Read Ebook: The things which belong— by Holme Constance

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Ebook has 608 lines and 49493 words, and 13 pages

"Oh, you're back, right enough!" he smiled at her from the door; and at the words the thing which had stayed in front of her eyes fled, and she looked across at him.

"Ay, I'm back," she said in a curious tone, and looked away from him and about her. "Back!"--and her glance went to the privet hedge beyond the window.... He waited a moment, staring at her uncertainly and rather uncomfortably, and then slipped quietly from the room. Half-way down the stairs, he heard her say "Back!" again, and hesitated in his step as if meaning to return to her; only to hurry on afterwards more rapidly than ever.

As he entered the kitchen he was met by the letter with the now familiar shock, but this time he did not attempt to evade it. On the contrary, he went deliberately across to it, and stood by the table, looking at it. A glance at the clock had shown him that he was earlier than he had imagined, and he was in no mood to meet his staff before he was obliged. That whistling first-comer would be Len Machell, a skilled gardener and his right-hand man. Len was always early, and he had always liked him for it; but he was not so sure that he liked him for it, this morning. Deep down in his mind lurked an uncomfortable suspicion that Len had a reason for coming early to-day....

Yet, after all, he said to himself, straightening himself as he stood, it was his weak pen which had altered their destinies. Mattie's handwriting, superior though it was, could not in this case have had the weight of his. The ink that was left had been more than sufficient for the few, colourless words in which, after forty years' service, he had sent in his notice.

Yet it was only in terms of death, he said to himself obstinately, that he could think of the actual break. It seemed absurd that the snapping of a tie like that could be brought about by the mere scraping of a rusty pen. It should be accomplished, he thought, in some more dramatic way, like the call to attention of clean shot, and the lowering of something into a grave.

Forty years' service was in that letter, but there was so much more besides. He had been bred on the estate, like his parents before him, and he had never left it. All that was in it, too. Old customs and ways of thought, closer and closer growth to human beings and to the soil,--links that had loosened and even broken, but had always welded again,--all these were there. Not in the actual wording of the letter, of course, but in its very texture; so that it seemed as if one man alone could never carry its weight of association and memory, and its long tale of the years.

And more besides.... Not only was there forty years' service in the letter, but there was forty years' struggle ... all that long contest between himself and his wife, which had begun in the first year of their marriage and never stopped,--never, that is, until last night with the writing of the letter, when it had stopped as a clock stops in a house where somebody dies.

Even this morning he had that same feeling as of a clock stopped somewhere in the house, followed as it always was by a silence that could be heard....

Well, it was all over,--the talks, the disputes, the discussions as to ways and means. She had always wanted to go, and he had never been able to go; first, because he hadn't the money and, second, because he hadn't the heart. He had grown to believe that the discussions would go on for ever, and now they were at an end. It almost seemed as if they would have nothing to talk about any more.

She had never liked the place from the very start; never settled or learned to look upon it as home. He had waited for the years to work their magic upon her, and they had never worked it. She had never settled.... Always she had gone on longing and reaching out for something that wasn't there, something that in the very nature of things couldn't possibly be there.

It had taken him a long time to understand, and he was not sure that he understood, even yet. All that he had definitely learned from the clash of wills was that the heart must face its own way; that one man's meat may be another man's poison, and that the holy, inhabited place wherein one soul can find its peace may be nothing but an airless vacuum to another.

Yet it was not, he sometimes argued with himself, as if he had taken her from such a very different existence. She was a gardener's daughter, as he was a gardener's son, and had been born to the same tranquil round and lovely isolation. He had thought her happy enough when he saw her at home, cheerful and busy and making her own interests; but that, as he knew now, was merely because of her youth. The soul can lay out its own pleasure-grounds when it is young. Later, when it ceases to do so, it sees the little ring-fence surrounding it only too plainly.

It was tragic that she had not known that she needed a wider scope,--tragic for both of them. But she had not known, and there had been nobody--apparently--to tell her. It was the gardens which told her eventually,--his dear, charmed circle of the gardens,--when it was too late.

He had found her, one evening,--as very soon after their marriage he had come to look for her,--sitting beside an upstairs window. The window was open, and by putting out her head she could see between the trunks of the trees to the coloured canvases of the fells. It was a circumscribed view at the best, with only a section of the hills visible when the weather permitted, together with a strip of sky laid nun-wise across their foreheads; but it was better than nothing. He had called up to her laughingly to ask her "what she was at," and she had told him in reply that she was "shoving the walls away."

"Shoving what walls? And whatever for?" he had enquired, puzzled, and she had flung out her hands with a thrusting movement towards the walls surrounding the gardens.

He had been so surprised by that that he had stayed under the window, staring, and wondering whether she wasn't well, or whether something had happened to upset her. It seemed incredible to him that people should think of garden walls as shutting them in, when everybody knew that what they were really there for was to shut things and people out.

"What, there was walls at home, wasn't there?" he reminded her, at last. "Ay, and a deal higher than ours, too, now I come to think of it!"

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

"I never thought of 'em as high," she returned slowly, pondering. "Anyway, I never felt shut in. Likely it was just because things seem that much bigger and wider to a child, but I remember thinking the garden was nearabouts as big as the whole world!"

"Well, I'm not saying this here's quite as big as that!" he had tried to laugh her out of her brooding. "But it's a fairish size. You'll not find a better kitchen-spot anywhere in the North."

It had grown no bigger for her, either, as time went on. She had never ceased to find it small and shut-in, never ceased to rebel against its limitations. Many a day she had sat by the upstairs window during the years that followed, but she had never succeeded in pushing the walls away. It was he who had done it in the end by writing the letter, laying them flat with his pen as effectively as with any Jericho trumpet.

Still, it was her will that ran behind the pen, even though it was his hand that held it. He knew that well enough, even while his loyalty had no intention of admitting it. The disputes and discussions had seemed futile enough at the time, but they had done their work in the end. Her hours of silent revolt, equally with her passionate clamourings to be free, had accumulated at last into a dynamic force which seemed able to move mountains.

Once, before, indeed, she had almost succeeded in getting her way, only to find, just as she was on the point of turning into it, that it led to a dead end. The affair was so long ago now that he had practically forgotten it, but it came back to him, this morning. Contemplating it to-day, he was struck by one curious fact,--that what he had nearly done then seemed to him now far more incredible than what he had actually done, last night. The sudden reassertion of that distant point of view showed him how much he had altered since that date; how far he had travelled, although unknowingly, along the road to Mattie's desire.

It was at a local flower-show that the opportunity had come, tumbled from Heaven, as it seemed, in answer to Mattie's pleading. He had been present at the show in the capacity of judge, and a visiting landowner had taken a fancy to him. At the end of the afternoon, his new friend, without actually offering him the post, had yet managed to convey to him that his own head gardener's situation, which happened to be vacant at the moment, could be Kirkby's for the mere formality of asking.

He had forgotten the incident, as has been said, but at least he had no difficulty in remembering how his wife had taken the news. It had acted upon her like a charm, turning her, even at the mere prospect of escape, into a different creature, so that already she moved and spoke as if breathing a freer air. All evening they had debated the question, and had gone up to bed resolved upon accepting the unspoken invitation. He recalled Mattie's elation over their luck, her gratitude to Providence, her almost childlike happiness. Yet it was he who had slept, that night, even under the sword of impending change; while she, for all that her prayer was about to be granted, had lain awake.

And in the morning the whole of her evening dream had fallen to pieces.... She had come downstairs silent and apathetic, dimmed as a candle is dimmed by the coming of daylight. She ignored any reference on his part to the decision of the night before, and when he definitely tried to reopen the subject, she pushed it away. Later, when he insisted that the matter should be settled, one way or the other, she told him that she had given up all idea of leaving.

"It'd make no difference, even if we did go," she had said dully. "I didn't see it, first thing, but I do now. It'd be the same thing over again, that's all, and happen worse."

His heart had leaped in spite of him at the unexpected reprieve, but he had tried to encourage her, nevertheless.

"What, it'll be a fresh spot, anyhow!" he reminded her bravely. "That's something, surely? Fresh folks and a fresh house, as well as a different sort of air, as'll likely suit you better."

She shook her head.

"If it's the walls as is still bothering you, they've no call to, as I've told you already. The house at the new spot is outside the gardens altogether. I asked Colonel Brangwyn special."

But she refused to be heartened.

"It'd be the same thing over again," was all she would say, repeating herself endlessly. "Just exactly the same. You and me and the gardens, and me choking myself to death."

Much the same situation had recurred at intervals, later on, but it had always ended in the same way. Always she had drawn back again at the last moment. Always it had seemed to her that she had found the right road at last, only to realise that it led nowhere. Always she had seen in time that, no matter where she went, to this country-house or that, she would always have the little ring of an English garden round her.

Things had been better for her after the children began to come, but they had also been worse. The gardens had grown fuller for her, after their arrival, but they had grown no larger. Moreover, the increasing family had put a stop to any chance of retirement as well as to the occasionally-discussed project of "setting up for ourselves." Money had continually grown tighter. With each fresh child that appeared, they were forced to "plough a furrow nearer the fence."

Yet if it was the children who in the first instance had closed the door to escape, it was the children who in the long run had thrown it open. One by one, as they grew up, they had all of them left the gardens. They had loved them,--all, perhaps, except Ellen,--just as they loved their parents; but they had left them, nevertheless. Something of their mother's longing for space must have entered into them at birth, making it impossible for them to remain. And not only had they found the gardens too small, but England itself, so that they had allowed Canada to swallow them up, as it swallowed so many.

It was not long, however, before they began to regret this wholesale snapping of ties. Not only did they get together as soon as possible on the other side, but, the moment they were on their feet, they wrote, urging their parents to join them. Sometimes it was Luke who wrote, and sometimes Joe; Maggie, sometimes, and sometimes Ellen. Later on, when they were all married, the boys' wives wrote, too, and the girls' husbands; and, later still, it was the grandchildren who, with their first handling of a pen, added their unsteady scrawls to the general petition.

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

All the same, a long time had elapsed before he had finally given in. He was middle-aged and over even when the letters first began to come, and he had not felt able to face the venture. Mattie was all agog for it, of course, seeing it as the chance for which she had waited all her life, but he refused to consider it. He had said "no" so often, indeed, that it had seemed as if he could go on saying it for ever. But he had not gone on saying it for ever, or anything like it. Quite suddenly he had blotted out all those accumulated "noes" with a single "yes."

Yet, perhaps, now that he came to think of it, it had not been as sudden as he imagined. It seemed to him now, looking back, that the "noes" had had no significance at all; that, in point of fact, he had been defeated from the very start. Right from that first occasion upon which he had found his wife upstairs, pushing the walls away, he had known that he would go....

Still, it had not been an easy matter, keeping his ears and his heart shut, all those years. Not only were there Mattie's arguments to contend with, and of course the letters, but there was a constant succession of photographs as well. Snapshots of the party across the ocean were always arriving,--pictures of his children, of their wives and husbands, their homes, their families. And besides all these there were photographs of the nursery garden which they ran among them, and which they were rapidly turning into a big business. For in this one thing at least they had remained true to type. Without hesitation they had turned naturally and successfully to gardening.

At first he had felt little more for their far-off efforts than the aloof if kindly contempt of the finished workman for the crude beginner. He was glad, of course, that the children had kept to the old trade, but conditions were different "out there," and at first he found them difficult to follow. As time went on, however, and the photographs showed the garden to be increasing in size and scope, his interest began to quicken. He had it fixed in his mind now what they were planting and when, and what they were growing for the different markets. Presently he was even trying some of their new-fangled ideas on his own account, although he was careful not to say very much about them. Thinking about that distant garden while he worked in his own, he came at last to that point where the mind passes so easily between place and place that the body might equally well be in either.

Mattie, of course, had reached that particular state long since. Her dream of last night had been only a vivid extension of it. Often, for instance, she would talk of the grandchildren as if they were no further away than round the corner. "Little Joe's first day at school to-day," she would say, bending over her sewing. "I hope they got him off in good time." Or-- "Maggie's May's not so grand with that cough of hers. I must see about getting her a bottle of something from the chemist's."

He had done his best to conceal from her his growing absorption in the Canadian enterprise, but it was not long before she discovered it. Dropping her talk of the grandchildren to some extent, she concentrated upon the business, surprising him, times without number, by her intimate knowledge of it. She, who had never shown even the faintest enthusiasm for his particular job, seemed to know every seed that was sown in that nursery across the Atlantic.

"Potatoes have done well for them, this year," she would inform him, glibly reeling off a list of varieties. "'Grand Elephant's' the best, though, they say. I'd like to try 'em. That sort we had ourselves wasn't worth the planting."

"Eh, now! Fancy that!" she would answer, in a tone of polite wonder. "And I never knew!... Likely it's the soil or something as makes the difference. Anyhow, all I can say is I thought 'em right poor."

For some time she had contented herself with merely stimulating his increasing interest, but after a while she came out into the open with it as a weapon.

"You'd settle sharp enough, you'd see," she was saying presently, when the eternal subject came cropping up again. "It's the same job, when all's said. 'Tisn't as if you'd be going to something different."

She had laughed without resentment at his mild attack, too enchanted with her happy project to be stirred to anger.

He had said nothing to that, partly because it did not seem worth while, but also because his mind instinctively retreated when she mentioned size. She liked to think of the Canadian garden as prairie-wide, a great, untrammelled stretch of a place under an arching sky,--but that view of it repelled him. The photographs, of course, had shown him something of what it was like, but he chose to ignore them. Hidden away in his imagination was his own impression of the place, as a time-mellowed, sheltered circle of anciently-tilled soil....

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