If he would "stand by her, as her friend"?
Denin could not wait to write. He cabled recklessly. "You have done no
wrong. Take all the comfort you need. What you suffer is not
punishment. It is martyrdom."
"God help her!" he prayed. "And let me help her, too--my Barbara!"
He thought of the girl yearningly, as of a tortured child with the
heart of a woman. His pain was peace compared to hers; and it was
he--the blind man he called "clear-seeing"--who had thrown her to the
wolves. If he had not been too blind to see her love, he would have
shown his for her as he had not dared to show it, that day in the old
garden. Their marriage would have been a real marriage, binding Barbara
so indissolubly to him that not to save a life could she have broken
the bond. By this time, they would have been together in their home,
and not his memory but himself would follow her through the rooms and
by the dreamy lake at Gorston Old Hall. Yet even so, could he ever have
known the girl from tip to tip of her soul's wings, as he saw himself
destined to know her now, with six thousand miles of sea and land and
one man's death and another man's life between them? Would he have
learned from her lips and eyes the delicate truth of an exquisite
worship, as he had learned it to-day from her written tribute to a dead
soldier?
"My God! She's more mine than she could ever have been if I hadn't died
for her!" he heard himself think aloud. After all, life hadn't been
laughing behind his back, while he wrote the book for Barbara. Though
Fate snatched her away from him with one hand, with the other it gave
her back, irrevocably and forever. It seemed to Denin that, though
nothing could bring them together in body, nothing could ever separate
them in spirit.
When he wrote that same day, he assured her again, as he had assured
her in his cable, that she had a right to every one of the words of
comfort he had sent. "And you have a right to lean on that unseen wall
of love I told you about," he repeated. "It is close to you, and meant
to lean on. There can be no disloyalty to any one in resting against
it. The love that exists for you on the other side of the Great Sea is
too vast to be selfish. It asks nothing from you that you ought not to
give. It only begs you to be happy, for there's a kind of happiness
without which we fall out of tune with the universe. Don't say you can
have no happiness of any kind. Don't think it, or that it would be
'wrong' or light-minded to be happy if you could. You have seen life
draped in black. But black is a concentration of all colors. No opal
has such lights as a black opal. The great adventure of life is
learning the terror and the beauty and the splendor of it all as one
and inseparable.
"I have to confess that I'm no guide for you or any other. I am just
groping my way up, out of my own dark places; but I believe that great
secrets reveal themselves in flashes, just as--in some mysterious,
inspired moments--a sunrise or a sunset tells you the truth of a thing
you've been groping for years to find out. This obligation to your own
soul (and Heaven knows how many others), the obligation of
_happiness_--is one secret which has been opened for me by a magic key.
That key is my strong wish to be of use to you. It helps me to feel
that I may help you. Perhaps you'll care to know that? And you can help
me, and yourself, and the man who has passed on, by trying to gain the
kind of happiness I speak of. It's the kind that makes you one with the
sunlight, a true note in the great music, ringing in tune with the
universe.
"I wonder if you happen to remember about the music which the man in my
book (the man who was passing) heard over the battlefield, the music of
life for which the music of war and death was only the bass, the
necessary undertone? I caught just a few snatches of that life music,
but once heard it goes on echoing in the ears, teaching you the harmony
of all things, if you listen deeply enough. Those young soldiers I
tried to write about, who had thrown off their bodies, and even their
enmities, with the rags and dirt and blood they left on the
battlefield--they were listening to the great music, and hearing in it
the call to some special mission which only they were fitted to fulfil,
going to it in the summer of their youth, before they had grown tired
of anything. I do believe that was more than a dream of mine; that this
torrent of splendid youth, this vast crowd of ardent souls suddenly
rushed from one plane to another, has some wonderful work to do, which
can be done only by souls who go out with the wine of courage on their
lips. But we others, we have our mission too. We can't perform it if we
make false notes in the music for the passing souls to hear. And we
_shall_ make false notes if we let our high vibrations drop down weakly
to depression's minor tones.
"Perhaps you'll turn away from this idea of mine. But it's one that
interests me, as you know, because you've honored my little book by
caring for it. In the dreams I had of things on the other side of sight
and hearing, I thought that I saw the real meaning of the war--the
hidden cause of this landslide of civilization. I saw a whole nation
scintillating with dull red vibrations of fear: fear of attack by other
nations, fear of letting neighbors grow stronger than they. Then I saw
the dull red glowing brighter with vibrations of anger, a furious
desire to grow strong at the expense of others, and to kill and conquer
at any cost. Beautiful blue vibrations of intellect, and clear green
vibrations of hope and successful perseverance were lost, swallowed up
by the all-pervading blood-red. I saw the heavy crimson flood spreading
into and lowering the golden vibrations of other great peoples, who had
not yet fallen; and in the strange dream of colors pulsing through the
ether of earth and heaven, I realized the immensity of the fight; how
it reached far beyond the forces we know, being in truth a battle
between the light of cosmic day and the darkness of cosmic night. I saw
that the danger was defeat of the golden vibrations by the red which
would lower the life-force of the whole world; but something told
me--some snatch of the great music which interprets secrets--that
progress is an integral, unalterable part of evolution; that evil,
which is only negative good, can never conquer; and that the gold
vibrations must win in the end. In the dream, that knowledge gave me
rest. It seemed a pronouncement from the tribunal of the Power which
causes all worlds and all beings to take form and exist by vibrations.
"That's a long homily on my dreams and the theories I'm clumsily
founding on them. But I am trying hard myself to vibrate and resound in
tune, because each vibration and each note count quite as much as
individual soldiers count in war. In this time of earth stress, and
after, when civilization is remaking itself in men's minds, with the
loyal 'spirit of the time' we must all _think gold and blue_, the gold
of the sun by which our bodies live, blue of the sky when inspirations
come. You'll believe me a 'mystic' (whatever that misused word may
mean!), but I'm only trying to see the Reality behind the Thing upon
which I've harped to you already. We are needing to know the Reality as
we never needed such knowledge before.
"Be happy then, in the way that unites you with everything in heaven
and on earth, all the sweet, kind children of Nature close around you,
so that you may learn the different languages of flowers from their
perfumes, and what the trees say in the wind. You can't feel alone in
the world if the trees talk to you, and they will if you open your
heart to them. You will get to know the oak language, the pine, the
elm, the beech languages; and next you will learn how they and the sea
and the rivers and brooks, and everything else that makes up the music
of nature, give out the same message in a thousand different ways: _Be
happy._ To be happy with your soul, no matter what has hurt your body
and tried to spoil your life, is to be strong. Go into your garden, and
walk by the lake you tell me of, and don't be afraid to call the Memory
you love to walk with you there or anywhere. The one you have loved
understands all, and so there could never be even a question of
forgiveness."
Denin longed to add to his letter the request that she would write
often; but he would not ask that of Barbara. He must be ready to give
all that she wanted, and beg for nothing in return. Perhaps if she
found any small comfort in what he had written this time, she would be
satisfied, and feel that nothing more was left to be said on either
side. This possibility he tried to keep before his mind, and to think
of even as a probability, in order to soften the blow of disappointment
if he never heard again. But in his heart he knew that she would write.
It seemed to him when he walked in the little garden of the Mirador, or
stretched his long body on the warm grass under a big olive tree he
loved, that he could hear her thoughts in the garden of Gorston Old
Hall. With his ear close to the earth the message Barbara would send by
and by seemed to come to him before it had left her mind and taken form
on paper.
She answered his cable without waiting for the letter that followed.
"Thank you a thousand times," she said. "I have always something new to
thank you for. What should I have done if your book hadn't come to me,
and given me you for my friend? For a little while, I almost stopped
believing in God, for life looked so cruel, not only to me but to every
one--or nearly every one--I know, since the war began. Far and wide as
I looked, I could find no mercy, no pity. How ungrateful I was, when
all the time God was putting it into your mind to write that book, and
sending your friendship to me when I needed it as one needs air to
breathe!
"Do you know, you are teaching me to _think?_ I feel now as if I had
never really _thought_ before. I just dreamed, or brooded. If _he_ had
lived, I should have learned from him. That is, I should, if our souls
hadn't gone on forever being shy of one another. When I had him with
me, I was too busy loving him and being afraid that he wouldn't love
me, to think about anything outside, though his mind had given my mind
a great lift, even then. And another thing I want to tell you. Your way
of thinking reminds me of him. I believe you must be a little like
him--mentally, I mean. Believing this will make me trust and turn to
you, as one who knows the things I long to know. You have his name,
too, 'John.' And I am going to sign my name always after this, not a
mere impersonal initial.
"I am yours, oh, so gratefully, Barbara Denin.
"P.S. Strange, I didn't notice at first where your cable was dated! I
suppose, like the help you send me, it seemed just to come out of
space! But reading the message again, I broke open the envelope I had
already sealed, to tell you what a throb of the heart I had in seeing
'Santa Barbara.' Can it be that you live at Santa Barbara? I was
christened after that dear old place, because I was born there, or very
near. It's good--it's _wonderful_ to have your words come to me from
_home_."
It was a direct question which she asked. Did he live at Santa Barbara?
But Denin thought best not to answer it. She would forget, maybe, or
would suppose that he had been staying for a short time in California.
Each of his letters to her before, though posted not far from the
Mirador itself, had been enclosed in an envelope to Eversedge Sibley.
In all but one case, other letters to correspondents brought the author
by his book had been sent off in the wrapper with Barbara's. Denin had
taken pains to settle the difficulty of writing to Gorston Old Hall in
this way, in order that neither the name of the woman nor the name of
the place should be remarked by Sibley. He kept this rule with the
letter which followed Barbara's question, but her next broke the plan
in pieces. It crossed one from him, and was written after receiving his
letter about the garden.
"Dear Friend," she named him. "Before I say anything else--and I feel
that there are a thousand things, each pressing forward to be said
first--I must tell you what I have found out. I've learned that you are
living in the house my father built for me. Of course that won't be
important to you. Why should it be so? I have to remind myself over and
over that I am surely just one of many women who have written to you
after reading your book; one of many women you are kind to, out of the
goodness of your heart, and the knowledge that's in it. Can knowledge
be in a _heart?_ Yes, yours is there, I think, even more than in your
brain. I am nothing to you except a poor drowning creature to whom you
have held out a firm hand. But the drowning creature feels that your
living in a place she knew and loved gives her a kind of personal right
in you.
"I read this very morning in a London paper an extract from a New York
one--an article about John Sanbourne. Perhaps you never even knew it
was written? I'm sure you gave no permission to have it done. I think
you would not like the way the man wrote about you; but I felt, in
reading, that he tried hard to bring his work up to a high level and
make it worthy of the subject. If you realized the good it has done me
to know that you cared enough for my dear little Mirador to want it for
your own, and to restore it from ruin, why, you _could_ not be so very
angry with the newspaper man!
"That time in California, when I was a little girl, seemed a hundred
years ago, or even in another state of existence, till I read the
description of you in your garden--once my garden. Then that part of my
life came back as if it were yesterday. I can see the big olive tree,
which had been let grow as it liked, with all sorts of flowing, dancing
gestures of its branches and twisting of its trunk, the way olives grow
in Italy and the south of France. I used to call it my 'silver
fountain.' And under it there was always a look of moonlight, even in
the brightest noon. I do hope nothing has happened to the tree? Say
kind things to the silver fountain from its little friend Barbara.
Write me about it, and tell me, please, if it means anything fairylike
to you as it did to me. But I know it must, because of what you say
about your garden. How little I thought when the letter came four days
ago, that my long-ago garden and your garden of now, were one and the
same!
"That letter was more than a letter. It was a saving force. Because it
was so much to me, and I wanted to think it all over and over, I
couldn't have dared to answer at once in any case. But it came on an
anniversary, August 18th, the day of his passing. I can't say or write
the word 'death,' since I have begun to learn from you. It was always a
dreadful word, like a bludgeon. But now it's impossible. For me it has
gone out of the language.
"As you walk in your little California garden of the Mirador, will it
please you at all to know that you have given me back the joy of the
English garden, the beautiful garden and the lake, and the sweet, old,
history-haunted house which _he_ left to be mine? Because you, who know
so much, say that he understands and doesn't even need to forgive me, I
take your word. I am not afraid to walk with his memory now. I can
speak to it as I shouldn't have had the courage to with him, when he
was here in the flesh. And because of your letter, August 18th was not
a terrible day. It was more like the wedding day of two spirits than
the anniversary of a great grief, and one of the spirits--mine--just
released from prison. Not that it can stay out of prison forever. It's
too weak, yet, to feel its freedom for long at a time. I've had
horrible hours, ever since that day. I shall have them often, I know,
for the thing I have done has made daily life a torture. But at worst I
can steal away by myself sometimes to read your letters over. They, and
my new thoughts, will be for me the tonic of courage; and so I can go
on from day to day, not looking too far ahead, into the dark.
"If I haven't trespassed upon your time and imposed upon your great
kindness too much already, will you write me little things about the
Mirador and your life there? Will you, if you take photographs, send a
snapshot of the wee house as it is now, and perhaps the silver
fountain, to--Your grateful friend, Barbara Denin?
"P. S. You will think I am very old-fashioned and early Victorian about
my postscripts, and I suppose I am, though I don't remember tacking
many onto other letters, only those to you. This one is just a thought
put into my head by some of the last things you said. It is about the
war, and it came to me in the garden on August 18th.
"In a world war like this, with all its anguish, can it be meant for
the nations, each one that suffers and strives, to develop by and by a
new individuality, a great unselfish, selfless Self? Can it be that the
Power behind the worlds throws this one now into the furnace because
development must come for progress' sake? When the earth was first
created, every least thing that lived fought for itself, and there was
no holding together in a large way, anywhere. When civilizations came,
they brought no real improvement, for politics and greed divided
nations against themselves as well as against each other. Is the true
excuse for creation unity, with all the experience of ages to give it
value? If it is so, and if each nation can attain to unity through
sacrifice and heroism, won't the next thing to follow be the unity of
the whole world? Can this be coming to pass, slowly yet surely, not
only with our grain of sand, but with all the worlds, while the Power
who created watches through the cosmic days you spoke of? It would make
one's own tears of sorrow seem small, if one could believe this; and
yet if we did not grudge the tears, they might count as pearls, poured
into a golden cup, to brim it full of jewels worthy of God's
acceptance.
"Perhaps this isn't much of a thought. But such as it is, there has
been light in it for me, on dark days. And as I owe it to you, I felt I
should like to tell you about it. It is going to make me realize more
than I could before, the brotherhood of all men in war time, even the
ones we call the enemy. Why, I used to be stupid and unseeing as a
mole! I hardly thought about common people, pasty-faced waiters and
weedy under-gardeners and grocer's boys, as _men_ at all. Now, out of
every town and village they are marching with their faces turned to the
front, brave and smiling. They are as glorious soldiers as any, and I
pray for them as I would pray for my own brothers. Is that a step for
me towards the great unity? I wonder--and hope.
"You see, I begin to warm myself at the fire your friendship has
kindled. Each letter you write will be a fresh log piled on to feed the
flame."