Where the Path Breaks

“What about Denin?”

“Oh, you didn’t know him, then? Why should you? I didn’t myself, but he belonged to one or two clubs with my brother Bob. I may have seen him myself. Awfully fine chap. Everybody liked him, though he was close as a clam – no talker. Came into a ripping place and piles of oof a few years ago. Not much on looks, though he was an A1 sportsman and athlete. Girls thought him a big catch. I’ve heard plenty say so. Well, he married an American girl, a beauty, the day he left for the front, and about a fortnight later she was a widow with everything he had, made over to her. That wasn’t much above eight months ago. But the day Evie and I were tied up, the first of last week, Lady Denin married her cousin, d’Arcy of the – th Gurkhas. Quick work – what? No heartbreak there!”

As there came no answer, Severne supposed that his visitor felt no interest in this bit of gossip apropos of war widows. He glanced up from his hard, flat pillow at the other man, and saw what he took for a far-away look on the scarred face. To change the subject to one more congenial, the aviator began to chat of things at the front; but almost instantly the English-speaking nurse intervened. The two invalids had talked long enough. Both must rest. They could see each other again next day.

Without any protest, and scarcely saying good-by, Denin dragged himself back to his own part of the ward. “‘Nobody home!’ The poor fellow looks as if he wasn’t all there yet.” Severne excused the seeming rudeness of the nameless one.

Denin had not had his full hour of freedom from bed, but he declared that he was tired and that his head ached, so he was allowed to lie down. He turned his face to the wall, and appeared to sleep, but never had he been more vividly awake.

His plan had fallen into ruin with one bewildering crash. The corner-stone had been torn out from the foundation. His duty – or what he had seen as his duty – was changed. After all, Barbara had not been disappointed in her cousin. She had found him her “knight and her hero” as of old. She had loved the man so passionately that she had given herself to him after only eight months of widowhood. If he had heard this thing of a woman other than Barbara, Denin would have been revolted. It could only have looked like an almost defiant admission that there was no love in the first marriage – nothing but interest. He could not, would not, however, think that Barbara’s act was a proof of hardness. Lying on his bed, with his face to the blank white wall, he began to make desperate excuses for the girl.

She had married him by special license at three days’ notice eight months ago, hurried into a decision by his love, and perhaps the glamour of war’s red light. Her mother, too, had given her no peace until she made up her mind. For the hundredth time he assured himself of that fact. And as for the well-nigh indecent haste of the second wedding; why, after all, was it so much worse than the first?

Her marriage with him, John Denin, had been a marriage only in name. She was left a girl, with no memories of wifehood. No doubt this new giving of herself had been another “war wedding.” Trevor d’Arcy in his picture looked like a man who would do his best to seize whatever he wanted. He had of course been going away, perhaps after being wounded and nursed by Barbara. It would be natural, very natural, for her to feel that she would be happier when d’Arcy was at the front, if they belonged to each other. Denin told himself savagely that it would be brutal to blame the girl. She had a right to love and joy, and she should have both, unspoiled. He would be damned sooner than snatch happiness from Barbara, and drag her through the dust of shame, a woman claimed as wife by two men.

“This decides things for me, then, forever and ever,” he thought, a strange quietness settling down upon him, like a cloud in which a man is lost on a mountain-top. “She’s free as light. John Denin died last August in France.”

CHAPTER IV

But the man in the German hospital did not die. He could not, unless he put an end to his own life, and to do that had always seemed to Denin an act of cowardice and weakness. He remembered reading as a boy, how Plato said that men were “prisoners of the gods” and had no right to run away from fate. For some reason those words had made a deep imprint upon his mind at the time, and the impression remained. His soul dwelt in his body as a prisoner of the gods, a prisoner on parole.

Life – mere physical life – rose again in his veins as the days went on, rose in a strong current, as the sap rises in trees when winter changes to spring. He was discharged from the hospital as cured, and interned in a concentration camp in Germany not far from the Dutch frontier. Though he had given his parole to the gods, he would not give it to the Germans. He meant to escape some day if he could. He limped heavily, and had not got back the full strength of his once shattered right hand, so there was no hope of returning to fight under a new name. Had there been a chance of that, he would have wished to join the French Foreign Legion, where a man can be of use as a soldier, while lost to the world. As it was, he made no definite plans, but set about earning money in order not to be penniless if the day ever came when he could snatch at freedom.

He had always had a marked talent for quick character-sketches and a bold kind of portraiture. He could catch a likeness in a moment. With charcoal he dashed off caricatures of his fellow prisoners, on the whitewashed wall of the room which he shared with several British soldiers. The striking cleverness of the sketcher was noticed by the man in charge who spoke to some one higher in authority; and officers came to gaze gravely at the curious works of art. Denin had rechristened himself by this time “John Sanbourne.” Sanbourne seemed to him an appropriate name for one without an aim in life, and as for “John,” without that standby he would have felt like a man who has thrown away his clothes. Sanbourne’s charcoal sketches, therefore, began to be talked about; and officers brought him paper and colored chalks, bargaining with him for a few German war notes, to take their portraits. By the end of May he had saved up two hundred marks, accumulated in this way, charging from five to twenty marks for a sketch, according to size and detailed magnificence of uniform.

Not having given his parole, he was carefully watched at first, but as time went on his lameness, his exemplary conduct, and air of stoical resignation deceived his guards. One dark night he slipped away, contrived to pass the frontier, bribed a Dutch fisherman to sell him clothing, and after a week of starvation and hardship limped boldly into Rotterdam. There he parted with the remainder of his earnings (save a few marks) for a third-class ticket to New York, trusting to luck that he might earn money on board as he had earned money in camp, enough at least to be admitted as an emigrant into the United States. Those few marks which he kept, he invested in artist’s materials, and on shipboard soon made himself something of a celebrity in a small way. He was nicknamed “the steerage Sargent,” and with an hour or two of work every day put together nearly sixty American dollars during the voyage. That sum satisfied him. He refused further commissions, for a great new obsession dominated his whole being, preoccupying every thought. Absorbed in it, he found his portrait-making exasperating work. Something within him that he did not understand but was forced to obey, commanded the writing of a book – the book, not of his life or of his outside experiences, but of his heart.

He had no idea of publishing this book after it was written. Indeed, at the beginning, such an idea would have been abhorrent to him. It would have been much like profaning a sanctuary. But there were thoughts which seemed to be in his soul, rather than in his brain, so intimate a part of himself were they; and these thoughts beat with strong wings against the barrier of silence, like fierce wild birds against the bars of a cage.

So ignorant was John Denin of book-writing that he did not know at all how long it would take to put on paper what he felt he had to give forth. He knew only that he must say what was in him to say; and every moment when he was not writing he chafed to get back to his book again. Indeed, it was but his body which parted from the manuscript even when he ate, or walked, or slept. His real self was writing on and on, every instant, after he had gone to bed, and most of all, while he dreamed. The idea for the book, when it sprang into his mind, was full-grown as Minerva born from the brain of Jove. Denin felt as if he were a sculptor who sees his statue buried deep in a marble block, and has but to hew away the stone to set the image free. He got up each morning at dawn, bathed, dressed hurriedly, and worked till breakfast time, when a cup of tea and a piece of bread were all he wanted or felt he had time to take. Then, in some out-of-the-way, uncomfortable corner where his fellow travelers of the steerage were not likely to interrupt him, he wrote on often till evening, without stopping to eat at noon. He used ship’s stationery begged from the second class, sheets off his own drawing pads, and small blank books that happened to be for sale in the wonderful collection of things ships’ barbers always have. Sometimes he scribbled fast with one pencil after another: sometimes he scratched painfully along with a bad pen. But nothing mattered, if he could write. And nothing disturbed him; no noise of yelling laughter, no shouting game, no crying of babies, nor blowing of bugles.

“When that chap’s got his nose to his paper, he wouldn’t hear Gabriel’s trump,” one man said of him to another. Everybody asked everybody else what he was doing when he suddenly stopped his traffic of portraits; but nobody dared put such a question to him. Some people guessed that he was a journalist in disguise, who had been in the war-zone, and was working against time to get his experiences onto paper before the ship docked at New York. But, as a matter of fact, it did not occur to Denin to wonder when he should finish until, suddenly and to his own surprise, the strange story he had been writing – if it could be called a story – came to its inevitable climax. His message was finished. There was no more that he wished to say.

This was at twelve o’clock one night, and the next morning at six the ship passed the Statue of Liberty.

Denin felt dazed among his fellow emigrants, all of whom were of a different class in life from his, and all of whom seemed to have something definite to expect, something which filled them with excitement or perhaps hope, making them talk fast, and laugh as the immense buildings of New York loomed picturesquely out of the silver mist.

“Othello’s occupation’s gone,” he found himself muttering as he leaned on the rail, a lonely figure among those who had picked up friendships on the voyage. He realized that he had been almost happy while he was writing his story. Now that it was finished and had to be put aside, he had nothing to look forward to. He was indeed sans bourne.

What the other steerage passengers did on landing, he did also. Vaguely it appealed to his sense of humor (which had slept of late) that he, Sir John Denin, should have his tongue looked at and questions put to him concerning his means, character, and purpose in coming from Europe to the United States. He went through the ordeal with good nature, and passed doctors and inspectors without difficulty. When he was free, he joined a couple of elderly Belgians to whom he had talked on shipboard, and with them set forth in search of a cheap lodging-house, where he might stay until he made up his mind what work he was fit to try for, and do. He was a poor man now, and could not afford to live in idleness for more than a few days. He realized this, also that a “job” of any kind was hard to get, and doubly hard for him since he was not trained for clerical work or strong enough at the moment to undertake manual labor. Still, he could not resist the intense desire he had to shut himself up and read the book which, when he thought of it, seemed to have written itself. He had always gone on and on, never stopping to glance back or correct; and he had a queer feeling that the story would be a revelation to him, that help and comfort and strength would come to him from its pages.

The Belgians remained in the lodging-house only long enough to unpack a few things. They then went out together to see New York, and visit an agency which had been recommended to them. But Denin shut himself up as he had longed impatiently to do, in the tiny back room he had engaged, on the top floor of a dreary house. There he took from the cheap bag bought in Rotterdam – his one piece of luggage – the oddly assorted pages of manuscript which made up a thick packet. With the moment that he began to read, the stained walls and the dirty window with a fire-escape outside vanished as if some genie had rubbed a lamp.

The story was of a soldier and his love for a girl who did not greatly care for him. She married him rather than send him away empty-hearted to the front, cold with disappointment, when it was in her power to arm him with happiness. They parted on the day of the wedding. The soldier went to France and was killed in his first fight. The girl grieved because it had not been possible to love the man with her whole heart, and because he had had no time (so she believed) to taste the joy she had sacrificed herself to give. But the man, going into battle and afterwards dying on the battlefield, was divinely happy and content. He saw clearly that his love for her had been the great thing in his life, its crown and its completion; that the thought of her as his wife was worth being born for; that it made death only a night full of stars with a promise of sunrise. The story did not end with the ending of the soldier’s life. The part before his death was no more than a prelude. The real story was of the power of love upon the spirit of a man after his passing, and his wish that the adored woman left behind might know the vital influence of a few hours’ happiness in shaping a soul to face eternity. The book was supposed to be written in the first person, by the man, and was in four parts. The first told of the courtship and marrying; the second, of the man’s going away from his wife-of-an-hour, to the front, and his fall on the battlefield; the third described the regret of the girl that she had not been able to give more, and her resolve to atone by denying herself love if it came to her in future; the fourth, the dead soldier’s attempt to make her feel the truth; that she was free of obligation because those few last hours had been a gift of joy never to be taken from his soul.

Denin had dashed down a title on the first page of his manuscript before beginning the book. There had seemed to him only one name for it: “The War Wedding.” Now that he came to read it all over, he still had the feeling that something in him more powerful than himself had done the writing; and suddenly he began to wish intensely that Barbara might see the testament of his heart.

He wished this not because he was proud of his work, or thought it superlatively good, but because he hoped that it might comfort her. She had been strangely reserved with him, invariably baffling, almost mysterious, during the latter half of their acquaintance, yet he had felt that he knew the truth of her nature, deep down under the girlish concealments. He had believed her tender-hearted. If she had not been so, why had she married him? And he thought that a girl of her strong character and sensitive spirit might be stabbed with remorse sometimes after gathering the flower of happiness for herself so near a new-made grave. He could not bear to think that Barbara might torture her conscience for his sake. He wanted her to be happy, wanted it more than anything else now. Not that he was naturally a marvel of unselfishness, but that he loved Barbara Fay better than he had ever loved himself. If this story which he had written – like, yet unlike, her own story – should happen to fall into Barbara’s hands, she might find consolation through all the coming years, because of certain thoughts from the man’s point of view, thoughts that would almost surely be new to her. And what joy for Denin, even lying in the gulf of forgetfulness, if his hand could reach out from the shadows to give her a thornless white rose of peace!

He wondered eagerly if he could find a publisher in New York – a publisher who produced books in England as well as America – to accept his manuscript.

Now that the wish was born, it seemed too good to be true that anything could come of it. Still, he determined to try, and try at once. Full of excitement he went out into a noisy street, and bought several newspapers and magazines. There were a number of publishers’ advertisements in them all, some with familiar names, but one he had known ever since he was old enough to read books. It was a name of importance in the publishing world, but there was no harm in aiming high. He had brought the manuscript out with him, because he could not bear to leave it alone in a strange house. Now he decided to take the parcel to the publisher himself. Nothing would have induced him to trust it to the post.

CHAPTER V

Four-thirty in the afternoon was Eversedge Sibley’s hour for leaving his office. If he had cared about escaping earlier he could easily have got away, for since his father’s death he stood at the head of the old publishing house; but to him business was the romance, poetry, and adventure of life. He passionately loved the champ and roar of the printing-presses as many people love a Wagner opera. There were never two days alike. Something new was always happening. Yet just because he was young for his “job,” and knew that he was a man of moods and temperament, he forced himself to be bound by certain rules. One of these rules was, even if he chose to linger a few minutes after four-thirty, that no caller need hope to be admitted. That was a favorite regulation of Sibley’s. It made him feel that, after all, he was very methodical. One afternoon, however, he did a worse thing than break this rule. He went back from the elevator, the whole length of the corridor to the outer office, simply to enquire about a man he had met at the lift door.

They almost collided as the man was stepping out and as Sibley was about to step in. But he did not step in. He let the lift shoot down without him, while he paused to stare after the man.

“Strange-looking customer!” he thought.

Sibley himself was a particularly immaculate person. Being somewhat of the Latin type, black eyed and olive skinned, he was shamefacedly afraid of looking picturesque. He dressed, therefore, as precisely as a fashion-plate. The man who had got out of the lift might have bought his clothes at a junk-shop, and a foreign junk-shop at that. They were not clothes a gentleman could wear – yet Sibley received a swift impression that a gentleman was wearing them at that moment: a remarkably tall fellow, so thin that his bones looked somehow too big for him.

He walked past Sibley with no more than a glance, yet it was partly the glance which impelled Sibley to stop short and gaze at the back of a badly made tweed coat, the worst sort of a “reach-me-down” coat.

The quick mind of the publisher was addicted to similes. (He had once written a book himself, under a nom de guerre. It had failed.) The thought sprang to his mind that the glance was like the sudden opening of a dingy box, which let out a flash of secret jewels.

In spite of his shocking clothes, the man had the air and bearing of a soldier. Sibley noticed this, in criticizing the straight back, and it aroused his curiosity more than ever in connection with the scarred face.

Any one who got out at the tenth floor of the Sibley building must want to see Eversedge Sibley or one of his partners, so evidently this person intended to ask for some member of the firm. He looked the last man on earth to be a budding author; yet Eversedge Sibley had caught sight of a paper-wrapped roll of manuscript. One who was not of the publishing or editorial world might have mistaken it for something else; but no manuscript would disguise itself from eyes so trained to fear and avoid it.

“Looks more like a heavy-weight champion invalided after a desperate scrap, than a writer; or like Samson betrayed by Delilah,” thought Sibley, rather pleased with the fancy.

He put out his hand to touch the bell for the lift to come up again, but did not touch it. Instead, he turned and walked back along the marble-walled corridor to the door of the reception room. The tall man had just arrived and was talking to a wisp of a creature facetiously known in the office as “the chucker out.”

“Mr. Sibley has gone, sir,” little McNutt was insisting, with dignity. “He doesn’t generally receive strangers. Mr. Elliot is in, though, and might see you if you could wait – ”

As he spoke, McNutt caught sight of his “boss” at the door, and by looking up a pair of thick gray eyebrows, he made a distressful signal of warning. It would be awkward for Mr. Sibley to be trapped and buttonholed here, just as he had been officially described as out. McNutt could not remember the boss ever coming back after he had gone for the day, and appearing in the publicity of the reception room. If he had forgotten something, why didn’t he let himself in at the door of his own private office, which was only a little further along the hall? But, there he was, and must be protected.

“Who is Mr. Elliot?” enquired the stranger.

Eversedge Sibley spent a short holiday in England every summer, and knew that the vilely dressed man had the accent of the British upper classes. His curiosity grew with what it fed on.

“Mr. Elliot is the third partner in the firm,” explained McNutt, to whom such ignorance appeared disgraceful.

“Thank you, I’d rather wait until to-morrow and try to see Mr. Sibley himself,” said Denin.

“I am Mr. Sibley,” the publisher confessed, on one of his irresistible impulses. “I’ve just come back for something forgotten. I can give you a few minutes if you like.”

The man’s face lit. It could never have been anything but plain, almost ugly, even before the scars came; yet it was singularly arresting. “That’s very good of you,” he said.

Sibley ushered the odd visitor into his own private office, but before he could even be invited to sit down, Denin got to his errand.