The Hidden Places | Page 5

the last
hour. They could well afford that concession to their affection, they
told each other. It was so hard to part.
It scarcely seemed possible that four years had gone winging by since
then, yet in certain moods it seemed to Hollister as if an eternity had
passed. Things had been thus and so; they had become different by
agonizing processes.
He did not know where Myra was. He, himself, was here in Vancouver,
alone, a stranger, a single speck of human wreckage cast on a far beach
by the receding tides of war. He had no funds worth considering, but
money was not as yet an item of consideration. He was not disabled.
Physically he was more fit than he had ever been. The delicate
mechanism of his brain was unimpaired. He had no bitterness--no
illusions. His intellect was acute enough to suggest that in the complete
shucking off of illusions lay his greatest peril. Life, as it faced him, the
individual, appeared to be almost too grim a business to be endured
without hopes and dreams. He had neither. He had nothing but moods.

He walked slowly down Granville Street in the blackest mood which
had yet come upon him. It differed from that strange feeling of terror
which had taken him unaware the night before. He had fallen easy prey
then to the black shadows of forlornness. He was still as acutely aware
of the barrier which his disfigurement raised between him and other
men. But with that morbid awareness there rose also now, for the first
time, resentment against the smug folk who glanced at him and
hurriedly averted their eyes. Slowly, by imperceptible degrees, as the
tide rises on a sloping shore, his anger rose.
The day was cold and sunny, a January morning with a touch of frost in
the air. Men passed him, walking rapidly, clad in greatcoats. Women
tripped by, wrapped in furs, eyes bright, cheeks glowing. And as they
passed, singly, in chattering pairs, in smiling groups, Hollister observed
them with a growing fury. They were so thoroughly insulated against
everything disagreeable. All of them. A great war had just come to a
dramatic close, a war in which staggering numbers of men had been
sacrificed, body and soul, to enable these people to walk the streets in
comfortable security. They seemed so completely unaware of the
significance of his disfigured face. It was simply a disagreeable
spectacle from which they turned with brief annoyance.
Most of these men and women honored the flag. In a theater, at any
public gathering, a display of the national colors caused the men to bare
reverently their heads, the women to clap their hands with decorous
enthusiasm. Without doubt they were all agreed that it was a sacred
duty to fight for one's country. How peculiar and illogical then, he
reflected, to be horrified at the visible results of fighting for one's
country, of saving the world for democracy. The thing had had to be
done. A great many men had been killed. A great number had lost their
legs, their arms, their sight. They had suffered indescribable mutilations
and disabilities in the national defense. These people were the nation.
Those who passed him with a shocked glance at his face must be aware
that fighting involves suffering and scars. It appeared as if they wished
to ignore that. The inevitable consequences of war annoyed them,
disturbed them, when they came face to face with those consequences.

Hollister imagined them privately thinking he should wear a mask.
After all, he was a stranger to these folk, although he was their
countryman and a person of consequence until the war and Myra and
circumstances conspired against him.
He stifled the resentment which arose from a realization that he must
expect nothing else, that it was not injustice so much as stupidity. He
reflected that this was natural. A cynical conclusion arose in his mind.
There was no substance, after all, in this loose talk about sympathy and
gratitude and the obligation of a proud country to those who had served
overseas. Why should there be? He was an individual among other
individuals who were unconsciously actuated by rampant individualism
except in moments of peril, when stark necessity compelled them to
social action. Otherwise it was every man for himself. Yes, it was
natural enough. He was a stranger to these people. Except for the color
of his skin, he was no more to them than a Hindoo or a Japanese. And
doubtless the grotesque disarrangement of his features appalled them.
How could they discern behind that caricature of a face the human
desire for friendliness, the ache of a bruised spirit?
He deliberately clamped down the lid upon such reflections and
bethought himself of the business