CHAPTER XI
A week of hot sunshine had filled the Toba River bank full of roilywater when Hollister breasted its current again. In midstream it ranfull and strong. Watery whisperings arose where swirls boiled oversunken snags. But in the slow eddies and shoal water under each bankthe gray canoe moved up-stream under the steady drive of Hollister'spaddle.
Doris sat in the bow. Her eyes roved from the sun-glittering stream tothe hills that rose above the tree-fringed valley floor, as if sighthad been restored to her so that her eyes could dwell upon thegreen-leaved alder and maple, the drooping spruce bows, the vastnessof those forests of somber fir where the deer lurked in the shadowsand where the birds sang vespers and matins when dusk fell and dawncame again. There were meadow larks warbling now on stumps that dottedthe floor of the Big Bend, and above the voices of thoseyellow-breasted singers and the watery murmuring of the river therearose now and then the shrill, imperative blast of a donkey engine.
"Where are we now, Bob?"
"About half a mile below the upper curve of the Big Bend," Hollisterreplied.
Doris sat silent for awhile. Hollister, looking at her, was strickenanew with wonder at her loveliness, with wonder at the contrastbetween them. Beauty and the beast, he said to himself. He knewwithout seeing. He did not wish to see. He strove to shut away thoughtof the devastation of what had once been a man's goodly face. Doris'skin was like a child's, smooth and soft and tinted like a rose petal.Love, he said to himself, had made her bloom. It made him quake tothink that she might suddenly see out of those dear, blind eyes. Wouldshe look and shudder and turn away? He shook off that ghastly thought.She would never see him. She could only touch him, feel him, hear thetenderness of his voice, know his guarding care. And to those thingswhich were realities she would always respond with an intensity thatthrilled him and gladdened him and made him feel that life was good.
"Are you glad you're here?" he asked suddenly.
"I would pinch you for such a silly question if it weren't that Iwould probably upset the canoe," Doris laughed. "Glad?"
"There must be quite a streak of pure barbarian in me," she said aftera while. "I love the smell of the earth and the sea and the woods.Even when I could see, I never cared a lot for town. It would be allright for awhile, then I would revolt against the noise, the dirt andsmoke, the miles and miles of houses rubbing shoulders against eachother, and all the thousands of people scuttling back and forth,like--well, it seems sometimes almost as aimless as the scurrying ofants when you step on their hill. Of course it isn't. But I used tofeel that way. When I was in my second year at Berkeley I had a brainstorm like that. I took the train north and turned up at home--we hada camp running on Thurlow Island then. Daddy read the riot act andsent me back on the next steamer. It was funny--just an irresistibleimpulse to get back to my own country, among my own people. I oftenwonder if it isn't some such instinct that keeps sailors at sea, nomatter what the sea does to them. I have sat on that ridge"--shepointed unerringly to the first summit above Hollister's timber,straight back and high above the rim of the great cliff south of theBig Bend--"and felt as if I had drunk a lot of wine; just to be awayup in that clear still air, with not a living soul near and themountains standing all around like the pyramids."
"Do you know that you have a wonderful sense of direction, Doris?"Hollister said. "You pointed to the highest part of that ridge asstraight as if you could see it."
"I do see it," she smiled, "I mean I know where I am, and I have in mymind a very clear picture of my surroundings always, so long as I amon familiar ground."
Hollister knew this to be so, in a certain measure, on a small scale.In a room she knew Doris moved as surely and rapidly as he didhimself. He had dreaded a little lest she should find herself feelinglost and helpless in this immensity of forest and hills whichsometimes made even him feel a peculiar sense of insignificance. Itwas a relief to know that she turned to this wilderness which must betheir home with the eagerness of a child throwing itself into itsmother's arms. He perceived that she had indeed a clear image of theToba in her mind. She was to give further proof of this before long.
They turned the top of the Big Bend. Here the river doubled on itselffor nearly a mile and crossed from the north wall of the valley to thesouth. Where the channel straightened away from this loop Hollisterhad built his house on a little flat running back from the right-handbank. A little less than half a mile below, Bland's cabin faced theriver just where the curve of the S began. They came abreast of thatnow. What air currents moved along the valley floor shifted in fromthe sea. It wafted the smoke from Bland's stovepipe gently down on theriver's shining face.
Doris sniffed.
"I smell wood smoke," she said. "Is there a fire on the flat?"
"Yes, in a cook's stove," Hollister replied. "There is a shack here."
She questioned him and he told her of the Blands,--all that he hadbeen told, which was little enough. Doris displayed a deep interest inthe fact that a woman, a young woman, was a near neighbor, asnearness goes on the British Columbia coast.
From somewhere about the house Myra Bland appeared now. To avoid theheavy current, Hollister hugged the right-hand shore so that he passedwithin a few feet of the bank, within speaking distance of this womanwith honey-colored hair standing bareheaded in the sunshine. She tooka step or two forward. For an instant Hollister thought she was aboutto exercise the immemorial privilege of the wild places and hail apassing stranger. But she did not call or make any sign. She stoodgazing at them, and presently her husband joined her and together theywatched. They were still looking when Hollister gave his last backwardglance, then turned his attention to the reddish-yellow gleam ofnew-riven timber which marked his own dwelling. Twenty minutes laterhe slid the gray canoe's forefoot up on a patch of sand before hishouse.
"We're here," he said. "Home--such as it is--it's home."
He helped her out, guided her steps up to the level of the bottomland.He was eager to show her the nest he had devised for them. But Dorischecked him with her hand.
"I hear the falls," she said. "Listen!"
Streaming down through a gorge from melting snowfields the creek alittle way beyond plunged with a roar over granite ledges. The fewwarm days had swollen it from a whispering sheet of spray to adeep-voiced cataract. A mist from it rose among the deep green of thefir.
"Isn't it beautiful--beautiful?" Doris said. "There"--she pointed--"isthe canyon of the Little Toba coming in from the south. There is thedeep notch where the big river comes down from the Chilcotin, and aridge like the roof of the world rising between. Over north there aremountains and mountains, one behind the other, till the last peaks arewhite cones against the blue sky. There is a bluff straight across usthat goes up and up in five-hundred-foot ledges like masonry, withhundred-foot firs on each bench that look like toy trees from here.
"I used to call that gorge there"--her pointing finger found the markagain--"The Black Hole. It is always full of shadows in summer, and inwinter the slides rumble and crash into it with a noise like the endof the world. Did you ever listen to the slides muttering andgrumbling last winter when you were here, Bob?"
"Yes, I used to hear them day and night."
They stood silent a second or two. The little falls roared above them.The river whispered at their feet. A blue-jay perched on the roof oftheir house and began his harsh complaint to an unheeding world, intowhich a squirrel presently broke with vociferous reply. An up-riverbreeze rustled the maple leaves, laid cooling fingers from salt wateron Hollister's face, all sweaty from his labor with the paddle.
He could see beauty where Doris saw it. It surrounded him, leaped tohis eye whenever his eye turned,--a beauty of woods and waters, ofrugged hills and sapphire skies. And he was suddenly filled with agreat gladness that he could respond to this. He was quickened to astrange emotion by the thought that life could still hold for him somuch that seemed good. He put one arm caressingly, protectingly,across his wife's shoulder, over the smooth, fir
m flesh that gleamedthrough thin silk.
She turned swiftly, buried her face against his breast and burst intotears, into a strange fit of sobbing. She clung to him like afrightened child. Her body quivered as if some unseen force graspedand shook her with uncontrollable power. Hollister held her fast,dismayed, startled, wondering, at a loss to comfort her.
"But I _can't_ see it," she cried. "I'll never see it again. Oh, Bob,Bob! Sometimes I can't stand this blackness. Never to see you--neverto see the sun or the stars--never to see the hills, the trees, thegrass. Always to grope. Always night--night--night without beginningor end."
And Hollister still had no words to comfort her. He could only holdher close, kiss her glossy brown hair, feeling all the while apassionate sympathy--and yet conscious of a guilty gladness that shecould not see him--that she could not look at him and be revolted anddraw away. He knew that she clung to him now as the one clear light inthe darkness. He was not sure that she (or any other woman) would dothat if she could see him as he really was.
Her sobs died in her throat. She leaned against him passively for aminute. Then she lifted her face and smiled.
"It's silly to let go like that," she said. "Once in awhile it comesover me like a panic. I wonder if you will always be patient with mewhen I get like that. Sometimes I fairly rave. But I won't do itoften. I don't know why I should feel that way now. I have never beenso happy. Yet that feeling came over me like a suffocating wave. I amafraid your wife is rather a temperamental creature, Bob."
She ended with a laugh and a pout, to which Hollister made appropriateresponse. Then he led her into the house and smiled--or would havesmiled had his face been capable of that expression--at the pleasurewith which her hands, which she had trained to be her organs ofvision, sought and found doors and cupboards, chairs, the variedequipment of the kitchen. He watched her find her way about with theuncanny certainty of the sightless, at which he never ceased tomarvel. When she came back at last to where he sat on a table,swinging one foot while he smoked a cigarette, she put her arms aroundhim and said:
"It's a cute little house, Bob. The air here is like old wine. Thesmell of the woods is like heaven, after soot and smoke and coal gas.I'm the happiest woman in the whole country."
Hollister looked at her. He knew by the glow on her face that shespoke as she felt, that she was happy, that he had made her so. And hewas proud of himself for a minute, as a man becomes when he isconscious of having achieved greatness, however briefly.
Only he was aware of a shadow. Doris leaned against him talking ofthings they would do, of days to come. He looked over her shoulderthrough the west window and his eye rested on Bland's cabin, whereanother woman lived who had once nestled in his arms and talked ofhappiness. Yes, he was conscious of the shadow, of regrets, ofsomething else that was nameless and indefinable,--a shadow. Somethingthat was not and yet still might be troubled him vaguely.
He could not tell why. Presently he dismissed it from his mind.