To get back the jewel he had thought lost, was to be born into a new
life in a new world. Denin had to tell the portrait in the redwood
frame, what he felt, for he dared not tell Barbara herself. To have
given her a glimpse of his heart would have been to show that its fire
had not been kindled by friendship. His answer to her letter was so
tame, so lifeless compared to the song of his soul, that it seemed
something to laugh at--or to weep over. But there was a line he must
not pass. He knew this well, and that his only happiness could be in
the Mirador and in Barbara's friendly letters, as long as she cared to
write. Mr. Carl Pohlson Bradley might go on bidding for the Mirador up
to a million if he liked. There was no chance of his getting it! Denin
was as sure of that, as he was of the shape of the world, or perhaps a
little surer. Then, one day, a thunderbolt fell in the garden. It was
dropped by the postman, in the form of a letter.
Barbara wrote, "Everything is changed since I wrote you six days ago. I
can't live here any longer, under the same roof with a man whose one
pleasure is to torture and insult me. I haven't spoken about him to you
lately. There was no need, but things grew no better between us--worse,
rather, for he resented the calmness I was finding through you. It made
him furious apparently, that he had no longer the same power over me as
at first, to drive me away from him, crying, or shaking all over with
shame and anger at the dreadful things he said. I hardly cared at all
of late days, when he called me a hypocrite, or a liar, or a damned
fool, or other names far worse. I paid him a visit morning and evening,
or at other times if he sent for me, and went out motoring or driving
with him when he felt well enough to go. He refused to move without me,
and so, as the doctor ordered fresh air for him, I couldn't refuse.
When he was at his worst--or what I thought the worst then--I could
look straight ahead, and think of things you said, hardly bearing his
abuse.
"'This is my "bit" to do in the war days,' I reminded myself, and
thought maybe my kind of fighting was almost as hard to do as the
fighting in the trenches. Besides, I never lost sight of what you
answered when I first told you how hard it was, living up to
obligations I'd taken on myself. You said, 'We're all sparks of the one
Great Fire, some brighter than others. We can't hate each other for
long without finding out that it's as bad as hating ourselves.' Truly,
I quite brought myself to stop hating him. I only pitied, and tried to
help, as much as he would let me. But I see now that it was all in
vain. I can't do him any good by staying, and--well, I just simply
can't bear it! He is too ill to be moved. This dear old house will have
to be his home while he drags on his death in life--which may mean
years. So I, not he, must go.
"Lest you should blame me too much, I will tell you what happened,
though I wasn't sure I would do so when I began to write.
"His valet is a trained nurse, a repellent person, though competent,
with dull eyes and a face which looks as if it had petrified under his
skin, because his soul--if any--belongs to the Stone Age. The
creature's name happens to be Stone, too; and if he has any feeling it
is love of money. His master has been bribing him, it seems, to spy
upon me. While I was away from the house, at my mother's funeral, Stone
was searching the drawers of my desk in the octagon study I've told you
about, where I like to sit because it was my dearest one's favorite
room.
"I had never thought of hiding your letters. There was nothing in them
which needed to be hidden. Besides, it never occurred to me that cruel
suspicions and disgusting ideas of baseness were wriggling round me,
like little snakes that peep out from between the rough stones in a
ruined wall. There they all were, bound together in a packet, the kind,
brave letters that have been my salvation! Stone took them to his
master, who sent for me when I came home after the funeral.
"As soon as I saw him, I knew that something unusual had happened. He
flung his 'discovery' of the letters into my face. He told me that he
had burnt all but a few which he would keep to 'use' against me, and
tried to frighten me into promising never to write to 'this John
Sanbourne' again. Of course I gave no promise. Instead, I told him that
what he had done and said freed me from him forever. Then I went out of
the room and left him there, helpless on his sofa. For the first time I
felt no pity for him whatever--not so much as I should feel for a
crushed wasp who had stung me. I haven't seen him since. I don't intend
to see him again. But when I could get my thoughts in order after the
fire of fury had cooled a little, I wrote to him. I said that I was
sending for a lawyer, and would make some arrangement so that he should
want for nothing. I told him that he might stay at Gorston Old Hall as
long as he wished, but that I was going away almost immediately. Once
gone, I should never return while he was in the house. I have always
thought divorce very dreadful; but now I see how one's point of view
changes when one's own interest is at stake. If I could, I would
divorce this man, with whom my marriage has been a tragic farce. But I
have no case against him legally. I knew when I consented to call
myself his wife, that I should never be his wife really, and so, my
solicitor says, I could not even sue for nullity of marriage. It wasn't
I who thought of that. I don't remember having heard the term
mentioned, though perhaps I have, without noticing, when such things
seemed as far from my life as the earth from Mars. It was the lawyer
who brought up the subject, but added the instant after, that nothing
could be done, in the way of legal separation of any kind. He advised
me to send the man away from Gorston Old Hall, saying that I should be
more than justified. But I wouldn't agree to do that. For one thing, it
would be like physical cruelty to a wounded animal. For another
thing--even a stronger reason--the _temptation_ to send him away
was--and is--terribly strong.
"I could feel myself trying to justify the idea to my own soul, as if I
were pleading a case before a tribunal. I could hear myself argue that
it was unfair to let such a man enjoy the home of my Dearest, whom he
had already superseded too long. But I knew, deep within myself, that
my Dearest would be the very one of all others to say, 'Let him stay
on,' if he could come back and speak to us. In that same deep down,
hidden place, was the knowledge of my real reason for wanting the man
to go. To move him might easily break off the thread of his life.
_That_ was the temptation: to do a thing which might seem just to every
one who heard the circumstances, and to get rid of the intolerable
burden--to be absolutely free of it as I could be in no other way.
"Of my own self, I'm afraid I couldn't have resisted the temptation. I
should probably have thrown all responsibility on my solicitor, and let
him settle everything as he thought best. The strength to resist has
come through you, and what you have taught me. So it is that this man
who has insulted you, and burned your letters, owes his comforts and
perhaps his life itself, to you.
"There are many things which it is hard to forgive him, but I think the
hardest of all is the loss of the letters. To lose them is like losing
my talisman. But the ones he was keeping as a threat, I shall have
again. The solicitor says he will force the man to give them up.
"Now that my leaving this dear house is settled, the next question is,
What shall I do with my life, since my services as an untrained nurse
are no longer pledged here? Already, though only a few days have
passed, I've decided how to answer that question. I shall go into some
hospital as a probationer, and as soon as I am qualified, I shall offer
my services to the Red Cross. That may be sooner than with most
amateurs, for already I've learned almost as much about nursing as
hospital training of a year could have taught me. Wherever I'm sent,
I'm willing to go. But before I take up this new work, I have a plan to
carry out. Oh, how I wonder what you will say to it!
"Only a few weeks before she went out of the world, a cousin of my
father's left Mother some property in California, quite valuable
property, near Bakersfield. I don't know if you have ever been there,
but of course you've heard that it is a great oil country. There are
big wells on this property. If it had come to Mother earlier, she would
have been overjoyed, because it would have made all the difference
between skimping poverty and comparative riches. It came too late for
her, and for me it isn't very important, so far as the money is
concerned. There's another thing that makes it important, though. The
place is in California! It seems like mending a link in a broken chain,
to own land in dear California again.
"Mother always said she would hate to go back, but I never felt like
that. Now, it seems to be rather necessary for me to go--or to send
some one, to look into things which concern the property. We hear there
has been mismanagement--perhaps dishonesty. Of course I know nothing
about business myself, and should be of no use. But if I went to
California, I would engage some good lawyer on the spot, to take care
of my interests: and, _I could meet you_, my friend. That is, I could
if you were willing. Would you be? Would you welcome me if I came one
day to the gate of the little garden, and begged, 'Dear Hermit of the
Mirador, will you give a poor tired traveler lunch in your pergola?'
"You see now that the legacy is only an excuse. I confess it. I
shouldn't go to California just to straighten out things at the oil
fields--no, not even if I lost the property by not going. But to see my
friend who has given me back life, and love in the sweetness of memory
and hope of future usefulness, I would travel with joy across the whole
world instead of half.
"I know you refused to send your photograph, because I 'might be
disillusioned.' But I _couldn't_ be disillusioned, because there's no
illusion. Do I care what your looks may be? If you are ugly, I'm sure
it's a beautiful, brave ugliness. Anyhow, _I_ should think it so.
Please, therefore, don't put me off for any such reason as you gave
about the photograph. It isn't really worthy of you, or even of me. Let
us dare to be frank with each other. I've told you how much I want to
see you and what it would mean to me. In return you must tell me
whether you want me to come, or whether, because of some _real_ reason
(which you may or may not choose to explain) you wish me to stay away.
"When you get this, there will be only time to telegraph to--Yours ever
in unbreakable friendship, Barbara Denin."
PART III
BEYOND THE MILESTONES
CHAPTER XVI
There was a great wind wailing over the sea, on the day that Barbara's
letter was brought to Denin. The wind seemed to come from the four
corners of the earth, laden with all the stormy sorrow of the world
since men and women first loved and lost each other. The voice was old
as death and young as life, and the heartbreak of unending processions
of lovers was the message it brought to the Mirador garden. Denin knew
because he had heard through the fire-music of life, that there was
another voice and another message for those who would listen. He knew
that higher than tragedy rang the notes of endless triumph; that the
message of love went on forever beyond the break of the note of loss.
He knew the lesson he had so hardly taught himself and Barbara: that
happiness is stronger than sorrow, as all things positive are stronger
than all negative things. But the big truths of the universe were too
big for him that day. The thought that he might see Barbara, and yet
must not see her, shut out all the rest.
There had been, it seemed, only one honorable course open when he had
decided to sacrifice his place in life to save Barbara from scandal and
to let her keep her happiness. It was very different now. Her marriage
with Trevor d'Arcy had not been a marriage of love. It had been worse
than a failure. She had loved only one man, John Denin. Why not let her
come and find him?
But no, the trial would be too great. It would not be fair to put the
girl, still almost a child, to such a test. Her love for Denin had been
a delicate poem. He had died, and his memory was cherished in her
heart, as a rose of romance. There was no human passion in such a
gentle love, and only the strongest passion could pass through the
ordeal he proposed. She might hate him for his long silence, and blame
him for deceit. She would see herself disgraced in the eyes of the
world, and nothing that he could give would repay her for all that she
must lose. No love could be expected to stand such a test, much less
the love of a child for an ideal which had never, in truth, existed. It
would break her heart to fail, and break his to have her fail. The
memory of a meeting and a parting would be for him a second
death--death by torture. The temptation to let things take their course
was overcome. Indeed, he no longer felt it as a temptation;
nevertheless he suffered.
Some reason for putting her off must be alleged, but there was time to
think of that afterwards, between the telegram and letter which would
follow. The great thing was to prevent her from coming to the Mirador,
and finding out what a tragic tangle she had made of her life.
When he had sent the cable, and was at home again, Denin read once more
all of Barbara's closely written pages. At the end he kissed the dear
name with a kiss of mingled passion and renunciation.
"She'll think I have no more heart than a stone," he said to himself.
"Her friendship for Sanbourne will crumble to pieces." Ineffably he
longed to keep it--all that he had in life of sunshine. Yet he could
not see how to account for his refusal without lying, and without
appearing in her eyes cold as a block of marble. He looked at the
letter--which might be her last--as a man might look at a beloved face
about to be hidden in a coffin: and suddenly the date sprang to his
eyes.
For all his reading and re-reading he had not noticed it before. There
had been a delay. The letter had been several days longer than usual in
reaching him. What if she had grown tired of awaiting the asked-for
cable, and had chosen to take silence for consent?
The certainty that this was so seized upon Denin. He was suddenly as
sure that Barbara was on the way to him, as if he had just heard the
news of her starting. If, honestly and at the bottom of his heart he
wanted to save her a tragic awakening from dreams, he must leave
nothing to chance. He must be up and doing. It was not impossible, even
if she had waited four days for a cable, and started impulsively off on
the fifth, that she might walk in at the gate of the Mirador garden, a
week from that night, so Denin hastily calculated. How was he to be
gone before she came--if she did come--without humiliating the dear
visitor by seeming deliberately to avoid her? How could John
Sanbourne's absence be accounted for in some reasonable and impersonal
way, if Lady Denin arrived at Santa Barbara enquiring for him?
In his need of a pretext, he recalled the offer which he had laughed
at; Carl Pohlson Bradley's offer to buy the Mirador in its garden. The
man would snap at the chance to get his way so soon. In a few days the
business could be settled, and Sanbourne could be gone. But where? And
Denin sought anxiously to provide the "good reason" at which he had
hinted to Barbara, in his cable forbidding her to come.
Even if he had sold the Mirador before receiving his friend's letter,
he might have waited to see her. He could have stayed on in a hotel, if
the new owner of the place had been impatient. No, selling his house
was but one step of the journey. What should the next one be?
Almost instantly the solution of the whole difficulty presented itself
to his mind. A few days before, he had sent a subscription to a fund
for organizing a relief expedition to Serbia. The appeal had come to
John Sanbourne through his publisher. And even as he wrote his check,
he had thought, if it were not for the exquisite bond of friendship
which tied him to a fixed address--the address of the Mirador--how easy
it would be to give himself as well as his money, to the cause of
Serbia in distress. Not only doctors and nurses were wanted for the
expedition, but men of independent means, able to act as hospital
orderlies and in other ways.
Physically, Denin had not yet got back the full measure of his old
strength. After all these months, he would be of no use as a fighting
man. He limped after a hard walk; and often with a change of weather he
suffered sharp pain, as if his old wounds were new. But he could stand
a long journey, and surely he would be equal to the work of an orderly,
perhaps something better. If there were dangers to meet in Serbia, he
would welcome them, whatever they might be. To die would be to adjust
things as they could be adjusted in no other way. Since August 18,
1914, John Denin had had no right to live.
The more he thought of it, the wiser seemed the Serbian plan. With
Bradley's money, he could do five times more for the Red Cross fund
than he had hoped to do. What mattered the wrench of parting from the
Mirador? The only thing that really mattered, as before, was saving
Barbara from pain. She would not be hurt if she came and found him gone
on such an errand as this, for it was one which could not wait. Later,
she would understand even more clearly, for he would write a letter and
send it to Gorston Old Hall, where some servant would have been given a
forwarding address. Thus he need not quite lose his friend. She would
forgive his going away, and write to him in Serbia.
Denin calculated that Barbara could not have sailed from England until
at least five or six days after sending her letter to him. Probably she
would not have sailed so soon. Apparently, when writing, she had only
just made up her mind that Gorston Old Hall was unbearable. There would
have been many things to arrange, and business to settle with her
solicitor, friends to say good-by to. She could not possibly reach
Santa Barbara even if she traveled with the most unlikely haste, until
the end of the week. That she should arrive on Saturday would be almost
a miracle. It was Monday now, and Thursday might see him away from the
place where he had dreamed of passing all his days. Now that he had
thrown off the dream, he saw it a fantastic vision. As vigor of body
and mind came back to him, the boundaries of the Mirador garden would
soon, in any case, have become too narrow for his energies. He would
have found it necessary to shoulder some useful burden, and work with
the rest of the world. The hour had struck for him now, and John
Sanbourne had got his marching orders, as John Denin had got them long
ago.
He sent word to Bradley through his lawyer, that the Mirador was for
sale, after all. Next, he telegraphed to the leader of the Serbian
Relief Expedition, in New York, and asked if there was a place for him.
Because the name of John Sanbourne was known, an enthusiastic answer
came back with great promptness. This stirred Denin's heart, which,
despite his firm resolution, felt heavy and cold. He thought of Barbara
coming to the Mirador, only to find Mr. Bradley's workmen engaged in
tearing down the barrier between the big garden and the little one. But
now that his course of action was decided, he supplemented his first
cable to her with another. This was in case his "presentiment" were
wrong, and she had not started. He told her what his "good reason" was:
that he had sold the Mirador and was starting at once for Serbia.
Further explanations, he added, would be given when he wrote.
Never had a letter to Lady Denin been so difficult for John Sanbourne
to compose, for he could say only the things he least wished to say;
and so the result of his labor was, in the end, very short.
Nevertheless, it took hours to write.
The day after the sending of the letter was largely taken up by a visit
from Carl Pohlson Bradley and his man of business. Denin held the
millionaire to the last price named by himself, for he intended to use
the money largely for the benefit of the Serbian Red Cross. At last a
contract was signed, and the check paid into John Sanbourne's bank at
Santa Barbara. He had still all Wednesday and part of Thursday for
packing and disposing of his treasures. The task was easy, for the
treasures were few. He could "fold his tent like an Arab, and silently
steal away."
Denin did not expect ever to return to Santa Barbara. Having loved the
Mirador, and given it up, there was no longer anything tangible to call
him back. More likely than not, death which had come close to him in
France, would come closer still in Serbia. He would cast off his body
like an outworn cloak, and free of it, would knock once more at the
gate where, once, he had heard voices singing.
The one possession which Denin could not bear to give up, yet knew not
how to take, was the portrait of Barbara which he had made, and framed
in redwood. It was large, and the delicate tints of its pastels had to
be carefully protected. He could not possibly include it in his slender
"kit" for Serbia. At last he decided to pack frame and all with
precaution, carry the case to New York, and leave it in charge of
Eversedge Sibley. There would be time for a visit to Sibley before the
sailing of the expedition; and Denin would make his friend promise to
burn the wooden box unopened, if he died abroad.
Everything else, with the exception of some favorite books which could
be slipped into his luggage, he determined to give away. Gossip about
the sale of the Mirador, and Sanbourne's intended departure for Serbia,
ran like quicksilver, in all directions. The acquaintances he had
made--or rather acquaintances who had fastened upon him--began calling
to enquire if the news were true, and their question answered itself
before it was asked. The hermit of the Mirador and his faithful dumb
companion, a pipe, were surrounded with the aimless confusion of a
hasty flitting. Souvenirs of John Sanbourne had their value, but he did
not appear to know that. He offered his Lares and Penates recklessly,
to any one who would accept. The parson's daughter, to whom--all
unconsciously--he was an ideal hero, took away the pictures, copies of
those the child Barbara had loved. The parson himself got a valuable
contribution of books for his library. The furniture was given to a
young couple who had taken a bungalow not far off, and were getting it
ready with an eye to economy. Dishes and linen went the same way,
excepting a cup and saucer and teapot which were clamored for with
tears by an old lady for whom "The War Wedding" ranked with the Bible.
Denin had allowed no one to enter the balconied bedroom, for he had
left Barbara's portrait until the last minute, and no eyes but his were
to see that sacred thing. Once the picture was shut away and nailed up
between layers of cotton and wood, it might be that he should never
again be greeted by the dear, elusive smile. The furniture from
upstairs he had added to the confusion of the sitting-room below, and
early in the afternoon of Thursday everything had been carted away by
the new owners. To strip the house while Sanbourne was still in it
seemed heartless, they had protested; but he had begged them to do so.
Mr. Bradley was to claim possession of the place next day.
When all those who called themselves his friends had bidden him
good-by, a curious sense of peace, of pause between storms, fell upon
the departing hermit of the Mirador. Because the little house was
almost as empty and echoing as on the day when he had seen it first,
that day lived again very clearly in Denin's mind. He had sought a
refuge, and had found happiness. The spirit of Barbara had come to him
in the garden, and had brought him love. That love he was taking away
with him, though he had to leave behind much that was very sweet; and
now the time had come to say farewell to the memories of months. In
three hours the motor car was due, which Denin had ordered to take him
and his luggage to the station. The most important piece of that
luggage was Barbara's portrait, and it had still to be put into its
case. But he was leaving the farewell to her eyes, till the last
moment, the last second even.
Meanwhile he walked in the garden, and in the jeweled green tunnel of
the pergola. There, in the pergola, he had read most of Barbara's
letters, and answered them. He was glad that no one was ever likely to
stroll or sit in the corridor of illuminated tapestry after to-day.
Carl Pohlson Bradley intended to have the pergola pulled down, and the
whole place torn to pieces in order to carry out the grandiose scheme
of a "garden architect" whom he had employed.
After the arrival of Barbara's first letter, and the one in which she
confessed her love for the dead John Denin, his sweetest association
with the pergola was the companionship of a little child--only a dream
child, but more real, it seemed, than any living child could be. It was
the child-Barbara who had walked day after day, hand in hand with him
in the pergola. She had welcomed him to the Mirador when he had come as
its owner; but after a certain letter from England, she had changed in
a peculiarly thrilling way. The letter was among the first half dozen;
but in the growing packet, Denin kept it near the top. It was one of
those which he re-read oftenest. In it Barbara had said to her friend,
John Sanbourne, "If my dear love had lived, to make me his wife,
perhaps by this time we should have had a baby with us. I think often
of that little baby that might have been--so often, that I have made it
seem real. It is a great comfort to me. I can almost believe that its
_soul_ really does exist, and that it comes to console me because its
warm little body can never be held in my arms. I see the tiny face, and
the great eyes. They are dark gray, like its father's. And when mine
fill with tears, it lays little fingers on them, fingers cool and light
as rose petals. Oh, it _must_ exist, this baby soul, for it is so
loving, and it has such strong individuality of its own! I couldn't
spare it now. Already, since it first came and said, 'I am the child
who ought to be yours and his,' it seems to have grown. It is the
_realest_ thing! Its hair is darker and longer and curlier than it used
to be. Perhaps this baby will always stay with me, and I shall see it
grow into boyhood, then, at last, into manhood. It's wonderful to have
this dream-baby! Tell me, have you ever had one? I know you are alone
in life, for you have said so. But the more alone in life one was, the
dearer a dream-baby might be."
After that letter, which pierced Denin's heart and then poured balm
into the wound, the child-Barbara who haunted the Mirador had changed
for him, except in name; or rather another child-Barbara had come, not
a child of ten or twelve, but a baby thing with smoke-blue eyes and
little satin rings of ruddy hair. The elder Barbara did not go away,
but loved the baby as he did, helping him teach it how to walk, and
talk, and think.
He wrote to Lady Denin after that letter of hers: "Yes, I too have a
dream-child, but mine is a little girl. I hardly know how I got on
without her before she came."
"Thank Heaven for memory!" he said to himself now, as he took his last
look at the tunnel of greenery starred with passion-flowers. "After
all, does it so much matter whether we had a beloved thing one minute
ago, or ten years ago, if it lives always in our hearts? Each tick of
the watch turns the present into the past. But in our hearts there is
no past."
So he bade good-by to the pergola, and the garden he had made out of a
tangled wilderness. Then he turned towards the house; for in the house
he had to take leave of the portrait.
CHAPTER XVII
"I'll get out here, please!" said a woman in black, stopping the
automobile which had brought her from the railway station within sight
of the Fay place. She was tall and slender, and apparently young, but
her mourning veil was so thick that it lay like drifting coal-smoke
between her face and the curious stare of the chauffeur.
"It's a quarter of a mile to the gate yet. And I shan't charge any more
to take you right to it," he explained.
"I know--thank you!" his passenger said. "But I want to walk the rest
of the way."
She had a pretty way of speaking, though rather a foreign sort of
accent, he thought. Perhaps it was English. Her luggage had been left
at the station, so she was free to do as she pleased, if it amused her
to spoil her shoes with the white dust of the road. She paid the price
agreed upon, and a dollar over, which the chauffeur acknowledged with a
"Thank you, miss!" As he turned and drove away, however, he wondered if
he ought to have called her "miss." To be sure, she had the air of a
girl; but her manner was grave. He didn't know one sort of mourning
from another; but being a foreigner like as not she was one of them war
widows over there.
The tall young woman walked fast at first, as if she were in a hurry.
Through the dark fog of her veil she looked at everything, gazing at
each tree as if she recognized it, and at each flowering creeper that
flooded the wall of the "Fay place" with color. She passed the main
gateway, and went on without hesitation; but as she came near the small
gate of the Mirador garden, her pace slackened. She moved very slowly;
then fast again; and just outside the gate she stopped, the bosom of
her black dress rising and falling as if she were out of breath. It was
as though she were afraid to go in at the gate. But after a minute of
breathing hard she recovered herself, and opened it, almost
noiselessly.
The path on the other side was arched over with pepper trees. The woman
in black closed the gate and latched it very gently, almost tenderly. A
few berries, like beads of pink coral from a child's necklace, lay on
the old gold of the path. She tiptoed along to avoid treading on them.
Presently the path was interrupted by a short flight of old brick
steps, and at the top it went on again. In a moment the little pink
house was in sight, backed by a great jade-green olive tree, touched
with silver in the slanting light of afternoon. The garden was a lovely
riot of flowers. It looked sweet and welcoming, with an old-fashioned
welcome, but no one was there.
The woman's heart beat, then missed a beat. She threw back her veil,
and her face shone out white and beautiful as the moon shines suddenly
through a torn black cloud. It was the face of a girl, but the eyes
were the eyes of a woman. They wandered over the garden, then focussed
on the house. The open windows were curtainless. There were no chairs
under the balcony which gave a shady roof to the front door. Instead, a
few odds and ends of broken crockery and disorderly wisps of straw lay
scattered here and there. Despite the welcoming charm of the garden,
there was an air of desolation about the place, which struck at the
woman's heart. Hesitating no longer, she walked quickly up the path,
and paused only at the open door of the little pink house.
Even there she stopped only for a few seconds. The room inside was
stripped of furniture. There was no need to knock. The woman walked in
and looked through the door of the "parlor" into the kitchen where a
child had once cooked dinners for her dolls. It also was empty.
"Gone!" The word dropped from her lips. She did not know that she had
spoken until a whispering echo of emptiness answered. Suddenly she
realized that she was very tired, more tired than she had ever been in
her life before. She seemed to have come to the end of the world, and
to have found nothing there but a stone wall.
"Oh!" she said, and covered her face with her hands, shivering, though
the sun outside the deserted house was warm. When her hands fell, there
were no tears in her eyes, but they were like blind eyes yearning for
sight.
It seemed to her that the house was trying to tell the secret of what
had happened. Stripped as it was, she had the impression that it was
full of intelligence and kindness. She listened at the foot of the
stairs. Perhaps the owner of the house had not really gone yet. Perhaps
he was up there. Perhaps for some reason he had to leave this place,
but was waiting for Some One he expected. Surely that must be so!
Surely he would not go away, just at this time?
When she had listened, and heard nothing, she called his name, softly
at first, then more loudly. But there was no answer. If he were in the
room above, he must have heard. Oh, the poor little room with the
balcony, where a child had looked out over the garden, and played that
fairies lived in the olive trees!
The girl was slightly made and light of foot, but she went up the steep
steps heavily, like a weary woman who feels herself old, very old. The
door of the balconied bedroom was shut. Maybe, after all, he might not
have heard her call! She knocked, once, twice, then turned the knob and
timidly pushed open the door. She could see nothing inside the room but
a packing-case, with a wooden cover propped against it, and a box of
bright new nails beside it on the bare, tiled floor.
The intruder stepped over the threshold, and saw that, at the further
end of the room out of sight from the door, stood a small leather
portmanteau--pathetically small, somehow--and a still smaller suitcase.
He had not gone, then!--and she had no right to be here, in his room.
She turned hastily to go out, and facing the door--blown partly shut by
the breeze from an open window, she also faced a portrait framed in a
wonderful frame of ruddy, rippled wood, like the auburn hair of a
woman. The eyes of the portrait--smoke-blue eyes--looked straight into
hers. And as she looked back into them, it was like seeing herself in a
mirror, a mysterious mirror which refused to reflect her mourning
clothes, and gave her instead a white dress.
This was so strange a thing, that the girl could not believe she really
saw it. She thought that she must be asleep in the train, on the way to
Santa Barbara, and that in her eager impatience she had dreamed ahead.
This would explain the deserted house. She was only dreaming that she
had walked up the garden path, and had found her friend gone--gone to
avoid her. How _like_ a dream!--the strain to succeed, and then failure
and vague disappointment wherever one turned! How like a dream that her
portrait should be found hanging in a marvelous frame, in the house of
a man who had never seen her, never even had her description! She would
wake up presently, of course, and find herself shaking about in the
train. How glad, how glad she must be that this was a dream, because
when she did indeed come to the Mirador, there would be curtains and
furniture and pictures and books, such as John Sanbourne had written
about, and John Sanbourne himself would be there expecting her! Still,
it was astonishing that the dream went on and on being so vivid. She
could not wake up!
As she stared at the eyes of the portrait, hypnotized by them, a
stronger breeze slammed the door shut. Now she would surely wake!
Noises always waked one. They had no place in dreams. But no. The scene
remained the same, except that the handle of the door was being slowly
turned. Some one was opening it from the outside. The dream was to go
on, to another phase. The girl clasped her hands, and pressed them
against her breast. So she stood when the door opened wide, and a man,
stopped by the sight of her, stepped back in crossing the threshold.
"Barbara!"
The name sprang to Denin's lips, but he did not utter it.
He had meant to go away in time. He had tried to spare her this; yet he
had in his secret heart thought that, if she did come, it would be
heaven to see her. But now it was not so. There was one brief flash of
joy in her beauty; then horror of himself overpowered it. Her very
loveliness seemed to make his guilt more hateful--a lifetime of guilt!
He saw himself as the murderer of this girl's youth and happiness. It
seemed to him that no man had ever sinned as he had sinned. He had
crept away and hidden in the dark when she most needed him.
Defenseless, she had in all good faith married another man. And because
of his weakness she had sinned against the law. She had done a thing
which, if known, would ruin her life in the world she knew. It was his
fault, not hers, yet she had suffered for it, and now she would suffer
more than she had suffered yet. If she had thought she loved the dead
man, from this moment she would hate the living one, who had deceived
her.
Yet there was one hope. Perhaps he was even more changed than he had
supposed, and if he went away instantly without speaking, she might not
recognize him. He stepped back, on the impulse, but she held out her
hands, as he turned to go, and cried to him piteously.
"Oh, if you are a dream," she said, in a low, strange voice, "stay! I
beg of you to stay."
Still he did not speak. He could not, now. He waited.
"It's all a dream," she whispered. "I know that. Coming here--to the
empty house--finding my own picture--and then--then--when I looked for
John Sanbourne, seeing you--my love! O God, let me never wake up in
this world. If this could only be--what they call death!"
The word broke, to a sob, and she swayed towards him, deathly white.
Denin sprang forward, and caught her in his arms--his wife--the first
time he had ever held her so. Then, because he could think no longer,
but only feel, he kissed her on hair and eyes and lips, and strained
her to him with every worshiping name he had given her in his heart
since their wedding and parting day.
She lay so still against him, that it seemed she must have fainted; but
her eyes opened, drowned in his, as he kissed her on the lips. He saw
the blue glitter, as if two sapphires blocked his vision, and suddenly
his face was wet with Barbara's tears. "Have I died?" she whispered.
And the tears which were damp on his face were salt on his lips as he
whispered back, "No."
He remembered how he, too, had once thought himself dead, and then had
crept slowly back to life. He had seen Barbara then, as in a dream
within a dream. Now she, too, was passing through this experience. He
held her tight. He could not let her suffer as he had suffered when he
came back to life! Yet what could he do for her, after all? The sense
of his helplessness was heavy upon him.
"Forgive me," he said, "Barbara, darling! I never meant this to happen.
The first I heard of you--after--was that you'd married--your cousin. I
believed you loved him. I was in a German hospital--broken to
pieces--disfigured. I ought to have died, but somehow I couldn't die. I
had to live on. Later, I escaped. I came here--where _you_ had lived.
God knows, all through I tried to do for the best--your best. Nothing
else mattered. I wrote that book--for you, only for you! And you know
the rest. You turned my hell to heaven. I was--almost happy, except for
what you suffered. But I dared not have you come here. I cabled. I was
going away--"
She pressed her head back against his shoulder, and looked up at him.
"You were going--" The words burst from her on a high note of sharp
reproach, but she caught them back with a sigh of joy. "You didn't go!"
she breathed. "God wouldn't have let you go. He put it in my heart to
leave England the day after I wrote. Ah, we're not dreaming, and we're
not dead! We're alive, and we love each other better than all the
world. I know now that you do love me, or you couldn't hold me and kiss
me so. You couldn't have made such a sacrifice--the sacrifice of your
very life and self for me. It was like you--like you! The mistake was
my fault, not yours. But I'll make up to you for it all, and you will
make up to me. We'll never part for an hour again."
"You don't know what you're saying, Barbara," he reminded her. "John
Denin's dead. We can't bring him back to life. Too many interests are
involved, yours first of all, but others, too. It would be selfish and
cruel for me to take you so--"
"You don't take me," she said. "I give myself, I give myself to John
Sanbourne, as I gave myself to John Denin."
"But we'll be poor," he told her. "John Denin's money can't come to
us--"
"I have enough of my own now. And if I hadn't, I'd beg with you. We
could be tramps together."
Denin laughed out joyously, almost roughly, and clasped her tight. "It
won't come to that, my darling! Perhaps I can write another book. Yes,
I can! It shall be called 'The Honeymoon.'"
"Let us go away somewhere," Barbara implored, "where nobody will know
us, and we can love each other in peace till we die: for we belong to
one another in God's sight and our own. Yes, till we die. And
afterwards--afterwards! Oh, you have taught me that!"
"I have pledged myself to go to Serbia," Denin said.
"Then I'll go to Serbia with you, that's all! What does it matter
where?"
"And the world--and Gorston Old Hall?" he heard himself asking.
"Neither do they matter. Nothing matters but you. And God will
understand--because I am _your_ wife, and belong to no one else, or
ever, ever did."
"You are right," Denin answered, holding her very close. "God will
understand. You're mine, and I'm yours, and nothing shall part us
again."
The portrait with the smoke-blue eyes smiled at them from the door.
They saw only each other: but the eyes in the picture Denin had painted
seemed to see beyond the place where the milestones end.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Where the Path Breaks, by Charles de Crespigny