Book: The Hidden Places

B >> Bertrand W. Sinclair >> The Hidden Places




He began to consider that seriously. Its value had shrunk appreciably
under his examination. He had certainly been tricked in its purchase
and he did not know if he had any recourse. He rather thought there
should be some way of getting money back from people who obtained it
under false pretenses. The limit, he was quite sure, contained less
than half the timber Lewis and Company had solemnly represented it to
carry. He grew uneasy thinking of that. All his eggs were in that
wooden basket.

He found himself anxious to know what he could expect, what he could
do. There was a considerable amount of good cedar there. It should
bring five or six thousand dollars, even if he had to accept the fraud
and make the best of it. When he reflected upon what a difference the
possession or lack of money might mean to himself and Doris, before
long, all his acquired and cultivated knowledge of business affairs
began to spur him to some action. As soon as he finished his breakfast
he set off for the office of the "Timber Specialist." He already had a
plan mapped out. It might work and it might not, but it was worth
trying.

As he walked down the street, Hollister felt keenly, for the first
time in his thirty-one years of existence, how vastly important mere
bread and butter may become. He had always been accustomed to money.
Consequently he had very few illusions either about money as such or
the various methods of acquiring money. He had undergone too rigorous
a business training for that. He knew how easy it was to make money
with money--and how difficult, how very nearly impossible it was for
the 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 that
universal inclination of people to avoid him because they disliked to
look on the direct result of settling international difficulties with
bayonets and high explosives and poison gas, he would not fare very
well in the search for a decent job. Poverty had never seemed to
present quite such a sinister face as it did to Hollister when he
reached this point in his self-communings.

Mr. Lewis received him with a total lack of the bland dignity
Hollister remembered. The man seemed uneasy, distracted. His eyes had
a furtive look in them. Hollister, however, had not come there to make
a study of Mr. Lewis' physiognomy or manner.

"I went up to Toba Inlet awhile ago and had a look over that timber
limit of mine," he began abruptly. "I'd like to see the documents
bearing on that, if you don't mind."

Mr. Lewis looked at him uncertainly, but he called a clerk and issued
an order. While the clerk was on his mission to the files Lewis put a
few questions which Hollister answered without disclosing what he had
in mind. It struck him, though, that the tone of Mr. Lewis' inquiry
bordered 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 original
cruiser's estimate, a series of tax receipts, held them in his hand
and 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 of
that timber, and found it away off color. You represented it to
contain so many million feet. It doesn't. Nowhere near. I appear to
have been rather badly stung, and I really don't wonder it hasn't been
resold. 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 shall
pay for the mistake?"

Mr. Lewis looked out of the window. He seemed suddenly to be stricken
with an attitude of remoteness. It occurred to Hollister that the man
was 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 the
desk and put them also in his pocket. He was angry because he was
baffled. This was a matter of vital importance to him, and this man
seemed 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 take
much interest in the fact that you have laid yourself open to a charge
of 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 a
moment, then shifted to the opposite wall, became fixed there. He sat
half turned in his chair. He seemed to grow intent on something, to
become wrapped in some fog of cogitation, through which Hollister and
his affairs appeared only as inconsequential phantoms.

In the doorway Hollister looked back over his shoulder. The man sat
mute, immobile, staring fixedly at the wall.

Down the street Hollister turned once more to look up at the
gilt-lettered windows. Something had happened to Mr. Lewis. Something
had jolted the specialist in British Columbia timber and paralyzed his
business nerve centers. Some catastrophe had overtaken him, or
impended, beside which the ugly matter Hollister laid before him was
of no consequence.

But it was of consequence to Hollister, as vital as the breaker of
water and handful of ship's biscuits is to castaways in an open boat
in mid-ocean. It angered him to feel a matter of such deep concern
brushed aside. He walked on down the street, thinking what he should
do. Midway of the next block, a firm name, another concern which dealt
in 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 scarred
face with that involuntary disapproval which Hollister was accustomed
to catch in people's expression before they suppressed it out of pity
or 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 able
lawyer--one with considerable experience in timber litigation
preferred?"

"I can. Malcolm MacFarlan, second floor Sibley Block. If it's legal
business relating to timber, he's your man. Not because he happens to
be my brother," MacFarlan smiled broadly, "but because he knows his
business. Ask any timber concern. They'll tell you."

Hollister thanked him, and retraced his steps to the office building
he had just quitted. In an office directly under the Lewis quarters he
introduced himself to Malcolm MacFarlan, a bulkier, less elderly
duplicate of his brother the timber broker. Hollister stated his case
briefly 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 at
last. "The case, as you state it, is clear. It could be interpreted as
fraud and hence criminal if collusion between the maker of the false
estimate and the vendor could be proven. In any case the vendor could
be held accountable for his misrepresentation of value. Your remedy
lies in a civil suit--provided an authentic cruise established your
estimate of such a small quantity of merchantable timber. I should say
you could recover the principal with interest and costs. Always
provided the vendor is financially responsible."

"I presume they are. Lewis and Company sold me this timber. Here are
the 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 you
haven't been reading the papers?"

"I haven't," Hollister admitted. "What has happened?"

"His concern has gone smash," MacFarlan stated. "I happen to be sure
of that, because I'm acting for two creditors. A receiver has been
appointed. Lewis himself is in deep. He is at present at large on
bail, charged with unlawful conversion of moneys entrusted to his
care. You have a case, clear enough, but----" he threw out his hands
with 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 judgment
against them. But it would be worthless. Simply throwing good money
after bad. There will be half a dozen other judgments recorded against
them, a dozen other claims put in, before you could get action. Of
course, I could proceed on your behalf and let you in for a lot of
costs, but I would rather not earn my fees in that manner. I'm
satisfied there won't be more than a few cents on the dollar for
anybody."

"That seems final enough," Hollister said. "I am obliged to you, Mr.
MacFarlan."

He went out again into a street filled with people hurrying about
their affairs in the spring sunshine. So much for that, he reflected,
not without a touch of contemptuous anger against Lewis. He understood
now the man's troubled absorption. With the penitentiary staring him
in the face--

At any rate the property was not involved. Whatever its worth, it was
his, and the only asset at his command. He would have to make the best
of it, dispose of it for what he could get. Meantime, Doris Cleveland
began to loom bigger in his mind than this timber limit. He suffered a
vast impatience until he should see her again. He had touches, this
morning, of incredulous astonishment before the fact that he could
love and be loved. He felt once or twice that this promise of
happiness would prove an illusion, something he had dreamed, if he did
not soon verify it by sight and speech.

He was to call for her at two o'clock. They had planned to take a
Fourth Avenue car to the end of the line and walk thence past the
Jericho Club grounds and out a driveway that left the houses of the
town far behind, a road that went winding along the gentle curve of a
shore line where the Gulf swell whispered or thundered, according to
the weather.

Doris was a good walker. On the level road she kept step without
faltering or effort, holding Hollister's hand, not because she needed
it 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 his
fingers. "I can smell the woods and feel the air soft as a caress. I
can't see the buds bursting, or the new, pale-green leaves, but I know
what it is like. Sometimes I think that beauty is a feeling, instead
of a fact. Perhaps if I could see it as well as feel it--still, the
birds wouldn't sing more sweetly if I could see them there swaying on
the little branches, would they, Bob?"

There was a wistfulness, but only a shadow of regret in her tone. And
there were no shadows on the fresh, young face she turned to
Hollister. He bent to kiss that sweet mouth, and he was again thankful
that she had no sight to be offended by his devastated features. His
lips, unsightly as they were, had power to stir her. She blushed and
hid her face against his coat.

They found a dry log to sit upon, a great tree trunk cast by a storm
above high-water mark. Now and then a motor whirred by, but for the
most part the drive lay silent, a winding ribbon of asphalt between
the sea and the wooded heights of Point Grey. English Bay sparkled
between them and the city. Beyond the purple smoke-haze driven inland
by the west wind rose the white crests of the Capilanos, an Alpine
background to the seaboard town. Hollister could hear the whine of
sawmills, the rumble of trolley cars, the clang of steel in a great
shipyard,--and the tide whispering on wet sands at his feet, the birds
twittering among the budding alders. And far as his eyes could reach
along the coast there lifted enormous, saw-toothed mountains. They
stood out against a sapphire sky with extraordinary vividness, with
remarkable brilliancy of color, with an austere dignity.

Hollister put his arm around the girl. She nestled close to him. A
little 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 machine
that 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. I
think I was a little bit afraid."

"Of me?"

"Oh, no," she tightened her grip on his hand. "I can't imagine myself
being afraid of _you_. I like you too much. But--but--well, I was
thinking of myself, really; of myself in relation to you. I couldn't
help seeing myself as a handicap. I could see you beginning to chafe
finally under the burden of a blind wife, growing impatient at my
helplessness--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 to
think."

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 the
way a drowning man clutches at anything. That I should get tired of
you, feel you as a burden--it's unthinkable. I'm thankful you're
blind. I shall always be glad you can't see. If you could--what sort
of picture of me have you in your mind?"

"Perhaps not a very clear one," the girl answered slowly. "But I hear
your voice, and it is a pleasant one. I feel your touch, and there is
something there that moves me in the oddest way. I know that you are a
big man and strong. Of course I don't know whether your eyes are blue
or brown, whether your hair is fair or dark--and I don't care. As for
your face I can't possibly imagine it as terrible, unless you were
angry. What are scars? Nothing, nothing. I can't see them. It wouldn't
make 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 peculiarly
direct, intent gaze which always gave him the impression that she did
see. Her eyes, the soft gray of a summer rain cloud--no one would have
guessed them sightless. They seemed to see, to be expressive, to glow
and soften.

She lifted a hand to Hollister's face. He did not shrink while those
soft fingers went exploring the devastation wrought by the exploding
shell. They touched caressingly the scarred and vivid flesh. And they
finished with a gentle pat on his cheek and a momentary, kittenish
rumpling of his hair.

"I cannot find so very much amiss," she said. "Your nose is a bit
awry, and there is a hollow in one cheek. I can feel scars. What does
it matter? A man is what he thinks and feels and does. I am the maimed
one, really. There is so much I can't do, Bob. You don't realize it
yet. And we won't always be living this way, sitting idle on the
beach, going to a show, having tea in the Granada. I used to run and
swim and climb hills. I could have gone anywhere with you--done
anything--been as good a mate as any primitive woman. But my wings are
clipped. I can only get about in familiar surroundings. And sometimes
it grows intolerable. I rebel. I rave--and wish I were dead. And if I
thought I was hampering you, and you were beginning to regret you had
married me--why, I couldn't bear it. That's what my brain was buzzing
with last night."

"Do any of those things strike you as serious obstacles now--when I
have my arms around you?" Hollister demanded.

She shook her head.

"No. Really and truly right now I'm perfectly willing to take any sort
of 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 natural
enough."

"Then we feel precisely the same," Hollister declared. "And you are
not to have any more doubts about me. I tell you, Doris, that besides
wanting you, I _need_ you. I can be your eyes. And for me, you will be
like 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 of
tenderness and mischief.

"I've warned you," she said with mock solemnity. "Your blood be upon
your own head."

They both laughed.




CHAPTER X


"Why not go in there and take that cedar out yourself?" Doris
suggested.

They had been talking about that timber limit in the Toba, the
possibility of getting a few thousand dollars out of it, and how they
could make the money serve them best.

"We could live there. I'd love to live there. I loved that valley. I
can see it now, every turn of the river, every canyon, and all the
peaks above. It would be like getting back home."

"It is a beautiful place," Hollister agreed. He had a momentary vision
of the Toba as he saw it last: a white-floored lane between two great
mountain ranges; green, timbered slopes that ran up to immense
declivities; glaciers; cold, majestic peaks scarred by winter
avalanches. He had come a little under the spell of those rugged
solitudes then. He could imagine it transformed by the magic of
summer. He could imagine himself living there with this beloved woman,
exacting a livelihood from those hushed forests and finding it good.

"I've been wondering about that myself," he said. "There is a lot of
good cedar there. That bolt chute your brothers built could be
repaired. If they expected to get that stuff out profitably, why
shouldn't I? I'll have to look into that."

They were living in a furnished flat. If they had married in what
people accustomed to a certain formality of living might call haste
they had no thought of repenting at leisure, or otherwise. They were,
in fact, quite happy and contented. Marriage had shattered no
illusions. If, indeed, they cherished any illusory conceptions of each
other, the intimacy of mating had merely served to confirm those
illusions, to shape them into realities. They were young enough to be
ardent lovers, old enough to know that love was not the culmination,
but only an ecstatic phase in the working out of an inexorable natural
law.

If Doris was happy, full of high spirits, joyfully abandoned to the
fulfilment of her destiny as a woman, Hollister too was happier than
he had considered it possible for him ever to be again. But, in
addition, he was supremely grateful. Life for him as an individual had
seemed to be pretty much a blank wall, a drab, colorless routine of
existence; something he could not voluntarily give up, but which gave
nothing, promised nothing, save monotony and isolation and, in the
end, complete despair. So that his love for this girl, who had given
herself to him with the strangely combined passion of a mature woman
and the trusting confidence of a child, was touched with gratitude.
She had put out her hand and lifted him from the pit. She would always
be near him, a prop and a stay. Sometimes it seemed to Hollister a
miracle. He would look at his face in the mirror and thank God that
she was blind. Doris said that made no difference, but he knew better.
It made a difference to eyes that could see, however tolerantly.

In Hollister, also, there revived the natural ambition to get on, to
grasp a measure of material security, to make money. There were so
many ways in which money was essential, so many desirable things they
could secure and enjoy together with money. Making a living came
first, but beyond a mere living he began to desire comfort, even
luxuries, for himself and his wife. He had made tentative plans. They
had discussed ways and means; and the most practical suggestion of all
came now from his wife's lips.

Hollister went about town the next few days, diligently seeking
information about prices, wages, costs and methods. He had a practical
knowledge of finance, and a fair acquaintance with timber operations
generally, so that he did not waste his own or other men's time. He
met a rebuff or two, but he learned a great deal which he needed to
know, and he said to Doris finally:

"I'm going to play your hunch and get that timber out myself. It will
pay. In fact, it is the only way I'll ever get back the money I put
into that, so I really haven't much choice in the matter."

"Good!" Doris said. "Then we go to the Toba to live. When?"

"Very soon--if we go at all. There doesn't seem to be much chance to
sell it, but there is some sort of returned soldiers' cooperative
concern working in the Big Bend, and MacFarlan and Lee have had some
correspondence with their head man about this limit of mine. He is
going to be in town in a day or two. They may buy."

"And if they do?"

"Well, then, we'll see about a place on Valdez Island at the
Euclataws, where I can clear up some land and grow things, and fish
salmon when they run, as we talked about."

"That would be nice, and I dare say we would get on very well," Doris
said. "But I'd rather go to the Toba."

Hollister did not want to go to the Toba. He would go if it were
necessary, but when he remembered that fair-haired woman living in the
cabin on the river bank, he felt that there was something to be
shunned. Myra was like a bad dream too vividly remembered. There was
stealing over Hollister a curious sense of something unreal in his
first marriage, in the war, even in the strange madness which had
briefly afflicted him when he discovered that Myra was there. He could
smile at the impossibility of that recurring, but he could not smile
at the necessity of living within gunshot of her again. He was not
afraid. There was no reason to be afraid. He was officially dead. No
sense of sin troubled him. He had put all that behind him. It was
simply a distaste for living near a woman he had once loved, with
another whom he loved with all the passion he had once lavished on
Myra, and something that was truer and tenderer. He wanted to shut the
doors on the past forever. That was why he did not wish to go back to
the Toba. He only succeeded in clearly defining that feeling when it
seemed that he must go--unless this prospective sale went
through--because he had to use whatever lever stood nearest his hand.
He had a direct responsibility, now, for material success. As the
laborer goes to his work, distasteful though it may be, that he may
live, that his family may be fed and clothed, so Hollister knew that
he would go to Toba Valley and wrest a compensation from that timber
with his own hands unless a sale were made.

But it failed to go through. Hollister met his man in MacFarlan's
office,--a lean, weather-beaten man of sixty, named Carr. He was frank
and friendly, wholly unlike the timber brokers and millmen Hollister
had lately encountered.

"The fact is," Carr said after some discussion, "we aren't in the
market for timber in the ordinary, speculative sense. I happen to know
that particular stand of cedar, or I wouldn't be interested. We're a
body of returned men engaged in making homes and laying the foundation
for a competence by our joint efforts. You would really lose by
selling out to us. We would only buy on stumpage. If you were a broker
I would offer you so much, and you could take it or leave it. It would
be all one to us. We have a lot of standing timber ourselves. But
we're putting in a shingle mill now. The market looks good, and what
we need is labor and shingle bolts, not standing timber. I would
suggest you go in there with two or three men and get the stuff out
yourself. We'll take all the cedar on your limit, in bolts on the
river bank at market prices, less cost of towage to Vancouver. You can
make money on that, especially if shingles go up."

There seemed a force at work compelling Hollister to this move. He
reflected upon it as he walked home. Doris wanted to go; this man Carr
encouraged him to go. He would be a fool not to go when opportunity
beckoned, yet he hesitated; there was a reluctance in his mind. He was
not afraid, and yet he was. Some vague peril seemed to lurk like a
misty shadow at his elbow. Nothing that he had done, nothing that he
foresaw himself doing, accounted for that, and he ended by calling
himself a fool. Of course, he would go. If Myra lived there,--well, no
matter. It was nothing to him, nothing to Doris. The past was past;
the future theirs for the making. So he went once more up to Toba
Inlet, when late April brought spring showers and blossoming shrubs
and soft sunny days to all the coast region. He carried with him
certain tools for a purpose, axes, cross-cut saws, iron wedges, a froe
to flake off uniform slabs of cedar. He sat on the steamer's deck and
thought to himself that he was in vastly different case to the last
time he had watched those same shores slide by in the same direction.
Then he had been in full retreat, withdrawing from a world which for
him held nothing of any value. Now it held for him a variety of
desirable things, which to have and to hold he need only make effort;
and that effort he was eager to put forth, was now indeed putting
forth if he did no more than sit on the steamer's deck, watching green
shore and landlocked bays fall astern, feeling the steady throb of her
engines, hearing the swish and purl of a cleft sea parting at the bow
in white foam, rippling away in a churned wake at her stern.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.