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 which brought him along the street. Turning off the main thoroughfare, he passed half a block along a cross street and entered an office building. Ascending to the fourth floor, he entered an elaborate suite of offices which bore upon the ground glass of the entrance door this legend:
Lewis and Company
specialists in b.c. timber. investments
He inquired for Mr. Lewis, gave his card to a young woman who glanced at him once and thereafter looked anywhere but at him while he spoke. After a minute of waiting he was ushered into a private office. As he neared this door, Hollister happened to catch a panoramic glimpse in a wall mirror. The eyes of half a dozen clerks and other persons in that room, both male and female, were fixed on him with the shocked and eager curiosity he had once observed upon the faces of a crowd gathered about the mangled victim of a street accident.
Mr. Lewis was a robust man, a few years older than Hollister. The cares of a rapidly developing business and certain domestic ties had prevented Mr. Lewis from offering himself upon the altar of his country. The responsibility of eight per cent. investments entrusted to his care was not easily shaken off. Business, of course, was a national necessity. However, since the armistice, Mr. Lewis had ceased to be either explanatory or inferentially apologetic—even in his own thought—for his inability to free himself from the demands of commerce during a critical period.