Where the Path Breaks

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

In his need of a pretext, he recalled the offer which he had laughed at; Carl Pohlson Bradley’s offer to buy the Mirador in its garden. The man would snap at the chance to get his way so soon. In a few days the business could be settled, and Sanbourne could be gone. But where? And Denin sought anxiously to provide the “good reason” at which he had hinted to Barbara, in his cable forbidding her to come.

Even if he had sold the Mirador before receiving his friend’s letter, he might have waited to see her. He could have stayed on in a hotel, if the new owner of the place had been impatient. No, selling his house was but one step of the journey. What should the next one be?

Almost instantly the solution of the whole difficulty presented itself to his mind. A few days before, he had sent a subscription to a fund for organizing a relief expedition to Serbia. The appeal had come to John Sanbourne through his publisher. And even as he wrote his check, he had thought, if it were not for the exquisite bond of friendship which tied him to a fixed address—the address of the Mirador—how easy it would be to give himself as well as his money, to the cause of Serbia in distress. Not only doctors and nurses were wanted for the expedition, but men of independent means, able to act as hospital orderlies and in other ways.

Physically, Denin had not yet got back the full measure of his old strength. After all these months, he would be of no use as a fighting man. He limped after a hard walk; and often with a change of weather he suffered sharp pain, as if his old wounds were new. But he could stand a long journey, and surely he would be equal to the work of an orderly, perhaps something better. If there were dangers to meet in Serbia, he would welcome them, whatever they might be. To die would be to adjust things as they could be adjusted in no other way. Since August 18, 1914, John Denin had had no right to live.

The more he thought of it, the wiser seemed the Serbian plan. With Bradley’s money, he could do five times more for the Red Cross fund than he had hoped to do. What mattered the wrench of parting from the Mirador? The only thing that really mattered, as before, was saving Barbara from pain. She would not be hurt if she came and found him gone on such an errand as this, for it was one which could not wait. Later, she would understand even more clearly, for he would write a letter and send it to Gorston Old Hall, where some servant would have been given a forwarding address. Thus he need not quite lose his friend. She would forgive his going away, and write to him in Serbia.

Denin calculated that Barbara could not have sailed from England until at least five or six days after sending her letter to him. Probably she would not have sailed so soon. Apparently, when writing, she had only just made up her mind that Gorston Old Hall was unbearable. There would have been many things to arrange, and business to settle with her solicitor, friends to say good-by to. She could not possibly reach Santa Barbara even if she traveled with the most unlikely haste, until the end of the week. That she should arrive on Saturday would be almost a miracle. It was Monday now, and Thursday might see him away from the place where he had dreamed of passing all his days. Now that he had thrown off the dream, he saw it a fantastic vision. As vigor of body and mind came back to him, the boundaries of the Mirador garden would soon, in any case, have become too narrow for his energies. He would have found it necessary to shoulder some useful burden, and work with the rest of the world. The hour had struck for him now, and John Sanbourne had got his marching orders, as John Denin had got them long ago.

He sent word to Bradley through his lawyer, that the Mirador was for sale, after all. Next, he telegraphed to the leader of the Serbian Relief Expedition, in New York, and asked if there was a place for him. Because the name of John Sanbourne was known, an enthusiastic answer came back with great promptness. This stirred Denin’s heart, which, despite his firm resolution, felt heavy and cold. He thought of Barbara coming to the Mirador, only to find Mr. Bradley’s workmen engaged in tearing down the barrier between the big garden and the little one. But now that his course of action was decided, he supplemented his first cable to her with another. This was in case his “presentiment” were wrong, and she had not started. He told her what his “good reason” was: that he had sold the Mirador and was starting at once for Serbia. Further explanations, he added, would be given when he wrote.

Never had a letter to Lady Denin been so difficult for John Sanbourne to compose, for he could say only the things he least wished to say; and so the result of his labor was, in the end, very short. Nevertheless, it took hours to write.

The day after the sending of the letter was largely taken up by a visit from Carl Pohlson Bradley and his man of business. Denin held the millionaire to the last price named by himself, for he intended to use the money largely for the benefit of the Serbian Red Cross. At last a contract was signed, and the check paid into John Sanbourne’s bank at Santa Barbara. He had still all Wednesday and part of Thursday for packing and disposing of his treasures. The task was easy, for the treasures were few. He could “fold his tent like an Arab, and silently steal away.”

Denin did not expect ever to return to Santa Barbara. Having loved the Mirador, and given it up, there was no longer anything tangible to call him back. More likely than not, death which had come close to him in France, would come closer still in Serbia. He would cast off his body like an outworn cloak, and free of it, would knock once more at the gate where, once, he had heard voices singing.