CHAPTER IX
Not until Hollister had left Doris at her cousin's home and waswalking back downtown did a complete realization of what he had doneand pledged himself to do burst upon him. When it did, he pulled upshort in his stride, as if he had come physically against someforthright obstruction. For an instant he felt dazed. Then a consuminganger flared in him,--anger against the past by which he was stillshackled.
But he refused to be bound by those old chains whose ghostly clankingarose to harass him in this hour when life seemed to be holding out anew promise, when he saw happiness beckoning, when he was dreaming ofpleasant things. He leaned over the rail on the Granville Streetdrawbridge watching a tug pass through, seeing the dusky shape of thesmall vessel, hearing the ripple of the flood tide against the stonepiers, and scarcely conscious of the bridge or the ship or the graydimness of the sea, so profound was the concentration of his mind onthis problem. It did not perplex him; it maddened him. He whispered adefiant protest to himself and walked on. He was able to think morecalmly when he reached his room. There were the facts, the simple,undeniable facts, to be faced without shrinking,--and a decision to bemade.
For months Hollister, when he thought of the past, thought of it as aslate which had been wiped clean. He was dead, officially dead. Hisfew distant relatives had accepted the official report withoutquestion. Myra had accepted it, acted upon it. Outside the British WarOffice no one knew, no one dreamed, that he was alive. He had servedin the Imperials. He recalled the difficulties and delays of gettinghis identity reestablished in the coldly impersonal, maddeninglydeliberate, official departments which dealt with his case. He hadsucceeded. His back pay had been granted. A gratuity was stillforthcoming. But Hollister knew that the record of his case wasentangled with miles of red tape. He was dead--killed in action. Itwould never occur to the British War Office to seek publicity for thefact that he was not dead. There was no machinery for that purpose.Even if there were such machinery, there was no one to pull thelevers. Nothing was ever set in motion in the War Office withoutpulling a diversity of levers. So much for that. Hollister, recallinghis experience in London, smiled sardonically at thought of theBritish War Office voluntarily troubling itself about dead men whocame to life. The War Office would not know him. The War Office didnot know men. It only knew identification numbers, regiments, ranks,things properly documented, officially assigned. It was disdainful ofany casual inquiry; it would shunt such from official to official,from department to department, until the inquirer was worn out, hispatience, his fund of postage and his time alike exhausted.
No, the British War Office would neither know nor care nor tell.
Surely the slate was sponged clean. Should he condemn himself andDoris Cleveland to heartache and loneliness because of a technicality?To Hollister it seemed no more than that. Myra had married again.Would she--reckoning the chance that she learned he was alive--rise upto denounce him? Hardly. His own people? They were few and far away.His friends? The war had ripped everything loose, broken the oldcombinations, scattered the groups. There was, for Hollister, nothingleft of the old days. And he himself was dead,--officially dead.
After all, it narrowed to himself and Doris Cleveland and an ethicalquestion.
He did not shut his eyes to the fact that for him this marriage wouldbe bigamy; that their children would be illegitimate in the eyes ofthe law if legal scrutiny ever laid bare their father's history; northat by all the accepted dictums of current morality he would beleading an innocent woman into sin. But current morality had ceased tohave its old significance for Hollister. He had seen too much of itvaporized so readily in the furnace of the war. Convention had lostany power to dismay him. His world had used him in its hour of need,had flung him into the Pit, and when he crawled out maimed,discouraged, stripped of everything that had made life precious, thisworld of his fellows shunned him because of what he had suffered intheir behalf. So he held himself under no obligation to be guided bytheir moral dictums. He was critical of accepted standards because hehad observed that an act might be within the law and still outragehumanity; it might be legally sanctioned and socially approved andspread intolerable misery in its wake. Contrariwise, he could conceivea thing beyond the law being meritorious in itself. With the Persiantent-maker, Hollister had begun to see that "A hair, perhaps, dividesthe false and true."
There was no falsity in his love, in his aching desire to lay hold ofhappiness out of the muddle of his life, to bestow happiness if hecould upon a woman who like himself had suffered misfortune. Withinhim there was the instinct to clutch firmly this chance which lay athand. For Hollister the question was not, "Is this thing right orwrong in the eyes of the world?" but "Is it right for her and for me?"And always he got the one answer, the answer with which lovers havejustified themselves ever since love became something more than themere breeding instinct of animals.
Hollister could not see himself as a man guilty of moral obliquity ifhe let the graveyard of the past retain its unseemly corpse withoutlegal exhumation and examination, and the delivering of a formalverdict upon what was already an accomplished fact.
Nevertheless, he forced himself to consider just what it would mean totake that step. Briefly it would be necessary for him to go to London,to secure documentary evidence. Then he must return to Canada, entersuit against Myra, secure service upon her here in British Columbia.There would be a trial and a temporary decree; after the lapse oftwelve months a divorce absolute.
He was up against a stone wall. Even if he nerved himself to publicrattling of the skeleton in his private life, he did not have themeans. That was final. He did not have money for such an undertaking,even if he beggared himself. That was a material factor as inexorableas death. Actual freedom he had in full measure. Legal freedom couldonly be purchased at a price,--and he did not have the price.
Perhaps that decided Hollister. Perhaps he would have made thatdecision in any case. He had no friends to be shocked. He had noreputation to be smirched. He was, he had said with a bitterwistfulness, a stray dog. And Doris Cleveland was in very much thesame position. Two unfortunates cleaving to each other, moved by agenuine human passion. If they could be happy together, they had aright to be together. Hollister challenged his reason to refute thatcry of his heart.
He disposed finally of the last uncertainty,--whether he should tellDoris. And a negative to that rose instantly to his lips. The past wasa dead past. Let it remain dead--buried. Its ghost would never rise totrouble them. Of that he was very sure.
Hollister went to bed, but not to sleep. He heard a great clocksomewhere in the town strike twelve and then one, while he still laystaring up at the dusky ceiling. But his thoughts had taken apleasanter road. He had turned over the pages of his life history,scanned them with a gloomy and critical eye, and cast them withdecisive finality into the waste basket. He was about to begin a newbook, the book of the future. It was pleasant to contemplate what heand Doris Cleveland together would write on those blank pages. To hopemuch, to be no longer downcast, to be able to look forward witheagerness. There was a glow in that like good wine.
And upon that he slept.
Morning brought him no qualms or indecisions. But it did bring him toa consideration of very practical matters, which yesterday's emotionalcrisis had overshadowed. That is to say, Hollister began to take stockof the means whereby they two should live. It was not an immediatelypressing matter, since he had a few hundred dollars in hand, but hewas not short-sighted and he knew it would ultimately become so.Hence, naturally, his mind turned once more to that asset which hadbeen one factor in bringing him back to British Columbia, the timberlimit he owned in the Toba Valley.
He began to consider that seriously. Its value had shrunk appreciablyunder his examination. He had certainly been tricked in its purchaseand he did not know if he had any recourse. He rather thought thereshould be some way of getting money back from people who obtained itunder false pretenses. The limit, he was quite sure, contained lessthan half the timber
Lewis and Company had solemnly represented it tocarry. He grew uneasy thinking of that. All his eggs were in thatwooden basket.
He found himself anxious to know what he could expect, what he coulddo. There was a considerable amount of good cedar there. It shouldbring five or six thousand dollars, even if he had to accept the fraudand make the best of it. When he reflected upon what a difference thepossession or lack of money might mean to himself and Doris, beforelong, all his acquired and cultivated knowledge of business affairsbegan to spur him to some action. As soon as he finished his breakfasthe set off for the office of the "Timber Specialist." He already had aplan mapped out. It might work and it might not, but it was worthtrying.
As he walked down the street, Hollister felt keenly, for the firsttime in his thirty-one years of existence, how vastly important merebread and butter may become. He had always been accustomed to money.Consequently he had very few illusions either about money as such orthe various methods of acquiring money. He had undergone too rigorousa business training for that. He knew how easy it was to make moneywith money--and how difficult, how very nearly impossible it was forthe penniless man to secure more than a living by his utmost exertion.If this timber holding should turn out to be worthless, if it _should_prove unsalable at any price, it would be a question of a job for him,before so very long. With the handicap of his face! With thatuniversal inclination of people to avoid him because they disliked tolook on the direct result of settling international difficulties withbayonets and high explosives and poison gas, he would not fare verywell in the search for a decent job. Poverty had never seemed topresent quite such a sinister face as it did to Hollister when hereached this point in his self-communings.
Mr. Lewis received him with a total lack of the bland dignityHollister remembered. The man seemed uneasy, distracted. His eyes hada furtive look in them. Hollister, however, had not come there to makea study of Mr. Lewis' physiognomy or manner.
"I went up to Toba Inlet awhile ago and had a look over that timberlimit of mine," he began abruptly. "I'd like to see the documentsbearing on that, if you don't mind."
Mr. Lewis looked at him uncertainly, but he called a clerk and issuedan order. While the clerk was on his mission to the files Lewis put afew questions which Hollister answered without disclosing what he hadin mind. It struck him, though, that the tone of Mr. Lewis' inquirybordered upon the anxious.
Presently the clerk returned with the papers. Hollister took them up.He selected the agreement of sale, a letter or two, the originalcruiser's estimate, a series of tax receipts, held them in his handand looked at Lewis.
"You haven't succeeded in finding a buyer, I suppose?"
"In the winter," Lewis replied, "there is very little stir in timber."
"There is going to be some sort of stir in this timber before long,"Hollister said.
The worried expression deepened on Mr. Lewis' face.
"The fact is," Hollister continued evenly, "I made a rough survey ofthat timber, and found it away off color. You represented it tocontain so many million feet. It doesn't. Nowhere near. I appear tohave been rather badly stung, and I really don't wonder it hasn't beenresold. What do you propose to do about this?"
Mr. Lewis made a gesture of deprecation.
"There must be some mistake, Mr. Hollister."
"No doubt of that," Hollister agreed dryly. "The point is, who shallpay for the mistake?"
Mr. Lewis looked out of the window. He seemed suddenly to be strickenwith an attitude of remoteness. It occurred to Hollister that the manwas not thinking about the matter at all.
"Well?" he questioned sharply.
The eyes of the specialist in timber turned back to him uneasily.
"Well?" he echoed.
Hollister put the documents in his pocket. He gathered up those on thedesk and put them also in his pocket. He was angry because he wasbaffled. This was a matter of vital importance to him, and this manseemed able to insulate himself against either threat or suggestion.
"My dear sir," Lewis expostulated. Even his protest was half-hearted,lacked honest indignation.
Hollister rose.
"I'm going to keep these," he said irritably. "You don't seem to takemuch interest in the fact that you have laid yourself open to a chargeof fraud, and that I am going to do something about it if you don't."
"Oh, go ahead," Lewis broke out pettishly. "I don't care what you do."
Hollister stared at him in amazement. The man's eyes met his for amoment, then shifted to the opposite wall, became fixed there. He sathalf turned in his chair. He seemed to grow intent on something, tobecome wrapped in some fog of cogitation, through which Hollister andhis affairs appeared only as inconsequential phantoms.
In the doorway Hollister looked back over his shoulder. The man satmute, immobile, staring fixedly at the wall.
Down the street Hollister turned once more to look up at thegilt-lettered windows. Something had happened to Mr. Lewis. Somethinghad jolted the specialist in British Columbia timber and paralyzed hisbusiness nerve centers. Some catastrophe had overtaken him, orimpended, beside which the ugly matter Hollister laid before him wasof no consequence.
But it was of consequence to Hollister, as vital as the breaker ofwater and handful of ship's biscuits is to castaways in an open boatin mid-ocean. It angered him to feel a matter of such deep concernbrushed aside. He walked on down the street, thinking what he shoulddo. Midway of the next block, a firm name, another concern which dealtin timber, rose before his eyes. He entered the office.
"Mr. MacFarlan or Mr. Lee," he said to the desk man.
A short, stout individual came forward, glanced at Hollister's scarredface with that involuntary disapproval which Hollister was accustomedto catch in people's expression before they suppressed it out of pityor courtesy, or a mixture of both.
"I am Mr. MacFarlan."
"I want legal advice on a matter of considerable importance,"Hollister came straight to the point. "Can you recommend an ablelawyer--one with considerable experience in timber litigationpreferred?"
"I can. Malcolm MacFarlan, second floor Sibley Block. If it's legalbusiness relating to timber, he's your man. Not because he happens tobe my brother," MacFarlan smiled broadly, "but because he knows hisbusiness. Ask any timber concern. They'll tell you."
Hollister thanked him, and retraced his steps to the office buildinghe had just quitted. In an office directly under the Lewis quarters heintroduced himself to Malcolm MacFarlan, a bulkier, less elderlyduplicate of his brother the timber broker. Hollister stated his casebriefly and clearly. He put it in the form of a hypothetical case,naming no names.
MacFarlan listened, asked questions, nodded understanding.
"You could recover on the ground of misrepresentation," he said atlast. "The case, as you state it, is clear. It could be interpreted asfraud and hence criminal if collusion between the maker of the falseestimate and the vendor could be proven. In any case the vendor couldbe held accountable for his misrepresentation of value. Your remedylies in a civil suit--provided an authentic cruise established yourestimate of such a small quantity of merchantable timber. I should sayyou could recover the principal with interest and costs. Alwaysprovided the vendor is financially responsible."
"I presume they are. Lewis and Company sold me this timber. Here arethe papers. Will you undertake this matter for me?"
MacFarlan jerked his thumb towards the ceiling.
"This Lewis above me?"
"Yes."
Hollister laid the documents before MacFarlan. He ran through them,laid them down and looked reflectively at Hollister.
"I'm afraid," he said slowly, "you are making your move too late."
"Why?" Hollister demanded uneasily.
"Evidently you aren't aware what has happened to Lewis? I take it youhaven't been reading the papers?"
"I haven't," Hollister admitted. "What has happened?"
"His concern has gone smash," MacFarlan stated. "I happen to be sureof that, because I'm acting
for two creditors. A receiver has beenappointed. Lewis himself is in deep. He is at present at large onbail, charged with unlawful conversion of moneys entrusted to hiscare. You have a case, clear enough, but----" he threw out his handswith a suggestive motion--"they're bankrupt."
"I see," Hollister muttered. "I appear to be out of luck, then."
"Unfortunately, yes," MacFarlan continued. "You could get a judgmentagainst them. But it would be worthless. Simply throwing good moneyafter bad. There will be half a dozen other judgments recorded againstthem, a dozen other claims put in, before you could get action. Ofcourse, I could proceed on your behalf and let you in for a lot ofcosts, but I would rather not earn my fees in that manner. I'msatisfied there won't be more than a few cents on the dollar foranybody."
"That seems final enough," Hollister said. "I am obliged to you, Mr.MacFarlan."
He went out again into a street filled with people hurrying abouttheir affairs in the spring sunshine. So much for that, he reflected,not without a touch of contemptuous anger against Lewis. He understoodnow the man's troubled absorption. With the penitentiary staring himin the face--
At any rate the property was not involved. Whatever its worth, it washis, and the only asset at his command. He would have to make the bestof it, dispose of it for what he could get. Meantime, Doris Clevelandbegan to loom bigger in his mind than this timber limit. He suffered avast impatience until he should see her again. He had touches, thismorning, of incredulous astonishment before the fact that he couldlove and be loved. He felt once or twice that this promise ofhappiness would prove an illusion, something he had dreamed, if he didnot soon verify it by sight and speech.
He was to call for her at two o'clock. They had planned to take aFourth Avenue car to the end of the line and walk thence past theJericho Club grounds and out a driveway that left the houses of thetown far behind, a road that went winding along the gentle curve of ashore line where the Gulf swell whispered or thundered, according tothe weather.
Doris was a good walker. On the level road she kept step withoutfaltering or effort, holding Hollister's hand, not because she neededit for guidance, but because it was her pleasure.
They came under a high wooded slope.
"Listen to the birds," she said, with a gentle pressure on hisfingers. "I can smell the woods and feel the air soft as a caress. Ican't see the buds bursting, or the new, pale-green leaves, but I knowwhat it is like. Sometimes I think that beauty is a feeling, insteadof a fact. Perhaps if I could see it as well as feel it--still, thebirds wouldn't sing more sweetly if I could see them there swaying onthe little branches, would they, Bob?"
There was a wistfulness, but only a shadow of regret in her tone. Andthere were no shadows on the fresh, young face she turned toHollister. He bent to kiss that sweet mouth, and he was again thankfulthat she had no sight to be offended by his devastated features. Hislips, unsightly as they were, had power to stir her. She blushed andhid her face against his coat.
They found a dry log to sit upon, a great tree trunk cast by a stormabove high-water mark. Now and then a motor whirred by, but for themost part the drive lay silent, a winding ribbon of asphalt betweenthe sea and the wooded heights of Point Grey. English Bay sparkledbetween them and the city. Beyond the purple smoke-haze driven inlandby the west wind rose the white crests of the Capilanos, an Alpinebackground to the seaboard town. Hollister could hear the whine ofsawmills, the rumble of trolley cars, the clang of steel in a greatshipyard,--and the tide whispering on wet sands at his feet, the birdstwittering among the budding alders. And far as his eyes could reachalong the coast there lifted enormous, saw-toothed mountains. Theystood out against a sapphire sky with extraordinary vividness, withremarkable brilliancy of color, with an austere dignity.
Hollister put his arm around the girl. She nestled close to him. Alittle sigh escaped her lips.
"What is it, Doris?"
"I was just remembering how I lay awake last night," she said,"thinking, thinking until my brain seemed like some sort of machinethat would run on and on grinding out thoughts till I was worn out."
"What about?" he asked.
"About you and myself," she said simply. "About what is ahead of us. Ithink I was a little bit afraid."
"Of me?"
"Oh, no," she tightened her grip on his hand. "I can't imagine myselfbeing afraid of _you_. I like you too much. But--but--well, I wasthinking of myself, really; of myself in relation to you. I couldn'thelp seeing myself as a handicap. I could see you beginning to chafefinally under the burden of a blind wife, growing impatient at myhelplessness--which you do not yet realize--and in the end--oh, well,one can think all sorts of things in spite of a resolution not tothink."
It stung Hollister.
"Good God," he cried, "you don't realize it's only the fact you_can't_ see me that makes it possible. Why, I've clutched at you theway a drowning man clutches at anything. That I should get tired ofyou, feel you as a burden--it's unthinkable. I'm thankful you'reblind. I shall always be glad you can't see. If you could--what sortof picture of me have you in your mind?"
"Perhaps not a very clear one," the girl answered slowly. "But I hearyour voice, and it is a pleasant one. I feel your touch, and there issomething there that moves me in the oddest way. I know that you are abig man and strong. Of course I don't know whether your eyes are blueor brown, whether your hair is fair or dark--and I don't care. As foryour face I can't possibly imagine it as terrible, unless you wereangry. What are scars? Nothing, nothing. I can't see them. It wouldn'tmake any difference if I could."
"It would," he muttered. "I'm afraid it would."
Doris shook her head. She looked up at him, with that peculiarlydirect, intent gaze which always gave him the impression that she didsee. Her eyes, the soft gray of a summer rain cloud--no one would haveguessed them sightless. They seemed to see, to be expressive, to glowand soften.
She lifted a hand to Hollister's face. He did not shrink while thosesoft fingers went exploring the devastation wrought by the explodingshell. They touched caressingly the scarred and vivid flesh. And theyfinished with a gentle pat on his cheek and a momentary, kittenishrumpling of his hair.
"I cannot find so very much amiss," she said. "Your nose is a bitawry, and there is a hollow in one cheek. I can feel scars. What doesit matter? A man is what he thinks and feels and does. I am the maimedone, really. There is so much I can't do, Bob. You don't realize ityet. And we won't always be living this way, sitting idle on thebeach, going to a show, having tea in the Granada. I used to run andswim and climb hills. I could have gone anywhere with you--doneanything--been as good a mate as any primitive woman. But my wings areclipped. I can only get about in familiar surroundings. And sometimesit grows intolerable. I rebel. I rave--and wish I were dead. And if Ithought I was hampering you, and you were beginning to regret you hadmarried me--why, I couldn't bear it. That's what my brain was buzzingwith last night."
"Do any of those things strike you as serious obstacles now--when Ihave my arms around you?" Hollister demanded.
She shook her head.
"No. Really and truly right now I'm perfectly willing to take any sortof chance on the future--if you're in it," she said thoughtfully."That's the sort of effect you have on me. I suppose that's naturalenough."
"Then we feel precisely the same," Hollister declared. "And you arenot to have any more doubts about me. I tell you, Doris, that besideswanting you, I _need_ you. I can be your eyes. And for me, you will belike a compass to a sailor in a fog--something to steer a course by.So let's stop talking about whether we're going to take the plunge.Let's talk about how we're going to live, and where."
A whimsical expression tippled across the girl's face, a mixture oftenderness and mischief.
"I've warned you," she said with mock solemnity. "Your blood be uponyour own head."
They both laughed.