Where the Path Breaks
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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