The Things Which Belong
9781465679130
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
HE dropped the pen.... More strictly speaking, it fell as if weighted from his fingers. He had an extraordinary feeling that he would never use a pen again. A flush came into Mattie’s face, but she said nothing. He had always expected that, if ever this moment arrived,—impossible as it had seemed that it ever should arrive,—she would meet it with a flood of joyful speech; but now she was silent. It was the second time this evening that she had surprised him by her silence,—this wan and weary early-spring evening which marked the finish of a bleak and soulless day. Searching vaguely, however, among recollections which had left impression without form, he remembered that people often did fall silent at the late fulfilment of a long desire....Instead of speaking, she sighed. It was such a sigh, he thought, as the dying give just before they pass on into new life. In that last breath there is everything that they see before them, and everything that they leave behind. Mattie’s sigh was like that. Not that she looked like dying, as she got to her feet at last, heavily a little, but pushing her chair from her more quietly than usual, not in the almost rough way she used sometimes, as if the very furniture of the house clogged and held her ardent spirit. She stood beside him a moment, looking down at the letter he had just written, a splendid woman, growing old,—and older in the evenings than in the mornings,—but still full of vitality and fire. Again he expected her to break out into some form of expression, either of satisfaction or relief, but still she said nothing. Sometimes, as he knew, on occasions of this kind, relief took the form of a recapitulation of past miseries, and he would not have been surprised if Mattie had shown hers in that fashion. But dumbness seemed to have fallen upon her. Even her face had grown strangely inexpressive. There was no hint in it that she was thinking either of old sorrow or new joy. It was simply blank, as if it was no longer able to register the workings of the mind that lay behind it. Turning away from him, she moved almost aimlessly across the kitchen. It was as if she had been switched suddenly on to another plane, and did not know any longer what to do on this. Stooping, she put out her hand for the poker, as if meaning to stir the fire, but she put it out to the wrong side. That seemed to paralyse her more than ever. She seemed incapable of reaching across to it where it stood in its accustomed place, but remained stooping, her hand dropped loosely at her side. It was only after a long pause that she straightened herself slowly, and, swinging round, stared about the room with eyes which hardly seemed to recognise it. He continued to watch her, fascinated. It was all so different, he was saying to himself; not in the least what he had expected. If only she would speak!... It couldn’t be that she was disappointed?—he found himself thinking, startled; and suddenly there came into his mind the absurd fear that, in giving her what she wanted, he had perhaps taken away from her something that she wanted more....She moved away from the hearth, and as she did so the firelight shot up, so that her shadow on the wall shot up, too, and became huge and menacing in the kitchen. Too big for the room, it pressed itself against ceiling and walls, as if trying to force a way out of what was no longer able to contain it. He watched it struggle for a moment, saw it sink and leap in a still more furious effort, and then the fire dropped and it dropped with it. He waited for it to shoot up again, expecting every second to see it beat and battle afresh. But it did not shoot up again. Instead, there came presently into the stillness a little tinkling sound which showed that the fire had dropped still lower.
