CHAPTER XVI
Hollister had gone down to Lawanne's with a haunch of venison. Thisneighborly custom of sharing meat, when it is to be had for thekilling, prevails in the northern woods. Officially there were gameseasons to be observed. But the close season for deer sat lightly onmen in a region three days' journey from a butcher shop. They shotdeer when they needed meat. The law of necessity overrode the legalpronouncement in this matter of food, as it often did in other ways.
While Hollister, having duly pleased Lawanne's China-boy by thisquarter of venison, sat talking to Lawanne, Charlie Mills came in toreturn a book.
"Did you get anything out of that?" Lawanne asked.
"I got a bad taste in my mouth," Mills replied. "It reads like thingsthat happen. It's too blamed true to be pleasant. A man shouldn't belike that, he shouldn't think too much--especially about other people.He ought to be like a bull--go around snorting and pawing up the earthtill he gets his belly full, and then lie down and chew his cud."
Lawanne smiled.
"You've hit on something, Mills," he said. "The man who thinks theleast and acts the most is the happy man, the contented man, becausehe's nearly always pleased with himself. If he fails at anything hecan usually excuse himself on the grounds of somebody else'sdamnfoolishness. If he succeeds he complacently assumes that he did itout of his own greatness. Action--that's the thing. The contemplative,analytical mind is the mind that suffers. Man was a happy animal untilhe began to indulge in abstract thinking. And now that the burden ofthought is laid on him, he frequently uses it to his owndisadvantage."
"I'll say he does," Mills agreed. "But what can he do? I've watchedthings happen. I've read what some pretty good thinkers say. It don'tseem to me a man's got much choice. He thinks or he don't think,according to the way he's made. When you figure how a man comes to bewhat he is, why he's nothing but the product of forces that have beenworking on all the generations of his kind. It don't leave a man muchchoice about how he thinks or feels. If he could just grin and say 'Itdoesn't matter', he'd be all right. But he can't, unless he's madethat way. And since he isn't responsible for the way he's made, whatthe hell can he do?"
"You're on the high road to wisdom when you can look an abstractionlike that in the face," Lawanne laughed. "What you say is true. Butthere's one item you overlook. A man is born with, say, certainpredispositions. Once he recognizes and classifies them, he can beginto exercise his will, his individual determination. If our existencewas ordered in advance by destiny, dictated by some all-conscious,omnipotent intelligence, we might as well sit down and fold our hands.But we still have a chance. Free will is an exploded theory, in so faras it purposes to explain human action in a general sense. Men arebiologically different. In some weakness is inherent, in othersdetermination. The weak man succumbs when he is beset. The strong manstruggles desperately. The man who consciously grasps and understandshis own weaknesses can combat an evil which will destroy a man oflesser perception, lesser will; because the intelligent man will avoidwhat he can't master. He won't butt his head against a stone walleither intellectually, emotionally, or physically. If the thing isbeyond him and he knows it is beyond him, he will not waste himself invain effort. He will adapt himself to what he can't change. The manwho can't do that must suffer. He may even perish. And to cling tolife is the prime law. That's why it is a fundamental instinct thatmakes a man want to run when he can no longer fight."
Hollister said nothing. He was always a good listener. He preferred tohear what other men said, to weigh their words, rather than pour outhis own ideas. Lawanne sometimes liked to talk at great length, toassume the oracular vein, to analyze actions and situations, to puthis finger on a particular motive and trace its origin, its mostremote causation. Mills seldom talked. It was strange to hear himspeak as he did now, to Lawanne.
Mills walked back through the flat with Hollister. They trudgedsilently through the soft, new snow, the fresh fall which had enabledHollister to track and kill the big deer early that morning. The sunwas setting. Its last beam struck flashing on the white hills. Theback of the winter was broken, the March storms nearly at an end. In alittle while now, Hollister thought, the buds would be bursting, therewould be a new feel in the air, new fragrant smells arising in theforest, spring freshets in the rivers, the wild duck flying north.Time was on the wing, in ceaseless flight.
Mills broke into his reflections.
"Come up in the morning, will you, and check in what cedar I havepiled? I'm going to pull out."
"All right." Hollister looked his surprise at the abrupt decision."I'm sorry you're going."
Mills walked a few paces.
"Maybe it won't do me any good," he said. "I wonder if Lawanne isright? It just struck me that he is. Anyway, I'm going to try hisrecipe. Maybe I can kid myself into thinking everything's jake, thatthe world's a fine sort of place and everything is always lovely. If Icould just myself think that--maybe a change of scenery will do thetrick. Lawanne's clever, isn't he? Nothing would fool him very long."
"I don't know," Hollister said. "Lawanne's a man with a pretty keenmind and a lively imagination. He's more interested in why people dothings than in what they do. But I dare say he might fool himself aswell as the rest of us. For we all do, now and then."
"I guess it's the way a man's made," Mills reflected. "But it's rathera new idea that a man can sort of make himself over if he puts hismind to it. Still, it sounds reasonable. I'm going to give it a try.I've got to."
But he did not say why he must. Nor did Hollister ask him. He thoughthe knew--and he wondered at the strange tenacity of this emotion whichMills could not shake off. A deep-rooted passion for some particularwoman, an emotion which could not be crushed, was no mystery toHollister. He only wondered that it should be so vital a force in thelife of a man.
Mills came down from the hill camp to settle his account withHollister in the morning. He carried his blankets and his clothes in abulky pack on his sturdy shoulders. When he had his money, he rose togo, to catch the coastwise steamer which touched the Inlet's head thatafternoon. Hollister helped him sling the pack, opened the door forhim,--and they met Myra Bland setting foot on the porch step.
They looked at each other, those two. Hollister knew that for a secondneither was conscious of him. Their eyes met in a lingering fixity,each with a question that did not find utterance.
"I'm going out," Mills said at last. A curious huskiness seemed tothicken his tongue. "This time for good, I hope. So-long."
"Good-by, Charlie," Myra said.
She put out her hand. But either Mills did not see it or he shrankfrom contact, for he passed her and strode away, bent a little forwardunder his pack. Myra turned to watch him. When she faced about againthere was a mistiness in her eyes, a curious, pathetic expression ofpity on her face. She went on into the house with scarcely a glance atHollister.
In another week spring had ousted winter from his seasonal supremacy.The snow on the lower levels vanished under a burst of warm rain. Therain ceased and the clouds parted to let through a sun fast growing tofull strength. Buds swelled and burst on willow and alder. The soil,warmed by the sun, sent up the first shoots of fern and grasses, amyriad fragile green tufts that would presently burst into flowers.The Toba rose day by day, pouring down a swollen flood of snow-waterto the sea.
And life went on as it always did. Hollister's crew, working on abonus for work performed, kept the bolts of cedar gliding down thechute. The mill on the river below swallowed up the blocks and spewedthem out in bound bundles of roof covering. Lawanne kept close to hiscabin, deep in the throes of creation, manifesting strange vagaries ofmoroseness or exhilaration which in his normal state he cynicallyascribed to the artistic temperament. Bland haunted the creeks wherethe trout lurked, tramped the woods gun in hand, a dog at his heels,oblivious to everything but his own primitive, purposeless pleasures.
"I shouldn't care to settle here for good," he once said to Hollister."But really, you know, it's not half bad. If money
wasn't so dashedscarce. It's positively cruel for an estate to be so tied up that aman can't get enough to live decently on."
Bland irritated Hollister sometimes, but often amused him by his calmassurance that everything was always well in the world of J.Carrington Bland. Hollister could imagine him in Norfolk and gaitersstriding down an English lane, concerned only with his stable, hiskennels, the land whose rentals made up his income. There were noproblems on Bland's horizon. He would sit on Hollister's porch with apipe sagging one corner of his mouth and gaze placidly at the river,the hills, the far stretch of the forest,--and Hollister knew that toBland it was so much water, so much up-piled rock and earth, so muchgrowing wood. He would say to Myra: "My dear, it's time we were goinghome", or "I think I shall have a go at that big pool in GraveyardCreek to-morrow", or "I say, Hollister, if this warm weather keeps on,the bears will be coming out soon, eh?", and between whiles he wouldsit silently puffing at his pipe, a big, heavy, handsome man, wearingsoiled overalls and a shabby coat with a curious dignity. He spoke of"family" and "breeding" as if these were sacred possessions whichconferred upon those who had them complete immunity from the sort ofeffort that common men must make.
"He really believes that," Myra said to Hollister once. "No Bland everhad to work. They have always had property--they have always beensuperior people. Jim's an anachronism, really. He belongs in theMiddle Ages when the barons did the fighting and the commoners did thework. Generations of riding in the bandwagon has made it almostimpossible for a man like that to plan intelligently and work hardmerely for the satisfaction of his needs."
"I wonder what he'd do if there was no inheritance to fall back on?"Hollister asked.
"I don't know--and I really don't care much," Myra said indifferently."I shouldn't be concerned, probably, if that were the case."
Hollister frowned.
"Why do you go on living with him, if that's the way you feel?"
"You seem to forget," she replied, "that there are very materialreasons! And you must remember that I don't dislike Jim. I have got sothat I regard him as a big, good-natured child of whom one expectsvery little."
"How in heaven's name did a man like that catch your fancy in thefirst place?" Hollister asked. He had never ceased to wonder aboutthat. Myra looked at him with a queer lowering of her eyes.
"What's the use of telling you?" she exclaimed petulantly. "You oughtto understand without telling. What was it drove you into DorisCleveland's arms a month after you met her? You couldn't know her--norshe you. You were lonely and moody, and something about her appealedto you. You took a chance--and drew a prize in the lottery. Well, Itook a chance also--and drew a blank. I'm a woman and he's a man, avery good sort of a man for any woman who wants nothing more of a manthan that he shall be a handsome, agreeable, well-mannered animal.That's about what Jim is. I may also be good-looking, agreeable,well-mannered--a fairly desirable woman to all outward appearances--butI'm something besides, which Jim doesn't suspect and couldn't understandif he did. But I didn't learn that soon enough."
"When did you learn it?" Hollister asked. He felt that he should notbroach these intimately personal matters with Myra, but there was afascination in listening to her reveal complexes of character which hehad never suspected, which he should have known.
"I've been learning for some time; but I think Charlie Mills gave methe most striking lesson," Myra answered thoughtfully. "You canimagine I was blue and dissatisfied when we came here, to buryourselves alive because we could live cheaply, and he could hunt andfish to his heart's content while he waited to step into a dead man'sshoes. A wife's place, you see, is in the home, and home is whereverand whatever her lord and master chooses to make it. I was quiteconscious by that time that I didn't love Jim Bland. But he was agentleman. He didn't offend me. I was simply indifferent--satiated, ifyou like. I used to sit wondering how I could have ever imaginedmyself going on year after year, contented and happy, with a man likeJim. Yet I had been quite sure of that--just as once I had been quitesure you were the only man who could ever be much of a figure on myhorizon. Do you think I'm facile and shallow? I'm not really. I'm notjust naturally a sensation-seeker. I hate promiscuity. _He_ convincedme of that."
She made a swift gesture towards Mills' vanishing figure.
"I ran across him first in London. He was convalescing from a legwound. That was shortly after I was married, and I was helpingentertain these stray dogs from the front. It was quite the fashion.People took them out motoring and so on. I remembered Mills out of allthe others because he was different from the average Tommy, quietwithout being self-conscious. I remembered thinking often what a pitynice boys like that must be killed and crippled by the thousand. Whenwe came here, Charlie was working down at the settlement. Somehow Iwas awfully glad to see him--any friendly face would have been welcomethose first months before I grew used to these terrible silences, thiscomplete isolation which I had never before known.
"Well, the upshot was that he fell in love with me, and forawhile--for a little while--I thought I was experiencing a realaffection at last, myself; a new love rising fine and true out of theashes of old ones.
"And it frightened me. It made me stop and think. When he would stareat me with those sad eyes I wanted to comfort him, I wanted to go awaywith him to some distant place where no one knew me and begin life allover again. And I knew it wouldn't do. It would only be the same thingover again, because I'm made the way I am. I was beginning to see thatit would take a good deal of a man to hold my fitful fancy very long.Charlie's a nice boy. He's clean and sensitive, and I'm sure he'd bekind and good to any woman. Still, I knew it wouldn't do. Curiousthing--all the while that my mind was telling me how my wholeexistence had unfitted me to be a wife to such a man--for CharlieMills is as full of romantic illusions as a seventeen-year-oldgirl--at the same time some queer streak in me made me long to wipethe slate clean and start all over again. But I could never convincemyself that it was anything more than sex in me responding to thepassion that so deeply moved him. That suspicion became certainty atlast. That is why I say Charlie Mills taught me something aboutmyself."
"I think it was a dear lesson for him," Hollister said, rememberingthe man's moods and melancholy, the bitterness of frustration whichmust have torn Mills. "You hurt him."
"I know it, and I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it," she saidpatiently. "There was a time just about a year ago when I very nearlywent away with him. I think he felt that I was yielding. But I wastrying to be honest with myself and with him. With all my vagaries, myuncertain emotions, I didn't want just the excitement of an affair, anamorous adventure. Neither did he. He wanted me body and soul, and Irecoiled from that finally, because--I was afraid, afraid of what ourlife would become when he learned that truth which I had alreadygrasped, that life can't be lived on the peaks of great emotion andthat there was nothing much else for him and me to go on."
She stopped and looked at Hollister.
"I wonder if you think I'm a little mad?" she asked.
"No. I was just wondering what it is about you that makes men wantyou," he returned.
"You should know," she answered bluntly.
"I never knew. I was like Mills: a victim of my emotions. But oneoutgrows any feeling if it is clubbed hard enough. I daresay all thesethings are natural enough, even if they bring misery in their wake."
"I daresay," she said. "There is nothing unnatural in a man loving me,any more than it was unnatural for you to love Doris, or for Doris tohave a son. Still you are inclined to blame me for what I've done.You seem to forget that the object of each individual's existence, manor woman, is not to bestow happiness on some one else, but to seek itfor themselves."
"That sounds like Lawanne," Hollister observed.
"It's true, no matter who it sounds like," she retorted.
"If you really believe that, you are certainly a fool to go on livingwith a man like Jim Bland," Hollister declared. It did not occur tohim that he was displaying irritation.
"I
've told you why and I do not see any reason for changing my idea,"she said coolly. "When it no longer suits me to be a chattel, I shallcease to be one. Meantime--_pax_--_pax_--
"Where is Doris and the adorable infant?" Myra changed the subjectabruptly. "I don't hear or see one or the other."
"They were all out in the kitchen a minute ago, bathing the kid," hetold her, and Myra went on in.
Hollister's work lay almost altogether in the flat now. The cut cedaraccumulating under the busy hands of six men came pouring down thechute in a daily stream. To salvage the sticks that spilled, toarrange the booms for rafting down stream, kept Hollister on the move.At noon that day Myra and Doris brought the baby and lunch in a basketand spread it on the ground on the sunny side of an alder near thechute mouth, just beyond the zone of danger from flying bolts. Theday was warm enough for comfortable lounging. The boy, now grown to bea round-faced, clear-skinned mite with blue eyes like his father, layon an outspread quilt, waving his chubby arms, staring at the mysteryof the shadows cast upon him by leaf and branch above.
Hollister finished his meal in silence, that reflective silence whichalways overtook him when he found himself one corner of this strangetriangle. He could talk to Myra alone. He was never at a loss forwords with his wife. Together, they struck him dumb.
And this day Doris seemed likewise dumb. There was a growingstrangeness about her which had been puzzling Hollister for days. Atnight she would snuggle down beside him, quietly contented, or shewould have some story to tell, or some unexpectedness of thought whichstill surprised him by its clear-cut and vigorous imagery. But by dayshe grew distrait, as if she retreated into communion with herself,and her look was that of one striving to see something afar, astraining for vision.
Hollister had marked this. It had troubled him. But he said nothing.There were times when Doris liked to take refuge in her ownthought-world. He was aware of that, and understood it and let her be,in such moods.
Now she sat with both hands clasped over one knee. Her face turnedtoward Myra for a time. Then her eyes sought her husband's face with alook which gave Hollister the uneasy, sickening conviction that shesaw him quite clearly, that she was looking and appraising. Then shelooked away toward the river, and as her gaze seemed to focus uponsomething there, an expression of strain, of effort, gathered on herface. It lasted until Hollister, watching her closely, felt his mouthgrow dry. It hurt him as if some pain, some terrible effort of herswas being communicated to him. Yet he did not understand, and he couldnot reach her intimately with Myra sitting by.
Doris spoke at last.
"What is that, Bob?" she asked. She pointed with her finger.
"A big cedar stump," he replied. It stood about thirty feet away.
"Is it dark on one side and light on the other?"
"It's blackened by fire and the raw wood shows on one side where apiece is split off."
He felt his voice cracked and harsh.
"Ah," she breathed. Her eyes turned to the baby sprawling on hisquilt.
Myra rose to her feet. She picked up the baby, moved swiftly andnoiselessly three steps aside, stood holding the boy in her arms.
"You have picked up baby. You have on a dress with light and darkstripes. I can see--I can see."
Her voice rose exultantly on the last word. Hollister looked at Myra;she held the boy pressed close to her breast. Her lips were parted,her pansy-purple eyes were wide and full of alarm as she looked atHollister.
He felt his scarred face grow white. And when Doris turned toward himto bend forward and look at him with that strange, peering gaze, hecovered his face with his hands.