CHAPTER XV
When they came back to the Toba, Hollister brought in a woman torelieve Doris of housework and help her take care of the baby,although Doris was jealous of that privilege. She was a typical motherin so far as she held the conviction that no one could attend so wellas herself the needs of that small, red-faced, lusty-lunged morsel ofhumanity.
And as if some definite mark had been turned, the winter season closedupon the valley in a gentle mood. The driving rains of the fall gaveway to January snows. But the frost took no more than a tentativenibble now and then. Far up on the mountains the drifts piled deep,and winter mists blew in clammy wraiths across the shoulders of thehills. From those high, cold levels, the warmth of day and the froststhat gnawed in chill darkness started intermittent slides rumbling,growling as they slipped swiftly down steep slopes, to end with acrash at the bottom of the hill or in the depths of a gorge. But thevalley itself suffered no extremes of weather. The river did notfreeze. It fell to a low level, but not so low that Hollister everfailed to shift his cedar bolts from chute mouth to mill. There wasseldom so much snow that his crew could not work. There was growingan appreciable hole in the heart of his timber limit. In another yearthere would be nothing left of those great cedars that were ancientwhen the first white man crossed the Rockies, nothing but a fewhundred stumps.
With the coming of midwinter a somnolent period seemed also to occurin Hollister's affairs. One day succeeded another in placid routine.The work went on with clock-like precision. It had passed beyond aone-man struggle for economic foothold; it no longer held for him thefeeling of a forlorn hope which he led against the forces of thewilderness. It was like a ball which he had started rolling down hill.It kept on, whether he tended it or not. If he chose to take his rifleand go seeking venison, if he elected to sit by his fire reading abook, the cedars fell, their brown trunks were sawn and split, thebolts came sliding down the chute in reckonable, profitablequantities, to the gain of himself and his men.
Mills remained, moody, working with that strange dynamic energy,sparing of words except that now and then he would talk to Hollisterin brief jerky sentences, in a manner which implied much and revealednothing. Mills always seemed on the point of crying out some deep woethat burned within him, of seeking relief in some outpouring ofspeech,--but he never did. At the most he would fling out some cryptichint, bestow some malediction upon life in general. And he neverslackened the dizzy pace of his daily labor, except upon those fewoccasions when from either Hollister or Lawanne he got a book thatheld him. Then he would stop work and sit in the bunk house and readtill the last page was turned. But mostly he cut and piled cedar as ifhe tried to drown out in the sweat of his body whatever fever burnedwithin.
Hollister observed that Mills no longer had much traffic with theBlands. For weeks at a time he did not leave the bolt camp except tocome down to Hollister's house.
Lawanne seemed to be a favored guest now, at Bland's. Lawanne workedupon his book, but by fits and starts, working when he did work with afeverish concentration. He had a Chinese boy for house-servant. Hemight be found at noon or at midnight sprawled in a chair beside apot-bellied stove, scrawling in an ungainly hand across sheets ofyellow paper. He had no set hours for work. When he did work, when hehad the vision and the fit was on and words came easily, chancecallers met with scant courtesy. But he had great stores of time tospare, for all that. Some of it he spent at Bland's, waging aninterminable contest at cribbage with Bland, coming up now and thenwith the Blands to spend an evening at Hollister's.
"It's about a man who wrecked his life by systematically undermininghis own illusions about life," he answered one day Hollister's curiousinquiry as to what the new book was about, "and of how finally a veryassiduously cultivated illusion made him quite happy at last. Soundinteresting?"
"How could he deliberately cultivate an illusion?" Doris asked. "Ifone's intelligence ever classifies a thing as an illusion, noconscious effort will ever turn it into a reality."
"Oh, I didn't say _he_ cultivated the illusion," Lawanne laughed.
"Besides, do you really think that illusions are necessary tohappiness?" Doris persisted.
"To some people," Lawanne declared. "But let's not follow up thatphilosophy. We're getting into deep water. Let's wade ashore. We'llsay whatever is is right, and let it go at that. It will be quite allright for you to offer me a cup of tea, if your kitchen mechanic willcondescend. That Chink of mine is having a holiday with my shotgun,trying to bag a brace of grouse for dinner. So I throw myself on yourmercy."
"This man Bland is the dizzy limit," Lawanne observed, when the teaand some excellent sandwiches presently appeared. "He bought anotherrifle the other day--paid forty-five bones for it. That makes four hehas now. And they have to manage like the deuce to keep themselves ingrub from one remittance day to the next. He's a study. You seldom runacross such a combination of physical perfection and child-likeirresponsibility. He was complaining about his limited income theother day--'inkum' in his inimitable pronunciation. I suggested thatright here in this valley he could earn a considerable number ofshekels if he cared to work. He merely smiled amiably and said hedidn't think he cared to take on a laborer's job. It left a chap notime for himself, you know. I suppose he'll vegetate here till hecomes into that money he's waiting for. He refers to that as if itwere something which pertained to him by divine right, something whichfreed him from any obligation to make any effort to overcome thesordid way in which they live at present."
"He doesn't consider it sordid," Hollister said. "Work is what heconsiders sordid--and there is something to be said for his viewpoint,at that. He enjoys himself tramping around with a gun, spending anafternoon to catch half a dozen six-inch trout."
"But it _is_ sordid," Lawanne persisted. "Were you ever in theirhouse?"
Hollister shook his head.
"It isn't as comfortable as your men's bunk house. They have boxes forchairs, a rickety table, a stove about ready to fall to pieces. Thereare cracks in the walls and a roof that a rat could crawl through--orthere would be if Mrs. Bland didn't go about stuffing them up withmoss and old newspapers. Why can't a gentleman, an athlete and asportsman make his quarters something a little better than a Siwashwould be contented with? Especially if he has prevailed on a woman toshare his joys and sorrows. Some of these days Mr. Bland will wake upand find his wife has gone off with some enterprising chap who isless cocksure and more ambitious."
"Would you blame her?" Doris asked casually.
"Bless your soul, no," Lawanne laughed. "If I were a little moreromantic, I might run away with her myself. What a tremendous jar thatwould give Bland's exasperating complacency. I believe he's ahang-over from that prehistoric time when men didn't believe that anywoman had a soul--that a woman was something in which a man acquired adefinite property right merely by marrying her."
Doris chuckled.
"I can imagine how Mr. Bland would look if he heard you," she said.
"He'd only smile in a superior manner," Lawanne declared. "Youcouldn't get Bland fussed up by any mere assertion. The only thingthat would stir him deeply would be a direct assault on that vagueabstraction which he calls his honor--or on his property. Then hewould very likely smite the wrongdoer with all the efficiency ofoutraged virtue."
Hollister continued to muse on this after Lawanne went away. Hethought Lawanne's summing up a trifle severe. Nevertheless it was apretty clear statement of fact. Bland certainly seemed above workingeither for money or to secure a reasonable degree of comfort forhimself and his wife. He sat waiting for a windfall to restore hispast splendor of existence, which he sometimes indirectly admittedmeant cricket, a country home, horses and dogs, a whirl among theright sort of people in London now and then. That sort of thing andthat sort of man was what Myra had fallen in love with. Hollister felta mild touch of contempt for them both.
His wife had also let her thoughts focus on the Blands.
"I wonder," she said, "if they are so very poor? Why don't y
ou offerBland a job? Maybe he is too proud to ask."
Bland was not too proud to ask for certain things, it seemed. About aweek later he came to Hollister and in a most casual manner said, "Isay, old man, can you let me have a hundred dollars? My quarterlyfunds are delayed a bit."
Hollister gave him the money without question. As he watched Blandstride away through the light blanket of snow, and a little laternoticed him disappear among the thickets and stumps going towards theCarr camp, where supplies were sold as a matter of accommodationrather than for profit, Hollister reflected that there was a mild sortof irony in the transaction. He wondered if Myra knew of her husband'sborrowing. If she had any inkling of the truth, how would she feel?For he knew that Myra was proud, sensitive, independent in spirit farbeyond her capacity for actual independence. If she even suspected hisidentity, the borrowing of that money would surely sting her. ButHollister put that notion aside.
For a long time Myra had ceased to trouble him with the irritatinguncertainty of their first meetings. She apparently accepted him andhis mutilated face as part of Doris Hollister's background and gavehim no more thought or attention. Always in the little gatherings athis house Hollister contrived to keep in the shadow, to be an onlookerrather than a participant,--just as Charlie Mills did. Hollister wasstill sensitive about his face. He was doubly sensitive because hedreaded any comment upon his disfigurement reaching his wife's ears.He had succeeded so well in thus effacing himself that Myra seemed toregard him as if he were no more than a grotesque bit of furniture towhich she had become accustomed. All the sense of sinisterpossibilities in her presence, all that uneasy dread of her nearness,that consciousness of her as an impending threat, had finally come toseem nothing more than mere figments of his imagination. Especiallysince their son was born. That seemed to establish the final bondbetween himself and Doris. Myra, the past which so poignantly includedMyra, held less and less significance. He could look at Myra andwonder if this _was_ the same woman he had held in his arms, whosekisses had been freely and gladly bestowed upon him; if all thepassion and pain of their life together, of their tearing apart, hadever really been. He had got so far beyond that it seemed unreal. Andlately there had settled upon him a surety that to Myra it must all bejust as unreal--that she could not possibly harbor any suspicion thathe was her legal husband, hiding behind a mask of scars--and thateven if she did suspect, that suspicion could never be translated intoaction which could deflect ever so slightly the current of his presentexistence.
He was working at the chute mouth when Bland came to ask for thatloan. He continued to work there. Not long after he noticed Blandleave his own house and go down the flat, he saw Myra coming along thebank. That was nothing. There was a well-beaten path there that shetraveled nearly every afternoon. He felt his first tentative misgivingwhen he saw that Myra did not stop at the house, that she walked pastand straight towards where he worked. And this slight misgiving grewto a certainty of impending trouble when she came up, when she facedhim. Movement and the crisp air had kindled a glow in her cheeks. Butsomething besides the winter air had kindled an almost unnatural glowin her eyes. They were like dusky pansies. She was, he thought, withcurious self-detachment, a strikingly beautiful woman. And he recalledthat anger or excitement, any emotion that stirred her, always madeher seem more alluring, always made her glow and sparkle as if in suchmoments she was a perfect human jewel, flashing in the sun of life.
She nodded to Hollister, looked down on the cedar blocks floating inthe cold river, stood a moment to watch the swift descent of otherbolts hurtling down the chute and joining their fellows withsuccessive splashes.
"You let Jim have some money this morning?" she said then; it was astatement as much as an interrogation.
"Yes," Hollister replied.
"Don't let him have any more," she said bluntly. "You may never get itback. Why should you supply him with money that you've worked for whenhe won't make any effort to get it for himself? You're altogether toofree-handed, Robin."
Hollister stood speechless. She looked at him with a curioushalf-amused expectancy. She knew him. No one but Myra had ever calledhim that. It had been her pet name for him in the old days. She knewhim. He leaned on his pike pole, waiting for what was to follow. Thisrevelation was only a preliminary. Something like a dumb fury cameover Hollister. Why did she reveal this knowledge of him? For whatpurpose? He felt his secure foundations crumbling.
"So you recognize me?"
"Did you think I wouldn't?" she said slowly. "Did you think your onlydistinguishing characteristic was the shape of your face? I've beensure of it for months."
"Ah," he said. "What are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing. Nothing. What is there to do?"
"Then why reveal this knowledge?" he demanded harshly. "Why drag outthe old skeleton and rattle it for no purpose? Or have you somepurpose?"
Myra sat down on a fallen tree. She drew the folds of a heavy browncoat closer about her and looked at him steadily.
"No," she replied. "I can't say that I have any definite purposeexcept--that I want to talk to you. And it seemed that I could talk toyou better if we stopped pretending. We can't alter facts bypretending they don't exist, can we?"
"I don't attempt to alter them," he said. "I accept them and let it goat that. Why don't you?"
"I do," she assured him, "but when I find myself compelled to acceptyour money to pay for the ordinary necessaries of living, I feelmyself being put in an intolerable position. I suppose you won'tunderstand that. I imagine you think of me as a selfish little beastwho has no scruples about anything. But I'm not quite like that. Itgalls me to have Jim borrow from you. He may intend to pay it back.But he won't; it will somehow never be quite convenient. And I'vesquandered enough of your money. I feel like a thief sometimes when Iwatch you work. You must hate me. Do you, Robin?"
Hollister stirred the snow absently with the pike-pole point. He triedto analyze his feelings, and he found it difficult.
"I don't think so," he said at last. "I'm rather indifferent. If youmeddled with things I'd not only hate you, I think I would want todestroy you. But you needn't worry about the money. If Bland doesn'trepay the hundred dollars it won't break me. I won't lend him any moreif it disturbs you. But that doesn't matter. The only thing thatmatters is whether you are going to upset everything in some rash moodthat you may sometime have."
"Do you think I might do that?"
"How do I know what you may do?" he returned. "You threw me into thediscard when your fancy turned to some one else. You followed your ownbent with a certain haste as soon as I was reported dead. I had ceasedto be man enough for you, but my money was still good enough for you.When I recall those things, I think I can safely say that I haven'tthe least idea what you may do next. You aren't faring any too well.That's plain enough. I have seen men raise Cain out of sheerdevilishness, out of a desperate notion to smash everything becausethey were going to smash themselves. Some people seem able to amusethemselves by watching other people squirm. Maybe you are like that.You had complete power over me once. I surrendered to that gladly,then. You appear to have a faculty of making men dance to any tune youcare to play. But all the power you have now, so far as I'm concerned,is to make me suffer a little more by giving the whole ugly show away.No, I haven't the least idea what you may do. I don't know you atall."
"My God, no, you don't," she flung out. "You don't. If you ever had,we wouldn't be where we are now."
"Probably it's as well," Hollister returned. "Even if you had beentrue, you'd have faltered when I came back looking like this."
"And that would have been worse than what I did do," she said,"wouldn't it?"
"Are you justifying it as an act of mercy to me?" he asked.
Myra shook her head.
"No. I don't feel any great necessity for justifying my actions. Nomore than you should feel compelled to justify yours. We have eachonly done what normal human beings frequently do when they get tornloose from the moorings the
y know and are moved by forces within themand beyond them, forces which bewilder and dismay them. The war andyour idea of duty, of service, pried us apart. Natural causes--naturalenough when I look back at them--did the rest. We all want to behappy. We all grab at that when it comes within reach. That's all youand I have done. We will probably continue doing that the same asevery one else."
"I have it," Hollister said defiantly. "That is why I don't want anyghosts of the old days haunting me now."
"If you have, you are very fortunate," she murmured. "But don't leaveyour wife alone in a city throbbing with the fevered excitement anduncertainty of war, where every one's motto is a short life and amerry one! Not if she's young and hot-blooded, if she has grown soaccustomed to affection and caresses that the want of them afflictsher with a thirst like that of a man lost in a desert. Because if shehas nothing to do but live from day to day on memories and hopes,there will be a time when some man at hand will obscure the figure ofthe absent one. That is all that happened to me, Robin. I longed foryou. Then I began to resent your complete absorption by the warmachine. Then you got dim, like the figure of a man walking away downa long road. Do you remember how it was? Leave once in six months orso. A kiss of welcome and a good-by right on its heels. There werethousands like me in London. The war took our men--but took no accountof us. We were untrained. There were no jobs to occupy our hands--nonewe could put our hearts into--none that could be gotten withoutinfluence in the proper quarters. We couldn't pose successfully enoughto persuade ourselves that it was a glorious game. They had taken ourmen, and there was nothing much left. We did not have to earn ourkeep. If you had only not stuck so closely to the front lines."
"I had to," Hollister said sharply. "I had no choice. The country----"
"The country! That shadowy phantasm--that recruiting sergeant'splea--that political abstraction that is flung in one's face alongwith other platitudes from every platform," Myra broke outpassionately. "What does it really mean? What did it mean to us? Mengoing out to die. Women at home crying, eating their hearts out withloneliness, going bad now and then in recklessness, in desperation.Army contractors getting rich. Ammunition manufacturers getting rich.Transportation companies paying hundred per cent. dividends. Onenation grabbing for territory here, another there. Talk of saving theworld for democracy and in the same breath throttling liberty ofspeech and action in every corner of the world. And now that it's allover, everything is the same, only worse. The rich are richer and thepoor poorer, and there are some new national boundaries and someblasted military and political reputations. That's all. What was thatto you and me? Nothing. Less than nothing. Yet it tore our lives up bythe roots. It took away from us something we had that we valued,something that we might have kept. It doesn't matter that you weresincere, that you wanted to serve, that you thought it a worthyservice. The big people, the men who run things, they had no suchillusions; they had their eye on the main chance all the time. It paidthem--if not in money then in prestige and power. How has it paid you?You know, every time you look in a mirror. You know that the men thatdied were the lucky ones. The country that marched them to the frontwith speeches and music when the guns were talking throws them on thescrapheap when they come back maimed. I have no faith in a countrythat takes so much and gives a little so grudgingly. I've learned tothink, Robin, and perhaps it has warped me a little. You havesuffered. So have I, partly because I was ignorant of the nature I wasborn with, which you didn't understand and which I'm only myselfbeginning to understand--but mostly because the seats of the mightywere filled by fools and hypocrites seeking their own advantage. Oh,life is a dreary business sometimes! We want so to be happy. We try sohard. And mostly we fail."
Her eyes filled with tears, round drops that gathered slowly in thecorners of her puckered lids and spilled over the soft curves of hercheek. She did not look at Hollister. She stared at the gray river.She made a little gesture, as if she dumbly answered some futilequestion, and her hands dropped idly into her lap.
"I feel guilty," she continued after a little, "not because I failedto play up to the role of the faithful wife. I couldn't help that. ButI shouldn't have kept that money, I suppose. Still, you were dead.Money meant nothing to you. It was in my hands and I needed it, orthought I did. You must have had a hard time, Robin, coming back tocivil life a beggar."
"Yes, but not for lack of money," Hollister replied. "I didn't needmuch and I had enough. It was being scarred so that everybody shunnedme. It was the horror of being alone, of finding men and women alwaysuneasy in my presence, always glad to get away from me. They acted asif I were a monstrosity that offended them beyond endurance. Icouldn't blame them much. Sometimes it gave me the shivers to look atmyself in the glass. I am a horrible sight. People who must be aroundme seem to get used to me, whether they like it or not. But at first Inearly went mad. I had been uprooted and disfigured. Nobody wanted toknow me, to talk to me, to be friendly. However, that's past. I havegot a start. Unless this skeleton is dragged out of the closet, Ishall get on well enough."
"I shall not drag it out, Robin," she assured him with a faint smile."Some day I hope I'll be able to give you back that money."
"What became of it?" He voiced a question which had been recurring inhis mind for a year. "You must have had over forty thousand dollarswhen I was reported dead in '17."
Myra shrugged her shoulders.
"We were married six months after that. Jim has some rather well-to-dopeople over there. They were all very nice to me. I imagine theythought he was marrying money. Perhaps he thought so himself. He hadnothing except a quarterly pittance. He has no sense of values, and Iwas not much better. There is always this estate which he will comeinto, to discount the present. He had seen service the first year ofthe war. He was wounded and invalided home. Then he served as amilitary instructor. Finally, when the Americans came in, he wasallowed to resign. So we came across to the States. We went here andthere, spending as we went. We cut a pretty wide swath too, most ofthe time. There were several disastrous speculations. Presently themoney was all gone. Then we came up here, where we can live on next tonothing. We shall have to stay here another eighteen months. Lookingback, the way we spent money seems sheer lunacy. The fool and hismoney--you know. And it wasn't our money. That hurts me now. I'vebegun to realize what money means to me, to you, to every one. That'swhy when Jim calmly told me that he had borrowed a hundred dollarsfrom you I felt that was a little more than I could stand. That'spiling it on. I wondered why you gave it to him--if you let him haveit in a spirit of contemptuous charity. I might have known it wasn'tthat. But don't lend him any more. He really doesn't need it.Borrowing with Jim is just like asking for a smoke. He's queer. If hemade a bet with you and lost he'd pay up promptly, if he had to pawnhis clothes and mine too. Borrowed money, however, seems to come in adifferent category. When this estate comes into his hands perhaps Ishall be able to return some of this money that we wasted. I thinkthat--and the fact that I'm just a little afraid to break away andface the world alone--is chiefly what keeps me faithful to him now."
"Is it as bad as that?" Hollister asked.
"Don't misunderstand me, Robin," she protested. "I'm not an abusedwife or anything like that. He's perfectly satisfied, as complacent asan English gentleman can be in the enjoyment of possession. But hedoesn't love me any more than I love him. He blandly assumes that loveis only a polite term for something else. And I can't believethat--yet. Maybe I'm what Archie Lawanne calls a romanticsentimentalist, but there is something in me that craves from a manmore than elementary passion. I'm a woman; therefore my nature demandsof a man that he be first of all a man. But that alone isn't enough.I'm not just a something to be petted when the fit is on and then toldin effect to run along and play. There must be men who have minds aswell as bodies. There must be here and there a man who understandsthat a woman has all sorts of thoughts and feelings as well as sex.Meanwhile--I mark time. That's all."
"You appear," Hollister said a little grimly, "to have acquir
edcertain definite ideas. It's a pity they didn't develop sooner."
"Ideas only develop out of experience," she said quietly. "And ourpassions are born with us."
She rose, shaking free the snow that clung to her coat.
"I feel better for getting all that steam off my chest," she said."It's better, since we must live here, that you and I should not keepup this game of pretence between ourselves. Isn't it, Robin?"
"Perhaps. I don't know." The old doubts troubled Hollister. He wasjealous of what he had attained, fearful of reviving the past, alittle uncertain of this new turn.
"At any rate, you don't hold a grudge against me, do you?" Myra asked."You can afford to be indifferent now. You've found a mate, you'replaying a man's part here. You're beating the game and getting somereal satisfaction out of living. You can afford to be above a grudgeagainst me."
"I don't hold any grudge," Hollister answered truthfully.
"I'm going down to the house, now," Myra said. "I wanted to talk toyou openly, and I'm glad I did. I think and think sometimes until Ifeel like a rat in a trap. And you are the only one here I can reallytalk to. You've been through the mill and you won't misunderstand."
"Ah," he said. "Is Charlie Mills devoid of understanding, or Lawanne?"
She looked at him fixedly for a second.
"You are very acute," she observed. "Some time I may tell you aboutCharlie Mills. Certainly I'd never reveal my soul to Archie Lawanne.He'd dissect it and gloat over it and analyze it in his next book. Andneither of them will ever be quite able to abandon the idea that acreature like me is something to be pursued and captured."
She turned away. Hollister saw her go into the house. He could picturethe two of them there together. Doris and Myra bending over youngRobert, who was now beginning to lie with wide-open blue eyes, inwhich the light of innocent wonder, of curiosity, began to show, towave his arms and grope with tiny, uncertain hands. Those two womentogether hovering over his child,--one who was still legally his wife,the other his wife in reality.
How the world would prick up its donkey ears--even the little cosmosof the Toba valley--if it knew. But of course no one would ever know.Hollister was far beyond any contrition for his acts. The endjustified the means,--doubly justified it in his case, for he had hadno choice. Harsh material factors had rendered the decision for him.Hollister was willing now to abide by that decision. To him it seemedgood, the only good thing he had laid hold of since the war had turnedhis world upside down and inside out.
He went about his work mechanically, deep in thought. His mindpersisted in measuring, weighing, turning over all that Myra had said,while his arms pushed and heaved and twisted the pike pole, thrustingthe blocks of cedar into an orderly arrangement within theboom-sticks.