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.