The Hidden Places

The Hidden Places

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hidden Places, by Bertrand W.
Sinclair This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
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Title: The Hidden Places
Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair
Release Date: April 11, 2006 [EBook #18150]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE HIDDEN PLACES
[Illustration: He did not shrink while those soft fingers went exploring
the devastation wrought by the exploding shell. FRONTISPIECE. See
page 128.]

THE HIDDEN PLACES
By BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR
Author of
"Big Timber," "Poor Man's Rock," etc.
A.L. BURT COMPANY Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company Printed in
U.S.A.
Copyright, 1922, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
All rights reserved Published January, 1922.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE HIDDEN PLACES
CHAPTER I
Hollister stood in the middle of his room, staring at the door without
seeing the door, without seeing the bulky shadow his body cast on the
wall in the pale glow of a single droplight. He was seeing everything
and seeing nothing; acutely, quiveringly conscious and yet oblivious to
his surroundings by reason of the poignancy of his thought.
A feeling not far short of terror had folded itself about him like a
shrouding fog.
It had not seized him unaware. For weeks he had seen it looming over
him, and he had schooled himself to disregard a great deal which his
perception was too acute to misunderstand. He had struggled
desperately against the unescapable, recognizing certain significant
facts and in the same breath denying their accumulated force in sheer

self-defense.
A small dressing-table topped by an oval mirror stood against the wall
beside his bed. Hollister took his unseeing gaze off the door with a start,
like a man withdrawing his mind from wandering in far places. He sat
down before the dressing-table and forced himself to look steadfastly,
appraisingly, at the reflection of his face in the mirror--that which had
once been a presentable man's countenance.
He shuddered and dropped his eyes. This was a trial he seldom
ventured upon. He could not bear that vision long. No one could. That
was the fearful implication which made him shrink. He, Robert
Hollister, in the flush of manhood, with a body whose symmetry and
vigor other men had envied, a mind that functioned alertly, a spirit as
nearly indomitable as the spirit of man may be, was like a leper among
his own kind; he had become a something that filled other men with
pitying dismay when they looked at him, that made women avert their
gaze and withdraw from him in spite of pity.
Hollister snapped out the light and threw himself on his bed. He had
known physical suffering, the slow, aching hours of tortured flesh,
bodily pain that racked him until he had wished for death as a welcome
relief. But that had been when the flame of vitality burned low, when
the will-to-live had been sapped by bodily stress.
Now the mere animal instinct to live was a compelling force within him.
He was young and strong, aching with his desire for life in its fullest
sense. And he did not know how he was going to live and endure the
manner of life he had to face, a life that held nothing but frustration and
denial of all that was necessary to him, which was making him suffer as
acutely as he had ever suffered in the field, under the knives of callous
surgeons, in the shambles of the front line or the ether-scented dressing
stations. There is morphine for a tortured body, but there is no opiate
for agony of the spirit, the sharp-toothed pain that stabs at a lonely
heart with its invisible lancet.
In the darkness of his room, with all the noisy traffic of a seaport city
rumbling under his windows, Hollister lay on his bed and struggled

against that terrifying depression which had seized him, that spiritual
panic. It was real. It was based upon undeniable reality. He was no
more captain of his soul than any man born of woman has ever been
when he descends into the dark places. But he knew that he must shake
off that feeling, or go mad, or kill himself. One of the three. He had
known men to kill themselves for less. He had seen wounded men beg
for a weapon to end their pain. He had known men who, after months
of convalescence, quitted