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Hidden Places, The

<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2> For another day, a day of brilliant sunshine and roaring west wind, the fire marched up over the southern slope. Its flaming head, with a towering crest of smoke, went over a high ridge, and its lower flank smoldered threateningly a little above the valley. The second night the wind fell to a whisper, shifting freakishly into the northeast, and day dawned with a mass formation of clouds spitting rain, which by noon grew to a downpour. The fire sizzled and sputtered and died. Twenty hours of rain cleared the sky of clouds, the woods of smoke. The sun lifted his beaming face over the eastern sky line. The birds that had been silent began their twittering again, the squirrels took up their exploration among the tree tops, scolding and chattering as they went. Gentle airs shook the last rain drops from leaf and bough. The old peace settled on the valley. There was little to mark the ten days of effort and noise and destruction except a charred patch on the valley floor and a mile-wide streak that ran like a bar sinister across the green shield of the slope south of the Big Bend. Even that desolate path seemed an insignificant strip in the vast stretch of the forest. Hollister and his men went, after the rain, up across that ravaged place, and when they came to the hollow where the great cedars and lesser fir had stood solemn and orderly in brown-trunked ranks, the rudest of the loggers grew silent, a little awed by the melancholy of the place, the bleakness, the utter ruin. Where the good green forest had been, there was nothing but ashes and blackened stubs, stretches of bare rock and gravelly soil, an odor of charred wood. There was no green blade, no living thing, in all that wide space, nothing but a few gaunt trunks stark in the open; blasted, sterile trunks standing like stripped masts on a derelict. There was nothing left of the buildings except a pile of stone which had been the fireplace in the log house, and a little to one side the rusty, red skeleton of the mess-house stove. They looked about curiously for a few minutes and went back to the valley. At the house Hollister paid them off. They went their way down to the steamer landing, eager for town after a long stretch in the woods. The fire was only an exciting incident to them. There were other camps, other jobs. It was not even an exciting incident to Hollister. Except for a little sadness at sight of that desolation where there had been so much beauty, he had neither been uplifted nor cast down. He had been unmoved by the spectacular phases of the fire and he was still indifferent, even to the material loss it had inflicted on him. He was not ruined. He had the means to acquire more timber if it should be necessary. But even if he had been ruined, it is doubtful if that fact would have weighed heavily upon him. He was too keenly aware of a matter more vital to him than timber or money,—a matter in which neither his money nor his timber counted one way or the other, and in which the human equation was everything. The steamer that took out his men brought in a letter from his wife, which Lawanne sent up by his Chinese boy. He had written to her the day before the fire broke out. He could not recall precisely what he wrote, but he had tried to make clear to her what troubled him and why. And her reply was brief, uncommonly brief for Doris, who had the faculty of expressing herself fully and freely. Hollister laid the letter on the table. The last line of that short missive kept repeating itself over and over, as if his brain were a phonograph which he had no power to stop playing: "I shall be home next week on the Wednesday boat." He got up and walked across the room, crossed and recrossed it half a dozen times. And with each step those words thrust at him with deadly import. He had deluded himself for a while. He had thought he could beat the game in spite of his handicap. He had presumed for a year to snap his fingers and laugh in the face of Fate, and Fate was to have the last laugh. He seemed to have a fatalistic sureness about this. He made a deliberate effort to reason about it, and though his reason assumed that when a woman like Doris Cleveland loved a man she did not love him for the unblemished contours of his face, there was still that deep-rooted, unreasoning feeling that however she might love him as the unseen, the ideal lover, she must inevitably shrink from the reality. He stood still for a few seconds. In the living quarters of his house there was, by deliberate intention, no mirror. Among Hollister's things there was a small hand glass before which he shaved off the hairs that grew out of the few patches of unscarred flesh about his chin, those fragments of his beard which sprouted in grotesquely separated tufts. But in the bedroom they had arranged for the housekeeper there was a large oval glass above a dresser. Into this room Hollister now walked and stood before the mirror staring at his face. No, he could not blame her, any one, for shrinking from that. And when the darting shuttle of his thought reminded him that Myra did not shrink from it, he went out to the front room and with his body sunk deep in a leather chair he fell to pondering on this. But it led him nowhere except perhaps to a shade of disbelief in Myra and her motives, a strange instinctive distrust both of her and himself. He recognized Myra's power. He had succumbed to it in the old careless days and gloried in his surrender. He perceived that her compelling charm was still able to move him as it did other men. He knew that Myra had been carried this way and that in the great, cruel, indifferent swirl that was life. He could understand a great many things about her and about himself, about men as men and women as women, that he would have denied in the days before the war. But while he could think about himself and Myra Bland with a calmness that approached indifference, he could not think with that same detachment about Doris. She had come, walking fearlessly in her darkened world, to him in his darkened world of discouragement and bitterness. There was something fine and true in this blind girl, something that Hollister valued over and above the flesh-and-blood loveliness of her, something rare and precious that he longed to keep. He could not define it; he simply knew that it resided in her, that it was a precious quality that set her apart in his eyes from all other women. But would it stand the test of sight? If he were as other men he would not have been afraid; he would scarcely have asked himself that question. But he knew he would be like a stranger to her, a strange man with a repellingly scarred face. He did not believe she could endure that, she who loved beauty so, who was sensitive to subtleties of tone and atmosphere beyond any woman he had ever known. Hollister tried to put himself in her place. Would he have taken her to his arms as gladly, as joyously, if she had come to him with a face twisted out of all semblance to its natural lines? And Hollister could not say. He did not know. He threw up his head at last, in a desperate sort of resolution. In a week he would know. Meantime— He had no work to occupy him now. There were a few bolts behind the boom-sticks which he would raft to the mill at his leisure. He walked up to the chute mouth now and looked about. A few hundred yards up the hill the line of green timber ended against the black ruin of the fire. There the chute ended also. Hollister walked on across the rocky point, passed the waterfall that was shrinking under the summer heat, up to a low cliff where he sat for a long time looking down on the river. When he came back at last to the house, Myra was there, busy at her self-imposed tasks in those neglected rooms. Hollister sat down on the porch steps. He felt a little uneasy about her being there, uneasy for her. In nearly two weeks of fighting fire he had been thrown in intimate daily contact with Jim Bland, and his appraisal of Bland's character was less and less flattering the more he revised his estimate of the man. He felt that Myra was inviting upon herself something she might possibly not suspect. He decided to tell her it would be wiser to keep away; but when he did so, she merely laughed. There was a defiant recklessness in her tone when she said: "Do you think I need a chaperone? Must one, even in this desolate place, kow-tow to the conventions devised to prop up the weak and untrustworthy? If Jim can't trust me, I may as well learn it now as any other time. Besides, it doesn't matter to me greatly whether he does or not. If for any reason he should begin to think evil of me—well, the filthy thought in another's mind can't defile me. I can't recall that I was ever greatly afraid of what other people might think of me, so long I was sure of myself." "Nevertheless," Hollister said, "it is as well for you not to come here alone while I am here alone." "Don't you like me to come, Robin?" she asked. "No," he said slowly. "That wasn't why I spoke—but I don't think I do." "Why?" she persisted. Hollister stirred uneasily. "Call a spade a spade, Robin," she advised. "Say what you think—what you mean." "That's difficult," he muttered. "How can any one say what he means when he is not quite sure what he does mean? I'm in trouble. You're sorry for me, in a way. And maybe you feel—because of old times, because of the contrast between what your life was then and what it is now—you feel as if you would like to comfort me. And I don't want you to feel that way. I look at you—and I think about what you said. I wonder if you meant it? Do you remember what you said?" "Quite clearly. I meant it, Robin. I still mean it. I'm yours—if you need me. Perhaps you won't. Perhaps you will. Does it trouble you to have me a self-appointed anchor to windward?" She clasped her hands over her knees, bending forward a little, looking at him with a curious serenity. Her eyes did not waver from his. Hollister made no answer. "I brought a lot of this on you, Robin," she went on in the musical, rippling voice so like Doris in certain tones and inflections as to make him wonder idly if he had unconsciously fallen in love with Doris Cleveland's voice because it was like Myra's. "If I had stuck it out in London till you came back, maimed or otherwise, things would have been different. But we were started off, flung off, one might say, into different orbits by the forces of the war itself. That's neither here nor there, now. You may think I'm offering myself as a sort of vicarious atonement—if your Doris fails you—but I'm not, really. I'm too selfish. I have never sacrificed myself for any man. I never will. It isn't in me. I'm just as eager to get all I can out of life as I ever was. I liked you long ago. I like you still. That's all there is to it, Robin." She shifted herself nearer him. She put one hand on his shoulder, the other on his knee, and bent forward, peering into his face. Hollister matched that questioning gaze for a second. It was unreadable. It conveyed no message, hinted nothing, held no covert suggestion. It was earnest and troubled. He had never before seen that sort of look on Myra's face. He could make nothing of it, and so there was nothing in it to disturb him. But the warm pressure of her hands, the nearness of her body, did trouble him. He put her hands gently away. "You shouldn't come here," he said quietly. "I will call a spade a spade. I love Doris—and I have a queer, hungry sort of feeling about the boy. If it happens that in spite of our life together Doris can't bear me and can't get used to me, if it becomes impossible for us to go on together—well, I can't make clear to you the way I feel about this. But I'm afraid. And if it turns out that I'm afraid with good cause—why, I don't know what I'll do, what way I'll turn. But wait until that happens—Well, it seems that a man and a woman who have loved and lived together can't become completely indifferent—they must either hate and despise each other—or else—You understand? We have made some precious blunders, you and I. We have involved other people in our blundering, and we mustn't forget about these other people. I can't. Doris and the kid come first—myself last. I'm selfish too. I can only sit here in suspense and wait for things to happen as they will. You," he hesitated a second, "you can't help me, Myra. You could hurt me a lot if you tried—and yourself too." "I see," she said. "I understand." She sat for a time with her hands resting in her lap, looking down at the ground. Then she rose. "I don't want to hurt you, Robin," she said soberly. "I can't help looking for a way out, that's all. For myself, I must find a way out. The life I lead now is stifling me—and I can't see where it will ever be any different, any better. I've become cursed with the twin devils of analysis and introspection. I don't love Jim; I tolerate him. One can't go through life merely tolerating one's husband, and the sort of friends and the sort of existence that appeals to one's husband, unless one is utterly ox-like—and I'm not. Women have lived with men they cared nothing for since the beginning of time, I suppose, because of various reasons—but I see no reason why I should. I'm a rebel—in full revolt against shams and stupidity and ignorance, because those three have brought me where I am and you where you are. I'm a disarmed and helpless revolte by myself. One doesn't want to go from bad to worse. One wants instinctively to progress from good to better. One makes mistakes and seeks to rectify them—if it is possible. One sees suffering arise as the result of one's involuntary acts, and one wishes wistfully to relieve it. That's the simple truth, Robin. Only a simple truth is often a very complex thing. It seems so with us." "It is," Hollister muttered, "and it might easily become more so." "Ah, well," she said, "that is scarcely likely. You were always pretty dependable, Robin. And I'm no longer an ignorant little fool to rush thoughtlessly in where either angels or devils might fear to tread. We shall see." She swung around on her heel. Hollister watched her walk away along the river path. He scarcely knew what he thought, what he felt, except that what he felt and thought disturbed him to the point of sadness, of regret. He sat musing on the curious, contradictory forces at work in his life. It was folly to be wise, to be sensitive, to respond too quickly, to see too clearly; and ignorance, dumbness of soul, was also fatal. Either way there was no escape. A man did his best and it was futile,—or seemed so to him, just then. His gaze followed Myra while his thought ran upon Doris, upon his boy, wondering if the next steamer would bring him sentence of banishment from all that he valued, or if there would be a respite, a stay of execution, a miracle of affection that would survive and override the terrible reality—or what seemed to him the terrible reality—of his disfigured face. He had abundant faith in Doris—of the soft voice and the keen, quick mind, the indomitable spirit and infinite patience—but he had not much faith in himself, in his own power. He was afraid of her restored sight, which would leave nothing to the subtle play of her imagination. And following Myra with that mechanical noting of her progress, his eyes, which were very keen, caught some movement in a fringe of willows that lined the opposite shore of the river some three hundred yards below. He looked more sharply. He had developed a hunter's faculty for interpreting movement in the forest, and although he had nothing more positive than instinct and a brief flash upon which to base conclusions, he did not think that movement of the leaves was occasioned by any creature native to the woods. On impulse he rose, went inside, and taking his binoculars from their case, focused the eight-power lenses on the screen of brush, keeping himself well within the doorway where he could see without being seen. It took a minute or so of covering the willows before he located the cause of that movement of shrubbery. But presently he made out the head and shoulders of a man. And the man was Bland, doing precisely what Hollister was doing, looking through a pair of field glasses. Hollister stood well back in the room. He was certain Bland could not see that he himself was being watched. In any case, Bland was not looking at Hollister's house. It was altogether likely that he had been doing so, that he had seen Myra sitting beside Hollister with her hand on his shoulder, bending forward to peer into Hollister's face. And Hollister could easily imagine what Bland might feel and think. But he was steadily watching Myra. Once he turned the glasses for a few seconds on Hollister's house. Then he swung them back to Myra, followed her persistently as she walked along the bank, on past Lawanne's, on towards their own rude shack. And at last Bland shifted. One step backward, and the woods swallowed him. One moment his shoulders and his head stood plain in every detail, even to the brickish redness of his skin and the curve of his fingers about the glasses; the next he was gone. Hollister sat thinking. He did not like the implications of that furtive observance. A suspicious, watchful man is a jealous man. And a jealous man who has nothing to do but watch and suspect and nurse that mean passion was a dangerous adjunct to an unhappy woman. Hollister resolved to warn Myra, to emphasize that warning. No one could tell of what a dull egotist like Bland might be capable. The very fact of that furtive spying argued an ignoble streak in any man. Bland was stiff-necked, vain, the sort to be brutal in retaliation for any fancied invasion of his rights. And his conception of a husband's rights were primitive in the extreme. A wife was property, something that was his. Hollister could imagine him roused to blind, blundering fury by the least suspicious action on Myra's part. Bland was the type that, once aroused, acts like an angry bull,—with about as much regard or understanding of consequences. Hollister had been measuring Bland for a year, and the last two or three weeks had given him the greatest opportunity to do so. He had appraised the man as a dullard under his stupid, inflexible crust of egotism, despite his veneer of manners. But even a clod may be dangerous. A bomb is a harmless thing, so much inert metal and chemicals, until it is touched off; yet it needs only a touch to let loose its insensate, rending force. Hollister rose to start down the path after Myra with the idea that he must somehow convey to her a more explicit warning. As he stepped out on the porch, he looked downstream at Bland's house and saw a man approach the place from one direction as Myra reached it from the other. He caught up his glasses and brought them to bear. The man was Mills,—whom he had thought once more far from the Toba with the rest of his scattered crew. Nevertheless this was Mills drawing near Bland's house with quick strides. Hollister's uneasiness doubled. There was a power for mischief in that situation when he thought of Jim Bland scowling from his hiding place in the willows. He set out along the path. But by the time he came abreast of Lawanne's cabin he had begun to feel himself acting under a mistaken impulse, an exaggerated conclusion. He began to doubt the validity of that intuition which pointed a warning finger at Bland and Bland's suspicions. In attempting to forestall what might come of Bland's stewing in the juice of a groundless jealousy, he could easily precipitate something that would perhaps be best avoided by ignoring it. He stood, when he thought of it, in rather a delicate position himself. So he turned into Lawanne's. He found Archie sitting on the shady side of his cabin, and they fell into talk. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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