The Hidden Places | Page 4

the very heart of the land, and where the land itself, delta and
slope and slide-engraved declivities, was clothed with great, silent
forests, upon which man, with his axes and saws, his machinery, his
destructiveness in the name of industry, had as yet made little more
impression than the nibbling of a single mouse on the rim of a large
cheese.
When he graduated he did return on a thirty-days' vacation, which the
lure of the semi-wild country prolonged for six months,--a whole
summer in which he resisted the importunities of his father to take his
part in the business upon which rested the family fortune. Hollister
never forgot that summer. He was young. He had no cares. He was free.
All life spread before him in a vast illusion of unquestionable
joyousness. There was a rose-pink tinge over these months in which he
fished salmon and trout, climbed the frowning escarpments of the
Coast Range, gave himself up to the spell of a region which is still
potent with the charm of the wilderness untamed. There had always
lingered in his receptive mind a memory of profound beauty, a stark
beauty of color and outline, an unhampered freedom, opportunity as
vast as the mountains that looked from their cool heights down on the
changeful sea and the hushed forests, brooding in the sun and rain.
So he had come back again, after seven years, scarcely knowing why
he came, except that the coast beckoned with a remote gesture, and that
he desired to get as far as possible from the charnel house of Europe,

and that he shrank from presenting himself among the acquaintances of
his boyhood and the few distant relatives left him upon the Atlantic
seaboard.
His father died shortly after Hollister married. He had left his son
property aggregating several thousand dollars and a complicated timber
business disorganized by his sudden death. Hollister was young,
sanguine, clever in the accepted sense of cleverness. He had married for
love,--urged thereto by a headlong, unquestioning, uncritical passion.
But there were no obstacles. His passion was returned. There was
nothing to make him ponder upon what a devastating, tyrannical force
this emotion which he knew as love might become, this blind fever of
the blood under cover of which nature works her ends, blandly
indifferent to the consequences.
Hollister was happy. He was ambitious. He threw himself with energy
into a revival of his father's business when it came into his hands. His
needs expanded with his matrimonial obligations. Considered
casually--which was chiefly the manner of his consideration--his future
was the future of a great many young men who begin life under
reasonably auspicious circumstances. That is to say, he would be a
success financially and socially to as great an extent as he cared to
aspire. He would acquire wealth and an expanding influence in his
community. He would lead a tolerably pleasant domestic existence. He
would be proud of his wife's beauty, her charm; he would derive a
soothing contentment from her affection. He would take pleasure in
friendships. In the end, of course, at some far-off, misty mile-post, he
would begin to grow old. Then he would die in a dignified manner, full
of years and honors, and his children would carry on after him.
Hollister failed to reckon with the suavities of international diplomacy,
with the forces of commercialism in relation to the markets of the
world.
The war burst upon and shattered the placidity of his existence very
much as the bombs from the first Zeppelins shattered the peace and
security of London and Paris.

He reacted to the impetus of the German assault as young men of his
class uniformly reacted. There was in Hollister's mind no doubt or
equivocation about what he must do. But he did not embark upon this
adventure joyously. He could not help weighing the chances. He
understood that in this day and age he was a fortunate man. He had a
great deal to lose. But he felt that he must go. He was not, however,
filled with the witless idea that service with the Expeditionary Force
was to be an adventure of some few months, a brief period involving
some hardships and sharp fighting, but with an Allied Army
hammering at the gates of Berlin as a grand finale. The slaughter of the
first encounters filled him with the conviction that he should put his
house in order before he entered that bloody arena out of which he
might not emerge.
So that when he crossed the Channel the first time he had disentangled
himself from his business at a great loss, in order to have all his funds
available for his wife in case of the ultimate disaster.
Myra accompanied him to England, deferred their separation to