CHAPTER XV
To get back the jewel he had thought lost, was to be born into a new life in a new world. Denin had to tell the portrait in the redwood frame, what he felt, for he dared not tell Barbara herself. To have given her a glimpse of his heart would have been to show that its fire had not been kindled by friendship. His answer to her letter was so tame, so lifeless compared to the song of his soul, that it seemed something to laugh at – or to weep over. But there was a line he must not pass. He knew this well, and that his only happiness could be in the Mirador and in Barbara’s friendly letters, as long as she cared to write. Mr. Carl Pohlson Bradley might go on bidding for the Mirador up to a million if he liked. There was no chance of his getting it! Denin was as sure of that, as he was of the shape of the world, or perhaps a little surer. Then, one day, a thunderbolt fell in the garden. It was dropped by the postman, in the form of a letter.
Barbara wrote, “Everything is changed since I wrote you six days ago. I can’t live here any longer, under the same roof with a man whose one pleasure is to torture and insult me. I haven’t spoken about him to you lately. There was no need, but things grew no better between us – worse, rather, for he resented the calmness I was finding through you. It made him furious apparently, that he had no longer the same power over me as at first, to drive me away from him, crying, or shaking all over with shame and anger at the dreadful things he said. I hardly cared at all of late days, when he called me a hypocrite, or a liar, or a damned fool, or other names far worse. I paid him a visit morning and evening, or at other times if he sent for me, and went out motoring or driving with him when he felt well enough to go. He refused to move without me, and so, as the doctor ordered fresh air for him, I couldn’t refuse. When he was at his worst – or what I thought the worst then – I could look straight ahead, and think of things you said, hardly bearing his abuse.
“‘This is my “bit” to do in the war days,’ I reminded myself, and thought maybe my kind of fighting was almost as hard to do as the fighting in the trenches. Besides, I never lost sight of what you answered when I first told you how hard it was, living up to obligations I’d taken on myself. You said, ‘We’re all sparks of the one Great Fire, some brighter than others. We can’t hate each other for long without finding out that it’s as bad as hating ourselves.’ Truly, I quite brought myself to stop hating him. I only pitied, and tried to help, as much as he would let me. But I see now that it was all in vain. I can’t do him any good by staying, and – well, I just simply can’t bear it! He is too ill to be moved. This dear old house will have to be his home while he drags on his death in life – which may mean years. So I, not he, must go.
“Lest you should blame me too much, I will tell you what happened, though I wasn’t sure I would do so when I began to write.
“His valet is a trained nurse, a repellent person, though competent, with dull eyes and a face which looks as if it had petrified under his skin, because his soul – if any – belongs to the Stone Age. The creature’s name happens to be Stone, too; and if he has any feeling it is love of money. His master has been bribing him, it seems, to spy upon me. While I was away from the house, at my mother’s funeral, Stone was searching the drawers of my desk in the octagon study I’ve told you about, where I like to sit because it was my dearest one’s favorite room.
“I had never thought of hiding your letters. There was nothing in them which needed to be hidden. Besides, it never occurred to me that cruel suspicions and disgusting ideas of baseness were wriggling round me, like little snakes that peep out from between the rough stones in a ruined wall. There they all were, bound together in a packet, the kind, brave letters that have been my salvation! Stone took them to his master, who sent for me when I came home after the funeral.
“As soon as I saw him, I knew that something unusual had happened. He flung his ‘discovery’ of the letters into my face. He told me that he had burnt all but a few which he would keep to ‘use’ against me, and tried to frighten me into promising never to write to ‘this John Sanbourne’ again. Of course I gave no promise. Instead, I told him that what he had done and said freed me from him forever. Then I went out of the room and left him there, helpless on his sofa. For the first time I felt no pity for him whatever – not so much as I should feel for a crushed wasp who had stung me. I haven’t seen him since. I don’t intend to see him again. But when I could get my thoughts in order after the fire of fury had cooled a little, I wrote to him. I said that I was sending for a lawyer, and would make some arrangement so that he should want for nothing. I told him that he might stay at Gorston Old Hall as long as he wished, but that I was going away almost immediately. Once gone, I should never return while he was in the house. I have always thought divorce very dreadful; but now I see how one’s point of view changes when one’s own interest is at stake. If I could, I would divorce this man, with whom my marriage has been a tragic farce. But I have no case against him legally. I knew when I consented to call myself his wife, that I should never be his wife really, and so, my solicitor says, I could not even sue for nullity of marriage. It wasn’t I who thought of that. I don’t remember having heard the term mentioned, though perhaps I have, without noticing, when such things seemed as far from my life as the earth from Mars. It was the lawyer who brought up the subject, but added the instant after, that nothing could be done, in the way of legal separation of any kind. He advised me to send the man away from Gorston Old Hall, saying that I should be more than justified. But I wouldn’t agree to do that. For one thing, it would be like physical cruelty to a wounded animal. For another thing – even a stronger reason – the temptation to send him away was – and is – terribly strong.
“I could feel myself trying to justify the idea to my own soul, as if I were pleading a case before a tribunal. I could hear myself argue that it was unfair to let such a man enjoy the home of my Dearest, whom he had already superseded too long. But I knew, deep within myself, that my Dearest would be the very one of all others to say, ‘Let him stay on,’ if he could come back and speak to us. In that same deep down, hidden place, was the knowledge of my real reason for wanting the man to go. To move him might easily break off the thread of his life. That was the temptation: to do a thing which might seem just to every one who heard the circumstances, and to get rid of the intolerable burden – to be absolutely free of it as I could be in no other way.
“Of my own self, I’m afraid I couldn’t have resisted the temptation. I should probably have thrown all responsibility on my solicitor, and let him settle everything as he thought best. The strength to resist has come through you, and what you have taught me. So it is that this man who has insulted you, and burned your letters, owes his comforts and perhaps his life itself, to you.
“There are many things which it is hard to forgive him, but I think the hardest of all is the loss of the letters. To lose them is like losing my talisman. But the ones he was keeping as a threat, I shall have again. The solicitor says he will force the man to give them up.
“Now that my leaving this dear house is settled, the next question is, What shall I do with my life, since my services as an untrained nurse are no longer pledged here? Already, though only a few days have passed, I’ve decided how to answer that question. I shall go into some hospital as a probationer, and as soon as I am qualified, I shall offer my services to the Red Cross. That may be sooner than with most amateurs, for already I’ve learned almost as much about nursing as hospital training of a year could have taught me. Wherever I’m sent, I’m willing to go. But before I take up this new work, I have a plan to carry out. Oh, how I wonder what you will say to it!
“Only a few weeks before she went out of the world, a cousin of my father’s left Mother some property in California, quite valuable property, near Bakersfield. I don’t know if you have ever been there, but of course you’ve heard that it is a great oil country. There are big wells on this property. If it had come to Mother earlier, she would have been overjoyed, because it would have made all the difference between skimping poverty and comparative riches. It came too late for her, and for me it isn’t very important, so far as the money is concerned. There’s another thing that makes it important, though. The place is in California! It seems like mending a link in a broken chain, to own land in dear California again.
“Mother always said she would hate to go back, but I never felt like that. Now, it seems to be rather necessary for me to go – or to send some one, to look into things which concern the property. We hear there has been mismanagement – perhaps dishonesty. Of course I know nothing about business myself, and should be of no use. But if I went to California, I would engage some good lawyer on the spot, to take care of my interests: and, I could meet you, my friend. That is, I could if you were willing. Would you be? Would you welcome me if I came one day to the gate of the little garden, and begged, ‘Dear Hermit of the Mirador, will you give a poor tired traveler lunch in your pergola?’
“You see now that the legacy is only an excuse. I confess it. I shouldn’t go to California just to straighten out things at the oil fields – no, not even if I lost the property by not going. But to see my friend who has given me back life, and love in the sweetness of memory and hope of future usefulness, I would travel with joy across the whole world instead of half.
“I know you refused to send your photograph, because I ‘might be disillusioned.’ But I couldn’t be disillusioned, because there’s no illusion. Do I care what your looks may be? If you are ugly, I’m sure it’s a beautiful, brave ugliness. Anyhow, I should think it so. Please, therefore, don’t put me off for any such reason as you gave about the photograph. It isn’t really worthy of you, or even of me. Let us dare to be frank with each other. I’ve told you how much I want to see you and what it would mean to me. In return you must tell me whether you want me to come, or whether, because of some real reason (which you may or may not choose to explain) you wish me to stay away.
“When you get this, there will be only time to telegraph to – Yours ever in unbreakable friendship, Barbara Denin.”
PART III
BEYOND THE MILESTONES
CHAPTER XVI
There was a great wind wailing over the sea, on the day that Barbara’s letter was brought to Denin. The wind seemed to come from the four corners of the earth, laden with all the stormy sorrow of the world since men and women first loved and lost each other. The voice was old as death and young as life, and the heartbreak of unending processions of lovers was the message it brought to the Mirador garden. Denin knew because he had heard through the fire-music of life, that there was another voice and another message for those who would listen. He knew that higher than tragedy rang the notes of endless triumph; that the message of love went on forever beyond the break of the note of loss. He knew the lesson he had so hardly taught himself and Barbara: that happiness is stronger than sorrow, as all things positive are stronger than all negative things. But the big truths of the universe were too big for him that day. The thought that he might see Barbara, and yet must not see her, shut out all the rest.
There had been, it seemed, only one honorable course open when he had decided to sacrifice his place in life to save Barbara from scandal and to let her keep her happiness. It was very different now. Her marriage with Trevor d’Arcy had not been a marriage of love. It had been worse than a failure. She had loved only one man, John Denin. Why not let her come and find him?
But no, the trial would be too great. It would not be fair to put the girl, still almost a child, to such a test. Her love for Denin had been a delicate poem. He had died, and his memory was cherished in her heart, as a rose of romance. There was no human passion in such a gentle love, and only the strongest passion could pass through the ordeal he proposed. She might hate him for his long silence, and blame him for deceit. She would see herself disgraced in the eyes of the world, and nothing that he could give would repay her for all that she must lose. No love could be expected to stand such a test, much less the love of a child for an ideal which had never, in truth, existed. It would break her heart to fail, and break his to have her fail. The memory of a meeting and a parting would be for him a second death – death by torture. The temptation to let things take their course was overcome. Indeed, he no longer felt it as a temptation; nevertheless he suffered.
Some reason for putting her off must be alleged, but there was time to think of that afterwards, between the telegram and letter which would follow. The great thing was to prevent her from coming to the Mirador, and finding out what a tragic tangle she had made of her life.
When he had sent the cable, and was at home again, Denin read once more all of Barbara’s closely written pages. At the end he kissed the dear name with a kiss of mingled passion and renunciation.
“She’ll think I have no more heart than a stone,” he said to himself. “Her friendship for Sanbourne will crumble to pieces.” Ineffably he longed to keep it – all that he had in life of sunshine. Yet he could not see how to account for his refusal without lying, and without appearing in her eyes cold as a block of marble. He looked at the letter – which might be her last – as a man might look at a beloved face about to be hidden in a coffin: and suddenly the date sprang to his eyes.
For all his reading and re-reading he had not noticed it before. There had been a delay. The letter had been several days longer than usual in reaching him. What if she had grown tired of awaiting the asked-for cable, and had chosen to take silence for consent?
The certainty that this was so seized upon Denin. He was suddenly as sure that Barbara was on the way to him, as if he had just heard the news of her starting. If, honestly and at the bottom of his heart he wanted to save her a tragic awakening from dreams, he must leave nothing to chance. He must be up and doing. It was not impossible, even if she had waited four days for a cable, and started impulsively off on the fifth, that she might walk in at the gate of the Mirador garden, a week from that night, so Denin hastily calculated. How was he to be gone before she came – if she did come – without humiliating the dear visitor by seeming deliberately to avoid her? How could John Sanbourne’s absence be accounted for in some reasonable and impersonal way, if Lady Denin arrived at Santa Barbara enquiring for him?
In his need of a pretext, he recalled the offer which he had laughed at; Carl Pohlson Bradley’s offer to buy the Mirador in its garden. The man would snap at the chance to get his way so soon. In a few days the business could be settled, and Sanbourne could be gone. But where? And Denin sought anxiously to provide the “good reason” at which he had hinted to Barbara, in his cable forbidding her to come.
Even if he had sold the Mirador before receiving his friend’s letter, he might have waited to see her. He could have stayed on in a hotel, if the new owner of the place had been impatient. No, selling his house was but one step of the journey. What should the next one be?
Almost instantly the solution of the whole difficulty presented itself to his mind. A few days before, he had sent a subscription to a fund for organizing a relief expedition to Serbia. The appeal had come to John Sanbourne through his publisher. And even as he wrote his check, he had thought, if it were not for the exquisite bond of friendship which tied him to a fixed address – the address of the Mirador – how easy it would be to give himself as well as his money, to the cause of Serbia in distress. Not only doctors and nurses were wanted for the expedition, but men of independent means, able to act as hospital orderlies and in other ways.
Physically, Denin had not yet got back the full measure of his old strength. After all these months, he would be of no use as a fighting man. He limped after a hard walk; and often with a change of weather he suffered sharp pain, as if his old wounds were new. But he could stand a long journey, and surely he would be equal to the work of an orderly, perhaps something better. If there were dangers to meet in Serbia, he would welcome them, whatever they might be. To die would be to adjust things as they could be adjusted in no other way. Since August 18, 1914, John Denin had had no right to live.
The more he thought of it, the wiser seemed the Serbian plan. With Bradley’s money, he could do five times more for the Red Cross fund than he had hoped to do. What mattered the wrench of parting from the Mirador? The only thing that really mattered, as before, was saving Barbara from pain. She would not be hurt if she came and found him gone on such an errand as this, for it was one which could not wait. Later, she would understand even more clearly, for he would write a letter and send it to Gorston Old Hall, where some servant would have been given a forwarding address. Thus he need not quite lose his friend. She would forgive his going away, and write to him in Serbia.
Denin calculated that Barbara could not have sailed from England until at least five or six days after sending her letter to him. Probably she would not have sailed so soon. Apparently, when writing, she had only just made up her mind that Gorston Old Hall was unbearable. There would have been many things to arrange, and business to settle with her solicitor, friends to say good-by to. She could not possibly reach Santa Barbara even if she traveled with the most unlikely haste, until the end of the week. That she should arrive on Saturday would be almost a miracle. It was Monday now, and Thursday might see him away from the place where he had dreamed of passing all his days. Now that he had thrown off the dream, he saw it a fantastic vision. As vigor of body and mind came back to him, the boundaries of the Mirador garden would soon, in any case, have become too narrow for his energies. He would have found it necessary to shoulder some useful burden, and work with the rest of the world. The hour had struck for him now, and John Sanbourne had got his marching orders, as John Denin had got them long ago.
He sent word to Bradley through his lawyer, that the Mirador was for sale, after all. Next, he telegraphed to the leader of the Serbian Relief Expedition, in New York, and asked if there was a place for him. Because the name of John Sanbourne was known, an enthusiastic answer came back with great promptness. This stirred Denin’s heart, which, despite his firm resolution, felt heavy and cold. He thought of Barbara coming to the Mirador, only to find Mr. Bradley’s workmen engaged in tearing down the barrier between the big garden and the little one. But now that his course of action was decided, he supplemented his first cable to her with another. This was in case his “presentiment” were wrong, and she had not started. He told her what his “good reason” was: that he had sold the Mirador and was starting at once for Serbia. Further explanations, he added, would be given when he wrote.
Never had a letter to Lady Denin been so difficult for John Sanbourne to compose, for he could say only the things he least wished to say; and so the result of his labor was, in the end, very short. Nevertheless, it took hours to write.
The day after the sending of the letter was largely taken up by a visit from Carl Pohlson Bradley and his man of business. Denin held the millionaire to the last price named by himself, for he intended to use the money largely for the benefit of the Serbian Red Cross. At last a contract was signed, and the check paid into John Sanbourne’s bank at Santa Barbara. He had still all Wednesday and part of Thursday for packing and disposing of his treasures. The task was easy, for the treasures were few. He could “fold his tent like an Arab, and silently steal away.”
Denin did not expect ever to return to Santa Barbara. Having loved the Mirador, and given it up, there was no longer anything tangible to call him back. More likely than not, death which had come close to him in France, would come closer still in Serbia. He would cast off his body like an outworn cloak, and free of it, would knock once more at the gate where, once, he had heard voices singing.
The one possession which Denin could not bear to give up, yet knew not how to take, was the portrait of Barbara which he had made, and framed in redwood. It was large, and the delicate tints of its pastels had to be carefully protected. He could not possibly include it in his slender “kit” for Serbia. At last he decided to pack frame and all with precaution, carry the case to New York, and leave it in charge of Eversedge Sibley. There would be time for a visit to Sibley before the sailing of the expedition; and Denin would make his friend promise to burn the wooden box unopened, if he died abroad.
Everything else, with the exception of some favorite books which could be slipped into his luggage, he determined to give away. Gossip about the sale of the Mirador, and Sanbourne’s intended departure for Serbia, ran like quicksilver, in all directions. The acquaintances he had made – or rather acquaintances who had fastened upon him – began calling to enquire if the news were true, and their question answered itself before it was asked. The hermit of the Mirador and his faithful dumb companion, a pipe, were surrounded with the aimless confusion of a hasty flitting. Souvenirs of John Sanbourne had their value, but he did not appear to know that. He offered his Lares and Penates recklessly, to any one who would accept. The parson’s daughter, to whom – all unconsciously – he was an ideal hero, took away the pictures, copies of those the child Barbara had loved. The parson himself got a valuable contribution of books for his library. The furniture was given to a young couple who had taken a bungalow not far off, and were getting it ready with an eye to economy. Dishes and linen went the same way, excepting a cup and saucer and teapot which were clamored for with tears by an old lady for whom “The War Wedding” ranked with the Bible.
Denin had allowed no one to enter the balconied bedroom, for he had left Barbara’s portrait until the last minute, and no eyes but his were to see that sacred thing. Once the picture was shut away and nailed up between layers of cotton and wood, it might be that he should never again be greeted by the dear, elusive smile. The furniture from upstairs he had added to the confusion of the sitting-room below, and early in the afternoon of Thursday everything had been carted away by the new owners. To strip the house while Sanbourne was still in it seemed heartless, they had protested; but he had begged them to do so. Mr. Bradley was to claim possession of the place next day.
When all those who called themselves his friends had bidden him good-by, a curious sense of peace, of pause between storms, fell upon the departing hermit of the Mirador. Because the little house was almost as empty and echoing as on the day when he had seen it first, that day lived again very clearly in Denin’s mind. He had sought a refuge, and had found happiness. The spirit of Barbara had come to him in the garden, and had brought him love. That love he was taking away with him, though he had to leave behind much that was very sweet; and now the time had come to say farewell to the memories of months. In three hours the motor car was due, which Denin had ordered to take him and his luggage to the station. The most important piece of that luggage was Barbara’s portrait, and it had still to be put into its case. But he was leaving the farewell to her eyes, till the last moment, the last second even.
Meanwhile he walked in the garden, and in the jeweled green tunnel of the pergola. There, in the pergola, he had read most of Barbara’s letters, and answered them. He was glad that no one was ever likely to stroll or sit in the corridor of illuminated tapestry after to-day. Carl Pohlson Bradley intended to have the pergola pulled down, and the whole place torn to pieces in order to carry out the grandiose scheme of a “garden architect” whom he had employed.
After the arrival of Barbara’s first letter, and the one in which she confessed her love for the dead John Denin, his sweetest association with the pergola was the companionship of a little child – only a dream child, but more real, it seemed, than any living child could be. It was the child-Barbara who had walked day after day, hand in hand with him in the pergola. She had welcomed him to the Mirador when he had come as its owner; but after a certain letter from England, she had changed in a peculiarly thrilling way. The letter was among the first half dozen; but in the growing packet, Denin kept it near the top. It was one of those which he re-read oftenest. In it Barbara had said to her friend, John Sanbourne, “If my dear love had lived, to make me his wife, perhaps by this time we should have had a baby with us. I think often of that little baby that might have been – so often, that I have made it seem real. It is a great comfort to me. I can almost believe that its soul really does exist, and that it comes to console me because its warm little body can never be held in my arms. I see the tiny face, and the great eyes. They are dark gray, like its father’s. And when mine fill with tears, it lays little fingers on them, fingers cool and light as rose petals. Oh, it must exist, this baby soul, for it is so loving, and it has such strong individuality of its own! I couldn’t spare it now. Already, since it first came and said, ‘I am the child who ought to be yours and his,’ it seems to have grown. It is the realest thing! Its hair is darker and longer and curlier than it used to be. Perhaps this baby will always stay with me, and I shall see it grow into boyhood, then, at last, into manhood. It’s wonderful to have this dream-baby! Tell me, have you ever had one? I know you are alone in life, for you have said so. But the more alone in life one was, the dearer a dream-baby might be.”
After that letter, which pierced Denin’s heart and then poured balm into the wound, the child-Barbara who haunted the Mirador had changed for him, except in name; or rather another child-Barbara had come, not a child of ten or twelve, but a baby thing with smoke-blue eyes and little satin rings of ruddy hair. The elder Barbara did not go away, but loved the baby as he did, helping him teach it how to walk, and talk, and think.
He wrote to Lady Denin after that letter of hers: “Yes, I too have a dream-child, but mine is a little girl. I hardly know how I got on without her before she came.”
“Thank Heaven for memory!” he said to himself now, as he took his last look at the tunnel of greenery starred with passion-flowers. “After all, does it so much matter whether we had a beloved thing one minute ago, or ten years ago, if it lives always in our hearts? Each tick of the watch turns the present into the past. But in our hearts there is no past.”
So he bade good-by to the pergola, and the garden he had made out of a tangled wilderness. Then he turned towards the house; for in the house he had to take leave of the portrait.