CHAPTER XVIII
For a week Hollister nursed this fear which so depressed him, watchingthe slow return of his wife's vision, listening to her talk of allthey could do together when her sight was fully restored. From doubtof ocular treatment she changed to an impatient desire of whateverbenefit might lie in professional care. A fever of impatience to seebegan to burn in her.
So Hollister took her out to Vancouver, thence to Seattle, on to SanFrancisco, passing from each city to a practitioner of higher standingin the next, until two men with great reputations, and consulting feesin proportion, after a week of observation announced their verdict:she would regain normal vision, provided so and so--and in the eventof such and such. There was some mystery about which they wereguarded. They spoke authoritatively about infusions into the vitreoushumor and subsequent absorption. They agreed in language too technicalfor a layman to understand that the cause of Doris' blindness wasgradually disappearing. Only when they put aside the formal languageof diagnosis and advised treatment did Hollister really fathom whatthey were talking about. What they said then was simple. She mustcease to strain for sight of objects. She must live for a time inneutral lights. The clearing up of her eyes could perhaps be helped bycertain ray treatments, certain forms of electrical massage, whichcould be given in Vancouver as well as anywhere.
Whereupon the great men accepted their fees and departed.
So too did Hollister and his wife depart for the North again, wherethey took a furnished apartment overlooking the Gulf of Georgia, closeto a beach where Robert junior could be wheeled in a pram by hisnurse. And Hollister settled himself to wait.
But it was weary work to nurse that sense of impending calamity, tofind his brain ceaselessly active upon the forecast of a future inwhich he should walk alone, and while he was thus harassed still tokeep up a false cheerfulness before Doris. She was abnormallysensitive to impressions. A tone spoke volumes to her. He did not wishto disturb her by his own anxiety at this critical period.
All the while, little by little, her sight was coming She coulddistinguish now any violent contrast of colors. The blurred detail ofform grew less pronounced. In the chaos of sensory impressions shebegan to distinguish order; and, when she began to peer unexpectedlyat the people she met, at the chubby boy in his cot, at her husband'sface, Hollister could stand it no longer. He was afraid, afraid ofwhat he might see in those gray eyes if she looked at him too long,too closely.
He was doubly sensitive now about his face because of those weeksamong strangers, of going about in crowded places where people staredat him with every degree of morbid curiosity, exhibiting every shadeof feeling from a detached pity to open dislike of the spectacle hepresented. That alone weighed heavily on him. Inaction rasped at hisnerves. The Toba and his house, the grim peaks standing aloof behindthe timbered slopes, beckoned him back to their impassive, impersonalsilences, those friendly silences in which a man could sit andthink--and hope. A man doomed to death must prefer a swift end to alingering one. Hollister gradually came to the idea that he could notpossibly sit by and watch the light of comprehension steal slowly intohis wife's eyes. Better that she should fully regain her sight, andthen see with what manner of man she had lived and to whom she hadborne a son. Then if she could look at him without recoiling, if theessential man meant more to her than the ghastly wreckage of his face,all would be well. And if not,--well, then, one devastating buffetfrom the mailed fist of destiny was better than the slow agony ofdaily watching the crisis approach.
So Hollister put forth the plausible fact that he must see about hisaffairs and took the next steamer for the Toba.
Lawanne, expecting letters, was at the float to meet the steamer.Hollister went up-stream with him. They talked very little until theyreached Lawanne's cabin. There was a four-mile current to buck, andthey saved their breath for the paddles. Myra Bland waved as theypassed, and Hollister scarcely looked up. He was in the grip of astrange apathy. He was tired, physically weary. His body was dull andheavy, sluggish. So was his mind. He was aware of this, aware that anervous reaction of some sort was upon him. He wished that he couldalways be like that,--dull, phlegmatic, uncaring. To cease thinking,to have done with feeling, to be a clod, dead to desires, to highhopes and heart-numbing fears.
"Come in and have a cup of tea and tell me the latest Vancouverscandal," Lawanne urged, when they beached the canoe.
Hollister assented. He was as well there as anywhere. If there were anantidote in human intercourse for what afflicted him, that antidotelay in Archie Lawanne. There was no false sentiment in Lawanne. He didnot judge altogether by externals. His was an understanding, curiouslypenetrating intelligence. Hollister could always be himself withLawanne. He sat down on the grass before the cabin and smoked whileLawanne looked over his letters. The Chinese boy brought tea andsandwiches and cake on a tray.
"Mrs. Hollister is recovering her sight?" Lawanne asked at length.
Hollister nodded.
"Complete normal sight?"
Hollister nodded again.
"You don't seem overly cheerful about it," Lawanne said slowly.
"You aren't stupid," Hollister replied. "Put yourself in my place."
It was Lawanne's turn to indicate comprehension and assent by a nod.He looked at Hollister appraisingly, thoughtfully.
"She gains the privilege of seeing again. You lose--what? Are you sureyou stand to lose anything--or is it simply a fear of what you maylose?"
"What can I expect?" Hollister muttered. "My face is bound to be ashock. I don't know how she'll take it. And if when she sees me shecan't stand me--isn't that enough?"
"I shouldn't worry, if I were you," Lawanne encouraged. "Your wife isa little different from the ordinary run of women, I think. And, takeit from me, no woman loves her husband for his Grecian profile alone.Nine times out of ten a man's looks have nothing to do with what awoman thinks of him, that is if she really knows him; whereas with aman it is usually the other way about, until he learns by experiencethat beauty isn't the whole works--which a clever woman knowsinstinctively."
"Women shy away from the grotesque, the unpleasant," Hollisterdeclared. "You know they do. I had proof of that pretty well over twoyears. So do men, for that matter. But the women are the worst. I'veseen them look at me as if I were a loathsome thing."
"Oh, rats," Lawanne returned irritably. "You're hyper-sensitive aboutthat face of yours. The women--well, take Mrs. Bland as an example. Idon't see that the condition of your face makes any great differenceto her. It doesn't appear to arouse any profound distaste on herpart."
Hollister could not counter that. But it was an argument which carriedno weight with him. For if Myra could look at him without a qualm,Hollister knew it must be because her mind never quite relinquishedthe impression of him as he used to be in the old days. And Doris hadnothing like that to mitigate the sweeping impression of first sight,which Hollister feared with a fear he could not shake off by anyeffort of his will.
He went on up to his own house. The maple tree thrust one heavy-leavedbranch over the porch. The doors were shut. All about the place hungthat heavy mantle of stillness which wraps a foresaken home, astillness in which not even a squirrel chattered or a blue-jay liftedhis voice, and in which nothing moved. He stood amid that silence,hearing only a faint whisper from the river, a far-off monotone fromthe falls beyond the chute. He felt a heaviness in his breast, asickening sense of being forsaken.
He went in, walked through the kitchen, looked into the bedroom, cameback to the front room, opening doors and windows to let in the sunand air and drive out the faint, musty odor that gathers in a closedhouse. A thin film of dust had settled on the piano, on chairs, on thetable. He stood in the middle of the room, abandoned to a horribledepression. It was so still, so lonely, in there. His mind, quick toform images, likened it to a crypt, a tomb in which all his hopes laidburied. That was the effect it had on him, this deserted house. Hisintelligence protested against submitting to this acceptance ofdisaster prior
to the event, but his feelings overrode hisintelligence. If Doris had been lying white and still before him inher coffin, he could not have felt more completely that sense of thefutility of life, of love, of hope, of everything. As he stood there,one hand in his pocket, the other tracing with a forefinger an aimlesspattern in the dust on the piano, he perceived with remarkable claritythat the unhappiness he had suffered, the loneliness he had enduredbefore he met Doris Cleveland was nothing to what now threatened, towhat now seemed to dog his footsteps with sinister portent.
In the bedroom occupied by their housekeeper stood the only mirror inthe house. Hollister went in there and stood before it, staring at thepresentment of himself in the glass. He turned away with a shiver. Hewould not blame her if with clear vision she recoiled from that. Hecould expect nothing else. Or would she endure that frightful mienuntil she could first pity, then embrace? Hollister threw out hishands in a swift gesture of uncertainty. He could only wait and see,and meanwhile twist and turn upon the grid. He could not be calm anddetached and impersonal. For him there was too much at stake.
He left all the doors and windows wide and climbed the hill. If hewere to withstand the onslaught of these uncertainties, theseforebodings which pressed upon him with such damnable weight, he mustbestir himself. He must not sit down and brood. He knew that. It wasnot with any particular enthusiasm that he came upon his crew at work,that his eye marked the widening stump-dotted area where a year beforethe cedars stood branch to branch, nor when he looked over the longricks of bolts waiting that swift plunge down the chute.
Bill Hayes gave a terse account of his stewardship during Hollister'sabsence. So many cords of bolts cut and boomed and delivered to themill. Hollister's profits were accelerating, the fruit of aninsatiable market, of inflated prices. As he trudged down the hill, hereflected upon that. He was glad in a way. If Doris could not or wouldnot live with him, he could make life easy for her and the boy. Moneywould do that for them. With a strange perverseness, his mind dweltupon the most complete breaking up of his domestic life. It persistedin shadowing forth scenes in which he and Doris took part, in which itwas made plain how and why they could no longer live together. InHollister's mind these scenes always ended by his crying despairingly"If you can't, why, you can't, I suppose. I don't blame you." And hewould give her the bigger half of his funds and go his way. He wouldnot blame her for feeling like that. Nevertheless, Hollister hadmoments when he felt that he would hate her if she did,--a paradox hecould not understand.
He slept--or at least tried to sleep--that night alone in his house.He cooked his breakfast and worked on the boom until midday, thenclimbed the hill to the camp and ate lunch with his men. He worked upthere till evening and came down in the dusk. He dreaded that lonelyhouse, those deserted rooms. But he forced himself to abide there. Hehad a dim idea of so disciplining his feelings, of attaining a numbedacquiescence in what he could not help.
Some one had been in the house. The breakfast dishes were washed, thedust cleared away, the floor swept, his bed made. He wondered, butgave credit to Lawanne. It was like Archie to send his Chinese boy toperform those tasks.
But it was Myra, he discovered by and by. He came off the hill inmid-afternoon two days later and found her clearing up the kitchen.
"You don't mind, do you?" she asked. "I have nothing much to do athome, and it seems a shame for everything here to be neglected. Whenis Doris coming back?"
"I don't know exactly. Perhaps two or three weeks, perhaps as manymonths."
"But her eyes will be all right again?"
"So they say."
Hollister went out and sat on the front doorstep. His mind sought tospan the distance to Vancouver. He wondered what Doris was doing. Hecould see her sitting in a shaded room. He could see young Robertwaving fat arms out of the cushioned depths of his carriage. He couldsee the sun glittering on the sea that spread away westward, frombeneath the windows of the house where they lived. And Doris would sitthere anticipating the sight of all those things which had been hiddenin a three-year night,--the sea rippling in the sun, the distantpurple hills, the nearer green of the forest and of grass and flowers,all the light and color that made the world beautiful. She would belooking forward to seeing him. And that was the stroke which Hollisterdreaded, which made him indifferent to other things.
He forgot Myra's presence. Six months earlier he would have resentedher being there, he would have been uneasy. Now it made no difference.He had ceased to think of Myra as a possible menace. Lately he had notthought of her or her affairs at all.
She came now and sat down upon the porch step within arm's length ofhim, looking at him in thoughtful silence.
"Is it such a tragedy, after all?" she said at last.
"Is what?"
He took refuge in refusal to understand, although he understoodinstantly what Myra meant. But he shrank from her intuitivepenetration of his troubled spirit. Like any other wounded animal, hewanted to be left alone.
"You know what I mean," she said. "You are afraid of Doris seeing you.That's plain enough. Is it so terrible a thing, after all? If shecan't stand the sight of your face, you're better off without her."
"It's easy to be philosophic about some one else's troubles,"Hollister muttered. "You can be off with one love and be reasonablysure of another before long. I can't. I'm not made that way, I don'tthink. And if I were, I'm too badly handicapped."
"You haven't a very charitable opinion of me, have you, Robin?" shesaid reflectively. "You rather despise me for doing precisely what youyourself have done, making a bid for happiness as chance offered. OnlyI haven't found it, and you have. So you are morally superior, andyour tragedy must naturally be profound because your happiness seemsthreatened."
"Oh, damn the moral considerations," he said wearily. "It isn't that.I don't blame you for anything you ever did. Why should I? I'm abigamist. I'm the father of an illegitimate son. According to thecurrent acceptance of morality, I've contaminated and disgraced aninnocent woman. Yet I've never been and am not now conscious of anyregrets. I don't feel ashamed. I don't feel that I have sinned. Imerely grasped the only chance, the only possible chance that was inreach. That's all you did. As far as you and I are concerned, thereisn't any question of blame."
"Are you sure," she asked point-blank, "that your face will make anydifference to Doris?"
"How can it help?" he replied gloomily. "If you had your eyes shut andwere holding in your hands what you thought was a pretty bird andsuddenly opened your eyes and saw it was a toad, wouldn't you recoil?"
"Your simile is no good. If Doris really loved you, it was not becauseshe pictured you as a pretty bird. If she could love you withoutseeing you, if you appealed to her, why should your marred face makeher turn away from you?"
But Hollister could not explain his feeling, his deep dread of thatwhich seemed no remote possibility but something inevitable and verynear at hand. He did not want pity. He did not want to be merelyendured. He sat silent, thinking of those things, inwardly protestingagainst this miraculous recovery of sight which meant so great a boonto his wife and contained such fearful possibilities of misery forhimself.
Myra rose. "I'll come again and straighten up in a day or two."
She turned back at the foot of the steps.
"Robin," she said, with a wistful, uncertain smile, "if Doris _does_will you let me help you pick up the pieces?"
Hollister stared at her a second.
"God God!" he broke out. "Do you realize what you're saying?"
"Perfectly."
"You're a strange woman."
"Yes, I suppose I am," she returned. "But my strangeness is only anacceptance, as a natural fact, of instincts and cravings and desiresthat women are taught to repress. If I find that I've gone swingingaround an emotional circle and come back to the point, or the man,where I started, why should I shrink from that, or from admittingit--or from acting on it if it seemed good to me?"
She came back to where Hollister sat on the steps. She
put her hand onhis knee, looked searchingly into his face. Her pansy-blue eyes methis steadily. The expression in them stirred Hollister.
"Mind you, Robin, I don't think your Doris is superficial enough to berepelled by a facial disfigurement. She seems instinctively to knowand feel and understand so many things that I've only learned bybitter experience. She would never have made the mistakes I've made. Idon't think your face will make you any the less her man. But if itdoes--I was your first woman. I did love you, Robin. I could again. Icould creep back into your arms if they were empty, and be glad. Wouldit seem strange?"
And still Hollister stared dumbly. He heard her with a little rancor,a strange sense of the futility of what she said. Why hadn't sheacquired this knowledge of herself long ago? It was too late now. Theold fires were dead. But if the new one he had kindled to warm himselfwere to be extinguished, could he go back and bask in the warmth thatsmoldered in this woman's eyes? He wondered. And he felt a faintirritation, as if some one had accused him of being faithless.
"Do you think it's strange that I should feel and speak like this?"Myra persisted. "Do people never profit by their mistakes? Am I sounlovable a creature? Couldn't you either forget or forgive?"
He shook his head.
"It isn't that." His voice sounded husky, uncertain. "We can't undowhat's done, that's all. I cross no more bridges before I come tothem."
"Don't mistake me, Robin," she said with a self-conscious littlelaugh. "I'm no lovesick flapper. Neither am I simply a voluptuouscreature seeking a new sensation. I don't feel as if I couldn't livewithout you. But I do feel as if I could come back to you again and itwould be a little like coming home after a long, disappointingjourney. When I see you suffering, I want to comfort you. If she makesyou suffer, I shall be unhappy unless I can make you feel that lifestill holds something good. If I could do that, I should perhaps findlife good myself. And it doesn't seem much good to me, any more. I'mstill selfish. I want to be happy. And I can't find happinessanywhere. I look back to our old life and I envy myself. If the warmarred your face and made you suffer, remember what it has done to me.Those months and months that dragged into years in London. Oh, I knowI was weak. But I was used to love. I craved it. I used to lie awakethinking about you, in a fever of protest because you could not bethere with me, in a perfect passion of resentment at the circumstancesthat kept you away; until it seemed to me that I had never had you,that there was no such man, that all our life together was only adream. Think what the war did to us. How it has left us--you scarredand hopeless; I, scarred by my passions and emotions. That is all thewar did for any one--scarred them, those it didn't kill. Oh, Robin,Robin, life seems a ghastly mockery, sometimes. It promises so muchand gives so little."
She bent her head. Her shoulders shook with sobs she tried tostrangle. Hollister put his hand on the thick coils of honey-coloredhair. He was sorry for her--and for himself. And he was disturbed tofind that the touch of her hair, the warm pressure of her hands on hisknee, made his blood run faster.
The curious outbreak spent itself. She drew herself away from him, andrising to her feet without a word she walked rapidly away along thepath by the river.
Hollister looked after her. He was troubled afresh, and he thought tohimself that he must avoid scenes like that. He was not, it appeared,wholly immune from the old virus.
And he was clearly conscious of the cold voice of reason warning himagainst Myra. Sitting there in the shadow of his silent house, hepuzzled over these new complexities of feeling. He was a littlebewildered. To him Doris meant everything that Myra had once been. Hewanted only to retain what he had. He did not want to salvage anythingfrom the wreckage of the past. He was too deeply concerned with thedreadful test that fully restored eyesight would impose on Doris. Heknew that Doris Cleveland's feeling for him had been profound andvital. She had given too many proofs for him to doubt that. But wouldit survive? He did not know. He hoped a little and feared much.
Above this fear he found himself now bewildered by this fresh swirl ofemotion. He knew that if Myra had flung herself into his arms he wouldhave found some strange comfort in that embrace, that he could notpossibly have repulsed her. It was a prop to his soul--or was it, heasked himself, merely his vanity?--that Myra could look behind thegrimness of his features and dwell fondly on the essential man, on thereality behind that dreadful mask.
Still, Hollister knew that to be only a mood, that unexpectedtenderness for a woman whom he had hated for betraying him. It wasDoris he wanted. The thought of her passing out of his life restedupon him like an intolerable burden. To be in doubt of her afflictedhim with anguish. That the fires of her affection might dwindle anddie before daily sight of him loomed before Hollister as theconsummation of disaster,--and he seemed to feel that hovering near,closely impending.
That they had lived together sixteen months did not count. That shehad borne him a child,--neither did that count. That she had pillowedher brown head nightly in the crook of his arm--that he had bestowed athousand kisses on her lips, her hair, her neck--that she had lainbeside him hour after hour through the long nights, drowsilycontent--none of these intimacies counted beside vision. He was astranger in the dark. She did not know him. She heard his voice, knewhis tenderness, felt the touch of him,--the unseen lover. But thereremained for her the revelation of sight. He was still the mysterious,the unknown, about which her fancies played.
How could he know what image of him, what ideal, resided tenaciouslyin her mind, and whether it would survive the shock of reality? Thatwas the root of Hollister's fear, a definite well-grounded fear. Hefound himself hoping that promise of sight would never be fulfilled,that the veil would not be lifted, that they would go on as they were.And he would feel ashamed of such a thought. Sight was precious. Whowas he to deny her that mercy,--she who loved the sun and the hillsand the sea; all the sights of earth and sky which had been shut awayso long; she who had crept into his arms many a time, weepingpassionate tears because all the things she loved were forever wrappedin darkness?
If upon Hollister had been bestowed the power to grant her sight or towithhold it, he would have shrunk from a decision. Because he lovedher he wished her to see, to experience the joy of dawn following thatlong night in which she groped her way. But he dreaded lest that lightgladdening her eyes should mean darkness for him, a darkness in whicheverything he valued would be lost.
Then some voice within him whispered suggestively that in thisdarkness Myra would be waiting with outstretched hands,--and Hollisterfrowned and tried not to think of that.
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