“Well, then,” he said, “if ever I change my mind I’ll send you word. We’ll let it stand at that.”
With a reluctance pathetic in a man so large and yellow, Bradley saw himself forced for the present to swallow the humble author’s dictum. His jaundiced eyes traveled over the little pink house, with its balcony shaded by pepper trees, over the garden which he had called a “corner lot,” and over the simple pergola which for its owner was a “corridor of illuminated tapestry.” It seemed to Denin that the man could have burst out crying, like a spoiled child suddenly thwarted.
“I think you’re da— mighty foolish!” Bradley amended, remembering the need to be conciliatory. “But I’m sure you’ll think better of it. I’m sure you will change your mind. I only hope for your sake I won’t have changed mine when that time comes!”
On that he made a dramatic exit, with a mixture of stride and waddle suited to one who felt that he had had the last word.
When he had gone, Denin finished his letter and forgot all about Mr. Carl Pohlson Bradley. Also he forgot about luncheon. But that did not matter, for his meals were movable feasts. He had them, or did not have them, according to his mood, like the hermit he was becoming. Mr. Bradley, however, he was forced to remember at short intervals, nearly every day, while he lived through the time of waiting for the letter promised in Barbara’s cable. “Changed your mind yet?” the new owner of the “Fay place” would yell from his huge automobile, spraying dust over John Sanbourne on the white road to Santa Barbara. Or he would prowl, grumbling, on the other side of the flower-draped barrier which separated the Mirador garden from his newly acquired property. At last he sent a lawyer to his irritating neighbor with a definite offer of twenty thousand, five hundred dollars—just temptingly over the price Sanbourne had said that he would not take. But Denin answered, “The Mirador is my ewe lamb.”
“When my mother was taken so desperately ill,” Barbara wrote, “every moment had to be for her, except those I could spare now and then for the other invalid. I wanted to wire you; but to do that seemed to be conceited, as if I took your personal interest in me very much for granted. I knew you would be too kind to laugh at anything I did; but perhaps, in spite of yourself, the idea might flash through your mind, ‘Poor thing, she telegraphs because she has no time to write. She must think I value her letters a lot!’ This was just after you had said that you wouldn’t send me your photograph, you may remember. But no, why should you remember? You will recall it now, though, when I bring it up to you again. And if you do, please don’t think I was foolish and small enough to be offended or piqued. I wasn’t—oh, not for a moment. I was only disappointed and a little—let down, if you know what I mean. I felt as if I had been taking a liberty with the best and kindest friend a girl or woman ever had, and laying myself open to be misunderstood. I felt, if I followed up that request by cabling to you that you mustn’t expect letters for some time, it would be another blunder. But oh, how I missed my friend!
“Two letters from you came to me, after I had been obliged to stop writing, but because I’d been able to send none, nothing seemed right. I felt as if I had lost hold upon you. I groped for you in the darkness, but because I had dropped your hand, I was punished by not finding it again.
“Mother suffered so much that I could not wish to keep her. For two days and nights after she went, I lay in a kind of stupor. You see, I hadn’t slept more than an hour out of the twenty-four, for weeks, so I suppose I had to make up somehow, or break. I was hardly conscious at all, and they let me lie without rousing me up to eat or drink. But at last I waked of my own accord, out of a dream, it must have been, though I don’t remember the dream. I remember only that I thought you were calling me, though the voice sounded like his. Immediately after, I seemed to hear the words, ‘John Sanbourne believes you’ve stopped writing to him because you were vexed at his refusal of the photograph.’ I started up, tingling all over with shame, for I saw that it might easily be true. I didn’t go to sleep again. I asked for a telegraph form, and sent the cable to you which I know you received next day, because of the date of your answer.
“I beg of you not to take your friendship away from me. I shall need it more than ever now, if possible, because my mother is gone. I don’t feel that she will come back to me in spirit, because she was unhappy here, and at the end was glad to go. She loved me, I’m sure, but not in the way which makes one spirit indispensable to the other. I think after the war gloom of this world, and her own pain, she will want to be very quiet and peaceful for a while in beautiful surroundings, where she can feel young and gay again, and not trouble herself to remember that she was the mother of a grown-up, sad woman down on earth. I want her spirit to be happy in its own way, so I’m not even going to try and call her to me.