The Hidden Places Part 28

They stood silent a few seconds, Doris leaning against him contentedly, Hollister struggling with the flood of mingled sensations that swept through him on the heels of this vast relief.

"How your heart thumps," Doris laughed softly. "One would think you were a lover meeting his mistress clandestinely for the first time."

"You surprised me," Hollister took refuge behind a white lie. He would not afflict her with that miasma of doubts and fears which had sickened him. "I didn't expect you till to-morrow afternoon."

"I got tired of staying in town," she said. "There was no use. I wasn't getting any better, and I got so I didn't care. I began to feel that it was better to be here with you blind, than alone in town with that tantalizing half-sight of everything. I suppose the plain truth is that I got fearfully lonesome. Then you wrote me that letter, and in it you talked about such intimately personal things that I couldn't let Mrs. Moore read it to me. And I heard about this big fire you had here. So I decided to come home and let my eyes take care of themselves. I went to see another oculist or two. They can't tell whether my sight will improve or not. It may go again altogether. And nothing much can be done. I have to take it as it comes. So I planned to come home on the steamer to-morrow. You got my letter, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Well, I happened to get a chance to come as far as the Redondas on a boat belonging to some people I knew on Stuart Island. I got a launch there to bring me up the Inlet, and Chief Aleck brought us up the river in the war canoe. My, it's good to be with you again."

"Amen," Hollister said. There was a fervent quality in his tone.

They found a log and sat down on it and talked. Hollister told her of the fire. And when he saw that she had no knowledge of what tragedy had stalked with b.l.o.o.d.y footprints across the Big Bend, he put off telling her. Presently she would ask about Myra, and he would have to tell her. But in that hour he did not wish to see her grow sad. He was jealous of anything that would inflict pain on her. He wanted to shield her from all griefs and hurts.

"Come back to the house," Doris said at last. "Baby's fretting a little. The trip in a small boat rather upset him. I don't like to leave him too long."

But Robert junior was peacefully asleep in his crib when they reached the house. After a look at him, they went out and sat on the porch steps. There, when the trend of their conversation made it unavoidable, he told her what had overtaken Charlie Mills and Myra Bland.

Doris listened silently. She sighed.

"What a pity," she murmured. "The uselessness of it, the madness--like a child destroying his toys in a blind rage. Poor Myra. She told me once that life seemed to her like swimming among whirlpools. It must have been true."

How true it was Hollister did not dare reveal. That was finished, for Myra and himself. She had perished among the whirlpools. He scarcely knew how he had escaped.

"How lucky we are, you and I, Bob," Doris said after a time. She put her arms around him impulsively. "We might so easily be wandering about alone in a world that is terribly harsh to the unfortunate.

Instead--we're here together, and life means something worth while to us. It does to me, I know. Does it to you?"

"As long as I have you, it does," he answered truthfully. "But if you could see me as I really am, perhaps I might not have you very long."

"How absurd," she declared--and then, a little thoughtfully, "if I thought that was really true, I should never wish to see again.

Curiously, the last two or three weeks this queer, blurred sort of vision I have seems quite sufficient. I haven't wanted to see half so badly as I've wanted you. I can get impressions enough through the other four senses. I'd hate awfully to have to get along without you.

You've become almost a part of me--I wonder if you understand that?"

Hollister did understand. It was mutual,--that want, that dependence, that sense of incompleteness which each felt without the other. It was a blessed thing to have, something to be cherished, and he knew how desperately he had reacted to everything that threatened its loss.

Hollister sat there looking up at the far places, the high, white mountain crests, the deep gorges, the paths that the winter slides had cut through the green forest, down which silvery cataracts poured now.

It seemed to have undergone some subtle change, to have become less aloof, to have enveloped itself in a new and kindlier atmosphere. Yet he knew it was as it had always been. The difference was in himself.

The sympathetic response to that wild beauty was purely subjective. He could look at the far snows, the bluish gleam of the glaciers, the restful green of the valley floor, with a new quality of appreciation.

He could even--so resilient and adaptable a thing is the human mind--see himself engaged upon material enterprises, years pa.s.sing, his boy growing up, life a.s.suming a fullness, a proportion, an orderly progression that two hours earlier would have seemed to him only a futile dream.

He wondered if this would endure. He looked down at his wife leaning upon his knee, her face thoughtful and content. He looked out over the valley once more, at those high, sentinel peaks thrusting up their white cones, one behind the other. He heard the river. He saw the foxglove swaying in the wind, the red flare of the poppies at his door. He smelled the fragrance of wild honeysuckle, the sharp, sweet smells blown out of the forest that drowsed in the summer heat.

It was all good. He rested in that pleasant security like a man who has fought his way through desperate perils to some haven of safety and sits down there to rest in peace. He did not know what the future held for him. He had no apprehension of the future. He was not even curious. He had firm hold of the present, and that was enough. He wondered a little that he should suddenly feel so strong a conviction that life was good. But he had that feeling at last. The road opened before him clear and straight. If there were crooks in it, pitfalls by the way, perils to be faced, pains to be suffered, he was very sure in that hour that somehow he would find courage to meet them open-eyed and unafraid.

THE END