Hollister stowed his pack in the smoking room and stood outside by the
rail, watching the Toba Valley fall astern, a green fissure in the
white rampart of the Coast Range. Chance, the inscrutable arbiter of
human destinies, had directed him that morning to a man cutting wood
on the bank of the river close by that cluster of houses where other
men stirred about various tasks, where there must have been wives and
mothers, for he saw a dozen children at play by a snow fort.
"Steamer?" the man answered Hollister's inquiry. "Say, if you want to
catch her, you just about got time. Two fellows from here left awhile
ago. If you hurry, maybe you can catch 'em. If you catch 'em before
they get out over the bar, they'll give you a lift to the float. If
you don't, you're stuck for a week. There's only one rowboat down
there."
Hollister had caught them.
He took a last, thoughtful look. Over the vessel's bubbling wake he
could see the whole head of the Inlet deep in winter snows,--a white
world, coldly aloof in its grandeur. It was beautiful, full of the
majesty of serene distances, of great heights. It stood forth clothed
with the dignity of massiveness, of permanence. It was as it had been
for centuries, calm and untroubled, unmoved by floods and slides, by
fires and slow glacial changes. Yes, it was beautiful and Hollister
looked a long time, for he was not sure he would see it again. He had
a canoe and a tent cached in that silent valley, but for these alone
he would not return. Neither the ownership of that timber which he now
esteemed of doubtful value nor the event of its sale would require his
presence there.
He continued to stare with an absent look in his eyes until a crook in
the Inlet hid those white escarpments and outstanding peaks, and the
Inlet walls--themselves lifting to dizzy heights that were shrouded in
rolling mist--marked the limit of his visual range. The ship's bell
tinkled the noon hour. A white-jacketed steward walked the decks,
proclaiming to all and sundry that luncheon was being served.
Hollister made his way to the dining saloon.
The steamer was past Salmon Bay when he returned above decks to lean
on the rail, watching the shores flit by, marking with a little wonder
the rapid change in temperature, the growing mildness in the air as
the steamer drew farther away from the gorge-like head of Toba with
its aerial ice fields and snowy slopes. Twenty miles below Salmon Bay
the island-dotted area of the Gulf of Georgia began. There a snowfall
seldom endured long, and the teeth of the frost were blunted by
eternal rains. There the logging camps worked full blast the year
around, in sunshine and drizzle and fog. All that region bordering on
the open sea bore a more genial aspect and supported more people and
industries in scattered groups than could be found in any of those
lonely inlets.
Hollister was not thinking particularly of these things. He had eaten
his meal at a table with half a dozen other men. In the saloon
probably two score others applied themselves, with more diligence than
refinement, to their food. There was a leavening of women in this male
mass of loggers, fishermen, and what-not. A buzz of conversation
filled the place. But Hollister was not a participant. He observed
casual, covert glances at his disfigured face, that disarrangement of
his features and marring of his flesh which made men ill at ease in
his presence. He felt a recurrence of the old protest against this. He
experienced a return of that depression which had driven him out of
Vancouver. It was a disheartenment from which nothing in the future,
no hope, no dream, could deliver him. He was as he was. He would
always be like that. The finality of it appalled him.
After a time he became aware of a young woman leaning, like himself,
against the rail a few feet distant. He experienced a curious degree
of self-consciousness as he observed her. The thought crossed his mind
that presently she would look at him and move away. When she did not,
his eyes kept coming back to her with the involuntary curiosity of
the casual male concerning the strange female. She was of medium
height, well-formed, dressed in a well-tailored gray suit. Under the
edges of a black velvet turban her hair showed glossy brown in a
smooth roll. She had one elbow propped on the rail and her chin
nestled in the palm. Hollister could see a clean-cut profile, the
symmetrical outline of her nose, one delicately colored cheek above
the gloved hand and a neckpiece of dark fur.
He wondered what she was so intent upon for so long, leaning immobile
against that wooden guard. He continued to watch her. Would she
presently bestow a cursory glance upon him and withdraw to some other
part of the ship? Hollister waited for that with moody expectation. He
found himself wishing to hear her voice, to speak to her, to have her
talk to him. But he did not expect any such concession to a whimsical
desire.
Nevertheless the unexpected presently occurred. The girl moved
slightly. A hand-bag slipped from under her arm to the deck. She
half-turned, seemed to hesitate. Instinctively, as a matter of common
courtesy to a woman, Hollister took a step forward, picked it up.
Quite as instinctively he braced himself, so to speak, for the shocked
look that would gather like a shadow on her piquant face.
But it did not come. The girl's gaze bore imperturbably upon him as he
restored the hand-bag to her hand. The faintest sort of smile lurked
about the corners of a pretty mouth. Her eyes were a cloudy gray. They
seemed to look out at the world with a curious impassivity. That much
Hollister saw in a fleeting glance.
"Thanks, very much," she said pleasantly.
Hollister resumed his post against the rail. His movement had brought
him nearer, so that he stood now within arm's length, and his interest
in her had awakened, become suddenly intense. He felt a queer
thankfulness, a warm inward gratefulness, that she had been able to
regard his disfigurement unmoved. He wondered how she could. For
months he had encountered women's averted faces, the reluctant glances
of mingled pity and distaste which he had schooled himself to expect
and endure but which he never ceased to resent. This girl's uncommon
self-possession at close contact with him was a puzzle as well as a
pleasure. A little thing, to be sure, but it warmed Hollister. It was
like an unexpected gleam of sunshine out of a sky banked deep with
clouds.
Presently, to his surprise, the girl spoke to him.
"Are we getting near the Channel Islands?"
She was looking directly at him, and Hollister was struck afresh with
the curious quality of her gaze, the strangely unperturbed directness
of her eyes upon him. He made haste to answer her question.
"We'll pass between them in another mile. You can see the western
island a little off our starboard bow."
"I should be very glad if I could; but I shall have to take your word
for its being there."
"I'm afraid I don't quite understand."
A smile spread over her face at the puzzled tone.
"I'm blind," she explained, with what struck Hollister as infinite
patience. "If my eyes were not sightless, I shouldn't have to ask a
stranger about the Channel Islands. I used to be able to see them well
enough."
Hollister stared at her. He could not associate those wide gray eyes
with total darkness. He could scarcely make himself comprehend a world
devoid of light and color, an existence in which one felt and breathed
and had being amid eternal darkness. Yet for the moment he was selfish
enough to feel glad. And he said so, with uncharacteristic
impulsiveness.
"I'm glad you can't see," he found himself saying. "If you could----"
"What a queer thing to say," the girl interrupted. "I thought every
one always regarded a blind person as an object of pity."
There was an unmistakably sardonic inflection in the last sentence.
"But you don't find it so, eh?" Hollister questioned eagerly. He was
sure he had interpreted that inflection. "And you sometimes resent
that attitude, eh?"
"I daresay I do," the girl replied, after a moment's consideration.
"To be unable to see is a handicap. At the same time to have pity
drooled all over one is sometimes irritating. But why did you just say
you were glad I was blind?"
"I didn't mean that. I meant that I was glad you couldn't see _me_,"
he explained. "One of Fritz's shells tore my face to pieces. People
don't like to look at the result. Women particularly. You can't see my
wrecked face, so you don't shudder and pass on. I suppose that is why
I said that the way I did."
"I see. You feel a little bit glad to come across some one who doesn't
know whether your face is straight or crooked? Some one who accepts
you sight unseen, as she would any man who spoke and acted
courteously? Is that it?"
"Yes," Hollister admitted. "That's about it."
"But your friends and relatives?" she suggested softly.
"I have no relatives in this country," he said. "And I have no friends
anywhere, now."
She considered this a moment, rubbing her cheek with a gloved
forefinger. What was she thinking about, Hollister wondered?
"That must be rather terrible at times. I'm not much given to slopping
over, but I find myself feeling sorry for you--and you are only a
disembodied voice. Your fix is something like my own," she said at
last. "And I have always denied that misery loves company."
"You were right in that, too," Hollister replied. "Misery wants
pleasant company. At least, that sort of misery which comes from
isolation and unfriendliness makes me appreciate even chance
companionship."
"Is it so bad as that?" she asked quickly. The tone of her voice made
Hollister quiver, it was so unexpected, so wistful.
"Just about. I've become a stray dog in this old world. And it used to
be a pretty good sort of a world for me in the old days. I'm not
whining. But I do feel like kicking. There's a difference, you know."
He felt ashamed of this mild outburst as soon as it was uttered. But
it was true enough, and he could not help saying it. There was
something about this girl that broke down his reticence, made him want
to talk, made him feel sure he would not be misunderstood.
She nodded.
"There is a great difference. Any one with any spirit will kick if
there is anything to kick about. And it's always shameful to whine.
You don't seem like a man who _could_ whine."
"How can you tell what sort of man I am?" Hollister inquired. "You
just said that I was only a disembodied voice."
She laughed, a musical low-toned chuckle that pleased him.
"One gets impressions," she answered. "Being sightless sharpens other
faculties. You often have very definite impressions in your mind about
people you have never seen, don't you?"
"Oh, yes," he agreed. "I daresay every one gets such impressions."
"Sometimes one finds those impressions are merely verified by actual
sight. So there you are. I get a certain impression of you by the
language you use, your tone, your inflections--and by a something else
which in those who can see is called intuition, for lack of something
more definite in the way of a term."
"Aren't you ever mistaken in those impressionistic estimates of
people?"
She hesitated a little.
"Sometimes--not often. That sounds egotistic, but really it is true."
The steamer drew out of the mouth of Toba Inlet. In the widening
stretch between the mainland and the Redondas a cold wind came
whistling out of Homfray Channel. Hollister felt the chill of it
through his mackinaw coat and was moved to thought of his companion's
comfort.
"May I find you a warm place to sit?" he asked. "That's an
uncomfortable breeze. And do you mind if I talk to you? I haven't
talked to any one like you for a long time."
She smiled assent.
"Ditto to that last," she said.
"You aren't a western man, are you?" she continued, as Hollister took
her by the arm and led her toward a cabin abaft the wheelhouse on the
boat deck, a roomy lounging place unoccupied save by a fat woman
taking a midday nap in one corner, her double chin sunk on her ample
bosom.
"No," he said. "I'm from the East. But I spent some time out here
once or twice, and I remembered the coast as a place I liked. So I
came back here when the war was over and everything gone to pot--at
least where I was concerned. My name is Hollister."
"Mine," she replied, "is Cleveland."
Hollister looked at her intently.
"Doris Cleveland--her book," he said aloud. It was to all intents and
purposes a question.
"Why do you say that?" the girl asked quickly. "And how do you happen
to know my given name?"
"That was a guess," he answered. "Is it right?"
"Yes--but----"
"Let me tell you," he interrupted. "It's queer, and still it's simple
enough. Two months ago I went into Toba Inlet to look at some timber
about five miles up the river from the mouth. When I got there I
decided to stay awhile. It was less lonesome there than in the racket
and hustle of a town where I knew no one and nobody wanted to know me.
I made a camp, and in looking over a stretch of timber on a slope that
runs south from the river I found a log cabin----"
"In a hollow full of big cedars back of the cliff along the south side
of the Big Bend?" the girl cut in eagerly. "A log house with two
rooms, where some shingle-bolts had been cut--with a bolt-chute
leading downhill?"
"The very same," Hollister continued. "I see you know the place. And
in this cabin there was a shelf with a row of books, and each one had
written on the flyleaf, 'Doris Cleveland--Her Book.'"
"My poor books," she murmured. "I thought the rats had torn them to
bits long ago."
"No. Except for a few nibbles at the binding. Perhaps," Hollister said
whimsically, "the rats knew that some day a man would need those books
to keep him from going crazy, alone there in those quiet hills. They
were good books, and they would give his mind something to do besides
brooding over past ills and an empty future."
"They did that for you?" she asked.
"Yes. They were all the company I had for two months. I often wondered
who Doris Cleveland was and why she left her books to the rats--and
was thankful that she did. So you lived up there?"
"Yes. It was there I had my last look at the sun shining on the hills.
I daresay the most vivid pictures I have in my mind are made up of
things there. Why, I can see every peak and gorge yet, and the valley
below with the river winding through and the beaver meadows in the
flats--all those slides and glaciers and waterfalls--cascades like
ribbons of silver against green velvet. I loved it all--it was so
beautiful."
She spoke a little absently, with the faintest shadow of regret, her
voice lingering on the words. And after a momentary silence she went
on:
"We lived there nearly a year, my two brothers and I. I know every
rock and gully within two miles of that cabin. I helped to build that
little house. I used to tramp around in the woods alone. I used to sit
and read, and sometimes just dream, under those big cedars on hot
summer afternoons. The boys thought they would make a little fortune
in that timber. Then one day, when they were felling a tree, a flying
limb struck me on the head--and I was blind; in less than two hours of
being unconscious I woke up, and I couldn't see anything--like that
almost," she snapped her finger. "On top of that my brothers
discovered that they had no right to cut timber there. Things were
going badly in France, too. So they went overseas. They were both
killed in the same action, on the same day. My books were left there
because no one had the heart to carry them out. It was all such a
muddle. Everything seemed to go wrong at once. And you found them and
enjoyed having them to read. Isn't it curious how things that seem so
incoherent, so unnecessary, so disconnected, sometimes work out into
an orderly sequence, out of which evil comes to some and good to
others? If we could only forestall Chance! Blind, blundering, witless
Chance!"
Hollister nodded, forgetting that the girl could not see. For a minute
they sat silent. He was thinking how strange it was that he should
meet this girl whose books he had been poring over all these weeks.
She had a mind, he perceived. She could think and express her thoughts
in sentences as clean-cut as her face. She made him think, thrust him
face to face with an abstraction. Blind, blundering, witless Chance!
Was there nothing more than that? What else was there?
"You make me feel ashamed of myself," he said at last. "Your luck has
been worse than mine. Your handicap is greater than mine--at least you
must feel it so. But you don't complain. You even seem quite
philosophic about it. I wish I could cultivate that spirit. What's
your secret?"
"Oh, I'm not such a marvel," she said, and the slight smile came back
to lurk around the corners of her mouth. "There are times when I
rebel--oh, desperately. But I get along very nicely as a general
thing. One accepts the inevitable. I comfort myself with the selfish
reflection that if I can't see a lot that I would dearly love to see,
I am also saved the sight of things that are mean and sordid and
disturbing. If I seem cheerful I daresay it's because I'm strong and
healthy and have grown used to being blind. I'm not nearly so helpless
as I may seem. In familiar places and within certain bounds, I can get
about nearly as well as if I could see."
The steamer cleared the Redondas, stood down through Desolation Sound
and turned her blunt nose into the lower gulf just as dark came on.
Hollister and Doris Cleveland sat in the cabin talking. They went to
dinner together, and if there were curious looks bestowed upon them
Hollister was too engrossed to care and the girl, of course, could not
see those sidelong, unspoken inquiries. After dinner they found chairs
in the same deck saloon and continued their conversation until ten
o'clock, when drowsiness born of a slow, rolling motion of the vessel
drove them to their berths.
The drowsiness abandoned Hollister as soon as he turned in. He lay
wakeful, thinking about Doris Cleveland. He envied her courage and
fortitude, the calm assurance with which she seemed to face the world
which was all about her and yet hidden from her sight. She was really
an extraordinary young woman, he decided.
She was traveling alone. For several months she had been living with
old friends of the family on Stuart Island, close by the roaring
tiderace of the Euclataw Rapids. She was returning there, she told
Hollister, after three weeks or so in Vancouver. The steamer would
dock about daylight the following morning. When Hollister offered to
see her ashore and to her destination, she accepted without any
reservations. It comforted Hollister's sadly bruised ego to observe
that she even seemed a trifle pleased.
"I have once or twice got a steward to get me ashore and put me in a
taxi," she said. "But if you don't mind, Mr. Hollister."
And Hollister most decidedly did not mind. Doris Cleveland had shot
like a pleasant burst of colorful light across the grayest period of
his existence, and he was loath to let her go.
He dropped off to sleep at last, to dream, strangely enough and with
astonishing vividness, of the cabin among the great cedars with the
snow banked white outside the door. He saw himself sitting beside the
fireplace poring over one of Doris Cleveland's books. And he was no
longer lonely, because he was not alone.
He smiled at himself, remembering this fantasy of the subconscious
mind, when the steward's rap at the door wakened him half an hour
before the steamer docked.