When Denin wrote again he ventured to give Barbara the name that she
had given him, "Dear Friend." And he enclosed photographs of the
Mirador, with its flower-draped balcony, and of the "silver fountain."
"What you say about my helping you is wonderful to hear, and makes me
feel like a comet stuffed with stars," he wrote. "It is a great honor
for me that you care for my letters. It's true, as you surmise, that
others have written and do write to the author of 'The War Wedding,'
and that is an honor too, in its way. But it's an altogether different
way. I can't explain why. I won't try to explain why the call you have
sent half across the world is different from any other call. Yet I want
you to believe that it is so, that I count it an immense privilege to
write to you, and an immense delight to get your answers. What you call
your 'gratitude' is the highest compliment ever paid to me. In trying
to study out your problems, I have solved some of my own. In advising
you to be happy, I've found a certain happiness for myself; so you see
that I have far more cause to be grateful to you than you could
possibly have to me.
"For one thing--just a small instance--I had never taken a photograph
in my life, until you asked me for snapshots of the Mirador garden. In
order to make them for you myself, I learned how. Now I am deep in it.
Do you remember the little room that is half underground, yet not quite
a cellar? I've turned it into a dark room for developing my negatives.
I was up all one night watching the birth of my first work. But I don't
tell you that to bid for thanks. I did it because I was too infatuated
with the work itself to think of going to bed. These things I send are
crude. I am going to try to become what they call--don't they?--an
'artist photographer.' When I can give myself a medal for my
achievements, I'll take some better pictures for you, of the house and
garden, and of the Mission and other places in the neighborhood of your
old home if you would like to have them. Of course it interests me
immensely to know that you once lived here."
The last sentence Denin added after a long moment of hesitation. It
seemed brutal not to protest against that humble supposition of
Barbara's that her past ownership of the Mirador would be unimportant
to him. But what he burned to say was so much more, that the few
conventional words he dared to dole out looked churlish in black and
white. Still, he had to let them stand.
After these letters, which crossed, the woman in England and the man in
California caught the habit of writing to one another oftener than
before--and differently. They did not wait for something definite to
answer, for their thoughts so rushed to meet each other that it seemed
as if they knew by wireless what was best to say each time. Often what
they said might have read commonplacely to an outsider, for now they
told each other the little things of every-day life. After her first
outburst of confidence and confession, Barbara did not again for many
weeks refer directly to Trevor d'Arcy. But Denin thought that he
understood, and felt his veins fill full with a sudden jerk, as do
those of a man electrocuted, when he read, "I am rather desperate
to-day:" or, "To keep myself from going all to pieces, just now, I
turned my thoughts off my own life, as you turn a tap, and sent them to
your garden--my old garden of the Mirador. I strolled there with you,
and you consoled me. It was evening. We were in the pergola (Father's
old head gardener used to call it the 'paragolla'), and I forgot the
iron grayness here that weighs down my spirit. Over you and me, as we
talked, glittered my old, loved stars of California. And the pergola
with its velvet drapery of leaves and flowers, and the three dark
cypresses barring the sea view at one end, was like a corridor hung
with illuminated tapestry 'come alive.' You can't think how real it was
for a few minutes, walking there and hearing your generous words of
comfort, like magic balm on a wound that only magic balm could heal.
I've decided that when things are very bad with me here, I'll try that
way of escape again. I will send my thoughts to the Mirador garden, and
the comfort that nobody but you--who understand so marvelously--can
even be _asked_ to give. Do you mind my flying to you? Will you
'pretend' too, sometimes in those starlit nights, that I have come to
ask your advice and help? Will you feel as if I were actually there,
and will you put the advice into words? Maybe they'll reach me so. I do
believe they will. And I am needing such words more than ever lately. I
can hardly wait for them to come in letters. Though I have the
'invisible wall of love' to lean against, that you told me of (and I
_do_ lean hard!), there is an influence which tries always to drag me
away from that dear support, making it seem not to belong to me after
all. There's a voice which tells me I was never really loved by the one
whose memory I worship; that he asked me to marry him only because
mother practically forced him to do so. This isn't an _inner_ voice.
It's the voice of a person whose jealousy and cruelty I _must_ forgive,
or be as cruel myself. The voice says it has reason to be sure that all
it tells me is true; that it's useless for me to ask mother, because
she would deny it; besides, she is too ill to be troubled or reproached
about anything. You know, I have two invalids now, so I can't do much
for any one outside, except send money--_his_ money, to the poor and
the wounded.
"The terrible voice hammers constantly on my heart, and is breaking it
to pieces, in spite of your help. For even you can't help me there. How
could you, when about that one thing--that principal thing of all, it
seems now--you have no knowledge? You can't know whether _he_ ever
loved me as a man loves one woman, or whether he was simply willing to
spread his generous protection round me for the future, when he was
going away to risk his life. It would have been like him to do that, I
have to admit in some moods. And I hate the moods, and hate the voice
for putting the idea--which mercifully hadn't struck me before--into my
head. I oughtn't to hate the voice, because it may be that its
wickedness--almost fiendish at times--is caused only by hopeless
suffering. I strive to say to myself, as I think you would wish me to
say, 'Could a bird who had been blinded and thrown into a cage where it
never saw sunshine, do better than croak, or peck the hand that tried
to feed it?'
"I need to walk with you in your garden, you see! Send me kind thoughts
from there, without waiting to write. Then, if I send you questions in
the same way, I shall feel that you hear and answer. I shall _listen_
for the answers. Tell me, first of all, do you, as a man, think another
man would ask a girl to marry him just because she was poor and without
prospects, and he was going away to face death? Of course it's true
that you can't know, but what do you think? Remember, I'm not speaking
of an ordinary man, but one almost too generous and chivalrous for
these days. Do you think such an one might have done that?"
Denin wrote back, "I think no man would have done that. You need have
no fear that you were married for any motive but love. A man--even such
a man as you describe--must have argued that a young, attractive girl
would have plenty of chances in life, at least as good as that which he
could offer. She would have no need of his protection, and he would
have no right to press it upon her, unless he gave all his love as
well."
This assurance Denin tried to send Barbara in the way she asked, as
well as by the letter which would take weeks to reach its destination.
He made of his ardent thought for her a carrier pigeon with golden
wings, which could travel swiftly as the light. Thus he rushed to her
the answers to many questions,--questions which seemed to come to him
from far off, as he walked in the garden. He could hear her voice
calling, when the wind came over the sea, from the east where England
lay.
Denin had bought the Mirador and begun his life there, with some echo
of Ernest Dowson's words in his mind:
Now will I take me to a place of peace:
Forget my heart's desire,
In solitude and prayer work out my soul's release.
But his heart's desire was with him, as it could have been nowhere
else, so vividly, flamingly with him, that there could be no thought of
finding peace. He no longer even wished for peace. He would not have
exchanged a peace pure as the crystal stillness of a mountain lake, for
the dear torture of seeing Barbara's soul laid bare. He was never in a
state calm enough to analyze his feelings. He could only feel. Yet the
strangeness of his position and hers swept over him sometimes, as with
a hot gust from the tropics. John Denin had had to die, in order to
learn that his wife adored him. The price would not have been too big,
if he alone had to pay, but she was paying too. He could not take the
payment all upon himself; yet he could help to make it less of a strain
for her, and all his life was poured into the giving of this help.
Every thought, every heart-beat was for Barbara. He lived to give
himself to her, and to take what she had for him in return. With each
day that passed he realized how much more they were to each other at
this vast distance--these two, parted forever--than most men and women
living side by side in legal union. He knew that John Sanbourne was
absolutely necessary to Barbara Denin, as she was to him; and all the
incidents of their daily lives, big and small, though lived separately,
drew them together when recounted, as pearls are drawn together on a
lengthening string.
Now that the secret was out, and Lady Denin knew where John Sanbourne
had made his home, without suspecting any hidden mystery in the
coincidence, he was thankful that she had learned the truth. A barrier
was down, and they seemed to gaze straight into each other's eyes,
across the space where it had been. In return for his snapshots of the
Mirador and its garden, Barbara sent photographs taken by herself of
Gorston Old Hall. One of these showed the lake, with a bow-windowed
corner of the black and white house mirrored in it--the very spot where
Sir John Denin had asked Barbara Fay to be his wife. "The place I love
best," she said. Though she did not say why, it thrilled him to guess.
And in the same letter she sent faintly fragrant specimens from the
"Shakespeare border."
How the sweetness of the dear old-fashioned things, whose very names
distilled a perfume, floated back to Denin from the garden he had given
to his love!
"My husband had the border planted," Barbara explained. "Don't you
think it a delicious idea? Not a single flower or herb mentioned by
Shakespeare has been forgotten, and you can hardly imagine what a noble
company has been brought together. Once we walked in the garden, he and
I, on a moonlight night, when a breeze came up and drove the evening
mists slowly, slowly along the paths and borders like a procession of
spirits in silver cloaks. We played that it had driven away the ghosts
of Shakespeare's people, kings and queens and knights and ladies called
back to earth by the perfume--which, you say, is the voice--of those
well-remembered flowers. That's one of the memories I cherish now, when
I walk past the Shakespeare borders in the moony dusk. And thanks to
you--who have helped me literally _to move into my dreams and live
there_--I don't seem to walk alone. For a few moments then, I am
neither lonely nor sad. The moonlight still drips into my heart, like
water into a fountain, as it dripped on that night I remember: and my
thoughts lead me along a beautiful, mysterious road that nobody else
can see--a road to wonderful things I've never known, but have always
longed for, such a road as certain music seems to open out before you."
The pressed leaves and petals in Barbara's letter were those of
pansies, rosemary, and rue: the dark blue pansies he had once thought
like her eyes at night; rosemary for the never-absent remembrance of
them; rue for an ever aching regret, because of what might have been
and could not be.
She asked him to tell her what he had done inside as well as outside of
the Mirador since he had taken it, and how he had furnished the rooms.
This was a difficult question to answer, because Denin had surrounded
himself with everything she had described in her old environment: white
dimity curtains, rag-woven rugs of pale, intermingled tints, the
"Mission" made chairs and tables, and copies of her old pictures on the
walls. If he detailed his chosen surroundings, would not the added
coincidence strike her as almost incredibly strange?
Denin ignored the request in his following letter, but Barbara repeated
it in her next. "After all, it isn't possible that she should suspect
the truth," he argued, and at last took what risk there was, rather
than appear secretive. Not that there _was_ a risk, he assured himself
over and over again; yet when a letter came which must be a reply to
his, the man's fingers trembled on the envelope. In a revealing flash
like lightning which shows a chasm to a traveler by night, he glimpsed
a hidden side of his own nature. He saw that it would be a
disappointment, not a relief to him, if Barbara passed over his
description of the new-born Mirador without stumbling on any vague
suspicion. He realized that he must have been hoping for her to guess
at the truth, and so break the thin crust of lava on that crater's
brink where they both stood, gathering flowers.
"Good God, I thought I had gained a little strength!" he said, and
opened the letter quickly, though with all accustomed tenderness of
touch. Then he tried to be glad, and remind himself that he had known
it would be so, when he read that she wondered only, without
suspecting.
"If I hadn't been certain of it before," she wrote, "I should believe
now that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of
in our philosophy. It _must_ indeed be that our thoughts do travel far,
and impress themselves upon the thoughts of others, for it can't be a
mere coincidence--as your taking the Mirador was--that you have made
the place over again just as I had it. I must have gone there in a
dream, and told you things in your sleep. Then you waked up, and
supposed that the ideas were all your own original fancies. The
strangest part is about the pictures. _I_ had Rossetti's 'Annunciation'
in my bedroom. I chose it myself, because of the lilies, and the little
flames on the angel's feet. I chose 'La Gioconda' too, because it
seemed to me that I should some day discover what made her smile so
secret, yet so enchanting, just as if, could one listen long enough,
one might catch the tune in the music of a brook or river. I used to
stand before the mirror of my dressing-table at the right of the big
window, and practise smiling like her, but I could never manage it. I
thought, if I could, when I grew up I should be able to make a man I
loved fall in love with me, even if he didn't care at first. Poor child
Me! I remembered that wish, when I wanted the One Man to love me, and
yet was too proud and ashamed to try and make him do it.
"Downstairs I had Carpaccio's dreaming St. Ursula, with the tiny dog
asleep, and the little slippers by the bedside. And you have that
picture hanging almost in the same place! Yes, I must unknowingly have
cast some influence upon you. That seems exquisite to me. I hope you do
not mind? If you don't, I shall try again in other ways. Indeed, I
shall begin at once by influencing you to do me a favor, I've been
waiting a long time to ask, and never quite found the courage to put
into words. Send me a photograph of yourself. I want it very much, to
make sure that my mental picture of you is right."
It was hard to refuse the first request she had ever spoken of as a
"favor." Denin was half tempted to buy the portrait of some
decent-looking fellow and label it "John Sanbourne"; but only half
tempted. He could not lie to Barbara, and was reduced to the excuse
that he "took a bad photograph." It would be better for her to keep the
friendly mental picture she had painted, rather than be disillusioned.
"This sounds as if I were vain," he added, "but unfortunately I have
every reason not to be."
"Either she won't care at all about not getting the photograph, or else
she'll be offended," Denin prophesied gloomily. "Time will show." And
when the day to which he had looked forward for an answer burst upon
him like a thunderclap, bringing no letter, he thought that time had
shown. She was angry, or worse still, hurt, feeling that like Psyche
with the oil-dropping lantern, she had been rebuked for curiosity. He
saw himself losing her again, through this small and miserable
misunderstanding which he could not, must not, set right. A second loss
would be a thousand times worse than the first, because this time her
soul had belonged to his soul. Their letters, their need of each other,
had circled them as if in a magic ring, or under a glass case which,
transparent to invisibility, had housed them warmly together. A
spiritual nausea of fear, fear of loss, turned his heart to water, so
that over and over again he asked himself what to do, without having
power to answer.
He remembered the old fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast, and how the
Beast lay down despairingly, to die in his garden, because Beauty, who
had made his life bearable, even happy, went away voluntarily and for a
long time forgot her promise to come back.
The Mirador garden lost something of its old spell for Denin. A
glowworm which had come to live at the end of the pergola, and
evidently believed in itself as a permanent family pet, was no longer
an intelligent and charming companion. He had valued it only, he saw
now, because he had meant to amuse Barbara by describing it to her, as
his newest friend. On nights when letters from her had come, all the
passion and romance of the world since its beginning had streamed along
the sea to his eyes, by the path of the moon. But now the white light
had a hard, steely radiance that dazzled his eyes.
While the link held between him and Barbara, it had been easy for Denin
to feel kinship with nature, with the world and worlds beyond. His mind
had traveled hand in hand with hers over the whole earth and on, on to
unknown immensities, as rings from a dropped stone spread endlessly on
the surface of water.
Expecting answers from Barbara, he had had an incentive to live, and
had looked eagerly forward to each new day, as to opening the door of a
room he had never seen before, a room full of beautiful things, made
ready for him alone. Now, when day after day passed, bringing no word
from her, the rooms of the House of the Future were empty.
He had advised her, when she needed counsel, to look and listen inside
herself, for a voice. But now, no such voice spoke to him, except to
say, "You have been a fool. You must unconsciously have expressed
yourself in some blundering way that disgusted her, broke the statue
she'd set up on a pedestal. She is 'disillusioned' indeed!"
A week dragged itself on into a fortnight after the day when Barbara's
answer ought to have come. Still Denin had done nothing but wait,
because it appeared to him that no explanation of his seeming
ungraciousness was possible. If Barbara did not want him any more, he
could not make her want him.
Had he not loved her so much, he might have thought her silence due to
illness; but he was sure that he should know if she were ill. She had
let him walk into the home of her soul and its secret garden of
thought; she had offered him the flowers of her childhood and girlhood
which no one else had ever seen; and if a blight had fallen upon her
body, he was so near that he would feel the chill of it in his own
blood. No, he told himself, Barbara was not ill. She had shut herself
away from him, that was all; and the very nature of his relationship
with her forbade his claiming anything which she did not wish to give.
He lost all hope of hearing again, at the end of a month, yet would not
let himself accuse her of injustice. Had she not a right to drop him if
she chose? He had no cause for complaining. He had received from the
"tankard of love" those two drafts which are said to recompense a man
for the pains of a lifetime, and he could expect no more. Yet he seemed
always to be listening, as if for some sound to come to him through
space, or even the faint echo of a sound, like the murmur in a bell
after it has ceased to chime.
One day, when five weeks lay between him and hope, a telegram was
brought to the Mirador. Denin opened it indifferently, for his
publisher often wired to him when a new edition of "The War Wedding"
came out, or if anything of special interest happened in connection
with the book. But this time the message was from England. It was
unsigned, yet he knew that it was from Barbara. She said, "My mother
has been at death's door for many weeks. Now she is gone. I am
writing."
"Thank God!" Denin heard himself gasp, and then was struck with remorse
for his hard-heartedness. He had thanked God because Barbara had not
taken herself away from him, and in the rush of joy had forgotten what
it would mean for her to be without her mother.
She was alone now with Trevor d'Arcy, at Gorston Old Hall.