” But something, which she took to be loyalty to Kirkby,
held her back from speaking. “Ay, well, and what d’you say to that?”
she compromised, by way of answer.
Dick shifted his bag and shuffled his feet, finally clearing his throat
like one preparing for an oration.
“Well, if you want to know, ten year ago I said you’d be off as sharp
as a dog to its kennel. Five year ago, I said--‘Ay, well, less likely
things has happened.’ But to-day, when they ax me, I say I wouldn’t
believe it even if I was to see it.”
The colour rose higher yet in Mattie’s face, but the thing that lay
close in her heart was too warm for a show of temper.
“Whatever makes you say that?” she queried innocently.
For the first time Dick showed signs of discomfort, turning about a
little, and looking away from her. “Nay, it’s just that you’re not so
young, these days,” he returned at last, bravely. “Same age as myself,
I’ve heard my old mother say, and you’d not catch _me_ crossing t’
ocean if you give me Canada!”
“Folks are as young as they feel,” Mattie said, trying to repress the
pang which had seized her when he mentioned the ocean. “The sea’s
nothing to me! As for age and such-like, there’s folks go abroad when
they’re a deal older than us. What, I remember Mrs. Dugdale going off
to New Zealand when she was nigh on ninety!”
“Ay, but they go sudden-like,” Dick said, wrinkling his brow as if to
help the working of his brain. “They don’t sit planning a sight o’
years. Things is sudden-like when they’re meant.”
“Things always seem sudden when they come,” Mattie retorted briskly.
“Planning makes no difference. Look how folks know they’re going to die
from the very minute they’re born, and yet they’re mighty surprised
about it when it happens!”
“Folks don’t plan to die.... Leastways, them as does seldom brings it
off. And that brings me back like to what I was trying to say. If you
stop over long on the edge of a jump you take root afore you think.”
“I shan’t have much root to bother about if I go to Canada!” Mattie
laughed. “Saving your presence, Mr. Nelson, there’s precious little I’d
mind leaving behind.”
The old postman shook his head.
“You strike roots afore you know. Everything as you do each day is a
root o’ some sort. Even folks as has been in prison knows what it is to
strike roots.”
The privet hedge came into Mattie’s mind, together with that past look
on Mrs. Grisedale’s face, and the clinging touch of Mrs. Ellwood’s
hand.... But she laughed again.
“They’re roots as is easy pulled up, I should say!” she said
cheerfully. “Folks in prison, I mean.... As for me, I’ve always been on
the go, so to speak. I’ve never settled down.”
“You can’t _not_ settle!” Dick said suddenly, in a loud voice that was
almost threatening. “Don’t you make any mistake, Mrs. Kirkby. Life
settles you. Time settles you. You can’t _not_ settle!”
The annoyance she had been keeping in check rose at that to a strong
head, but it was succeeded almost at once by a feeling of pity. Dick
looked so old, standing there, weighed down by his heavy bag, and with
the fine spring sunlight showing up his wrinkles. He was jealous, she
said to herself, because he felt old, and because, perhaps, he, too,
had wanted to go to Canada. She could have laughed now at the thought
that they were the same age. In the pride of her new joy she felt like
a girl beside him,--a girl with her strength to draw at, and the whole
wide world before her.
“Ay, well, I don’t see as we need quarrel about it,” she said amiably.
“Likely what you say’s right most of the time, if it isn’t always.
Anyway, Canada or no Canada, it’s a bonny morning!”
But Dick was already shambling away towards the office, wheezing as he
went, and grumbling to himself as an old dog grumbles when he meets a
young one. She smiled as she saw him stumble over a stone, and stop in
a rage to kick it from him. Thrusting the letters in at the office with
a shaky hand, he swung about crossly and disappeared round a corner of
the building.
V
With the smile still on her lips, Mattie turned herself round and
went back into the kitchen. Dick was a grumpy old thing, she thought
cheerfully, and, like many other old people, firmly convinced that his
dismal view of life was the only possible one. But she could not help
feeling sorry that he had gone away in a rage. On a day that should
have been joy from dawn to set, she did not like to think that she had
had even the shadow of a dispute with such an old acquaintance.
She would miss Dick’s constant visits when she had got to the other
side, his grumpiness and his whistle, and his rough, outspoken
comments. It would be a bit of a nuisance, too, to have to get used to
dealing with new tradespeople. Shopfolk took a lot of getting to know,
wherever you happened to be, but she had long since got the better of
hers. The grocer would never dream, nowadays, of sending her any but
the right bacon, the right sugar, the right tea. As for the butcher,
he had long ago given up trying to palm off on her any piece of meat
except the one that she happened to ask for. It was a triumph to have
got as far as that with a butcher, as anybody could tell you, and one
that could hardly be achieved twice within the limits of a lifetime.
She had a distinct feeling of dismay when she thought of having to
start again with a fresh butcher.
Ellen’s packet was still in her hand, and she stood looking down at
it without attempting to open it. For the first time in her life she
had not been altogether pleased to see Ellen’s handwriting, and she
could not understand it. At sight of it she had had a sensation of
interference affecting her almost to physical recoil. She had been
so near to her children during the night that a message arriving so
soon afterwards seemed bound to break the spell. Nor was the position
bettered by the fact that the packet should have reached her the day
before. There was something casual yet calculated about its coming this
morning which seemed to jar the serene procession of ordained events.
Ellen ought to have known, she found herself saying senselessly, that
after last night there was no need to keep sending packets any more.
It was a photograph that she held, she felt sure of that, and one for
which she had long been waiting. Among the many snapshots arriving year
by year there had never been one of Ellen, arm in arm with a husband,
or half hidden behind a baby. She had never “taken” well, even in her
youth, and, once over the water, had firmly refused to be “taken”
at all. Always she had resisted her mother’s demands in that light,
laughing way of hers which seemed to bring her so closely to you. No
photograph, so Mattie had often felt, could possibly seem more real
than the Ellen who came to you with her letters.
She had continued to ask for one, nevertheless, and at long last had
come the news that it would shortly be forthcoming. Ellen had written
an amusing account of her visit to the photographer’s and of her
sufferings during the proceedings. The result, however, it seemed, had
been an unexpected success, and should presently be forwarded to her
mother. Mattie had watched for that precious packet as a hen waits and
watches for a hatching chicken. She could not have been more thrilled,
she sometimes thought, if it had been Ellen herself who was coming
through the post!
That excitement had paled now beside the vividness of the dream, as
well as the greater interest of the new position. She looked at the
parcel with indifference, almost with dislike ... certainly with
impatience, as at a thing come at the wrong time. She would open it
later on, she said to herself, as she laid it down, and returned with a
lightened heart to her measuring of the dresser.
Passing from that to other even more entrancing speculations, she
was soon wrapped again in the atmosphere which Dick and the packet
between them had temporarily dispelled. She forgot them both as she
toiled and planned, stopping every now and then to remember Kirkby’s
dinner. Strung up though she was, and therefore sensitive to the least
touch of trouble, she was still too high on the wave of success to be
disheartened for long together.
Even when she had begun her absurd game with the furniture, that
childish but charming pretence in the midst of which Machell had come
upon her, she had not remembered the photograph. Moving again in the
dream, she was able to turn even blocks of wood into the dear ones who
had peopled it, so that they could scarcely have been more real to her
if they had been present in the flesh. The little stool in her arms had
held the warmth of a living child; the grandfather’s clock had been
more surely Ellen than the packet she had put away.
The sight of Machell smiling in at the door had no power to disillusion
her. Machell did not annoy her, as Dick had done, by over-cocksure
assertions that it was now too late to change. On the contrary, he
was full of encouragement and congratulation, and anxious to know her
plans. You would almost have thought, she said to herself, chuckling,
that he was as glad of the move to Canada as she was herself!
Her spirits mounted still further as the sun mounted, and the day grew
in clarity and beauty. Like all country-bred folk, she was susceptible
to the influence of the weather, even when she was not consciously
aware of it. Even when she was most withdrawn in mind from the
atmosphere around her, she was still swayed by its many changes. The
coming-out of the sun was a trumpet-call to her vitality, even if the
note that it sounded was one of clamorous rebellion. A grey day had the
power to chill her passion almost to fainting, even if neither it nor
any other-coloured day was able to slay it altogether.
In her state of heightened sensibility she could not have failed to
notice the conditions about her, but there was a good deal more to it
than that. The miraculous way in which the barriers between herself
and the place seemed to have broken down continued to surprise her.
Now, when she looked out, she had a distinct sensation of pleasure, as
well as that warmth of recognition which comes from loved association.
It seemed impossible to her now that she could ever have regarded her
home with horror and dislike. The garden walls and the paths gave her
a sense of satisfaction which seemed to have the satisfaction of many
years behind it. The tree-tops against the sky produced a thrill of joy
suggesting a long chain of similarly sweet moments.
It was the same with the house, which she had so long thought of as
a prison, and which had suddenly become a place of pleasantness and
peace. For the first time in forty years she realised it as peculiarly
and joyfully her own. She felt an impulse to sing as she saw the
sunlight lying across the kitchen floor. Up in her bedroom the flowered
wallpaper was printed with memories, like a book.
She did not know whether to be glad or sorry about the change, but it
continued to amaze her. She tested it, as she had tested her sudden
view of the privet hedge, and found that it stood it, as the privet
hedge had stood it. Room after room she found rich and filled with
the actual makings of her life. Each time that she went to window or
house-door, she saw the view before her shine and smile.
It was while she was standing at the door during one of these pauses
for mingled puzzle and rest that she saw Mrs. Machell coming across
the gardens. Mrs. Machell was a plump little woman, full of bustle
and talk, but there was a lilt about her to-day which she had never
hitherto noticed. Also she looked from side to side of her as she came,
as if the place interested her more than usual. The spring must have
got into Mrs. Machell’s blood, Mattie thought, adding the head-turning
and the lilt to the rest of her new puzzle.
It was some time, however, before the visitor actually reached the
house. Coming upon Len at work among the raspberry canes, she stopped
to talk to him, and they stood laughing and chatting together for
several minutes. Mattie frowned a little as she watched them, seeing
the fine spring day going and Kirkby’s best workman idling. But she was
still too happy to be annoyed by a thing which, after all, was hardly
within her province, and she had nothing but smiles for Len’s wife when
she finally approached her.
“It was good of you to come,” she began blithely, as she led the way
into the kitchen. “I didn’t look for you so soon. There’s not that much
doing, yet awhile, of course, but I’m fair aching for someone to talk
to!”
Mrs. Machell laughed as she looked about her at the chaotic state of
things which had so disgusted Kirkby. She was a fine, bright little
thing, Mattie thought, and Joe might have done worse than marry her.
Her cheeks were still fresh, and the gold of her hair shone as she took
off her hat in a business-like manner. She was the same age as Joe,
too, which meant a couple of years older than Ellen.... Mattie joined
in the laugh with the heartiness of the excellent housewife who for
once in a lifetime is found wanting.
“Ay, it looks like it, I’m sure,” she agreed, in reply to Mrs.
Machell’s remark that at all events there seemed plenty to be going on
with. “I’ll be right grateful if you’ll help me to put things straight.
Kirkby was that sick about ’em at dinner, it fair went to your heart
to see him! A man minds a house being pulled about a deal more than a
woman.”
“They do that!” Dolly Machell nodded wisely. “They make as much noise
about it as a dog being skifted from its kennel. I daren’t so much as
move a chair in our spot but Len’s as uneasy as an earthquake!”
Mattie felt a prick in her pride that an under-gardener should presume
to indulge in the same idiosyncrasies as distinguished Kirkby, but she
covered it hastily. “Ay, well, men must be men,” she returned kindly,
generously admitting Len into at least that one category.
“I’d a feeling I must be doing something right off,” she went on,
conscious that the general upset needed some explanation. “Of course,
I know it’s over early yet to be arranging about the sale, but it won’t
be trouble wasted. I know a deal better where I am than when I started
in at things, this morning.”
Mrs. Machell stole a glance at her in the chair into which she had sunk
after taking her visitor into the kitchen. Mattie was hardly conscious
that she had sat down, or that she was beginning to feel the effects of
the work and excitement of the morning. But to Mrs. Machell weariness
was written plain in the lines of her flushed face and the droop of her
broad shoulders. Loose strands of her hair were straying wildly across
her forehead. Her hands, resting heavily in her lap, looked older than
the rest of her.
“Then you’re really thinking of leaving, Mrs. Kirkby?” Dolly asked,
with a casualness assumed to hide an inward tremor. “Len said it was as
certain as rent-day, but I said I didn’t believe it.”
There came over Mattie the same reluctance to commit herself to a
definite statement as she had felt when Dick’s hinting had put a
similar question. Indeed, now that she came to think of it, she had not
been definite even with Len. He had assumed certain things, that was
all, and she had allowed him to assume them. It was only to herself and
to Kirkby that she had so far put into straight words the great fact of
their going.
“Well, it looks like it, I’ll give you that!” she answered
good-temperedly, though with a touch of discomfort. “I’ll admit it
looks like it.... But I don’t know that it does to go shouting things
out over soon. There’s some think you’ll likely spoil your luck that
way if you’re not careful.”
Dolly looked a little disconcerted for a moment, and then laughed
brightly.
“Ay, well, we’ll pretend it’s true, shall we?” she said cheerfully.
“Just make a game of it? _That_ can’t spoil your luck! We’ll pretend
you’re off to Canada, though you’re stopping on just as usual.”
“That’s it!” Mattie said, in a tone of obvious relief. “We’ll just
pretend.... Well, then, my lass, if you want to know, we’re thinking of
getting away by nigh on the first boat that can take us.”
“Eh, now, if that isn’t news!” Dolly played up promptly, for all the
world as if she had never heard a suggestion of such a thing until
that moment. Her face glowed as she spoke, and a faint astonishment
took Mattie, as it had taken her with Len, that anybody else should
care so much about the project....
“But you can’t get away that soon, can you?” the younger woman went on.
“There’s your notice to give in, and folks to tell on the other side.
You’ll be having a sale, you said; there’ll be that to settle. And
likely there’ll be a thing or two you’ll be wanting for the journey.”
Mattie felt a fresh twinge of surprise at this smart summary of
her private business, together with a twinge of uneasiness as she
remembered the Hall letter. Kirkby must be reminded about it, she
thought, the moment he came in.... But she forgot it again instantly as
she began a recital of her plans, her hot face growing hotter, and her
hands moving restlessly. The future became more and more real to her
as she talked, just as it had been made more real by the mere moving
of the furniture. She found herself telling Dolly not only about the
measuring and the packing, but about the conditions and people awaiting
her over the water. She was not always quite certain whether what she
was relating existed in point of fact or only in last night’s dream,
but it did not matter. Such discrepancies as there might be counted for
nothing in the main immensity of her statement.
Dolly made the most satisfying listener that anybody could desire, her
own hands twitching and her own eyes shining. “It’s like a fairy-story,
I’m sure!” she declared, when at last the other, short of further facts
for the time being, was beginning to repeat herself. “I’ve heard a deal
about Canada, one way and another. My cousin, Jessie Bowness married,
this last year, and went out to the same part as your Ellen.”
“Oh, ay?” Mattie replied indifferently, getting somewhat heavily to
her feet. “Help me shove this cupboard back again where it come from,
there’s a good lass.”
“She lives near Ellen an’ all,” Dolly went on, setting her sturdy
little shoulder to the cupboard. “She’s moved there just lately. She
doesn’t see much of her, she says, as they’re both so throng, but she
sends me news of her every now and then.”
Mattie said, “Oh, ay?” again, as some answer seemed to be needed, but
every letter of the little phrase bristled defensively. She had the
same impression of interference as at the sight of Ellen’s packet, the
same sensitive fear of being twisted from her path.... “Lend me a hand
with this table now,” she continued quickly, hoping that Dolly’s cousin
Jessie might drop out of the conversation.
But Dolly had no intention of parting with such an asset until she had
added her utmost to the interest of the occasion. She was too much
absorbed by her own prospects to be greatly aware of another person’s
reactions, as well as too highly excited to refrain from talking.
Moreover, she thought in all innocence that Mrs. Kirkby would be only
too glad to listen to anything that she could tell her about Canada.
Her cousin Jessie, therefore, was so much present with them during the
afternoon, that it seemed to Mattie sometimes she had only to turn
herself about in order to see her.
“Jessie isn’t best suited with Canada,” Dolly said, when the table had
been restored to its place, and the articles which usually reposed upon
it had returned to grace it. “She says it’s so different.”
“Different to what?” Mattie enquired, affecting obtuseness from a
growing sense of annoyance. “I don’t rightly follow.”
“Different to England, she means, and the things she’s been used to,
over here. She says there’s times she feels she might as well be in the
moon, it’s all so strange.”
“Well, and why shouldn’t it be?” Mattie returned, slapping down a book
with unnecessary vehemence, and then discovering it to be Kirkby’s
mother’s Bible. “It’s like to be different, isn’t it, seeing it started
a deal later?”
“Ay, I told her that when she was complaining about folks being
scattered about like except when you got to the big cities. But Jessie
was always the sort that liked a crowd, even if it meant sitting on
other folks’ knees or sleeping three in a bed.... But it isn’t only
that,” she continued, when she and Mattie between them had removed the
packing-case from the larder. “There’s the climate as well. She says
it’s that cold in the winter you could get yourself frozen stiff before
you’d know anything about it.”
“I reckon _I’d_ know all right, anyhow,” Mattie retorted grimly,
although not without an inward qualm. Her particular brand of
rheumatism, acquired by a lifetime spent in damp gardens, was
peculiarly if incongruously susceptible to frost. “Ay, and if I was
getting melted, either, come to that!”
“Then there’s the houses,” Dolly said, her plump hands busy all the
time clearing and straightening. “You should just hear her about
the houses! Them sort, you know, made of bits of wood, as you build
yourself? Hen-hulls, Jessie says they are,--hen-hulls and nothing else!”
The elder woman felt a cold wrath take possession of her as she heard
the precious house of her dream described in this derogatory manner. If
Dolly’s cousin Jessie had indeed been present at that moment, it would
doubtless have gone hard with her. As she was not, Mattie was forced to
content herself with glaring across the kitchen at Dolly, who, however,
was busy putting a drawer in the dresser to rights, and could not see
her.
“No place to swing a cat, Jessie says, and that ugly an’ all! She says
she’d give the eyes out of her head for a nice bit of mortared stone.
‘Something like that grand cottage of Mrs. Kirkby’s,’ she says, ‘up at
the gardens at the Hall.’ I once brought her up here on a message or
something, if you remember, and she was that taken with this spot there
was no holding her.”
Mattie did not remember, as it happened, and was, at that moment, as
far as it was possible to be from wishing to remember. Her exasperation
at the onslaughts of Dolly’s cousin Jessie was only to be measured by
her growing sense of helplessness in face of them. She had, however,
just discovered something to say that might possibly put her out of
court for good and all, when Dolly, passing to another drawer, flowed
steadily onward.
“As for the folks out there, she hasn’t a good word to say for them,
home or foreign! A lot of bounders, she says,--barring always your
folks, you’ll understand, Mrs. Kirkby. The shop-folk, Jessie says, are
that impudent she can bare bring herself to speak to them. Talk to you
like as if they’d known you all your life, and call you ‘my dear’ as
soon as look at you!”
“I’d like to hear anybody calling me ‘my dear’ before I had asked
’em for it!” Mattie said furiously, fingering a tea-cup with such
fierceness that she broke the handle. The retainers connected with a
big house have always a curious sense of being a species apart, and in
spite of her rebellion she was not immune from it.
“Likely Jessie did ask for it,” Dolly said soothingly, though without
turning to look at her. “I always thought her a bit free.... But the
things she says about the folks as belong are nothing to what she
says about the folks out from England. They fair ruin the place, she
says--barring always your belongings, Mrs. Kirkby, as I said before.
They’re that stuck up, she says, each of ’em trying to best the rest,
that you’d fair bust out laughing if you didn’t feel that mad at ’em. I
reckon Jessie’s done her bit of sticking up as well, and it didn’t come
off, and that’s what makes her so wild.”
“I don’t know why any of them should be stuck up, I’m sure,” Mattie
burst out before she had time to think,--“folks as didn’t make good
over here, and thought another country’d likely do the job!”
“Why, that’s what Jessie says, Mrs. Kirkby!” Dolly said, looking at
her now, and with definite surprise. “Leaving their country for their
country’s good, is how _she_ puts it. But I didn’t look to hear you
saying the same, and with your folks doing so well an’ all!
“Some on ’em,” she continued, before Mattie could find breath to speak
again, “make out they were that swell at home you’d likely think as
they’d have brought their coronets with them! There’s some Madisons,
she says, from over Witham way, as is that full of themselves they can
hardly walk. They tell folks they had a big farm over here, with a
pedigree herd of the best; whereas everybody knows they had nothing but
a milk-round as was more like a water-round, by a deal!”
But Mattie had had more than she could bear for the time being of
Jessie’s depressing reflections. A fresh picture of Canada was forming
before her eyes, blotting out the fine-hued image which she had made
for her own enchantment. Already its glamour was blurred beneath
Jessie’s touch, as frost-traceries are blurred by the rub of a rough
finger. She was appalled, too, by her sudden, contemptuous speech, with
its astonishing infidelity to her past beliefs. She had always thought
of the Canadian adventurers by the brave title of pioneers, and would
have been proud to have made one of their gallant company. It seemed
the last treachery of all that she should have nursed that subtle
contempt, so that in a moment of idle annoyance it might set a sneer
upon her lips.
With a brusque movement she put an end both to Mrs. Machell’s monologue
and to her final dealings with the dresser.
“Let’s get at t’ parlour now, if you don’t mind,” she said, bustling
before her into the dismantled room. She was now just as anxious to get
the house put back to rights as she had wanted, earlier on, to pull it
all to pieces. Subconsciously she was thinking that, when the place was
tidy again, the trouble that was growing in her mind might possibly
smooth out, too....
The two women had a pleasant hour together arranging the little-used
furniture, over which they spent more time than was necessary out of
sheer enjoyment. Mattie found Mrs. Machell an entranced auditor as she
dwelt upon its merits, pointing out its beauty of shape or gloss or
the elegance of its handles. Pictures and vases had their histories
related at full length, succeeded by records of clocks and epics
of antimacassars. Dolly fingered and valued, praised and exclaimed,
wondering to herself all the time how many of the precious objects
would come her way at the sale.
“I’ll have a bad time, I doubt, before I’ve settled what we’re to
take!” Mattie laughed, handling her treasures more and more fondly
under Dolly’s appreciation. “I thought I’d hardened my heart to part
with some of them, this morning, but now that I’m looking at ’em again,
I’m not so sure! There’s no sense, though, in taking a chair-leg more
than we’re obliged. It’ll cost enough, as it is. I doubt, anyhow, I’ll
have to make up my mind to leave pictures and knick-knacks behind.”
Dolly’s heart leaped as she looked at a pair of bright pink vases,
trimmed with an excellent imitation of sugar icing, seeing them already
as her very own.
“Photo-frames and such-like won’t pay for the taking, either,” Mattie
was saying hesitatingly, “though wild horses ’emselves wouldn’t make
me part with the photos. I’ve a regular stack of ’em as They’ve sent
me, year in and year out, especially of the children. Some folks’d say
it was nonsense taking photos along when you’re going to see the folks
themselves, but I’ve grown that used to them I’ve got to have them.”
She remembered now that she had not yet spent the hour with the
grandchildren which she had promised herself earlier, and proceeded
to take it, setting them forth to Dolly with that sense of proud
showmanship which the first generation almost invariably seems to feel
towards the third. It was impossible to believe, listening to her vivid
description of its looks and ways, that she had never yet set eyes upon
a single member of it. Smiling and happy, she had found for herself
again that first ecstasy which she had felt upon awakening from her
dream. Canada was again what she had thought it to be, as she laughed
and talked, wearing always that inward look of those who ponder upon
hidden treasure.
“Luke’s youngest, they say, is as like me as a couple of peas, and
Joe’s second takes after Kirkby. He’s a bit darker, perhaps, and he’s
brown eyes instead of blue, but there’s no mistaking where he comes
from, either in looks or manners. Little Eric, they call him, after
his mother’s father, though I don’t know why they need go out of the
family when there’s so many good names shouting. I’m right set upon
little Eric.... Maggie’s May frames something grand at the piano, and
Ellen’s Sally shapes to have a voice.... Luke’s eldest’s getting on for
twelve, and can manage a motor-mower ... leastways, they say he can,
though I doubt they’re putting it on.”
“Jessie can’t abide Canadian children,” Dolly cut in, introducing that
unpleasant person for the first time into the parlour. “Real nasty
about ’em, she is. She couldn’t abide English children, either, if it
comes to that, judging from what parents and such-like used to say
about her when she taught school. But Canadian children, she says,
are that uppish and wild there’s no doing anything with them. Like
savages, you’d think they were, if you swallowed everything you heard
from Jessie. Fine children to look at, she says, and healthy and all
that; but that noisy and full of beans they fair make an English person
tired.”
Mattie had a horrid vision of a narrow and crowded house, with Kirkby
and herself hemmed in by leaping, shouting children. She herself had
once rather rejoiced in noise, though Kirkby had always hated it; but
she was not so sure now that, after all these years of silence, she
would not hate it, too. Luke had two other boys besides young Joe of
the motor-mower, as well as a little girl just over a year old. He
was fond of company, too, and was never so happy as when extending
hospitality. Also he had that piano, she remembered with dismay, upon
which both relatives and friends came eagerly to practise....
The homes of the younger children had nothing better to offer, for
they, too, had growing families, and in even smaller houses. It was
true that she and Kirkby would have their own home before so long, but
she could not think of it now with her early happy passion. It seemed
vulnerable to her now, and no longer a haven of contentment. For the
first time in her life she saw the good stone walls of her English
cottage as a frame for privacy and peace.
“Jessie says Canadian children _aren’t_ children as we know ’em,” Dolly
was saying blandly. “She says they grow up that fast it’s hard to
remember they’ve ever even been babies. They’re grown folks, she says,
before you can hardly turn round, same as that fine lad of Luke’s you
said could manage a motor. I reckon you’ll be surprised, Mrs. Kirkby,
by the time you get there, to find how they’ve all come on.”
Mattie turned to the door with the same sharp movement with which she
had endeavoured to rid herself of Jessie in the kitchen. That last
stroke of hers, dealt through Dolly’s innocent tongue, had gone a great
deal nearer home than she cared to realise. Like most grandmothers, she
had thought of the children as children only, hardly believing that
in the future they would be grown-up people. And especially she had
thought of little Eric as remaining always little Eric.... Yet already,
as she remembered, a year had passed since they had sent her his last
picture. By the time she got out to him, she reflected grimly, he, too,
might have risen to the dignity of the motor-mower!
“Time we were having tea,” she said firmly, waving Dolly before her
through the door. “You’ll be wanting it, I’m sure. As for me, I’m that
worn out with all that shoving and siding, I could do with a dozen
teas instead of one!”
Back in the kitchen, however, she was diverted by still another matter,
which kept the tea waiting a little longer. Going to a cupboard in the
wall, she opened the door and stood looking at its contents.
“I can’t make up my mind what to do about my jam,” she said, as Dolly
joined her. “It fair goes to my heart to leave it. Yet it seems silly,
doesn’t it, to go hugging jam-pots and such-like across the ocean? I
doubt it’ll have to be put in the sale.”
“Folks’ll be fighting like cats for it, if it is!” Dolly laughed,
peering admiringly round her shoulder. Even at this time of the year
the shelves were still half-filled with rows of glistening jars,
making, with their white caps topping their coloured bodies, a smart
and polished regiment. “It’s a long while back since I first heard tell
there was nothing to beat your jam.”
Mattie looked pleased, and her voice lost the rather dull tone which
had suddenly come into it since her late depression in the parlour.
“Well, I’ve always prided myself on getting it just so,” she said,
eyeing the glories of the cupboard proudly. “It’s been my hobby, as you
might say. Getting the best of everything, that’s the secret,--the best
fruit and the best sugar, and making sure of the boiling. Not but what
like enough there’s a knack to it as well, same as there is for making
butter and setting hens.”
She ran her hand fondly over the white paper carpet above which the
jams glowed like so many jewels, the raspberries looking like pressed
garnets against the prison of their glass, and the red currant and
apple jellies gleaming like ruby and yellow topaz.
“There’s plenty to go at yet, as you can see, even though we’re well
past the turn of the year. I always make a fairish amount, in case we
get a bad year after a good one. ’Tisn’t as if my jam wouldn’t keep; in
a good season, I reckon, it’d keep till the Day of Judgment!... This
shelf’s near all rasps, and that’s apricot and a bit of marrow. There’s
some blackberry jelly behind, and a taste of wineberry. We haven’t a
deal of gooseberry and rhubarb, but there’s a lot of plum. That pot or
two of black currant is just for when Kirkby gets a cough; and here’s
where I keep my Best Strawberry.”
The red had come into Dolly’s face as she looked, gloating over the
housewife’s riches with honest pleasure. Catching her breath a little
as Mattie stopped, she broke into quick speech.
“Likely you’ll know, Mrs. Kirkby, what we’re hoping’ll come to Len? Mr.
Kirkby was right kind when he spoke about it, this morning. It’s early
days to be talking, perhaps, but I thought you wouldn’t mind....”
Mattie took her hand away from the shining pot which she was stroking
as a man strokes the glossy coat of a horse, and looked round slowly.
“Talking about what?” she enquired, looking at the colour in Dolly’s
face, and then away again.
“About Len applying for head place, if Mr. Kirkby gives up,” Dolly
said, growing more and more nervous with every second. “I shouldn’t
have said anything, perhaps, but I thought you’d be sure to know.”
For quite a long time Mattie was silent from sheer surprise, not so
much at Dolly’s announcement as at her own reception of it. No more
than to Kirkby had it occurred to her to speculate as to his probable
successor, but if ever she had arrived at speculation, she would have
been certain that it would not trouble her. Yet here she was filled
with anger and scorn, not only on Kirkby’s account, but actually on
her own! Len’s reaching out for the gardens which she had always hated
should have been nothing to her, by rights; yet the very suggestion had
set her seething with injured pride and pain.
“Nay, I’ve heard nothing about it, not I,” she managed to get out
presently, trying to keep out of her voice her conviction that Len was
an impudent monkey and a robber. “But he’ll be as likely as anybody, I
should say, if it comes to choosing.”
Dolly’s face glowed at this grudging praise, and she went forward with
fresh confidence.
“That’s right good of you, Mrs. Kirkby, seeing it’s your own business
we’re after. I shouldn’t have mentioned it but for the jam. But I’d be
glad, if you’re selling, to take some of it over before the sale----”
She stopped as Mattie put out her arms again towards the shelves in
a gesture which she could not interpret, but which was, as a matter
of fact, a gesture of protection. Now it was Dolly as well as Len who
seemed a thief, stretching out greedy hands to her own most precious
belongings. She saw her moving about her home, sitting in her chairs,
walking in the cool of the evening in her sacred garden. Her heart rose
against her in a rage of distress which almost threatened to choke her.
At that moment she could have driven the other woman from the house
with blows....
With agitated movements she began to push the jars as far back on their
shelves as they would go, thrusting them out of sight and danger like
a hen protecting her chickens. She closed the door with a bang, and
snapped the lock with a click; and then, normal again with the shutting
away of the threatened treasure, turned to Dolly, smiling.
“Ay, well, we’ll talk about that later, when we’ve got things settled.
Now I’m wanting my tea. Fill kettle and boil it, will you, while I set
the cloth?... We’re taking this over seriously,” she added, with a
laugh, “and forgetting it’s just pretence!”
Dolly laughed, too, not only in polite recognition of the assumption
with which they had started out, but because she felt relieved. There
had been a strong feeling of tension in the air as they stood before
the cupboard, and she was glad to get away from it. For the first time
it crossed her kindly, unthinking little mind that things might have
been better conducted, that afternoon....
But she was soon at her ease again when they were seated at their meal,
pleasantly conscious, as they kept telling each other, laughing, how
well they had earned it. Her confidence returned, which had so nearly
been shattered by the episode of the jam, and she let herself babble
freely. Mattie found herself listening with interest to local gossip,
and giving fervent attention to the local scandals. Hitherto she had
never cared a rap what happened in the hamlet, and could only conclude
that this was one of the many changes which had come upon her to-day.
She had sworn to herself that she would not mention Canada again,
but before they were half-way through the meal she had broken her
intention. By the time she had poured the second cups of tea she was
gone abroad, taking an interested Dolly with her. Seated at a cottage
tea-table, they were yet gold-seekers and explorers, game-hunters in
the Rockies, and adventurers shooting the rapids. Their lungs were
braced by the air of the Strong Country, and its distances lightened
their eyes. The wind that blows over the prairies filled and freshened
the little room.
“I’d a dream about it, last night,” Mattie said presently, reverting to
that solemn and lovely subject a little shyly. “I was There, just as
I’m here now, and with none of that nasty crossing. I saw the places
and the folks and the insides of the houses.... And everything was as
nice as could be, in spite of your cousin Jessie!”
With her own lips she had invoked the demon of the situation, and
instantly it was at grips with her. Dolly, dashed by the sense of
insecurity which had alarmed her before tea, had kept a guard on her
tongue as soon as Canada was mentioned. But now Mattie, of her own
accord, had raised that guard, and she rushed in briskly.
“Jessie wouldn’t know a nice spot if it up and told her about it,” she
said gaily. “She was always a wet blanket.... But they’ll get the
surprise of their lives when they hear you’re coming, Mrs. Kirkby.
Jessie says they’ve all of ’em given up hopes of it long ago.”
A sudden quiet seemed to fall and envelop Mattie, a quiet which spread
and spread and travelled over the kitchen. After a long moment--“Who
told her they’d given up hope?” she enquired, stilly.
“Ellen told her herself,” Mrs. Machell replied, uneasily conscious that
the tension was returning. “‘Father’ll be getting past it, is what she
says, and I reckon so will Mother.’ She’s a grand plan now for coming
over to you instead. She’s just breaking her heart, Jessie says, to get
back again over here.... She talks of bringing little Sally with her
when she comes, and leaving her if you want her. She’ll be a help to
you, she says, now you’re beginning to get on; and Sally’s as keen as
mustard to come and live with Granny.”
She stopped then, startled by the loudness of her voice in the
growing stillness, which seemed at the same time both to accentuate
it and rebuke it. Looking across at her hostess, she felt almost
panic-stricken at the change which had come upon her. It was
impossible, she said to herself, that those few chattered words should
so greatly have disturbed her. As if it mattered what Jessie said,
or what she chose to repeat! Yet Mattie was sunk in her chair as if
the vigour which usually sustained her had suddenly departed from
her. Exhaustion had drained the blood from her face, and without its
customary bright colour it looked somehow smaller. And wrapping her
round about was that curious curtain of quiet; a shroud, as it were,
automatically produced for something that had ceased to be....
Glancing at the clock, Dolly stood up sharply, setting the china
ringing.
“I’ll have to be going, Mrs. Kirkby,” she said as quietly as she could,
yet shrinking again from her voice as it smote upon the silence.
“Len’ll be wanting his tea. I’ll just have time to lend you a hand with
the washing-up, and then I must be off.”
She had still another moment of panic before Mattie stirred, afterwards
getting to her feet in a series of rather helpless movements. Dolly
watched her with troubled eyes, wondering always how far she was
responsible for the sudden situation. Even now that Mattie was standing
up and moving about, she felt ill at ease with her. The absurd thought
flashed through her mind that the Mrs. Kirkby who had got up was not
the same Mrs. Kirkby who had sat down!...
Between them, they got the washing-up put through in record time, which
yet seemed unnaturally long because of the heavy silence in which
they did it. Mattie’s work was as efficient as ever, but it seemed to
have lost its spring. Her hands, moving with dull sureness among the
cups and saucers, looked strangely old and weak. Dolly was dull, too,
her brain groping its way back over the talk of the afternoon, and
anathematising both her own foolishness and the grumblings of Cousin
Jessie. It was with a sense of acute relief that at last she put on her
hat and hurried to the door.
“Well, I’ll be saying good day to you, Mrs. Kirkby,” she announced
hastily to the still only half-recognisable figure of Mattie which had
followed her. “It’s been real pleasant to have a chat. If you want a
bit of help again when it really comes to packing, you’ve only to let
me know.”
Mattie spoke to her then, though in an altered tone which corresponded
with her altered presence. With an obvious effort she made her little
speech of thanks,--Dolly moving restlessly the while,--and then bade
her wait a moment. Going back into the kitchen, she reappeared with a
pot of her Best Strawberry.
“Nay, I want you to take it,” she insisted, firmly if dully, as Mrs.
Machell protested. “You’ve been right kind. I’ll give you them pink
vases, if you’ll have ’em, before the sale, but anyhow I’d like you to
have a taste of my good strawberry.”
The tears came into Dolly’s eyes. Regardless of the jam-pot, she put
her arms round Mattie’s neck and hugged her.
“I don’t need presents just for enjoying myself!” she said, laughing
and crying together. “Eh, Mrs. Kirkby, but I’d be right glad if I heard
as you weren’t going!”
She was gone herself then, running across the gardens, jam-pot in
hand, and Mattie waited until she had lost sight of her. Her lips had
quivered a little at the warm pressure of Dolly’s cheek, but they did
not quiver now. Her figure straightened itself slightly as she turned
on her heel, and went back slowly, but with set purpose, into the
darkening house.
VI
She went back into the kitchen and sat down at the table from which the
tea-things had been removed, and which now wore its evening glory of
crimson cloth. The sight of the cloth reminded her that Kirkby had not
yet come in for his meal, and she wondered what had become of him. But
she forgot him again in the urge for settlement with herself which had
suddenly seized her. Sinking herself in the problems which beset her,
she lost all consciousness of time and place.
She sat heavily in her chair, with the heaviness of exhaustion, but
with less of that air of lowered vitality which had frightened Mrs.
Machell. A little force had returned to her joined hands, laid loosely
along the table. Her face, lifted and looking straight before her, was
the face of one who at the same time sits in judgment and awaits the
decision of some tribunal.
She was still numb from the shock of Dolly’s communication, but she
was bracing herself all the time. She was trying to make herself
understand that she had still to decide about Canada, still to set the
balance dipping one way or the other. She had thought the choice made
long since, clinched long ago beyond all possible change. But the truth
was that you could neither test nor be tested by a situation which
had not as yet arisen. She saw now that the decision had never really
been made at all; that it never could have been made until Kirkby had
written the letter....
She had forgotten, too, that, while she waited, time had been at
work, busily adding its make-weights on this side or on that. She had
forgotten that people alter ... that places alter ... that she herself,
even in the iron mould of her obsession, might possibly alter....
Behind her set face she was filled with fear that some still-unnoticed
change might tip the scale against her.
So many ages seemed to have fled since the joy of the morning that she
peered back at it with dim eyes as at some memory of childhood. Yet the
steps by which she had come to this pass had been so swift that her
brain swam at their mere remembrance. But they had only seemed swift
because of the suddenness with which revelation after revelation had
been sprung upon her. The truths lying behind those changes of thought
and scene must have been growing in secret for many a long year.
It was not only the whinings of Cousin Jessie which had taken her
courage from her, stealing it, hour by hour, as if it was her very
life-blood that they drained. The dream itself had undermined it,
puzzling and depressing her even while it glorified and exalted. She
remembered the Questions, and shrank from the finger of warning which
they so obviously had pointed. And she remembered that Ellen ... but
she was still too bruised and shocked to dare to dwell upon Ellen.
And after the dream there had been other portents and signs, each of
them, as it were, putting out an unseen arm in order to stay her. All
day long she had been called to attention by the things about her, as
well as by the sudden, unwished-for rising of old memories. Both within
and without, as it were, she had been attacked, and before each attack
had retreated a step further. All day long it had been brought home to
her that she was exchanging the substance for the shadow, and that, in
her insistence upon Canada, she was cutting herself off from the things
which really mattered.
She said to herself angrily, as if accusing some outside power, that
she had not known that places and houses could hold you against your
will. She had tried to keep herself free, like a soldier awaiting his
orders, and she had never once been free. Not only that, but it was
she herself who had been forced to betray herself. Even while she was
nursing and keeping warm her hatred of her surroundings, her heart
was beginning to love them. Even while she had imagined herself to be
facing steadily forward, she was already beginning to look back.
Dick Nelson had been right in saying that, no matter how you might
fight against it, you were bound to settle, in the end. She had been
angry about it, at the time, angry and contemptuous, but she saw what
he meant now. The gardens had grown no wider for her as time went on,
but they had grown deeper. She had taken root.... It seemed as if the
place where you had suffered held you as surely in the end as the
place where you had been content....
And in the same way people got hold of you, after a while ... even
those you disliked, let alone people like Mrs. Grisedale and Mrs.
Ellwood. In spite of yourself they became part of your life,--that life
which you had not wanted, perhaps, which had either been thrust upon
you, or which you had chosen by mistake, but which nevertheless you had
steadily gone on living. You could not keep yourself away from people,
no matter how you tried. Even if you shared nothing else with them, you
shared the same countryside. Your life was marked by the milestones
of their happenings, just as their lives were marked by yours. And
when the time came to die, you lay down together to sleep in the same
soil....
She was too old for Canada, she said to herself, accepting the fact
calmly because as yet it had not come home to her. Not too old in body,
perhaps, in spite of her age, but almost certainly in spirit. You could
not fret and fight, year after year, as she had fretted and fought,
without something wearing out in you. And even her body felt too old
to-night for the land of which she had always thought as a place of
vivid youth. She would feel better in the morning, of course,--better
and more equal to things,--because you always did feel better in the
morning. It was one of the lessons of life that you could face things
in the morning which you could not face at night. But always the night
came again.... In any case, something told her that to-day she had
touched what was for her the highest point of living. After to-day she
would begin definitely to grow old.
Safety was what you needed most when you were beginning to get on; not
to be high adventurers and pioneers. Pioneers and adventurers weren’t
safe,--couldn’t be, in the nature of things. Whatever happened, she
and Kirkby would have certain dangers to face, even though they were
not going actually into the wilds. Dangers from people and food, from
climate and travel and strain.... There were dangers everywhere, of
course,--even here; but long custom had taught them how to avoid them.
You got used to most of your dangers, except for those unforeseen; and
when you were used to your dangers they were no longer very dangerous.
Safety and peace and quiet, and a certain amount of ease; not hen-hulls
and yelling children, such as Cousin Jessie had pictured. Jessie,
of course, had been drawing the long bow, even if she had not been
telling absolute untruths. But it would be different from England,
nevertheless. Whatever Luke’s home might be like, it would not have the
settled dignity of the home in which he had been reared. As for their
own, which had yet to be built, it would have even less than Luke’s. It
would have no dignity because it would have no memories and no past.
It would be empty, and they would not have time to fill it. They would
barely have grown used to it, and it to them, before death, with a
crooked finger, would beckon them both out.
It was too late, she said to herself again, and felt through her calm
the upstriking pang which the words inevitably evoke. It was true,
as Dick said, that you could wait too long, so that, when the time
came, and the chance offered, you were not able to take it. And the
reason you were not able was because you had nothing left with which
to meet it. The strength which you needed for new conditions had been
squandered long ago, frittered away, day by day, in striving and
rebellion.
The children thought it too late, too.... Her heart contracted as she
remembered that, and she drew in her breath sharply. They had ceased to
look for her long since,--if it was true what Jessie had told Dolly.
It seemed a betrayal beyond pardon that they should not have gone on
hoping as long as they could; at all events until she, who had lived on
that hope, had finally resigned it. But she had never hinted at such a
thing, not even in the latest of her letters. Perhaps they had laughed
at the letters, she thought, shrinking; had mocked, even if ever so
kindly, at the old mother who would not own herself defeated....
At least they had not mocked her when they wrote, nor had they ever
implied that they had ceased to expect her. They had kept it up, just
as she had kept it up, and with all the old happy anticipation. And for
long enough now it had been just pretence ... that is, if you could
believe Jessie. She felt suddenly that she hated letters and the things
that they could do.... Jessie’s letters, which had brought about this
present trouble ... the letters from the children, without which she
might possibly have settled down long since....
She came at last to the thought of Ellen, and forced herself to meet
it. It was Ellen who had hurt her most,--Ellen, who had been nearest to
her, and had always understood her. Not only had she ceased to believe
that she would come, but, with the plan for her own visit growing in
her mind, she must also have ceased to hope for it. She had told a
complete stranger that she was breaking her heart, longingly looking
back to the home she had left so gladly. She had not told her mother
that she was breaking her heart.... Mattie felt the desolation of one
who, dedicated to some cause, finds that the comrade with whom he has
travelled has secretly turned back.
She remembered Ellen’s packet now, and, getting up to look for it,
returned with it resolutely to the table. She opened it slowly,
fumbling with paper and string, and without any interest in what she
was doing. Her mind, persistently turned inward upon its sorrow,
refused to focus for more than a second upon any external object. All
that she could think of at the moment was the hard fact of Ellen’s
backsliding, and the breaking of the bond which had so long existed
between them.
There was a photograph in the packet, as she had thought, and presently
she had unwrapped it and had it lying before her. There was no
accompanying letter that she could find; but there was nothing in that,
as she had had one only yesterday. Taking the picture in her hands, she
made a determined effort to fix her attention upon it.
After that first glance at it, however, she made as if to throw it
down, for the woman in it was not Ellen. This was a middle-aged
stranger, with traces of hard work in her face and hands, a little
droop to her head and a slight stoop to her shoulders. The lips smiled,
it was true, but behind the attempt at gaiety the face was tired. Even
the clothes she wore had something a little strange about them to
Mattie’s English eyes.
Yet for all that it was still Ellen.... Even as she looked she saw the
likeness stand out, first, in the curve of the cheek, and then in the
curve of the mouth. They were Ellen’s eyes, when she came to study
them, though the laughing and dancing in them had sunk deeper. They
were Ellen’s hands, too, which, even to this day, had kept their old
childish habit of clutching at her gown.
Her heart swelled as she looked, both on her own account and on her
daughter’s, thinking of the light, laughing thing that had gone out
of the cottage, to return to her in this guise. She had known that
she would look older, of course, and, as far as she could, had taught
herself to expect it. But she could never have believed that the years
would make so much difference. She remembered that Ellen was younger
than Dolly,--Dolly, with her plump, straight, little figure and
cheerful, unlined face,-and felt the tears that were in her heart rise
up and fill her throat.
A horror of Canada seized her,--horror and fear of the land which had
played such havoc with Ellen, and which had taken her away from her
in more senses than she knew. For it was neither the added years nor
the look of endurance which troubled her, after the first. People
grew older in England, as well as anywhere else, and Ellen had never
been very strong.... What frightened her was the unmistakable air of
another country, turning her daughter into a stranger.
She sat for a long time trying to will the young Ellen back into the
picture, and saw the youth come into it by degrees as the spring green
comes upon the hedgerows. And presently, when she had her again, the
longing to see her grew greater than she could bear. Silently and
unknown to her, as she stared, the tears ran down her face....
She must see her, at all costs, she said to herself, in spite of
Ellen’s lack of confidence and the bitterness of betrayal. It would be
harder to go now, both because of her own clearer vision of things, and
because of the fading impulse from Over There which had done so much
to sustain her. The glamour had gone out of the enterprise for ever.
But she could not afford to wait until Ellen should find both money and
opportunity for her visit. At all costs, she must go to Canada.
But even as she made her decision she remembered the sea, and shrank
from it in her mind as if from an actual presence. It had frightened
her even in her morning freshness; in her evening weariness it became
a stalking horror. Her passion for size and space, together with her
power of visualisation, turned upon her now to her own undoing. The
Atlantic rose up against her in its sullen depth and strength, in chain
upon chain of endless, rolling mountains. Presently, as it seemed, the
advancing terror was in the garden and in the house, and under the
waves of her huge vision she saw herself sink and drown....
She came back at last to find herself twisted in her chair, with
her eyes fixed upon some half-seen but definitely soothing object.
As her mind cleared she found that she was looking through the open
larder door, and out through the window beyond which vignetted the
privet hedge. She could see the lawn, too, shadowy and mysterious with
the evening, and the rosebush, slimmed and thinned to almost elfin
proportions. Over the hedge-top there still lingered a segment of
silvered, tranquil sky....
Her heart stopped pounding as she looked, and the choking terror which
had sprung on her out of the ocean slowly loosed its grip. The peace of
the garden reached her even in the house, making an exquisite stillness
where the sea had roared and rolled. She sat drinking in the quiet,
watching the sky fade and the lawn dim as veil after veil was laid upon
them.... And then again she remembered Ellen.
She would never be able to get to Ellen if she could not face the sea,
and she knew now that she could not face it. There was no deliverance,
after all. All that she could do was to sit and wait for Ellen to come,
and Ellen might never come.... She sprang to her feet, crying aloud
that she was trapped, as Kirkby, down in the garden, was crying that he
was trapped. She could neither go nor stay, she said to herself, get
to Ellen nor remain here. Life, after all these years of bitterness
and despair, could do nothing better for her than to get her into this
trap....
With the supreme terror upon her of those who see themselves caught by
life she ran to the door, and beheld the bowed figure of Kirkby, dusky
and ghost-like in the distance. Leaving the house, as if it was her own
self that she left, she went running and stumbling towards him across
the gardens.