Where the Path Breaks

by C. N. Williamson; A. M. Williamson

He remembered the old fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast, and how the Beast lay down despairingly, to die in his garden, because Beauty, who had made his life bearable, even happy, went away voluntarily and for a long time forgot her promise to come back.

The Mirador garden lost something of its old spell for Denin. A glowworm which had come to live at the end of the pergola, and evidently believed in itself as a permanent family pet, was no longer an intelligent and charming companion. He had valued it only, he saw now, because he had meant to amuse Barbara by describing it to her, as his newest friend. On nights when letters from her had come, all the passion and romance of the world since its beginning had streamed along the sea to his eyes, by the path of the moon. But now the white light had a hard, steely radiance that dazzled his eyes.

While the link held between him and Barbara, it had been easy for Denin to feel kinship with nature, with the world and worlds beyond. His mind had traveled hand in hand with hers over the whole earth and on, on to unknown immensities, as rings from a dropped stone spread endlessly on the surface of water.

Expecting answers from Barbara, he had had an incentive to live, and had looked eagerly forward to each new day, as to opening the door of a room he had never seen before, a room full of beautiful things, made ready for him alone. Now, when day after day passed, bringing no word from her, the rooms of the House of the Future were empty.

He had advised her, when she needed counsel, to look and listen inside herself, for a voice. But now, no such voice spoke to him, except to say, “You have been a fool. You must unconsciously have expressed yourself in some blundering way that disgusted her, broke the statue she’d set up on a pedestal. She is ‘disillusioned’ indeed!”

A week dragged itself on into a fortnight after the day when Barbara’s answer ought to have come. Still Denin had done nothing but wait, because it appeared to him that no explanation of his seeming ungraciousness was possible. If Barbara did not want him any more, he could not make her want him.

Had he not loved her so much, he might have thought her silence due to illness; but he was sure that he should know if she were ill. She had let him walk into the home of her soul and its secret garden of thought; she had offered him the flowers of her childhood and girlhood which no one else had ever seen; and if a blight had fallen upon her body, he was so near that he would feel the chill of it in his own blood. No, he told himself, Barbara was not ill. She had shut herself away from him, that was all; and the very nature of his relationship with her forbade his claiming anything which she did not wish to give.

He lost all hope of hearing again, at the end of a month, yet would not let himself accuse her of injustice. Had she not a right to drop him if she chose? He had no cause for complaining. He had received from the “tankard of love” those two drafts which are said to recompense a man for the pains of a lifetime, and he could expect no more. Yet he seemed always to be listening, as if for some sound to come to him through space, or even the faint echo of a sound, like the murmur in a bell after it has ceased to chime.

One day, when five weeks lay between him and hope, a telegram was brought to the Mirador. Denin opened it indifferently, for his publisher often wired to him when a new edition of “The War Wedding” came out, or if anything of special interest happened in connection with the book. But this time the message was from England. It was unsigned, yet he knew that it was from Barbara. She said, “My mother has been at death’s door for many weeks. Now she is gone. I am writing.”

“Thank God!” Denin heard himself gasp, and then was struck with remorse for his hard-heartedness. He had thanked God because Barbara had not taken herself away from him, and in the rush of joy had forgotten what it would mean for her to be without her mother.