A Possession
THERE were times when a sudden passionate realization of preciousness in the fleeting moment swept her and shook her like a hand across a dull, strong instrument. At sunset, she would pass the big west window in the long upstairs chamber, and would seem to be smothered with the thick light that made the homely carpets gem-work of Arabia, and the old pictures flash back golden suns and splendors. As she looked out past the black pine trees and the distant blurring hills to that seething-pot of sunny flame, a great yet desperate joy would possess her: a moment’s knowledge of perfection, and an unpremeditated leap into the future. It was a curious mingling of conscious possession and loss. She seemed to know in some wise, eternal way, how the sunset, the homely happy room, and all that the warm moment stood for, belonged to her so utterly that no terror of change could take it from her; and yet to feel sure, with an almost morbid premonition, that the things themselves, in that special and precious combination, would presently be lost to her forever.
Indeed, as she walked the corridors and looked from the windows of the old house, almost daily she stopped in her work or play to feel for an instant the content of the present, the vague horror and yet assurance of the future,— that it was all very good, and that some day she would be remembering how good it was, still possessing it, in the eternal way, but lacking it utterly, in time and space.
After this fashion, she would sit sewing in the cheerful yellow room whence she could watch many doves flashing about the white church belfry and many elm-leaves twinkling, — and would hear from the study her father’s pleasant voice, rumbling along in conference with some questioning parishioner; from one room the clack-clack of her brother’s typewriter, and up and down the narrow hall the other brother’s slow stride, as he thought out a queer point at law or imagined a queer text for a sermon. Perhaps the chink of silver from the dining-room let her know that Theresa was doing her already thrice-done duty. And as she would sit there, in the sun, — the white curtains blowing a little across the sill, the chair before her piled high with mending, her brother sometimes stopping in his stride to give her an extract from his brief or a comic interpretation of the scriptures, the street before the house bustling with wheeled-gear, from farm wagons to motors, and all the world apparently busy, happy, and innocent of time and change,— it would all grow suddenly very close and valuable to her, even the ragged, hopeless shirt in her hands; even the rattlety-bang of the flatwheeled trolley outside; and she would know, without once stopping the toand-fro of her needle, that this was dear and not to be foregone without hurt; that she had it, and would always have it, but that people would think, some day, that she had lost it forever. She would be sure, yet without credulity, that she would lose it. When, or how, she could not tell, but the sense of imminent loss was always in it, — not sadly; perhaps triumphantly.
The day came, and with no long delay, when the corridors and large rooms of the old house were empty save of presences too closely felt and never seen. At every window there stood a kind yet troublous shadow. In haste, with a heart shut fast from memory and hands feverish to work, she dismantled room after room, from dusty book-crammed garret to sunny purring kitchen, saying no farewells, but bringing away her treasures without many thoughts — to set them up in a strange place, where they courteously gave her the old greetings with a new smile.
Then presently, out of all the confusion and weariness and languor of spirit, an unawaited joy came to her: for she proved, at last, that it was true. Her possessions, so rare, could never be taken from her. The sunsets, the still times when she lay watching the dawn creep up the wall, the sounds of doors that stuck, of boards that, creaked, of steps and voices that could not be mistaken, the windows that were shadowy or sunny, or from which one saw the moon, the corners where she could read and dream, — these and a thousand odd sweet, or bitter-sweet, appearances and echoes, were truly her own. They had become parts of her; and being passed from material sense, they grew more sweet, and she knew that they could never pass again.
No one came to inherit her sunny windows. The old house was deserted, until strange hands made havoc with it, and it ceased to be. But she, who had loved it and lived in it, knew no change. In those far moments of passion, of realized content and fear and assurance, she had felt more pain than afterwards it was possible for her to suffer. The old house, and all that it had meant to her (which was youth and home, and that which underlies all happy living), was her possession, most utterly. It was all her own, forever; and that was much to know.