“P. S. You will think I am very old-fashioned and early Victorian about my postscripts, and I suppose I am, though I don’t remember tacking many onto other letters, only those to you. This one is just a thought put into my head by some of the last things you said. It is about the war, and it came to me in the garden on August 18th.
“In a world war like this, with all its anguish, can it be meant for the nations, each one that suffers and strives, to develop by and by a new individuality, a great unselfish, selfless Self? Can it be that the Power behind the worlds throws this one now into the furnace because development must come for progress’ sake? When the earth was first created, every least thing that lived fought for itself, and there was no holding together in a large way, anywhere. When civilizations came, they brought no real improvement, for politics and greed divided nations against themselves as well as against each other. Is the true excuse for creation unity, with all the experience of ages to give it value? If it is so, and if each nation can attain to unity through sacrifice and heroism, won’t the next thing to follow be the unity of the whole world? Can this be coming to pass, slowly yet surely, not only with our grain of sand, but with all the worlds, while the Power who created watches through the cosmic days you spoke of? It would make one’s own tears of sorrow seem small, if one could believe this; and yet if we did not grudge the tears, they might count as pearls, poured into a golden cup, to brim it full of jewels worthy of God’s acceptance.
“Perhaps this isn’t much of a thought. But such as it is, there has been light in it for me, on dark days. And as I owe it to you, I felt I should like to tell you about it. It is going to make me realize more than I could before, the brotherhood of all men in war time, even the ones we call the enemy. Why, I used to be stupid and unseeing as a mole! I hardly thought about common people, pasty-faced waiters and weedy under-gardeners and grocer’s boys, as men at all. Now, out of every town and village they are marching with their faces turned to the front, brave and smiling. They are as glorious soldiers as any, and I pray for them as I would pray for my own brothers. Is that a step for me towards the great unity? I wonder—and hope.
“You see, I begin to warm myself at the fire your friendship has kindled. Each letter you write will be a fresh log piled on to feed the flame.”
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.