It seemed to Denin that he knew the day and even the moment when his
letter reached Barbara.
He was working on her portrait, to which he gave every instant of his
spare time between dawn and dusk. A strange, elusive impression of a
girl it was; a girl in white looking through a half-open door. She
stood in shadow, but leaning forward a little so that her eyes and hair
and a long fold of her dress caught the light. Denin's portrait work
before had been done with charcoal or colored chalk. Such mediums were
too crude, however, for this labor of his love. He was trying pastels,
and had expected to make many false starts and failures. But he had
only to open the door to see the girl standing just outside, looking
straight at him with smoke-blue eyes under level brows and warm shadow
of copper-beech hair; so after all he could not go wrong with his work.
He had but to paint what he saw, and the picture took life quickly, as
his book had taken life, because it was easier to go on than to stop.
One evening, he was straining his eyes for the last ray of daylight,
when a blue flash seemed to leap from the eyes of the portrait. He
could hardly believe that it was only an illusion of an overworked
optic nerve. It was as if Barbara had somehow found out about the
portrait, and compelled it to speak for her, to tell him something she
wished to say.
"She has got the letter!" was the thought that compelled his mind to
accept it. And then--"She will answer at once."
The difference in time between Santa Barbara and Gorston Old Hall was
about twelve hours; and fifteen days ago, he had posted his letter. It
was just possible, even in war-time delays, that it had reached her, he
calculated, as the eyes of the portrait held him spellbound.
When the picture was finished, he took its measurements and ordered a
glass to protect the fragile colors, delicate as the microscopic plumes
of a moth's wing. But he could not content himself with any design for
a frame. He went to shop after shop, and even traveled as far as Los
Angeles, in the hope of finding the right thing. But nothing was right
as a frame for Barbara. The handsomer a frame was, the more
conventional and banal it looked in Denin's eyes, when he tried to
associate it with her. At last he decided to carve out the frame with
his own hands, from the beautiful fluted redwood of the great sequoias
of California: wonderful, ruddy wood with an auburn sheen and a wave
running through it like that of Barbara's hair.
The idea seized him and brought extraordinary delight. He took three
lessons from an astonished cabinet-maker of whom he was able to buy the
redwood, and then with confidence and joy began his work. In two days
it was finished, and the picture in place. It was almost as if he had
built a house for Barbara, and she had come to live in it, and look out
of the door at him.
The portrait was half life-size; and rimmed in its rich fluted setting
of redwood a thousand years old, it was of exactly the right length and
shape to hang on the door of child-Barbara's bedroom--his bedroom now.
It was for that place he had planned it, because in these days he had
lost the unbroken privacy of his first weeks at the Mirador. John
Sanbourne had been "discovered," and without churlishness was unable to
remain any longer a hermit. He went nowhere, except for the long,
solitary walks he loved, and refused all invitations, but he could not
lock his gate against the three or four kindly persons who ventured
with the best intentions, to "dig him up" and "keep him from being
lonely." His memory-portrait of Barbara was too strikingly like her, in
its strange impressionist way, not to be in danger of recognition by
some old acquaintance of her childhood. Besides, a picture of his love,
even if unrecognized, was far too sacred to be seen by stranger eyes.
In Denin's bedroom the smiling visitant was safe. No one but himself
ever went there. And with the heavy frame firmly clamped to the door
panels, the effect of the girl gazing out into the room was thrillingly
intensified for Denin. Thus hung, the portrait was opposite his camp
bed; and when he waked at sunrise, Barbara and he looked at each other.
The picture had been in its place for a day when her letter came, a
very thick letter; and with the envelope uncut he went up to sit before
her likeness and read what she had to say to John Sanbourne.
"You are a lifeline thrown to me!" he read. "I grasp it thankfully. I
wonder if you will think me a silly, sentimental creature, if I tell
you that even before I opened your letter a strong golden current
seemed to come out through the envelope into my fingers, and up my arm?
If you were just an ordinary friend, a man, living near me, I shouldn't
be able to say this to you, or tell you that I put your letter like a
talisman inside my dress, so as to keep it near me, and not lose the
sense of its influence after I had read it three times over. But to
_you_ at your distance I can tell many things that are sacred, because
I'm only a shadow to you, not a flesh-and-blood woman, with all my
faults and foolishnesses under your eyes to be judged. I'm a shadow to
you, and I don't mind being a shadow, because it gives me freedom and
liberty. Yet I mustn't abuse that liberty, and deceive you, my friend
so far off--and so near. I'm afraid that I have deceived you already,
and asked for your sympathy, your help, under false pretenses. Perhaps
if you'd known the real truth about me and my life, you would have
written me a terribly different letter. Whenever I am feeling the
comfort of it most, suddenly that thought pierces through me, very cold
and deadly, like a spear of ice. I _want_ the comfort--oh, how I want
it!--and so, to make sure whether I have the right to take it or not, I
am going to tell you everything. You will not be bored, or think me
egotistic. I know you well enough, through your book and your letters,
to be sure of that. When you have read this, you will be able to judge
whether I can dare to claim the consolation you offer me, and whether I
have a right to comfort myself with those thoughts, about the only man
I have loved or shall ever love. Because, I have given another man a
place in my outer life.
"What thought comes into your mind when you read those
words--cold-hearted, horrible, disloyal words? Do you slam the door of
your sympathy in my face, and turn me away? No, please, please don't do
that--anyhow don't do it quite yet. Wait till I've explained as well as
I can--if any explanation is possible.
"I want you to know all the truth and understand entirely, so I must
even tell you a thing that seems absurd to tell. It would be absurd, if
it were not for the thing's consequences. When I was fourteen my mother
and I came away from America, where we'd lived ever since I was born,
came to live in Paris, though she is English by birth. A cousin of
hers, an officer in the British army, was on leave from his regiment
just then. He ran over to Paris, to amuse himself, not to see us; but
as he knew we were there, he called. He was twenty-seven--thirteen
years older than I--and I thought he was like all the heroes of all the
novels I'd ever read, in the form of one perfectly handsome, perfectly
fascinating man. He treated me like a child, and teased me a little
about being a 'flapper,' but that only made me look up to him more,
because he seemed so high above me, and wonderful and unattainable,
like a prince.
"Perhaps he saw how I felt, and gloried in it as great fun. He gave me
his picture in uniform, and I worshiped it humbly, as a little Eastern
girl might worship an idol. Soon he went to India, but I saw him once
again, nearly two years afterwards, when I was almost sixteen. I had
never forgotten my 'prince,' and after he came back he flirted with
me--rather cruelly, I think. When I realized--just as he was saying
good-by, that he'd only been playing a little, it all but broke my
heart--what I thought was my heart. I used actually to _enjoy_ being
miserable, and telling myself I should never love again--just as if I'd
been a grown-up woman. I was even angry with my frivolous self when I
found that I was getting over it. For I did get over it very soon, and
before I was seventeen I could look back and laugh at my childish
silliness. That was over five years ago, for I am twenty-two now; and
all my real life has come since then.
"My mother and I were poor, until a little while ago. She is very good
really and very charming, and absolutely unselfish, so I'm not picking
flaws in her if I have to explain to you that she was selfish for _me_.
Being English herself, she has always thought--in spite of marrying an
American and going to live in America--that there's nothing quite so
good in the world as the best kind of English life. By the 'best kind,'
she means life among the aristocracy, in country houses, and in London
in the season. She made up her mind before I was eighteen that she
wanted me some day to marry a man who could give me just that life. I
used to laugh then, when she mapped out my future. It seemed only
funny, not vulgar and horrid to talk about marrying some vague,
imaginary man for his title and money; but when Mother took a house in
London--a better house than we could afford--and went into debt to buy
me heaps of lovely clothes, and fussed and schemed to get me presented
and dragged into the 'right set,' I began to be ashamed.
"Before we had been in London very long I met a man who was different
from any one I had ever seen before. From the first night, when we were
introduced at a dance, I could think about no one else. I wish I could
make you understand what he was like, for then you would see how a
woman who cared about him could never stop caring, even when he was
dead; for no other man could at all take his place. He wasn't handsome,
not even what people would call 'good looking,' I suppose, and he
didn't talk very much. But somehow, when he came into a room with lots
of other men in it, all the rest simply ceased to count. He was very
tall, and a great athlete. Maybe that was one thing that pleased a
woman, for we do like strength--we can't help it. But there was so much
more about him, magnetic and sincere and splendid, which would somehow
have made one feel that he was near, if one were _blind!_ He could do
all the things other men do better than any of the others, yet he had
thoughts such as none of the others had. One knew that a woman could
have no moods or imaginings beyond his power to understand, if he cared
enough, because he was _fine_--'fine' in the French meaning of the
word--as well as strong. I shall never forget the first time he looked
at me. We had just been introduced. There was something wonderful about
his eyes--I could hardly tell you what it was. But one suddenly felt
caught and drawn into them, as into a vortex in deep, still water,
clear and pure, though dark.
"I saw that he rather liked me, and even that meant a good deal from
him, because he was a man's man, and didn't care much about laughing
and talking with lots of girls. Perhaps he was shy of them. Mother saw,
too, that he was interested; and that was what began all the trouble,
because he was exactly what she had set her heart on for me. She
wouldn't leave him alone to make up his mind whether he really wanted
to see more of me or not. She tried to _force_ him to want me. She did
all she could to bring us together. She left no stone unturned. To me
it was sickening. I don't know whether he saw it or not, but I was so
afraid he might, and be disgusted with us both, that it made me feel
absolutely ill. I could never be at ease with him. It was hateful,
hateful that he should think my mother and I were trying to 'catch'
him, because of his title and money, and his beautiful old house which
every one admired and talked about, and heaps of women wanted.
"After we had known him for awhile, mother hinted and hinted for us to
be invited to stay at his place. It was almost like asking him to marry
me--at least I felt it was. He was obliged to get up a house-party for
us, so that we shouldn't be alone, for he had no mother or aunt or any
one to entertain for him. We and the others were invited for a week,
but the day everybody was going on somewhere else, mother was taken
ill, so she and I had to stay. I was sure she was pretending, though
she wouldn't confess, and I was almost wild with misery and shame, I
loved him so _dreadfully_.
"For days mother kept her room, and when she came down she seemed so
weak, that of course he begged us not to think of going. A fortnight
more passed like that. Then the first rumors of war began; and we were
still with him when war was declared. That same day, out in a garden by
a lake we both loved, he told me he _cared_, and asked if I would marry
him before he went off to fight. If only I could have been sure that he
did really care, and hadn't been drawn on by things mother had said, I
should have been divinely happy. But I wasn't sure. I wasn't at all
sure. And the shame and suffering I felt, and the fear of showing that
I adored the ground he walked on, when perhaps he was only being
chivalrous to me, made me behave like a _beast_. I was just a sullen
lump. I said yes, I would marry him, if he was quite, quite sure he
wanted me to; and then mother came out of the house, and straight to
us, as if she had known exactly what was going on and could hardly wait
to make certain of him.
"He had to go so soon, to rejoin his old regiment, and leave for the
front, that he got a special license, and we were married when we had
been engaged just two days. If he did love me--and looking back I
almost believe now that he did, for he was too true as well as strong
to be 'trapped' by any woman--I must have hurt him by keeping him so at
a distance. He couldn't have understood, not even with the wonderful
power he had of seeing deep into people, all the way through to their
souls. But now I have explained to you about mother, _you_ will
understand. We were hardly alone together, he and I, for more than five
minutes at a time. I always made some excuse to escape. I was afraid if
I were with him for long I should break down and be a fool. And I
thought if he didn't love me I should certainly disgust him by crying.
Mother had told me often, when she was training me to 'come out' in
society, that a man must love a woman _very_ much, not to be irritated
with her when she cries, and her face crinkles up and her nose gets red.
"After our wedding he was with me for about an hour, but mother was
with us too, for half the time, and even when she left us alone in an
ostentatious sort of way, I could think of nothing to say to him,
nothing at all. There were a thousand things in my brain,
will-o'-the-wisp things, but my tongue could not catch up with them. I
let him go. And then it was too late.
"Three weeks afterwards, he died, saving the life of a friend. So now
you see what your book meant to me, very specially, and why I begged
you to tell me whether you had found out these wonderful things by
going down close to death yourself. You know why it wasn't enough even
when you answered as you did at first. I longed to hear whether you
thought _he_ would know the truth about me. Your answer to that
question is all I hoped for, and more. But I don't deserve it, for I am
married now to my cousin--the one I so childishly made an idol of when
I was a little girl.
"You are shocked. You think of me with horror. You are sorry you have
troubled with me at all. When you read at the beginning of this letter
that I had given another man a 'place in my life,' you didn't dream
that I had _married him_. But so it is. Eight months after my love
died, and my youth died with him, I was my cousin's wife.
"I won't tell you much about that. Only this: a month after I was a
widow, this cousin came to England, wounded. My mother and I were
helping the nurses as best we knew how, in the private hospital of a
friend. My cousin arranged to be sent there. He wasn't seriously hurt,
and we saw something of him, of course. He was immensely changed from
the old days. Because he might have been a stick or a stone instead of
a man for all I cared, he was piqued, I suppose. He told mother that he
meant to make me fall in love with him and marry him when the war was
over. And when he had gone back to the front again, she repeated what
he had said to me. You see, she didn't know how I had loved _the
other_, so she was surprised at the way I took the message. I couldn't
help showing that I was angry because he had _dared_. He wrote to me
later, more than once, but I didn't answer his letters.
"Months afterwards, he was horribly wounded. As he had no near
relatives, he asked to have us sent for, to Boulogne. He was supposed
to be dying, and we couldn't refuse to go. We never thought of
refusing. It seemed to do him good to see us, and he grew better. His
one wish, he said, was to die in England. We brought him back--a
dreadful journey. He grew worse again on the way, and we were obliged
to stop at Folkestone for two weeks. Then we got him to London, to see
a great specialist for spinal operations. The surgeon said that such an
operation as would have to be made--if any--might kill, and could not
cure. At best, if he lived, my cousin would be an invalid for the rest
of his life. Still, without an operation, he must surely die. It would
be just a question of a few weeks. My cousin had to be told this by
some one, and the surgeon thought the news of such a verdict had better
be broken to him by a person he cared for. Mother felt unable to bear
the strain, after all she had gone through. She isn't strong, and since
last August she has changed very much. It seems as if, now that I'm
'provided for' (as she says), she had let herself go. That day, when
she asked if I would tell my cousin what the surgeon said, I was
frightened about her, she trembled so much and suddenly turned so
deathly pale, with bluish lips, and blue circles round her eyes.
Without an instant's hesitation I promised to speak to my cousin. But I
didn't realize what the scene would be like, or I could hardly have
faced it. In his weakness he broke down, as I never saw any one else
break down. He said, if there was no hope of his being made into a man
again, what good would it bring him to be cut up and hacked about by a
surgeon? Besides, the specialist was the most expensive operator in
England, and he couldn't afford such a costly experiment. The simplest
thing would be to put a revolver to his head, or take an overdose of
some sleeping draft, and so to be out of his misery once and for all.
"I was unnerved, and begged him to keep up hope and courage--not to
think about the money, but to let us lend it. My beloved one left
everything to me; and I was sure, if he were alive, he would wish me to
make that offer to a brother soldier. I felt, even while I was
speaking, that if _I_ were in my cousin's place, I should refuse the
operation because I'd rather die than live on as a helpless invalid, a
burden to myself and others. But it wouldn't have been _human_ not to
encourage that poor sufferer to endure existence, if he could. So I
tried my best, and I was very excited and worked up by the sight of his
emotion. Suddenly he spoke again. He said that without an incentive to
live, he wouldn't trouble about the operation, and the only incentive
he could possibly have would be my marrying him, before he went under
the anesthetic. Besides, he couldn't accept money from me, when he saw
no way of repaying it, unless I were his wife. I would rather he had
killed me than force me to make such a decision as that!
"Perhaps if I'd been calmer, I might have dared to refuse, realizing
that his love of life was very strong indeed, and that when he had
thought things over, he would surely consent to the operation without
the horrible sacrifice he asked of me. But I was at the point of
breaking down, myself. I couldn't see anything clearly. It seemed to me
that I had to save a life, if it could be saved, at any cost. And then,
my future mattered so little to me then. The thought in my mind at the
time was, that to be the nurse of a broken soldier who'd given himself
for his country, was at least a mission in life. As it was, I had none
left. Also, it may be that deep down under my conscious thought was
another: that according to the surgeon's expert opinion, my cousin was
most unlikely to live. Why not give him the incentive he asked for, to
face the ordeal, and let him die happy--since that one thing seemed to
mean happiness for him? Almost before I knew what I was doing, I
promised. Then it was sprung upon me the next day, that if the
operation were to be done at all, it must be done soon. I had to keep
my word. And what followed was a nightmare: a second wedding by special
license, a bedside marriage with a dying man, words of farewell, and
the surgeon and anesthetist arriving in their white robes--like
undertakers.
"When I heard that he had come through the operation with his life, I
knew instantly what wicked hope must have been hiding in my heart. A
sickening disappointment crept like poison through my blood. I had to
do my duty, though, and live up to the obligations I'd undertaken so
recklessly. After a few weeks, mother and I brought the invalid
home--to the home my beloved one had given me! My life seems to have
been one long series of mistakes, but I don't think I've sinned enough
to deserve the punishment I have to endure now. It is too much for me.
How am I to bear it, and keep my soul's honor? The memory of my love,
his ways, and his looks follow me from room to room of his house, and
walk with me by the dear lake, and in the garden paths. I might have
found peace if I'd left myself a right to live with that memory. But I
haven't. I've put a man in _his_ place, a man whose body is helpless as
that of a little child, yet whose soul is a giant of hateful jealousy.
He is jealous of the dead. I hadn't guessed a man could be like that. I
must tell you no more. I must try not to be cruel or utterly disloyal
both to living and dead--and to my own self-respect, such as I have
left.
"I have kept my love's name. I bargained for that, before I promised my
cousin to marry him. It was the one possession I couldn't consent to
give up. If you will stand by me as my friend after all this that I've
told you--if you can say that, in spite of everything, I have any right
to the comfort you've given, address your next letter to Lady Denin.
"Yours gratefully, from the heart, whatever your decision may be. B. D."