Chapter XIV

"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.

"She looked no more than seventeen in her white dress, in a white-lined coffin; and seeing her like that, so young and almost coquettishly pretty, made me realize why she had so bitterly regretted the passing of her youth, and had clung desperately to its ragged edges. I gave her a bed and a covering of her favorite flowers, though they were not those I care for most: gardenias and camellias and orchids. I associate them always with hot-houses and florists' shops, which seem to me like the slave markets of the flower world--don't they to you?

"I beg of you not to believe that I forgot, or did not keep turning in thought to my friend, in those long days and nights when I hadn't time to write, or couldn't risk the rustle of a sheet of paper, or the scratch of a pen. I thought of you constantly, especially in the night when I sat beside mother, not daring to stir or draw a long breath if she slept. I reviewed all the past, since August 18th, 1914, and as if I had been an outsider, saw myself as I was before I read your book--before I wrote to you, and gained your friendship for my strong prop.

"I was a child in those days. I couldn't face grief and realize that it must be borne. All the small, dear, warm, cushiony things of life as I had lived it, seemed the only ones which ought to be real. I clung to them. I wanted to shut out sorrow and hide away from it by drawing rose-colored blinds across my windows. I was a shivering creature who had been caught in a sleety rain and soaked through to the skin. I ran home out of the sleet, thinking to pull those rose-colored curtains and put on dry clothes and warm myself at the fire. But the curtains had been ripped away. There were no dry clothes, and no fire. There was no help or comfort anywhere. The world marched in an army against me. Only misery was real; in vain to writhe away from it; it was everywhere. Horror and anguish poured through me, as water pours into a leaking ship. My soul was withering in the cold. The bulwarks of my character were beaten down. Then you came into my life. You didn't give me back my rose-colored curtains to hide the face of sorrow, but you taught me how to look into sorrow's eyes, and find beauty and wonder beyond anything I had ever known. You let me creep into a temple you had built, and learn great truths which you had found out through your own suffering. I knew you had written your book with your heart's blood, or you couldn't have made my heart fill with life and beat again. You couldn't have reached me where I was cowering, far, far below tear-level.

"Even when I could see by your letters that you hadn't quite been able to shake off chains of depression from yourself, you had the power to release others. What a splendid power! Did you realize that you had it, when you wrote your book, I wonder?

"You showed me what to do with the strange forces I could feel blindly groping in my soul. You showed me that philosophy shouldn't be a brew of poppies to drown regrets, but a tonic, a stimulant. You taught me that hope must live in the heart, because hope is knowledge wrapped up in our subconsciousness, and spilling rays of light through the wrappings. You gave me the glorious advice not to waste life, which must be lived, by trying to kill Time, making him die a dull death at bedtime every night, but to run hand in hand with him--run wherever he might be going, because things worth while might be ready to happen round the very next bend of the future.

"This was the lesson I needed most, because I'd forgotten that if there was no intimate personal joy left for me in this world, there was for others; and even I might help them to find it, by having the bright courage of my imagination, instead of the dull courage of convictions.

"You made me believe (even though I can't always live up to the belief) that when we are horribly unhappy, we're only seeing a beautiful, bright landscape reflected gray-green, in our own little cracked and dusty mirror, distorted in its cramped frame. While Mother was ill, and other troubles pressed on me heavily, I often reminded myself of those words of yours, in a many-times-read letter; and I tried to turn my eyes away from the poor cracked mirror, dim with the dust which I had stupidly thought was the dust of my own destiny; tried to look instead at the clear truth of things.

"In the same letter (one of those I treasure most; for I've kept all, and always shall keep them) you gave me another thought that has done me good. You said it had only just come to you as you wrote to me. Do you remember? You were wondering if our Real Selves (the 'realities behind the Things' you've spoken of so often) exist uninterruptedly on the Etheric Plane, to be joined there by the souls of the earthbound selves, each time they finish with their bodies. 'Imagine the soul arriving from earth, pouring its new experiences into the mind of its Real Self,' you said, 'and receiving in return memories of all it had ever lived through, learning the reason _why_ of every sorrow and joy, and never quite forgetting, though it might think it had forgotten.'

"Oh, I thank you, my friend, for every mental growing pain you have given me! Instead of forgetting what I owed you, in those weeks of silence, I realized it all more and more, and resolved to be worthier of my lessons when the strain on my new strength increased, as it is bound to do, with mother gone. I shall try, that's all I can say. I don't know how I shall win through. And I shall have more to thank you for, if you tell me that our friendship hasn't been disturbed by my seeming ingratitude.

"Did you ever see those queer little dried-up Japanese flowers which seem utterly dead till you throw them into water? Then they expand and remember that they are alive. I am one of them. Don't pour off the water. I'm afraid if you did, I might be weak enough to dry up again."