John Sanbourne had smiled when he read the critic's prophecy that he
was "bound to get letters of appreciation from half the women in the
world," and he had thought no more of the comic suggestion until the
letters began to come. But the letters were not comic.
They were forwarded in large packets by Sibley and Company, and there
were many, incredibly many of them; some from men, but mostly from
women. The writers felt impelled to tell the author of "The War
Wedding" what a wonderful book they thought it was, or how much good it
had done them in their different states of mind. These states the
readers of Sanbourne's book described almost as penitents confessing to
a priest detail their sins. And the strange confidences, or pitiful
pleadings for advice and help from one who "seemed to know such
glorious truths about life and death," were desperately pathetic to
Denin. He was utterly amazed and overwhelmed by this phase of his
unlooked-for success, and knew not how to cope with it.
The first thousand and more letters were all from people in the United
States. Then letters from Canada began drifting in. At last, when "The
War Wedding" had been on sale and selling edition after edition for
eight weeks, a rather smaller parcel than usual arrived from the
publishers. Denin, who was in the garden, took it from the postman, at
the new gate which led to the Mirador. It was in the morning, and he
had been gathering late roses; for every day he decorated with her
favorite blossoms the two principal rooms of the house which
child-Barbara had loved. He had a big pair of scissors in his hand; and
sitting down on a bench, in the cool strip of shade that ran the length
of the lower balcony, he cut the string which fastened the packet. This
he did, not because he was impatient to see what it contained, but
because he was warm and tired after two hours of garden work and wanted
an excuse to rest. The letters of so many sad women who begged for
counsel that he knew not how to give, were having a shattering effect
upon his nerves. He had not supposed that there were so many tragic
souls of women in the world, outside the war-zone, and he dreaded the
details of their lives. Sometimes he was half tempted to put the
letters away or destroy them, unread.
There was a vague hope in his mind that this parcel might have
something other than letters in it: but as the shears bit the tightly
tied string, the stout linen envelope burst open and began to disgorge
its contents: letters--letters--letters!
Between his feet John Sanbourne had placed the basket of roses; and the
letters, falling out of the big envelope, began to drop onto the green
leaves and crepy-crisp blooms of pink and white and cream.
"English stamps!" he said aloud--for the habit had grown upon him of
talking to himself. Bending down to pick up the letters, a dark flush
streamed to his forehead. There was one envelope of the same texture,
the same gray-blue tint, and the same long, narrow shape that Sir John
Denin had liked and always used at Gorston Old Hall. It had fallen face
downward; and as he rescued it from a fragrant bath of dew, he slowly
turned it over. There was an English stamp upon this envelope also, and
it was addressed to "John Sanbourne, Esq., care of Messrs. Eversedge
Sibley and Company," in Barbara's handwriting.
For an instant everything went black, just as it had done months ago
when he had got on his feet too suddenly in hospital. He shut his eyes,
and leaned back with his head against the house wall--the wall of
Barbara's Mirador. It was as if he could hear her voice speaking to him
across six thousand miles of land and sea. But it spoke to John
Sanbourne, not to John Denin.
"My God--she's read the book. _She's written!_"
He had to say the words over to himself before he could make the thing
seem credible.
And even then he did not open the letter. He dreaded to open it, and
sat very still and rigid, grasping the envelope as if it were an
electric battery of which he could not let go.
What if she hated the book? What if she wrote, as a woman who had been
twice a war bride, to say that a subject such as he had chosen was too
sacred to put into print? What if she felt bound to reproach the author
for treading brutally on holy ground?
If that was what the letter had to say to him, his message of peace had
failed, and all his patched-up scheme of existence broke down in that
one failure.
The thought that he was a coward shrinking from a blow nerved him to
open the letter. He was on the point of tearing the envelope, but he
could not be rough with a thing Barbara had touched, nor could he
deface it. He took up the scissors and cut off one end of the envelope,
then drew out a sheet of the familiar gray-blue paper. Unfolding it,
his hands trembled. All the rest of his life, such as it was, he felt,
hung on what he was about to read.
The letter began abruptly. "You must have many letters from strangers,
but none will bring you more gratitude than this. If you are like your
book, you are too generous to be bored by grateful words from people
whose sore hearts you helped to heal, so I won't apologize. You could
not write as you do, I think, if you didn't want to do good to others.
Will you then help me, even more than you have helped me already, by
answering a question I am going to ask? Will you tell me whether the
wonderful things you say, to comfort those of us who are losing our
dearest in battle, are just inspired _thoughts_, or whether you have
yourself been very near death, so near that you caught a vision from
the other side? If you answer me, and if you say that actual experience
gave you this knowledge, your book--which has already been like a
strong hand dragging me up from the depths--will become a beautiful
message meant especially for me out of all the whole world, making all
my future life bearable.
"Every night for months I've gone to bed unable to sleep, because I've
felt exactly as if my brain were a battlefield, full of the agony and
hopelessness of brave men dying violent and dreadful deaths, cut off in
the midst of youth, with the stories of their lives tragically
unfinished. But since I read in your book that marvelous scene with
those suddenly released spirits--young men of both sides, friends and
enemies, meeting and talking to each other, saying, 'Is this all?' 'Is
this the worst that death can do to us?' why, I seem to pass beyond the
battlefield! I go with those happy, surprised young men who are seeing
for the first time the great 'reality behind the thing' and a feeling
of rest and immense peace comes to me. I don't keep it long at a time.
I can't, yet. But if you write and say you _know_, I think I may some
day learn to keep it.
"I have the English edition of your book, but I have read in a
newspaper an extract from the interview a journalist had with the
publisher in New York. You see, everybody who has some one dear in the
war, or has lost some one beloved, is reading and talking of the book.
They all want to know things about you, but perhaps not all for as
_real_ a reason as mine. Some people have said that perhaps the author
may be a woman, who chooses to write under a man's name. I felt sure
from the first it couldn't be so, for only a man could say those things
as you say them; but I was glad of your publisher's assurance that you
are a man, and that your home now is in the far West in America.
Perhaps I shouldn't have dared write you if you were in this country,
because--but no, I needn't explain.
"My name can be of no interest to you, yet I will sign it.
"Yours gratefully, Barbara Denin."
"Barbara Denin." ... _She had kept his name!_
Many a woman did (he was aware) after a second marriage continue to use
the name of her first husband, in order to retain a title. But all he
knew of the girl Barbara Fay made it amazing to him that she should
hold to the name of a man she had never loved, after becoming the wife
of a man she had loved since childhood.
A wild doubt set his brain on fire. Could there have been some terrible
misunderstanding? Was it possible that after all she had never married
Trevor d'Arcy? ... Carried away on the flame of passion fanned by her
letter, Denin told himself that it might be so, and that if she were
free he would still have the right to go back to her. If she had not
given herself to another man she belonged to him, to him alone, and she
would not hate him if he explained the sacrifice he had made for her
sake.
He was on his feet before he knew what he was doing. The blinding hope
lit body and soul as with some curative ray beyond the ultra violet. It
shot, through his worn frame, life and abounding health, making of him
for a magical moment more than the man he had been a year ago. But it
was only a moment; indeed, less than a moment. For it did not take him
sixty seconds to remember _how_ he had heard of Barbara's marriage to
her cousin Captain d'Arcy. Walter Severne the airman had said that her
wedding had taken place on the same day with his own. Severne had
blamed her. Every word he had said was branded on Denin's brain. There
could be no mistake. Whatever the motive might be for signing herself
Barbara Denin, she was in all certainty d'Arcy's wife.
With the violent reaction of feeling came a sense of physical
disintegration. A heavy fatigue that weighted his heart and turned his
bones to iron followed the brief buoyancy of spirit. Yet he could not
rest. He had to walk, to keep in constant movement, to escape some
tidal wave which threatened suddenly to engulf his soul. He passed out
from the cool shadow of the balcony into the blaze of sunlight and
drank in the hot perfume of the flowers. At the end of a path a tall
cypress held its black, burnt-out torch high against the sky. Denin
went and leaned against it; doubly glad of his loneliness in this
refuge he had found, and thankful that none but the trees and flowers
of his garden could see him in his weakness and his pain.
The dark cypress he looked up to seemed to have gone through fire and
to have triumphed over death. Denin felt a kind of kinship with it,
wishing that from the tree and from all nature calmness and strength
might pass into his spirit. He imagined that he could hear the rushing
of sap deep under the rough bark. Generations of joys and sorrows had
come and gone since the tree was young, and had vanished, leaving no
more trace than sun or storm. So it would be with what he was suffering
now. The things that mattered in the life of this earth were strength
and steadfastness. Denin prayed for them, a voiceless prayer to Nature.
When he grew calmer he walked again, and lifted up his face to the sun.
"I'll answer her letter," he thought. It seemed strange to him now,
after the shock of what had happened, that when the letters began to
come, he had never imagined himself receiving one from Barbara. He had
had the book published in order that it might have some chance of
reaching her, of helping her; yet the proof that she had been reached
and helped had come upon him like a thunderbolt.
Of course he was thankful, now that he put it to himself in such a way.
He ought to be almost happy, he tried to think; but he was at the
world's end from happiness. A hurricane had swept through his soul, and
it would take him a long time to build up again the miserable little
refuge which had been his house of peace. Still, it didn't matter about
himself. He would write to Barbara, and give her the assurance she
asked for. He was glad now of a whim that had led him to learn
typewriting two or three years ago, for he could not trust to
disguising his hand so well that she might not recognize it. It was
many months since he had practiced typing, but he thought that in a few
hours he might again pick up the trick which he could not quite have
lost.
Rather than let himself think any longer, he went out at once, walking
to the town, where he bought a small typewriter of a new make. Its
lettering was in script, which seemed less offensive and coldly
businesslike for a letter than print. Back again at the Mirador he
tried the machine, and sooner than he had expected the old facility
returned. Then he was ready to begin his answer to Barbara; but for a
long time he sat with his fingers on the keys, his eyes fixed upon them
aimlessly. It was not that he could find nothing to say. He could find
too many things, and too many ways of saying those things. But all were
expressions of thoughts which he might not put on paper for Barbara to
read.
Even after he began to type, he took page after page out of the machine
and tore up each one. Vaguely he felt that the right way was to be
laconic; that he ought to show no emotion, lest he should show too
much. Finally he finished a few paragraphs which he knew to be lame and
halting, like himself, stiff and altogether inadequate. Yet he was sure
that he would be able to do no better, and so he determined to send his
letter off as it was.
"You say you are grateful to me," Denin began as abruptly as Barbara
had begun in writing to him, "but it is for me to be grateful to you
really, for speaking as you do of my story, 'The War Wedding.' I am
answering your letter the day it has reached me, because you are
anxious to have a reply to your question. It is what you wished it
might be. I _have_ been very near to death, so near that I seemed to
see across, to the other side of what _we_ think of as a gulf. If I saw
aright, it is not a gulf.... Those voices of young men passing suddenly
over in crowds, I thought, I believed, and still believe I heard. I can
almost hear them now, because one does not forget such things _if one
comes back_. I trust this answer may be of some comfort to you; and if
you can feel, as you say you will feel, that my book has a message
especially for you, I shall be very glad and proud.
"Yours sincerely, John Sanbourne."
When he re-read the typed letter, one point struck him which had not so
sharply pierced his intelligence before. The effect of the appeal from
Barbara, the miracle of its coming, and the poignant obligation it
thrust upon him had been too overpowering at first. He had not stopped,
after breaking short his wild hope of her freedom, to dwell on the
strangeness of one part of her letter above another. But now, in
judging his own phrases, he came to a stop at a sentence towards the
end of the page: "I trust this may be of some comfort to you."
"Won't that way of putting it sound conceited?" he asked himself. But
no; she had used that very word "comfort" in her letter. As he
remembered this, the thought suddenly woke in him that she had written
as a woman might write who was in deep sorrow. Yet she could not be in
deep sorrow. She had her heart's desire, and at worst, her feeling for
the man who was gone--John Denin--could only be a mild, impersonal
grief that his life had to be the price of her happy love.
He had longed, in writing the story of "The War Wedding," to show
Barbara why even that mild grief was not needed, because in giving
great joy to another soul a woman earned the right to her own
happiness. Denin could not bear to think that pity for him might shadow
Barbara's sunshine, but he had not dreamed until to-day that the shadow
could be dark. Now, the more intently he studied her appeal to the
author of the book, the more difficult he found it to understand her
state of mind.
Barbara spoke of herself as one of the many women whose "sore hearts"
ached for healing because they were losing their "dearest" in battle.
And she said that, if he could give her the assurance she asked for,
the story of "The War Wedding" would seem to hold a personal message,
making her "future life bearable."
What a generous and sensitive nature she had, and what beautiful
loyalty, to mourn sincerely for a man she had never loved, but to whom
she owed a few material advantages! It was wonderful of the girl, and
he worshiped her for it. His sacrifice for her was easier because of
this warm sense of her gratitude, and he kissed the paper he had just
written on for her, because some day it would be touched by her hands.
"If I only dared to say more to comfort her, and beg her to be happy!"
he thought. But the one safe way had been to make his answer to her
calmly impersonal, perhaps even a little cold. For fear he might be
seized with an irresistible desire to add something more, something
from his heart instead of his head, Denin put the letter into an
envelope and sealed it.
Then, however, he stumbled upon a new difficulty which had not occurred
to him before. He was in the act of addressing her as "Lady Denin"
(since she chose to keep his name), when his heart stood still in the
face of a danger he had barely escaped.
How was a stranger like John Sanbourne to know that she was _Lady_
Denin?
If, inadvertently, he had written the name thus, and sent the letter to
the post, even so slight a thing might have made her guess the truth.
Instead of comforting, he might have plunged her into humiliation and
despair.
Barbara had not spoken of herself in the letter as being married. For
all John Sanbourne was supposed to know, she might be a girl, mourning
a brother or a lover. At last he addressed her as "Mrs. or Miss Denin,
Gorston Old Hall." And with several other letters which he forced
himself to write, he enclosed the stamped envelope in a note to
Eversedge Sibley. "Please post these in New York," he begged. "I don't
care to have every one know where I live."