A. M. Williamson

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I heard other people talking of these things when I went where the milestones end. Since then I’ve wondered why I didn’t know the things before. Listen to your hopes, and you can know without waiting; because hope is the voice of instinctive knowledge, and soul-instinct is what we were born knowing. Believe this, and you won’t have to stumble slowly up, as I did, with a hod full of old precepts on my back. You can plane down from the sky with your arms full of stars, and live with them, as I live with the flowers in my garden. ”

“ She had loved the man so passionately that she had given herself to him after only eight months of widowhood. If he had heard this thing of a woman other than Barbara, Denin would have been revolted. It could only have looked like an almost defiant admission that there was no love in the first marriage—nothing but interest. He could not, would not, however, think that Barbara’s act was a proof of hardness. Lying on his bed, with his face to the blank white wall, he began to make desperate excuses for the girl. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Without being sentimental, it’s full of that kind of indescribable sentiment which goes straight to the heart. It will be a short book, only about fifty thousand words, or even less; but that doesn’t matter, because a word added or a word left out would make a false note. The thing’s an inspiration. You’ve got a big success before you. You ought to be a happy man, Mr. Sanbourne.”
“You make me feel as if I were in a dream,” said Denin.
“That’s the way your story has made me feel,” said Sibley. “Really, your method has an extraordinary effect. ”

“ The girl had been born near Santa Barbara, and had grown up there to the age of thirteen, when her father had died and their place had been sold. After that, the mother and daughter had gone to Paris. Denin recalled with crystal clearness all the girl’s warm, eager picturing of her old home, for he remembered scenery and even descriptions of scenery with greater distinctness than he remembered faces. He had often thought (until he met Barbara, and fell in love) that he cared more for nature and places and things than he could ever care for people, except those of his very own flesh and blood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He had longed, in writing the story of “The War Wedding,” to show Barbara why even that mild grief was not needed, because in giving great joy to another soul a woman earned the right to her own happiness. Denin could not bear to think that pity for him might shadow Barbara’s sunshine, but he had not dreamed until to-day that the shadow could be dark. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the man in the German hospital did not die. He could not, unless he put an end to his own life, and to do that had always seemed to Denin an act of cowardice and weakness. He remembered reading as a boy, how Plato said that men were “prisoners of the gods” and had no right to run away from fate. For some reason those words had made a deep imprint upon his mind at the time, and the impression remained. His soul dwelt in his body as a prisoner of the gods, a prisoner on parole. ”

“ Denin felt dazed among his fellow emigrants, all of whom were of a different class in life from his, and all of whom seemed to have something definite to expect, something which filled them with excitement or perhaps hope, making them talk fast, and laugh as the immense buildings of New York loomed picturesquely out of the silver mist. ”

“ Denin told himself savagely that it would be brutal to blame the girl. She had a right to love and joy, and she should have both, unspoiled. He would be damned sooner than snatch happiness from Barbara, and drag her through the dust of shame, a woman claimed as wife by two men.
“This decides things for me, then, forever and 49ever,” he thought, a strange quietness settling down upon him, like a cloud in which a man is lost on a mountain-top. “She’s free as light. John Denin died last August in France.” ”

“ He was too full-fleshed for that: a big, low-browed, thick-lipped man of thirty-six or seven, who would think a great deal of himself and his own pleasure. Evidently he had changed since the days when he was the ideal hero of a sixteen-year-old girl. Denin, scarred and wrecked, a bit of human driftwood, was dimly shocked at the mean pleasure had in this thought. Barbara—wife or widow—was unlikely to feel her old love rekindle at sight of her cousin, and Denin was glad—glad. Barbara was not a girl to fall in love easily. ”

“ Generations of joys and sorrows had come and gone since the tree was young, and had vanished, leaving no more trace than sun or storm. So it would be with what he was suffering now. The things that mattered in the life of this earth were strength and steadfastness. Denin prayed for them, a voiceless prayer to Nature.
When he grew calmer he walked again, and lifted up his face to the sun. “I’ll answer her letter,” he thought. It seemed strange to him now, after the shock of what had happened, that when the letters began to come, he had never imagined himself receiving one from Barbara. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
273“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.” ”

“ The whole thing suggested poverty and the meager condition of a steerage passenger. But this squalor, which in most circumstances would have caused Sibley to fling down the stuff in fastidious disgust, sent a thrill through him. No ordinary man with ordinary things to say could have had the courage to struggle through such difficulties, to any desired end. The longing to tell this story, whatever it was, must have been strong in the man’s soul as the urge of travail in the body of a woman. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sick man thought for a moment, and the question went echoing through his brain as a voice calling one who is absent echoes through a deserted house. Knowledge of his helplessness brought a sense of physical disintegration, as if the marrow of his bones was melting.
“Never mind!” the shock-headed surgeon said, in a quiet, reassuring tone. “It’s all right. You’ll remember by and by, when you’re stronger. Don’t worry about yourself. ”

“ Every night for months I’ve gone to bed unable to sleep, because I’ve felt exactly as if my brain 111were a battlefield, full of the agony and hopelessness of brave men dying violent and dreadful deaths, cut off in the midst of youth, with the stories of their lives tragically unfinished. But since I read in your book that marvelous scene with those suddenly released spirits—young men of both sides, friends and enemies, meeting and talking to each other, saying, ‘Is this all?’ ‘Is this the worst that death can do to us?’ why, I seem to pass beyond the battlefield! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If I read them rightly, I’ve told you only an old, old truth in saying that there should be no such word as death, or grief for it among the living. We’ve only to lift the veil of Death to see the face of Life—a wonderful, shining face with no pain in its smile. ”

“ 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 259now, 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.” ”