The thought filled the man's soul and surrounded it as water fills and
surrounds a ring fallen into the sea. Barbara had loved him. There was
nothing in the world outside that thought.
At first, it caught him up to heaven, and then just as he saw the
light, it flung him down to hell.
Fool that he had been, never to see the truth under her reserve, while
seeing would have meant standing by her, keeping her forever! But he
had let her go, and it was too late now, even for explanations. He had
shut an iron door between them; and standing with her on the other side
of that door was a man who called her his wife. There was the
situation; and he, by his silence, had created it. He was condemned to
perpetual silence; for it was the wildest, most hopeless mockery of all
which brought to John Sanbourne a knowledge of Barbara's love for John
Denin.
Fate had been laughing at him while he wrote his book with a message of
peace for her, laughing wicked and cruel laughter, because through the
message he was to come into touch with Barbara and learn the tragic
failure of his sacrifice. That seemed to Denin a vile trick for life to
play upon a man, and whipped by the seven devils of thwarted love which
had entered into him he cursed it; cursed life and fate, himself and
Trevor d'Arcy, and was ready to deny Justice, even Justice blindfolded.
His heaven lasted for a moment at best. For many hours Cain and Abel in
him fought each other in hell. But he had been down in depths well nigh
as black, and had struggled out to the light. Remembering this, he
struggled out once more, at last, and perceived that, somehow, to his
own wondering surprise, he had stumbled up to a higher level and a
stronger footing than before. Within distant sight he visioned those
serene mountain tops where light is, the light that never shines on sea
or land for those who have not suffered.
Only a short time ago he had begun daily to realize and tell himself
that strength and steadfastness alone really mattered; that suffering
was but a flame which passed. This was still true, as true as it had
ever been. A man could choose whether the flame should consume or
purify him in its passing; and here and now the immediate hour of his
choice was on the stroke. At the end of that day of turmoil, Denin
seemed still to be looking down at himself, as a crouching prisoner in
a dark underground cell. Yet he knew that he was his own prisoner, not
really a helpless captive of the Fate he had cursed. Fate had no power
after all to make men prisoners. It was their business to find this
out, and to prove that they had only to release themselves, in order to
be free. He felt this to be an abstract fact of life; and if he meant
to live he must make it concrete.
The underground hole where he so miserably crouched was but the cellar
of his darkest self. If he but thought so, he had strength enough in
him to fight his way up into the high, bright tower which was also
himself, a tower with a wide view on every side, over the sunlit
mountains from whose peaks he could already catch some glimmering
vision.
Even the thought of the mountain tops--that they were there, shining,
and always had been and always would be--made Denin lift his head and
draw deep breaths into his lungs. That part of him which had yearned to
write the book for Barbara and had conquered difficulties to write it,
came like a strong brother to the rescue of a weak brother and pulled
him up by main force out of the dark. He tried to reassure himself,
over and over, that he need never again crawl back into the darkness.
He had seen the view from the tower, and the tower was his to reach.
Denin had not worked out for his own guidance any clear-cut philosophy
of life. He had just stumbled along with strength for his goal mark,
trying now and then to recall some whisper or note of music he had
caught from the other side before he came back. He had written down in
his book, for Barbara, all that had been tangible under his pen. But
now, knowing she had loved him, he saw how much more help she needed
than he had given, and how much more--how very much more--he owed her.
Not that he had deliberately stood aside and left the girl unprotected.
When in the German hospital he had drifted back to a knowledge of
realities past and present, he had seen almost at once that, even if
the news were unwelcome, he must not let his wife live in ignorance
that she was still bound. It was only after hearing from Severne of
Barbara's marriage to d'Arcy, that he had said, "John Denin is dead and
buried, and his ghost laid." He had meant to make the supreme sacrifice
for Barbara's good, and there had been no shadow of doubt in his mind
that he was right in making it. Now he asked himself if even then it
might not have been best to let the truth come out. No one was to blame
for the mistake in a dead man's identity, nor for what had happened
afterwards through that mistake. Barbara would have had a hard choice
before her; yet she might, if she possessed strength and courage
enough, have chosen from the two men who had come into her life, the
one she loved. The whole world would have rung with the tragic story,
but at the end Barbara might have lived down the tragedy. If he had
been her choice, he would have helped her to live it down, by the gift
of such love as no man had ever given to a woman.
As it was, he had dared to play the potter. He had taken the clay of
Barbara's destiny into his own awkward hands, to shape it as he thought
best, and he had let the vase break in the furnace. He could never make
it what, but for his meddling, it might have been; yet he must piece
the delicate fragments together if he could, not caring for--not
thinking of--his bleeding hands.
This, then, was the debt Denin owed to Barbara. And to pay it he saw
that he must begin by remaking himself, before he could give her
anything worth the having. He must become a thing of value, in order to
be of value to her. Those faint whispers and snatches of music from the
other side of the hidden river, which he had jumbled into "The War
Wedding," confusedly, hurriedly, fearing to lose their echoes, he must
now carefully gather up again and sort out with method. He must dip
into his brain where half-remembered thoughts seethed in solution. He
must see the rainbow in every tear drop, and crystallize it into a
jewel for Barbara. Thus developing himself, he might have some worthy
offering for her at last.
He could not write that day, nor the next, for it seemed that the only
things worth saying were the things which would not let themselves be
said, things which swept through the background of his mind like a
flight of chiming bells in the night, elusive as waiting souls for
which no bodies have yet been made. But though he could not write, he
called thoughts, which he had once seen and let go, to come again to
him. He sent himself back along the road he had traveled beyond the
milestones. He searched by the wayside for beautiful memories he had
dropped there, and some of them he found grown up tall and white as
lilies in moonlight. Whatever he found was for Barbara.
On the third night after the revelation, he had gathered something to
give her, and strength enough to feel sure he would not put into his
letter the question which must not be asked: "What was the reason you
couldn't tell your husband that you loved him?"
Denin wrote with a typewriter, as he had written before, on blank paper
with no address, because it was better for Barbara to come in touch
with him only through his publishers. In that way, she would be spared
any sense of constraint she might have to feel in knowing that he lived
among her neighbors of long ago. She had given him her name frankly,
and she might fear some inadvertent mention of it to people she had met
as a child. If he were to be of real use to her, he thought, he must be
known only as a distant Voice, an Ear, a Sympathy, almost impersonal
outside his letters.
Denin wrote to her that he was sure, entirely sure, the man she loved
was "not too far away to know."
"You will only have to send him a thought, and it must reach him behind
that very thin wall we call death. The way I imagine it, such a message
goes where it's directed, just as when we call 'Central' through the
telephone. They, whom we speak of as dead, have their own work to do
and their own life to live, so perhaps they don't think of us every
moment. But surely we've only to call. They may not see us in the
flesh, any more than we can see them in the spirit; but it came to me
when I was very close to the other side, that our bodies don't enclose
us quite. We're half-open jewel-boxes, that let out flashes of emerald,
or sapphire, or diamond light, according to the strength of our
vibrations--or aspirations, if you like (I begin to realize that these
are much the same thing!). It is the flashes of light which are seen
and recognized by the ones who have passed farther on. The lights are
our images, as well as messages for them. But when I say 'farther on,'
it's only a figure of speech. They are not far off.
"We can see the rain. We can't see the wind, even when it is so close
we can lean on it like a wall. And so we can lean on their love, strong
as a wall, stronger than anything visible to us, because love is the
strongest thing there is. You see, life wouldn't be worth living for
any of us--it wouldn't have been worth creating--if the dead really
died. The glory of the deathless dead lights our way, with the bright
deeds they have done, till we come where we can see for ourselves that
there's no dividing line. 'The milestones end.' That's all. They're not
needed any more.
"I heard other people talking of these things when I went where the
milestones end. Since then I've wondered why I didn't know the things
before. _Listen to your hopes_, and _you_ can know without waiting;
because hope is the voice of instinctive knowledge, and soul-instinct
is what we were _born_ knowing. Believe this, and you won't have to
stumble slowly up, as I did, with a hod full of old precepts on my
back. You can plane down from the sky with your arms full of stars, and
live with them, as I live with the flowers in my garden.
"The accident which put me into close touch with what we call 'death,'
put me out of touch--mentally--with life on this side for a while. An
operation brought me back. Just as, hovering between the known and the
unknown, I let my past drop, so on my return to it I had for a while no
memories of the borderland. My brain busied itself picking up lost
threads. I recalled the instant when I thought I was meeting death: a
great shock when all supports fell away as from under a ship that is
launched, and I plunged into measureless depths. Beyond that sensation,
there was blankness. By and by glimpses of something bright came and
went, oftenest in dreams. The effort to seize their meaning waked me
with a start. It is only now that I am beginning to hold some of the
best meanings, I think. I have come back with a little star-dust, even
I; and by its glimmer, in good moments, I try to interpret my own
dreams.
"If I read them rightly, I've told you only an old, old truth in saying
that there should be no such word as death, or grief for it among the
living. We've only to lift the veil of Death to see the face of Life--a
wonderful, shining face with no pain in its smile. Looking into its
eyes, what we do, instead of 'dying,' is to flow over our own narrow
limitations as growing vines flow over the high wall of a little
garden. We escape out of bounds into the boundless and are part of it.
"Don't, then, let the life of the man you have loved be darkened by
feeling that he has darkened yours. Stand up, lift your head, and
you'll see how your sorrow will have to lie down at your feet as
shadows lie."
When Denin ended his letter, he found that in trying to help Barbara,
he had helped and heartened himself. He had unfolded a flag and waved
it to the sky.
He went out, though it was after midnight, and posted the letter.
Later, he was able to sleep as he had not slept since the night he
wrote the last words of his book. As usual he dreamed of Barbara, but
this time it was a new dream. He saw himself painting her portrait; and
when he waked in the sunrise he wondered why he had never tried to
paint such a likeness from memory. He could see her as clearly before
him as though she had come to the door, opened it, and looked at him.
The thought gave him something more to live for. He would do the
picture, and so bring Barbara herself to the Mirador where, guessing
nothing of the truth, she sent her thoughts to John Sanbourne.