CHAPTER XIV
All that summer the price of cedar went creeping up. For a while thiswas only in keeping with the slow ascension of commodity costs whichcontinued long after the guns ceased to thunder. But presently cedaron the stump, in the log, in the finished product, began to soar whileother goods slowed or halted altogether in their mysterious climb toinaccessable heights,--and cedar was not a controlled industry, not amonopoly. Shingles and dressed cedar were scarce, that was all. Forthe last two years of the war most of the available man-power andmachinery of British Columbia loggers had been given over to airplanespruce. Carpenters had laid down their tools and gone to the front.House builders had ceased to build houses while the vast cloud ofEuropean uncertainty hung over the nation. All across North Americathe wind and weather had taken toll of roofs, and these must berepaired. The nation did not cease to breed while its men died dailyby thousands. And with the signing of the armistice a flood ofimmigration was let loose. British and French and Scandinavians andswarms of people from Czecho-Slovakia and all the Balkan States,hurried from devastated lands and impending taxes to a new countryglowing with the deceptive greenness of far fields. The population hadincreased; the housing for it had not. So that rents went up and upuntil economic factors exerted their inexorable pressure and the tapof the carpenter's hammer and the ring of his saw began to sound inevery city, in every suburb, on new farms and lonely prairies.
Cedar shingles began to make fortunes for those who dealt in them on alarge scale. By midsummer Carr's mill on the Toba worked night andday.
"Crowd your work, Hollister," Carr advised him. "I've been studyingthis cedar situation from every angle. There will be an unlimiteddemand and rising prices for about another year. By that time everylogging concern will be getting out cedar. The mills will be cuttingit by the million feet. They'll glut the market and the bottom willdrop out of this cedar boom. So get that stuff of yours out while thegoing is good. We can use it all."
But labor was scarce. All the great industries were absorbing men,striving to be first in the field of post-war production. Hollisterfound it difficult to enlarge his crew. That was a lonely hillsidewhere his timber stood. Loggers preferred the big camps, the lessprimitive conditions under which they must live and work. Hollistersaw that he would be unable to extend his operations until deep snowshut down some of the northern camps that fall. Even so he did wellenough, much better than he had expected at the beginning. BillHayes, he of the gray mustache and the ear-piercing faller's cry, wasa "long-stake" man. That is to say, old Bill knew his weaknesses, thecommon weaknesses of the logger, the psychological reaction from hardwork, from sordid living, from the indefinable cramping of the spiritthat grows upon a man through months of monotonous labor. Town--apyrotechnic display among the bright lights--one dizzy swoop on thewings of fictitious excitement--bought caresses--empty pockets--thewoods again! Yet the logger dreams always of saving his money, ofbecoming a timber king, of setting himself up in some business--knowingall the while that he is like a child with pennies in his hand,unhappy until they are spent. Bill Hayes was past fifty, and he knewall this. He stayed in the woods as long as the weakness of the fleshpermitted, naively certain that he had gone on his last "bust", thathe would bank his money and experience the glow of possessing capital.
The other man was negligible--a bovine lump of flesh withoutpersonality--born to hew wood and draw water for men of enterprise.
And there was always Mills, Mills who wanted to make a stake and "getto hell out of here", and who did not go, although the sum to hiscredit in Hollister's account book was creeping towards a thousanddollars, so fierce and unceasing an energy did Mills expend upon thefragrant cedar.
Hollister himself accounted for no small profit. Like Mills, he workedunder a spur. He wrestled stoutly with opportunity. He saw beyond thecedar on that green slope. With a living assured, he sought fortune,aspired to things as yet beyond his reach,--leisure, an ampler way oflife, education for his children that were to be.
This measure of prosperity loomed not so distant. When he took stockof his resources in October, he found himself with nearly threethousand dollars in hand and the bulk of his cedar still standing.Half that was directly the gain derived from a rising market. Laborwas his only problem. If he could get labor, and shingles held theupper price levels, he would make a killing in the next twelve months.After that, with experience gained and working capital, the forestedregion of the British Columbia coast lay before him as a field ofoperations.
Meantime he was duly thankful for daily progress. Materially thatdestiny which he doubted seemed to smile on him.
Late in October, when the first southward flight of wild duck began towing over the valley, old Bill Hayes and Sam Ballard downed tools andwent to town. The itch of the wandering foot had laid hold of them.The pennies burned their pockets. Ballard frankly wanted a change.Hayes declared he wanted only a week's holiday, to see a show or twoand buy some clothes. He would surely be back.
"Yes, he'll be back," Mills commented with ironic emphasis. "He'll bebroke in a week and the first camp that pays his fare out will gethim. There's no fool like a logger. Strong in the back and weak inthe head--the best of us."
But Mills himself stayed on. What kept him, Hollister wondered? Did hehave some objective that centered about Myra Bland? Was the man avictim of hopeless passion, lingering near the unobtainable because hecould not tear himself away? Was Myra holding him like a pawn in someobscure game that she played to feed her vanity? Or were the two ofthem caught in one of those inextricable coils which Hollisterperceived to arise in the lives of men and women, from which theycould not free themselves without great courage and ruthless disregardof consequences?
Sometimes Hollister wondered if he himself were not overfanciful, toosensitive to moods and impressions. Then he would observe somesignificant interchange of looks between Mills and Myra and be sure ofcurrents of feeling, furtive and powerful, sweeping about those two.It angered him. Hollister was all for swift and forthright action,deeds done in the open. If they loved, why did they not committhemselves boldly to the undertaking, take matters in their own handsand have an end to all secrecy? He felt a menace in this secrecy, asif somehow it threatened him. He perceived that Mills suffered, thatsomething gnawed at the man. When he rested from his work, when he satquiescent beside the fire where they ate at noon together, that cloakof melancholy brooding wrapped Mills close. He seldom talked. When hedid there was in his speech a resentful inflection like that of a manwho smarts under some injury, some injustice, some deep hurt which hemay not divulge but which nags him to the limits of his endurance.
Hollister was Mills' sole company after the other two men left. Theywould work within sight of each other all day. They ate together atnoon. Now and then he asked Mills down to supper out of pity for theman's complete isolation. Some chord in Hollister vibrated in sympathywith this youngster who kept his teeth so resolutely clenched onwhatever hurt him.
And while Hollister watched Mills and wondered how long that effort atrepression would last, he became conscious that Myra was watching_him_, puzzling over him; that something about him attracted andrepulsed her in equal proportions. It was a disturbing discovery. Myracould study him with impunity. Doris could not see this scrutiny ofher husband by her neighbor. And Myra did not seem to care whatHollister saw. She would look frankly at him with a question in hereyes. What that question might be, Hollister refused even to consider.She never again made any remark to Doris about her first husband,about the similarity of name. But now and then she would speak ofsomething that happened when she was a girl, some casual reference tothe first days of the war, to her life in London, and her eyes wouldturn to Hollister. But he was always on his guard, always on thealert against these pitfalls of speech. He was never sure whether theywere deliberate traps, or merely the half-regretful, backward lookingof a woman to whom life lately had not been kind.
Nevertheless it kept his nerves on edge. For he valued his peace andhis hom
e that was in the making. There was a restfulness and asatisfaction in Doris Cleveland which he dreaded to imperil because hehad the feeling that he would never find its like again. He felt thatMyra's mere presence was like a sword swinging over his head. Therewas no armor he could put on against that weapon if it were decreed itshould fall.
Hollister soon perceived that if he were not to lose ground he musthave labor. Men would not come seeking work so far out of the beatentrack. In addition, there were matters afoot that required attention.So he took Doris with him and went down to Vancouver. Almost the firstman he met on Cordova Street, when he went about in search of boltcutters, was Bill Hayes, sober and unshaven and a little crestfallen.
"Why didn't you come back?" Hollister asked.
Hayes grinned sheepishly.
"Kinda hated to," he admitted. "Pulled the same old stuff--dry town,too. Shot the roll. Dang it, I'd ought to had more sense. Well, that'sthe way she goes. You want men?"
"Sure I want men," Hollister said. "Look here, if you can rustle fiveor six men, I'll make it easier for you all. I'll take up a cook forthe bolt camp. And I won't shut down for anything but snow too deep towork in."
"You're on. I think I can rustle some men. Try it, anyhow."
Hayes got a crew together in twenty-four hours. Doris attended to herbusiness, which required the help of her married cousin and a round ofcertain shops. Almost the last article they bought was a piano, theone luxury Doris longed for, a treat they had promised themselves assoon as the cedar got them out of the financial doldrums.
"I suppose it's extravagance," Doris said, her fingers caressing thesmooth mahogany, feeling the black and ivory of the keyboard, "butit's one of the few things one doesn't need eyes for."
She had proved that to Hollister long ago. When she could see she musthave had an extraordinary faculty for memorizing music. Her memoryseemed to have indelibly engraved upon it all the music she had everplayed.
Hollister smiled indulgently and ordered the instrument cased forshipping. It went up on the same steamer that gave passage tothemselves and six woodsmen and their camp cook. There were some bitsof new furniture also.
This necessitated the addition of another room. But that was a simplematter for able hands accustomed to rough woodwork. So in a littlewhile their house extended visibly, took on a homier aspect. Thesweet-peas and flaming poppies had wilted under the early frosts. Nowa rug or two and a few pictures gave to the floors and walls acheerful note of color that the flowers had given to their dooryardduring the season of their bloom.
About the time this was done, and the cedar camp working at anaccelerated pace, Archie Lawanne came back to the Toba. He walked intoHollister's quite unexpectedly one afternoon. Myra was there.
It seemed to Hollister that Lawanne's greeting was a little eager, atrifle expectant, that he held Myra's outstretched hand just a littlelonger than mere acquaintance justified. Hollister glanced at Mills,sitting by. Mills had come down to help Hollister on the boom, andDoris had called them both in for a cup of tea. Mills was staring atLawanne with narrowed eyes. His face wore the expression of a man whosees impending calamity, sees it without fear or surprise, faces itonly with a little dismay. He set down his cup and lighted acigarette. His fingers, the brown, muscular, heavy fingers of astrong-handed man, shook slightly.
"You know, it's good to be back in this old valley," Lawanne said. "Ihave half a notion to become a settler. A fellow could build up quitean estate on one of these big flats. He could grow almost anythinghere that will grow in this latitude. And when he wanted to experiencethe doubtful pleasures of civilization, they would always be waitingfor him outside."
"If he had the price," Mills put in shortly.
"Precisely," Lawanne returned, "and cared to pay it--for all he got."
"That's what it is to be a man and free," Myra observed. "You can gowhere you will and when--live as you wish."
"It all depends on what you mean by freedom," Lawanne replied. "Showme a free man. Where is there such? We're all slaves. Only some of usare too stupid to recognize our status."
"Slaves to what?" Myra asked. "You seem to have come back in adecidedly pessimistic frame of mind."
"Slaves to our own necessities; to other people's demands; to burdenswe have assumed, or have had thrust upon us, which we haven't thecourage to shake off. To our own moods and passions. To somethingwithin us that keeps us pursuing this thing we call happiness. Tostruggle for fulfilment of ideals that can never be attained. Slavesto our environment, to social forces before which the individual isnothing. It's all rot to talk about the free man, the man whose soulis his own. Complete freedom isn't even desirable, because to attainit you would have to withdraw yourself altogether from your fellowsand become a law unto yourself in some remote solitude; and no saneperson wants to do that, even to secure this mythical freedom whichpeople prattle about and would recoil from if it were offered them.Yes, I'll have another cup, if you please, Mrs. Hollister."
Lawanne munched cake and drank tea and talked as if he had been deniedthe boon of conversation for a long time. But that could hardly be,for he had been across the continent since he left there. He had beenin New York and Washington and swung back to British Columbia by wayof San Francisco.
"I read those two books of yours--or rather Bob read them to me,"Doris said presently. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself for writingsuch a preposterous yarn as 'The Worm'."
"Ah, my dear woman," Lawanne's face lit up with a sardonic smile. "Iwish my publishers could hear you say that. 'The Worm' is good, sound,trade union goods, turned out in the very best manner of a thrivingschool of fictionsmiths. It sold thirty thousand copies in the regularedition and tons in the reprint."
"But there never were such invincible men and such a perfect creatureof a woman," Doris persisted. "And the things they did--the stringsyou pulled. Life isn't like that. You know it isn't."
"Granted," Lawanne returned dryly. "But what did you think of 'The ManWho Couldn't Die'?"
"It didn't seem to me," Doris said slowly, "that the man who wrote thelast book could possibly have written the first. That _was_ life. Yourman there was a real man, and you made his hopes and fears, his loveand sufferings, very vivid. Your woman was real enough too, but Ididn't like her. It didn't seem to me she was worth the pain shecaused."
"Neither did she seem so to Phillips, if you remember," Lawanne said."That was his tragedy--to know his folly and still be urged blindly onbecause of her, because of his own illusions, which he knew he mustcling to or perish. But wait till I finish the book I'm going to writethis winter. I'm going to cut loose. I'm going to smite thePhilistines--and the chances are," he smiled cynically, "they won'teven be aware of the blow. Did you read those books?" He turnedabruptly to Myra.
She nodded.
"Yes, but I refuse to commit myself," she said lightly. "There is nosuch thing as a modest author, and Mrs. Hollister has given you allthe praise that's good for you."
Hollister and Mills went back to their work on the boom. When theyfinished their day's work, Lawanne had gone down to the Blands' withMyra. After supper, as Mills rose to leave for the upper camp, he saidto Doris:
"Have you got that book of his--about the fellow that couldn't die?I'd like to read it."
Doris gave him the book. He went away with it in his hand.
Hollister looked after him curiously. There was strong meat inLawanne's book. He wondered if Mills would digest it. And he wondereda little if Mills regarded Lawanne as a rival, if he were trying totest the other man's strength by his work.
Away down the river, now that dark had fallen, the light in Bland'shouse shone yellow. There was a red, glowing spot on the river bank.That would be Lawanne's camp. Hollister shut the door on the chillOctober night and turned back to his easy-chair by the stove. Dorishad finished her work. She sat at the piano, her fingers picking outsome slow, languorous movement that he did not know, but which soothedhim like a lullaby.
Vigorously he dissented from L
awanne's philosophy of enslavement. He,Hollister, was a free man. Yes, he was free,--but only when he couldshut the door on the past, only when he could shut away all the worldjust as he had but now shut out the valley, the cold frosty night, hisneighbors and his men, by the simple closing of a door. But he couldnot shut away the consciousness that they were there, that he mustmeet Myra and her vague questioning, Mills with his strangerepression, his brooding air. He must see them again, be perplexed bythem, perhaps find his own life, his own happiness, tangled in the webof their affairs. Hollister could frown over that unwelcomepossibility. He could say to himself that it was only an impression;that he was a fool to labor under that sense of insecurity. But hecould not help it. Life was like that. No man stood alone. No mancould ever completely achieve mastery of his relations to hisfellows. Until life became extinct, men and women would be swayed andconditioned by blind human forces, governed by relations casual orintimate, imposed upon them by the very law of their being. Who was heto escape?
No, Hollister reflected, he could not insulate himself and Dorisagainst this environment, against these people. They would have totake things as they came and be thankful they were no worse.
Doris left the piano. She sat on a low stool beside him, leaned herbrown head against him.
"It won't be so long before I have to go to town, Bob," she saiddreamily. "I hope the winter is open so that the work goes on well.And sometimes I hope that the snow shuts everything down, so thatyou'll be there with me. I'm not very consistent, am I?"
"You suit me," he murmured. "And I'll be there whether the work goeson or not."
"What an element of the unexpected, the unforeseen, is at work all thetime," she said. "A year ago you and I didn't even know of eachother's existence. I used to sit and wonder what would become of me.It was horrible sometimes to go about in the dark, existing like aplant in a cellar, longing for all that a woman longs for if she is awoman and knows herself. And you were in pretty much the same boat."
"Worse," Hollister muttered, "because I sulked and brooded and ragedagainst what had overtaken me. Yet if I hadn't reacted so violently,I should never have come here to hide away from what hurt me. So Iwouldn't have met you. That would almost make one think there issomething in the destiny that you and Lawanne smile at."
"Destiny and chance: two names for the same thing, and that thingwholly unaccountable, beyond the scope of human foresight," Dorisreplied. "Things happen; that's all we can generally say. We don'tknow why. Speaking of Lawanne, I wonder if he really does intend tostay here this winter and write a book?"
"He says so."
"He'll be company for us," she reflected. "He's clever and a littlebit cynical, but I like him. He'll help to keep us from getting boredwith each other."
"Do you think there is any danger of that?" Hollister inquired.
She tweaked his ear playfully.
"People do, you know. But I hardly think we shall. Not for a year ortwo, anyway. Not till the house gets full of babies and the stale odorof uneventful, routine, domestic life. Then _you_ may."
"Huh," he grunted derisively, "catch me. I know what I want and whatcontents me. We'll beat the game handily; and we'll beat it together.
"Why, good Lord," he cried sharply, "what would be the good of allthis effort, only for you? Where would be the fun of working andplanning and anticipating things? Nearly every man, I believe," heconcluded thoughtfully, "keeps his gait because of some woman. Thereis always the shadow of a woman over him, the picture of somewoman--past, present, or future, to egg him on to this or that."
"To keep him," Doris laughed, "in the condition a poet once describedas:
'This fevered flesh that goes on groping, wailing Toward the gloom.'"
They both laughed. They felt no gloom. The very implication of gloom,of fevered flesh, was remote from that which they had won together.
When Hollister went up to the works in the morning, he found Millshumped on a box beside the fireplace in the old cabin, reading "TheMan Who Couldn't Die." At noon he was gone somewhere. Over the noonmeal in the split-cedar mess-house, the other bolt cutters spokederisively of the man who laid off work for half a day to read a book.That was beyond their comprehension.
But Hollister thought he understood.
Later in the afternoon, as he came down the hill, he looked from thevantage of height and saw Lawanne's winter quarters already takingform on the river bank, midway between his own place and Bland's. Itgrew to completion rapidly in the next few days, taking on at last ashake roof of hand-dressed cedar to keep out the cold rains that nowbegan to beat down, the forerunner of that interminable downpour whichdeluges the British Columbia coast from November to April, thetorrential weeping of the skies upon a porous soil which nourishesvast forests of enormous trees, jungles of undergrowth tropical in itsdensity, in its variety of shrub and fern.
For a month after that a lull seemed to come upon the slow march ofevents towards some unknown destiny,--of which Hollister nursed astrange prescience that now rose strong in him and again grew sotenuous that he would smile at it for a fancy. Yet in that month therewas no slack in the routine of affairs. The machinery of Carr's millrevolved through each twenty-four hours. Up on the hill Hollister'smen felled trees with warning shouts and tumultuous crashings. Theyattacked the prone trunks with axe and saw and iron wedges,Lilliputians rending the body of a fallen giant. The bolt piles grew;they were hurled swiftly down the chute into the dwindling river,rafted to the mill. All this time the price of shingles in the openmarket rose and rose, like a tide strongly on the flood, of which noman could prophesy the high-water mark. Money flowed to Hollister'spockets, to the pockets of his men. The value of his standing timbergrew by leaps and bounds. And always Sam Carr, who had no economicillusions, urged Hollister on, predicting before long the inevitablereaction.
The days shortened. Through the long evenings Hollister's housebecame a sort of social center. Lawanne would come in after supper,sometimes inert, dumb, to sit in a corner smoking a pipe,--againfilled with a curious exhilaration, to talk unceasingly of everythingthat came into his mind, to thump ragtime on the piano and sing avariety of inconsequential songs in a velvety baritone. Myra cameoften. So did Bland. So did Charlie Mills. Many evenings they were allthere together. As the weeks went winging by, Doris grew less certainon her feet, more prone to spend her time sitting back in a deep armchair, and Myra began to play for them, to sing for them--to come tothe house in the day and help Doris with her work.
The snow began at last, drifting down out of a windless sky. Uponthat, with a sudden fear lest a great depth should fall, lest theriver should freeze and make exit difficult, Hollister took his wifeto town. This was about the middle of November. Some three weeks latera son was born to them.