For another day, a day of brilliant sunshine and roaring west wind,
the fire marched up over the southern slope. Its flaming head, with a
towering crest of smoke, went over a high ridge, and its lower flank
smoldered threateningly a little above the valley. The second night
the wind fell to a whisper, shifting freakishly into the northeast,
and day dawned with a mass formation of clouds spitting rain, which by
noon grew to a downpour. The fire sizzled and sputtered and died.
Twenty hours of rain cleared the sky of clouds, the woods of smoke.
The sun lifted his beaming face over the eastern sky line. The birds
that had been silent began their twittering again, the squirrels took
up their exploration among the tree tops, scolding and chattering as
they went. Gentle airs shook the last rain drops from leaf and bough.
The old peace settled on the valley. There was little to mark the ten
days of effort and noise and destruction except a charred patch on the
valley floor and a mile-wide streak that ran like a bar sinister
across the green shield of the slope south of the Big Bend. Even that
desolate path seemed an insignificant strip in the vast stretch of the
forest.
Hollister and his men went, after the rain, up across that ravaged
place, and when they came to the hollow where the great cedars and
lesser fir had stood solemn and orderly in brown-trunked ranks, the
rudest of the loggers grew silent, a little awed by the melancholy of
the place, the bleakness, the utter ruin. Where the good green forest
had been, there was nothing but ashes and blackened stubs, stretches
of bare rock and gravelly soil, an odor of charred wood. There was no
green blade, no living thing, in all that wide space, nothing but a
few gaunt trunks stark in the open; blasted, sterile trunks standing
like stripped masts on a derelict.
There was nothing left of the buildings except a pile of stone which
had been the fireplace in the log house, and a little to one side the
rusty, red skeleton of the mess-house stove. They looked about
curiously for a few minutes and went back to the valley.
At the house Hollister paid them off. They went their way down to the
steamer landing, eager for town after a long stretch in the woods. The
fire was only an exciting incident to them. There were other camps,
other jobs.
It was not even an exciting incident to Hollister. Except for a little
sadness at sight of that desolation where there had been so much
beauty, he had neither been uplifted nor cast down. He had been
unmoved by the spectacular phases of the fire and he was still
indifferent, even to the material loss it had inflicted on him. He was
not ruined. He had the means to acquire more timber if it should be
necessary. But even if he had been ruined, it is doubtful if that fact
would have weighed heavily upon him. He was too keenly aware of a
matter more vital to him than timber or money,--a matter in which
neither his money nor his timber counted one way or the other, and in
which the human equation was everything.
The steamer that took out his men brought in a letter from his wife,
which Lawanne sent up by his Chinese boy. He had written to her the
day before the fire broke out. He could not recall precisely what he
wrote, but he had tried to make clear to her what troubled him and
why. And her reply was brief, uncommonly brief for Doris, who had the
faculty of expressing herself fully and freely.
Hollister laid the letter on the table. The last line of that short
missive kept repeating itself over and over, as if his brain were a
phonograph which he had no power to stop playing:
"I shall be home next week on the Wednesday boat."
He got up and walked across the room, crossed and recrossed it half a
dozen times. And with each step those words thrust at him with deadly
import. He had deluded himself for a while. He had thought he could
beat the game in spite of his handicap. He had presumed for a year to
snap his fingers and laugh in the face of Fate, and Fate was to have
the last laugh.
He seemed to have a fatalistic sureness about this. He made a
deliberate effort to reason about it, and though his reason assumed
that when a woman like Doris Cleveland loved a man she did not love
him for the unblemished contours of his face, there was still that
deep-rooted, unreasoning feeling that however she might love him as
the unseen, the ideal lover, she must inevitably shrink from the
reality.
He stood still for a few seconds. In the living quarters of his house
there was, by deliberate intention, no mirror. Among Hollister's
things there was a small hand glass before which he shaved off the
hairs that grew out of the few patches of unscarred flesh about his
chin, those fragments of his beard which sprouted in grotesquely
separated tufts. But in the bedroom they had arranged for the
housekeeper there was a large oval glass above a dresser. Into this
room Hollister now walked and stood before the mirror staring at his
face.
No, he could not blame her, any one, for shrinking from _that_. And
when the darting shuttle of his thought reminded him that Myra did not
shrink from it, he went out to the front room and with his body sunk
deep in a leather chair he fell to pondering on this. But it led him
nowhere except perhaps to a shade of disbelief in Myra and her
motives, a strange instinctive distrust both of her and himself.
He recognized Myra's power. He had succumbed to it in the old careless
days and gloried in his surrender. He perceived that her compelling
charm was still able to move him as it did other men. He knew that
Myra had been carried this way and that in the great, cruel,
indifferent swirl that was life. He could understand a great many
things about her and about himself, about men as men and women as
women, that he would have denied in the days before the war.
But while he could think about himself and Myra Bland with a calmness
that approached indifference, he could not think with that same
detachment about Doris. She had come, walking fearlessly in her
darkened world, to him in his darkened world of discouragement and
bitterness. There was something fine and true in this blind girl,
something that Hollister valued over and above the flesh-and-blood
loveliness of her, something rare and precious that he longed to keep.
He could not define it; he simply knew that it resided in her, that it
was a precious quality that set her apart in his eyes from all other
women.
But would it stand the test of sight? If he were as other men he would
not have been afraid; he would scarcely have asked himself that
question. But he knew he would be like a stranger to her, a strange
man with a repellingly scarred face. He did not believe she could
endure that, she who loved beauty so, who was sensitive to subtleties
of tone and atmosphere beyond any woman he had ever known. Hollister
tried to put himself in her place. Would he have taken her to his
arms as gladly, as joyously, if she had come to him with a face
twisted out of all semblance to its natural lines? And Hollister could
not say. He did not know.
He threw up his head at last, in a desperate sort of resolution. In a
week he would know. Meantime--
He had no work to occupy him now. There were a few bolts behind the
boom-sticks which he would raft to the mill at his leisure. He walked
up to the chute mouth now and looked about. A few hundred yards up the
hill the line of green timber ended against the black ruin of the
fire. There the chute ended also. Hollister walked on across the rocky
point, passed the waterfall that was shrinking under the summer heat,
up to a low cliff where he sat for a long time looking down on the
river.
When he came back at last to the house, Myra was there, busy at her
self-imposed tasks in those neglected rooms. Hollister sat down on the
porch steps. He felt a little uneasy about her being there, uneasy for
her. In nearly two weeks of fighting fire he had been thrown in
intimate daily contact with Jim Bland, and his appraisal of Bland's
character was less and less flattering the more he revised his
estimate of the man. He felt that Myra was inviting upon herself
something she might possibly not suspect. He decided to tell her it
would be wiser to keep away; but when he did so, she merely laughed.
There was a defiant recklessness in her tone when she said:
"Do you think I need a chaperone? Must one, even in this desolate
place, kow-tow to the conventions devised to prop up the weak and
untrustworthy? If Jim can't trust me, I may as well learn it now as
any other time. Besides, it doesn't matter to me greatly whether he
does or not. If for any reason he should begin to think evil of
me--well, the filthy thought in another's mind can't defile me. I
can't recall that I was ever greatly afraid of what other people might
think of me, so long I was sure of myself."
"Nevertheless," Hollister said, "it is as well for you not to come
here alone while I am here alone."
"Don't you like me to come, Robin?" she asked.
"No," he said slowly. "That wasn't why I spoke--but I don't think I
do."
"Why?" she persisted.
Hollister stirred uneasily.
"Call a spade a spade, Robin," she advised. "Say what you think--what
you mean."
"That's difficult," he muttered. "How can any one say what he means
when he is not quite sure what he does mean? I'm in trouble. You're
sorry for me, in a way. And maybe you feel--because of old times,
because of the contrast between what your life was then and what it is
now--you feel as if you would like to comfort me. And I don't want you
to feel that way. I look at you--and I think about what you said. I
wonder if you meant it? Do you remember what you said?"
"Quite clearly. I meant it, Robin. I still mean it. I'm yours--if you
need me. Perhaps you won't. Perhaps you will. Does it trouble you to
have me a self-appointed anchor to windward?"
She clasped her hands over her knees, bending forward a little,
looking at him with a curious serenity. Her eyes did not waver from
his.
Hollister made no answer.
"I brought a lot of this on you, Robin," she went on in the musical,
rippling voice so like Doris in certain tones and inflections as to
make him wonder idly if he had unconsciously fallen in love with Doris
Cleveland's voice because it was like Myra's. "If I had stuck it out
in London till you came back, maimed or otherwise, things would have
been different. But we were started off, flung off, one might say,
into different orbits by the forces of the war itself. That's neither
here nor there, now. You may think I'm offering myself as a sort of
vicarious atonement--if your Doris fails you--but I'm not, really. I'm
too selfish. I have never sacrificed myself for any man. I never will.
It isn't in me. I'm just as eager to get all I can out of life as I
ever was. I liked you long ago. I like you still. That's all there is
to it, Robin."
She shifted herself nearer him. She put one hand on his shoulder, the
other on his knee, and bent forward, peering into his face. Hollister
matched that questioning gaze for a second. It was unreadable. It
conveyed no message, hinted nothing, held no covert suggestion. It was
earnest and troubled. He had never before seen that sort of look on
Myra's face. He could make nothing of it, and so there was nothing in
it to disturb him. But the warm pressure of her hands, the nearness of
her body, did trouble him. He put her hands gently away.
"You shouldn't come here," he said quietly. "I will call a spade a
spade. I love Doris--and I have a queer, hungry sort of feeling about
the boy. If it happens that in spite of our life together Doris can't
bear me and can't get used to me, if it becomes impossible for us to
go on together--well, I can't make clear to you the way I feel about
this. But I'm afraid. And if it turns out that I'm afraid with good
cause--why, I don't know what I'll do, what way I'll turn. But wait
until that happens--Well, it seems that a man and a woman who have
loved and lived together can't become completely indifferent--they
must either hate and despise each other--or else--You understand? We
have made some precious blunders, you and I. We have involved other
people in our blundering, and we mustn't forget about these other
people. I _can't_. Doris and the kid come first--myself last. I'm
selfish too. I can only sit here in suspense and wait for things to
happen as they will. You," he hesitated a second, "you can't help me,
Myra. You could hurt me a lot if you tried--and yourself too."
"I see," she said. "I understand."
She sat for a time with her hands resting in her lap, looking down at
the ground. Then she rose.
"I don't want to hurt you, Robin," she said soberly. "I can't help
looking for a way out, that's all. For myself, I must find a way out.
The life I lead now is stifling me--and I can't see where it will ever
be any different, any better. I've become cursed with the twin devils
of analysis and introspection. I don't love Jim; I tolerate him. One
can't go through life merely tolerating one's husband, and the sort of
friends and the sort of existence that appeals to one's husband,
unless one is utterly ox-like--and I'm not. Women have lived with men
they cared nothing for since the beginning of time, I suppose, because
of various reasons--but I see no reason why I should. I'm a rebel--in
full revolt against shams and stupidity and ignorance, because those
three have brought me where I am and you where you are. I'm a disarmed
and helpless _revolte_ by myself. One doesn't want to go from bad to
worse. One wants instinctively to progress from good to better. One
makes mistakes and seeks to rectify them--if it is possible. One sees
suffering arise as the result of one's involuntary acts, and one
wishes wistfully to relieve it. That's the simple truth, Robin. Only a
simple truth is often a very complex thing. It seems so with us."
"It is," Hollister muttered, "and it might easily become more so."
"Ah, well," she said, "that is scarcely likely. You were always pretty
dependable, Robin. And I'm no longer an ignorant little fool to rush
thoughtlessly in where either angels or devils might fear to tread. We
shall see."
She swung around on her heel. Hollister watched her walk away along
the river path. He scarcely knew what he thought, what he felt, except
that what he felt and thought disturbed him to the point of sadness,
of regret. He sat musing on the curious, contradictory forces at work
in his life. It was folly to be wise, to be sensitive, to respond too
quickly, to see too clearly; and ignorance, dumbness of soul, was also
fatal. Either way there was no escape. A man did his best and it was
futile,--or seemed so to him, just then.
His gaze followed Myra while his thought ran upon Doris, upon his boy,
wondering if the next steamer would bring him sentence of banishment
from all that he valued, or if there would be a respite, a stay of
execution, a miracle of affection that would survive and override the
terrible reality--or what seemed to him the terrible reality--of his
disfigured face. He had abundant faith in Doris--of the soft voice and
the keen, quick mind, the indomitable spirit and infinite
patience--but he had not much faith in himself, in his own power. He
was afraid of her restored sight, which would leave nothing to the
subtle play of her imagination.
And following Myra with that mechanical noting of her progress, his
eyes, which were very keen, caught some movement in a fringe of
willows that lined the opposite shore of the river some three hundred
yards below. He looked more sharply. He had developed a hunter's
faculty for interpreting movement in the forest, and although he had
nothing more positive than instinct and a brief flash upon which to
base conclusions, he did not think that movement of the leaves was
occasioned by any creature native to the woods.
On impulse he rose, went inside, and taking his binoculars from their
case, focused the eight-power lenses on the screen of brush, keeping
himself well within the doorway where he could see without being seen.
It took a minute or so of covering the willows before he located the
cause of that movement of shrubbery. But presently he made out the
head and shoulders of a man. And the man was Bland, doing precisely
what Hollister was doing, looking through a pair of field glasses.
Hollister stood well back in the room. He was certain Bland could not
see that he himself was being watched. In any case, Bland was not
looking at Hollister's house. It was altogether likely that he had
been doing so, that he had seen Myra sitting beside Hollister with her
hand on his shoulder, bending forward to peer into Hollister's face.
And Hollister could easily imagine what Bland might feel and think.
But he was steadily watching Myra. Once he turned the glasses for a
few seconds on Hollister's house. Then he swung them back to Myra,
followed her persistently as she walked along the bank, on past
Lawanne's, on towards their own rude shack. And at last Bland shifted.
One step backward, and the woods swallowed him. One moment his
shoulders and his head stood plain in every detail, even to the
brickish redness of his skin and the curve of his fingers about the
glasses; the next he was gone.
Hollister sat thinking. He did not like the implications of that
furtive observance. A suspicious, watchful man is a jealous man. And a
jealous man who has nothing to do but watch and suspect and nurse that
mean passion was a dangerous adjunct to an unhappy woman.
Hollister resolved to warn Myra, to emphasize that warning. No one
could tell of what a dull egotist like Bland might be capable. The
very fact of that furtive spying argued an ignoble streak in any man.
Bland was stiff-necked, vain, the sort to be brutal in retaliation for
any fancied invasion of his rights. And his conception of a husband's
rights were primitive in the extreme. A wife was property, something
that was his. Hollister could imagine him roused to blind, blundering
fury by the least suspicious action on Myra's part. Bland was the type
that, once aroused, acts like an angry bull,--with about as much
regard or understanding of consequences. Hollister had been measuring
Bland for a year, and the last two or three weeks had given him the
greatest opportunity to do so. He had appraised the man as a dullard
under his stupid, inflexible crust of egotism, despite his veneer of
manners. But even a clod may be dangerous. A bomb is a harmless thing,
so much inert metal and chemicals, until it is touched off; yet it
needs only a touch to let loose its insensate, rending force.
Hollister rose to start down the path after Myra with the idea that he
must somehow convey to her a more explicit warning. As he stepped out
on the porch, he looked downstream at Bland's house and saw a man
approach the place from one direction as Myra reached it from the
other. He caught up his glasses and brought them to bear. The man was
Mills,--whom he had thought once more far from the Toba with the rest
of his scattered crew. Nevertheless this was Mills drawing near
Bland's house with quick strides.
Hollister's uneasiness doubled. There was a power for mischief in that
situation when he thought of Jim Bland scowling from his hiding place
in the willows. He set out along the path.
But by the time he came abreast of Lawanne's cabin he had begun to
feel himself acting under a mistaken impulse, an exaggerated
conclusion. He began to doubt the validity of that intuition which
pointed a warning finger at Bland and Bland's suspicions. In
attempting to forestall what might come of Bland's stewing in the
juice of a groundless jealousy, he could easily precipitate something
that would perhaps be best avoided by ignoring it. He stood, when he
thought of it, in rather a delicate position himself.
So he turned into Lawanne's. He found Archie sitting on the shady side
of his cabin, and they fell into talk.