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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Snow-Blind, by Katharine Newlin Burt
+
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+Title: Snow-Blind
+
+Author: Katharine Newlin Burt
+
+Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7520]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 13, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SNOW-BLIND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ketaki Chhabra and Wendy Crockett from the book.
+
+
+
+
+SNOW-BLIND
+
+BY
+
+KATHARINE NEWLIN BURT
+
+AUTHOR OF THE BRANDING IRON, Etc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Under a noon sun the vast, flat country, buried deep in snow, lay
+like a paper hoop rimmed by the dark primeval forest; its surface
+shone with an unbearable brightness as of sun-struck glass, every
+crystal gleaming and quivering with intense cold light. To the north
+a single blunt, low mountain-head broke the evenness of the horizon
+line.
+
+Hugh Garth seemed to leap through paper like a tiny active clown as
+he dropped down into the small space shoveled clear in front of his
+hidden cabin door. The roof was weighted with drift, so that a curling
+mass like the edge of a wind-crowded wave about to break hung low
+over the eaves. Long icicles as thick as a man's arm stretched from
+roof to ground in a row of twisted columns. Under this overhanging
+cornice of snow near the door there was a sudden icy purple darkness.
+
+As Hugh plunged down into it, his face lost a certain rapt brightness
+and shadowed deeply. He let slip the load of fresh pelts from his
+back, drew his feet from the skis which he stuck up on their ends
+in the snow, and removed the fur cap from his head and the huge dark
+spectacles from his eyes. Then, crouching, he went in at the low,
+ill-hung door. It stuck to its sill, and he cursed it; all his
+movements expressed the anger of frustration. He slammed the door
+behind him.
+
+Buried in drifts, the cabin was dim even at this bright hour of noon.
+The stove glowed in a corner with a subdued redness, its bulging
+cheeks and round mouth dully scarlet. The low room was pleasant to
+look at, for it had the beauty of brown bark and the salmon tints
+of old rough boards, and its furniture, wrought painstakingly by an
+unskillful hand, had the charm of all handwork even when unskilled.
+Some of the chairs were rudely carved, one great throne especially,
+awkward, pretentious, and carefully ornate.
+
+There was, too, a solid table in the center of the floor; and on it
+a woman was setting heavy earthenware plates nicked and discolored.
+She was heavy and discolored herself, but like the stove, she too
+seemed to have a dull glow. She was no longer young, but she might
+still have encouraged her youthfulness to linger pleasantly; she was
+not in the least degree beautiful, but she might have fostered a charm
+that lurked somewhere about her small, compact body and in her square,
+dark face. Her hair of a sandy brown was stretched back brutally so
+that her bright, devoted eyes--gray and honest eyes, very deep-set
+beneath their brows--lacked the usual softness and mystery of women's
+eyes. Her lips were tight set; her chin held out with an air of dogged
+effort which seemed to possess no relation to her mechanical
+occupation, yet to have a strong habitual relation to her state of
+mind. She seemed, in fact, under a shell of self-control, to conceal
+an inner light, like a dimly burning dark-lantern. Her expression
+was dumb. She moved about like a deaf-mute. Indeed, her stillness
+and stony self-repression were extraordinary.
+
+A youth rose from a chair near the stove and greeted Hugh as he
+entered.
+
+"Hullo," he said. "How many did you get?"
+
+It was the eager questioning of a modest, affectionate boy who curbs
+his natural effervescence of greeting like a well-trained dog. The
+tone was astonishingly young, a quiet, husky boy-voice.
+
+"Damn you, Pete!" was snarled at him for answer. "Haven't you got
+my boot mended yet?"
+
+The boot, still lacking its heel, lay on the floor near the stove,
+and Hugh now picked it up and hurled it half across the room.
+
+"I have to get out into this ice chest of a wilderness and this
+flaming glare that cuts my eyeballs open, and work till the sweat
+freezes on my face, and then come home to find you loafing by the
+fire as if you were a house cat--purring and rubbing against my legs
+when I come in," he snarled. "Thanking me for a quiet nap and a saucer
+of milk, eh? You loafer! What do I keep you for? You gorge the bread
+and meat I earn by sweating and freezing, and you keep your sluggish
+mountain of bones covered. A year or two ago I'd have urged you along
+with a stick. I used to get some work out of you then. But you think
+you're too big for that, now, don't you? You fancy I'm afraid of your
+bigness, eh? Well, do you want me to try it out? What about it?"
+
+During the first part of his brother's speech, Pete had faced him,
+but in the middle he had turned his back and stood in front of one
+of the clumsy windows. He looked out now at a white wall of snow,
+above which shone the dazzle of the midday. He whistled very softly
+to himself and sank his hands deep into the pockets of his corduroys.
+He did not answer the snarling question, but his wide, quiet mouth,
+exquisitely shaped, ran into a smile and a dimple, deep and narrow,
+cut into his thin and ruddy cheek.
+
+Between the woman, who went on with her work as though no one had
+come into the room, and the silent smiling youth, Hugh Garth prowled
+the floor like a shadow thrown by a moving light.
+
+He was a man of forty-five, gray-haired, misshapen, heavy above the
+waist and light to meanness below; a man lame in one leg and with
+an ill-proportioned face, malicious, lined, lead-colored; a man who
+limped and leaped about the room with a fierce energy, the while his
+tongue, gifted with a rich and resonant voice, poured vitriol upon
+the silence.
+
+Suddenly the woman spoke. She turned back on the threshold of the
+kitchen door through which her work had been taking her to and fro
+during Garth's outbreak. Her voice was monotonous and smothered; it
+had its share in her unnatural self-repression.
+
+"Why don't you tell him to be quiet, Pete? You've been chopping wood
+since daybreak to make up for what he didn't do last week, and you
+only came in about ten minutes before he did. Why don't you speak
+out? You're getting to be pretty close to a man now, and it isn't
+suitable for you to let yourself be talked to that way. You always
+stand like a fool and take it from him."
+
+Pete turned. "Oh, well," he answered good-humoredly, "I guess maybe
+he's tired. Let up, Hugh, will you? I'll finish your boot after
+dinner."
+
+"The hell you will! You'll do it now!" Venting on his brother his
+anger at the woman's intervention, Garth swung his misshapen body
+around the end of the table and thrust an elbow violently against
+Pete's chest. The attack was so unexpected that Pete staggered, lost
+his balance, and stepping down into the shallow depression of a
+pebbled hearth, fell, twisting his ankle. The agony was sharp. After
+a dumb minute he lifted a white face and pulled himself up, one hand
+clutching the board mantel. "Now you've done it!" he said between
+his teeth. "How will you get your pelts to the station now? I won't
+be able to take them."
+
+There ensued a dismayed silence. The woman had come back from the
+kitchen and stood with a steaming dish in her hands. After the brief
+pause of consternation she set down the dish and went over to Pete.
+"Here," she said, "sit down and let me take off your moccasin and
+bathe your ankle before it begins to swell."
+
+Hugh Garth had seated himself in the thronelike chair at the head
+of the table. His expression was still defiant, indifferent, and
+lordly. "Come and eat your dinner, both of you," he commanded. "You've
+had your lesson, Pete. After this, I guess you'll do what I tell you
+to--not choose the work that happens to suit your humor. Don't, for
+God's sake, baby him, Bella. Don't start being a grandmother before
+you've ever been a sweetheart. You're too young for the one even if
+you're getting a bit too old for the other!"
+
+Bella flushed deep and hot. She went to her place, and Pete hobbled
+to his, opposite his brother. Between them the woman sat, dyed deep
+in her sudden unaccustomed wave of scarlet. Pete's whiteness too was
+stained in sympathy. But Hugh only chuckled. "As for the pelts," he
+said royally, "I'll take them down myself."
+
+Bella looked slowly up.
+
+"You think I don't mean it, I suppose?" Hugh demanded.
+
+They did not answer, but the eyes of the boy and the woman met. This
+silence and this dumb exchange of understanding infuriated Garth.
+He clinched his hands on the carved arms of his chair and leaned a
+little forward.
+
+"I'll take the pelts myself," he repeated boisterously. "I'm not
+afraid to be seen at the station. I'm sick of skulking. Buried
+here--with _my_ talents--in this damn country, spending my days
+trapping and skinning beasts to keep the breath in our three useless
+bodies. Wouldn't death be better for a man like me? Easier to bear?
+Fifteen years of it! Fifteen years! My best years!" He stared over
+Pete's head. "In all that time no beauty to feed my starved senses,
+no work for my starved brain, no hope for my starved heart." The woman
+and the youth watched him still in silence. "That fox I killed this
+morning had a better life to lose than I."
+
+"It wouldn't be safe for you to go, Hugh," said Pete gently.
+
+"Why not--watchdog?"
+
+The sneer deepened the flush on Pete's face, but he answered with
+the same gentleness, fixing his blue eyes on his brother's.
+
+"Because not two months ago there was a picture of you tacked up in
+the post-office."
+
+Bella's face whitened, and Hugh's cheeks grew a shade more leaden.
+"T-two months ago!" he stammered painfully; "but that's not p-possible.
+They--they've given me up. They've f-forgotten me. They th-think I'm
+dead. After fifteen years? My God, Pete! Why didn't you tell me?"
+He pleaded the last with a shaken sort of sharpness, in pitiful
+contrast to the bombast of the preceding speech.
+
+"I didn't see the good of telling you. I was waiting until this trip
+to see if the picture was still there, and maybe to ask some
+questions."
+
+"What does it mean?" whispered Bella.
+
+"It means they've some fresh reason to hunt me--some fresh impulse--God
+knows what or why. How can we tell out here, buried in the snows of
+fifteen winters. Well!" He struck his hands down on the table edge
+and stood up. He drew his mouth into a crooked smile and looked at
+the other two as a naughty child looks at its doting but disapproving
+elders. The smile transfigured his ugliness. "I've a fancy to see that
+picture. Want to be reminded of what I looked like fifteen years ago.
+I was a handsome fellow then. I'm going to take the pelts."
+
+Pete looked dumbly up at him, his lips parted. Bella twisted her
+apron about her hands. Both seemed to know the hopelessness of
+protest. In the same anxious dumbness they watched Garth make ready
+for his trip. As he pulled his cap down close about his ears, Pete
+at last found his voice.
+
+"Hugh," he began doubtfully, "I wish you wouldn't risk it. We can
+get on without supplies until next trading-day, when I'll surely be
+all right."
+
+"Hold your tongue! I'm going," was the answer. "I tell you, the spirit
+of adventure has me. Who knows what I may meet with out there?" He
+flung back the door and, pointing with a long arm, stood silhouetted
+against the dazzle.
+
+"Beauty? Opportunity? Danger? Hope? Death? I shan't shirk it this
+time. I'll meet whatever comes. But--" He came back a step into the
+room. His harsh face melted to a shamefaced gentleness; his voice
+softened. "If they get me down there, if I _don't_ come back, you
+two try to think kindly of me, will you? I know what you think of
+me now. I know you won't see me as I am--no one but God will ever
+do me that kindness; but you two--be easy with me in your memories."
+
+Bella, her arms now twisted to their red elbows in her apron, took
+a few stiff steps across the floor. Her face was expressionless, her
+eyes lowered. Garth smiled at them both and went out, shutting the
+door. They heard him singing as he put on his skis:
+
+  A hundred men were riding,
+  A-hunting for Pierre.
+  They rode and rode, but nothing could they find.
+  They rode around by moonlight;
+  They rode around by day;
+  They rode and rode, but nothing could they find.
+
+Then came the sharp scraping of his runners across the surface of
+the snow on a level with the buried roof. It lessened from a hissing
+speech to a hissing whisper. It sighed away. Bella sat down abruptly
+on a chair, pulled in her chin like an unhappy child; her bosom lifted
+as though a sob would force its way out.
+
+"If he doesn't come back!" she murmured. "If he doesn't come back!"
+She was speaking to God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Pete blinked, swallowed hard and began to talk fast and hopefully.
+
+"He'll come back. I don't believe he'll get halfway there, Bella,"
+he reassured the woman. "He'll come to his senses. You know how moody
+he is. Come over here and doctor up my ankle, please. 'Make a fuss
+over me, Bell.' Isn't that what I used to say?"
+
+He coaxed until at last she came and knelt before him and removed
+his moccasin and heavy woolen sock. The strong white foot was like
+marble, but the ankle was swollen and discolored. Bella clicked her
+tongue. "He _is_ a brute, you know!" She laughed shortly. Since
+Garth's departure she had become almost a human being. The deaf-mute
+look had melted from her, and a sardonic humor emerged; her eyes
+cleared; she could even smile. "Why do we care so much for him,
+Pete--the two of us?"
+
+Pete winced under her touch and puckered his brows. "Because he's
+such a kid, I guess. He's always fretting after the moon."
+
+"Don't you ever get angry with him, Pete? He does treat you shameful
+sometimes."
+
+"N-no. Not often. He's always sorry and ashamed afterward. He'd like
+to be as kind as God. I believe if he could only fool us into thinking
+he _was_ God, he could act like Him--ouch, Bella! Go easy."
+
+"You're an awful smart boy, Pete. It's a sin you've never had any
+schooling."
+
+"Schooling! Gosh! I've had all the schooling I could digest. Hugh
+beat it into me. He's taught me all he had in his head and a whole
+lot he never ought to have had there, I guess. But _you've_ taught
+me most, Bella--that's the truth of it."
+
+"_Me_! I never knew anything. They saw to that. They never did
+anything for me at home but abuse me. Hugh Garth was the only relation
+I ever had in the world that spoke kind to me. Remember how I used
+to run over from my folks to tuck you into bed in your little room
+above the shop, Pete? No, you were too little."
+
+"Of course, I remember," the boy replied. "The ankle's fine now,
+Bella. Let up. I can't stand that rubbing. Let me stick the foot up
+on another chair. There--that's great. It doesn't hurt near so bad
+now. I remember Hugh's bookshop; yes, I do--honest! I remember sitting
+on the ladder and listening to him talk to the students when they
+came in. He always was a gorgeous talker, Bella. They used to stand
+around and listen to his yarns like kids to a fairy story. Just the
+same as you and I do now--when we can get him into a good humor. But,
+you know, he used to like strangers best--to talk to, I mean."
+
+Bella assented, bitterly. She had begun to clear the table of its
+almost untouched meal. "Because he could put it over better with a
+stranger. It isn't the _truth_ Hugh likes--about himself, or others."
+
+Pete had begun to whittle a piece of wood. He was a charming figure,
+slouching down in his chair, slim and graceful, his shapely golden
+head ruffled, his chin pressed against his chest. His expression was
+indescribably sweet and boyish, the shadow of anxiety and pain
+accentuating a wistful if determined cheerfulness. He was deliberately
+entertaining Bella, diverting her mind from its agony of apprehension.
+She saw through him, but like a sick child she took the entertainment
+languidly.
+
+"Now, _you're_ too dead bent on the truth, Bella. You know you are.
+You're a regular bear for the truth."
+
+"I can't see anything else," she said gloomily. "Things are just so
+to me--no blinking them."
+
+He put his head a little to one side and contemplated her. "What do
+you see when you look into the water-bucket, Bella?"
+
+"The water-bucket?" She flushed. "Just because you caught me prinking
+that once!"
+
+"Well, if you had a mirror, what would you see in it, then?"
+
+"An ugly old woman, Pete."
+
+"There! Your mind's just the wrong-side-out of Hugh's. He won't see
+himself ugly, and you won't see yourself pretty. I'm the only sane
+fellow in this house."
+
+"And you never in your life saw a pretty woman to remember her.
+Besides, you're too young." She said it with a tart sweetness and
+vanished into the kitchen.
+
+With her departure Pete's whittling ceased, his hands fell slack and
+he began to stare out through the snow-walled window. His anxiety
+for Hugh slipped imperceptibly into a vague pondering over his own
+youthfulness. That's what those two were always telling him, sometimes
+savagely, sometimes tenderly! "You're too young." What did it mean
+to him, anyhow, that he was "too young"? A desolation from which at
+times he suffered in secret overcame him.
+
+He was twenty-one or -two--or his memory lied. They had never
+celebrated his birthdays, but he was five or six years old when Hugh
+had been so suddenly, so unexplainably taken from the house, back
+there in the little Eastern college town where they had lived. It
+was a few months later that Bella--Cousin Bella, who worked at "the
+farm"--came for him, a furtive, desperate Bella with a bruised
+face--a Bella tight-strung for flight, for a breaking of the galling
+accustomed ties of her life, for a terrible plunge into unknown
+adventure. She had muttered to him, as she dressed him and bundled
+together a few of his belongings, that they "were going to Hugh"--only
+it was another name she used, a name since blotted from their lives.
+
+Hugh had sent for them. She was the only person in the world that
+Hugh could trust. But no one must know where they were going. They
+must be away by the time the man who took charge of the shop came
+back in the morning.
+
+Pete remembered the journey. He remembered the small frontier station
+where they left the train at last. He remembered that strange,
+far-flung horizon, streaked with dawn, and his first taste of the
+tangy, heady air. There had been a long, long drive and a parting
+with the friendly driver where Bella turned on to the trail through
+the woods. It had been dim and dark and terrible among the endless
+regiments of trees--mazy and green and altogether bewildering. And
+after vague hop-o'-my-thumb wanderings, he had a disconnected memory
+of Hugh--a wild, rugged, ragged, bearded Hugh who caught him up
+fiercely as though he had an ogrish hunger for the feel of little
+boys. It was night when they came to Hugh's hiding-place. For miles
+Pete had been carried in his brother's arms. Bella had limped behind
+them. There had been a ford, he remembered; the splashing water had
+roused Pete, and he stayed awake afterward until he found himself
+before a dancing fire of logs in a queer, dark, resinous-smelling
+house, very low, with unglazed windows. He remembered, too, that Bella
+had burst out crying. That was the queerest memory of them all--that
+crying of Bella's.--Even now he could not understand exactly why she
+had cried so then.
+
+The frightened, furtive life they had all led since--the life of
+scared wild things--had left its mark on Pete. His fear for Hugh now
+threw him back into the half-forgotten state of apprehension which
+had been the atmosphere of all his little boyhood. He had not known
+then why strange men were creatures to be feared and shunned. In fact,
+he had never been told the reason for Hugh's flight. Only, bit by
+bit, he had pieced together hints and vague allusions until he knew
+that this strange, embittered, boasting poet of a brother had killed
+or had been accused of killing. In his loyal boy mind Hugh Garth was
+promptly acquitted. It was the world that was wrong--not Hugh. Yet
+to-day, after all the long years of carefulness, he had gone back
+to the cruelty of the world.
+
+Like a beast the boy's anxiety for his brother began to prowl
+about the walls of his mind. He imagined Hugh appearing at the
+trading-station. He pictured the curious glances of the Indians
+and the white natives. This limping, extravagant, energetic Hugh
+with his whitening hair and eyebrows and flaring hazel eyes--with
+his crooked nose and mouth, his magnificently desperate manner and
+his magnificently desperate voice--attention would inevitably fasten
+upon him anywhere; how much more in an empty land such as this! Pete
+fancied the inquiring looks turned from the man to the man's posted
+picture. It was no longer a faithful likeness, of course; still, it
+was a likeness. There was no other man in all the world like Hugh! He
+was made of odd, fantastic fragments, of ill-fitting parts--physically,
+mentally, spiritually. It was as if a soul had seen itself in a
+crooked mirror and had fashioned a form to match the distorted image.
+Hugh wouldn't, couldn't force himself to be inconspicuous. He would
+swagger; he would talk loud; his big, beautiful voice would challenge
+attention, create an audience. He would have some impossible, splendid
+tale to tell.
+
+Pete sat up straighter in his chair, gingerly rearranging the ankle,
+and lifted his blue and haunted eyes--the eyes of the North--to the
+window.
+
+The dazzle of noon had faded to a glow. The short winter day was
+nearly done. There would be a long violet twilight, and then, the
+blaze of stars.
+
+But for his aching ankle Pete would be sliding out on soundless skis,
+now poised for breathless flight down some long slope, now leaping
+fallen trees or buried ditches. He spent half of his wild young
+restlessness in such long night runs when, in a sort of ecstasy, he
+outraced the stifled longings of his exiled youth. But there would
+be no ski-running for several nights now. He was a prisoner, and at
+a time when imprisonment was hard to bear.
+
+If only there were some way of getting quick news of Hugh! Why had
+Bella and he let this thing happen? Why had they stood helplessly
+by and allowed the rash fool to go singing to his own destruction?
+They might have held him by force, if not by argument, long enough
+to bring him to his senses. They had been weak; they were always weak
+before Hugh's magnetic strength--always the audience, the following;
+Bella, for all her devastating tongue, no less than himself. And
+Hugh's liberty, perhaps his life, might be the price of their
+acquiescence.
+
+Straining forward in his chair, listening, there came to Pete, across
+the silence, the sound of skis.
+
+He rose and hopped to the door, flinging it wide. He could not see
+above the top of the drift which rose just beyond the roof to a height
+of nine or ten feet, but listening intently, he thought he recognized
+a familiar slight unevenness in the sliding of the skis.
+
+"Bella!" he shouted, his boy-voice ringing with relief. "Bella! Here's
+Hugh. He's come back."
+
+Bella was instantly at his side. They stood waiting in the doorway.
+Against the violet sky darkening above the blue wall of snow, a bulky
+figure rose, blotting out the light. It half slid, half tumbled down
+upon them, clumsy and shapeless.
+
+"Let us in," panted Hugh. "Let us in."
+
+Slipping his feet from the straps of his skis, he staggered past them
+and they saw that he was carrying a woman in his arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+"Shut the door," Hugh whispered, and laid his burden down on a big
+black bear-hide near the stove. He knelt beside it. He had no eyes
+for anything else. Pete, hobbling to him, gazed curiously down, and
+Bella knelt opposite and drew away Hugh's mackinaw coat, with which
+he had wrapped his trove. It was not a woman whom they looked down
+upon, but a girl, and very young--perhaps not yet seventeen--a girl
+with cropped dark curly hair and a face so wan and blue and at the
+same time so scorched by the snow-glare that its exquisiteness of
+feature was all the more marked. Hugh's handkerchief was tied loosely
+across her eyes.
+
+"I heard her crying in the snow," he said with ineffable tenderness;
+"crying like a little bleating lamb with cold and pain and hunger
+and fright--the most pitiful thing in God's cruel trap of life. She's
+blind--snow-blind."
+
+Pete gave a sharp exclamation, and Bella gently removed the
+handkerchief. The small figure moaned and moved its head. The lids
+of her eyes were swollen and discolored.
+
+"Snow-blind," echoed Bella.
+
+"A bad case," said Hugh. "Get her some soup, Bella, and--perhaps,
+hot water--I don't know." He looked up helplessly.
+
+Bella went to the kitchen. She had regained her old look of dumbness.
+Beside the figure on the floor Pete touched one of the girl's small
+clenched hands. It was like ice. At the touch she moaned, and Hugh
+ordered sharply: "Let her alone." So the boy dragged himself up again
+and stood by the mantel, watching Hugh with puzzled and wondering
+eyes.
+
+"Think what she's been through," Hugh murmured, "that little delicate
+thing, wandering for two days, out in this cold--scared by the woods,
+blinded by the pain, starving. When I found her, you'd have thought
+she'd be afraid of a wild man like me, but she just lifted up her
+arms like a baby and dropped her head on my shoulder. She--she patted
+my cheek--"
+
+Bella brought the soup, and Hugh, raising the small black head on
+the crook of his arm, forced a spoonful between the clenched teeth.
+The girl swallowed and began again to whimper: "Oh, my eyes! My eyes!
+They hurt me so!" She turned her face against Hugh's chest and clung
+to him.
+
+"They'll be better soon," he soothed her; then fiercely to Bella:
+"Can't we do something? Don't you know what to do?"
+
+Again Bella went to the kitchen, moving like an automaton. Hugh coaxed
+and murmured, feeding the girl in spite of her pain. He managed to
+force a little of the soup down her throat, and a faint stain of color
+came back to her lips and cheeks. Bella presently reappeared with
+salve and lotion, and Hugh helped her hold the swollen lids apart,
+his big hands very skillful, while she gently washed out the eyes.
+Then they put the salve on her sun-scorched face. She sighed as though
+in some relief, and again snuggled against Hugh.
+
+"Don't go away, please," she pleaded in a sweet trickle of voice.
+"I'm scared to feel you gone. You're so warm. You're so strong. Will
+you talk to me again, please? Your voice is so comforting, so
+beau-ti-ful."
+
+So Hugh talked. The others drew away and watched and listened. They
+did not look at each other. For some reason Pete was ashamed to meet
+Bella's eyes. As usual, they were the audience, those two. They sat,
+each in a chair, the width of the room apart; below them, his grizzled
+head and warped face transfigured by its new tenderness, Hugh bent
+over the child in his arms. Pete held his tumult of curiosity, of
+interest, in leash. He could hear his heart pounding.
+
+"You're safe now, and warm," Hugh was murmuring. "No need to be
+scared, no need. I'll take care of you. Go to sleep. I'm strong enough
+to keep off anything. You're safe and snug as a little bird in its
+nest. That's right. Go to sleep."
+
+Pete's blue eyes dwelt on this amazing spectacle with curious wonder.
+This was a Hugh he had never seen before. For the first time in
+fifteen years, he realized, the man had forgotten himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+To Hugh Garth the girl told her story at last. She seemed to realize
+only dimly that there were two other living beings in this house,
+to her a house of darkness peopled only by voices--Pete's modest,
+rare boy speeches, Bella's brief, smothered statements. The great
+music of Hugh's utterance must indeed have filled her narrowed world.
+So it was to him she turned--he was always near her, sitting on the
+pelt beside the chair to which, after a day and night in Bella's bed,
+she was helped.
+
+She had a charming fashion of speech, rather slow motions of her lips,
+which had some difficulty with "r" and "s," a difficulty which she
+evidently struggled against conscientiously, and as she talked, she
+gesticulated with her slim little hands. She was a touching thing
+sitting there in Hugh's carved throne--he an abdicated monarch at
+her feet, knee in hand, grizzled head tilted back, hazel eyes raised
+to her and filled with adoration.
+
+"I am called Sylvie Doone," she said with that quaint struggle over
+the "S." "I was always miserable at home." She gave the quick sigh
+of a child. "You see, my father died when I was very little, and then
+my mother married again. We lived in the grimmest little town, hardly
+more than a dozen houses, beside a stream, up in Massachusetts--farming
+country, but poor farming, hard farming, the kind that twists the
+men with rheumatism, and makes the women all pinched and worn. Mother
+was like that. She died when I was thirteen. You see--there I was,
+so queerly fixed. I had to live with Mr. Pynche--there was no other
+home for me anywhere. And he kind of resented it. He had enough money
+not to need me for work--a sister of his did the housework better
+than I could--and yet he was poor enough to hate having to feed me
+and pay for my clothes. I was always feeling in the way, and a burden.
+There was nothing I could do.
+
+"Then I saw something about the movies in a magazine, and pictures
+of girls, not much better-looking than me, making lots of money. I
+borrowed some money from a drug-store clerk who wanted to keep company
+with me--I've paid it back--and I went to New York. I did get a job.
+But I'm not a good actress."
+
+She faltered over the rest--a commonplace story of engagements, of
+failures, until she found herself touring the West with a wretched
+theatrical troupe. "We were booked for a little town off there beyond
+your woods, and the train was stalled in a snowstorm. We got on a
+stage-coach, but it got stuck in a drift on one of those dreadful
+roads. I was freezing cold, and I thought I'd make a short cut through
+the woods. The road was running along the edge of a big forest of
+pines. I cut off while they were all working to dig out the horses.
+
+"Mr. Snaring said, 'Look out for the bears!' and I laughed and ran
+up what looked like a snow-buried trail. There was a hard crust. The
+woods were all glittering and so beautiful. I ran into them, laughing.
+I was so glad to get away by myself from those people into the woods
+where it was so silent and sort of solemn--like being in a church
+again. I can't think how I got so lost. I meant to come round back
+to the road, but before I knew it, I didn't know which way the road
+was. The pines were so dense, so all alike, they looked almost as
+if they kept sort of shifting about me. I tried to follow back on
+my footprints, but in some places snow had shaken down from the
+branches. And there were so many--so dreadfully many other tracks--of
+animals--" She put her hands over her face and shrank down in her
+chair.
+
+"Forget about them, Sylvie," Hugh admonished gently. "Even if there
+had been bears about, they wouldn't likely have bothered you any."
+
+"I can't bring myself to tell you about that time--I can't!"
+
+"Don't, then--only, how did you live through the night, my dear?"
+
+"I don't know--except that I never stayed still. I got out from the
+trees because I was afraid of bears, and I lost my hat. The sun was
+like fire shining up from underneath and down from up above. My eyes
+began to hurt almost at once, and by the time night came, it was
+agony. The darkness didn't seem to help me any either; the glare still
+seemed to come in under my lids. I couldn't sleep for the pain. I
+knew I'd freeze if I stood still, so I kept moving all night,
+trampling round in circles, I suppose. Next morning the terrible glare
+began again. Then everything went red. I was nearly crazy when you
+found me, Mr. Garth."
+
+"Please call me Hugh," he murmured, taking her hand in his. "I feel
+in a way that you belong to me now--I saved you from dying alone there
+in the cold and brought you back to my home. I've got jettison rights,
+Sylvie." She let him hold her hand, and flushed.
+
+"You'll never know what it felt like to hear your voice call to me,
+to feel you pulling me up. I'd only just dropped a few minutes before,
+but I'd never have struggled up. It would have been the end." She
+trembled in the memory, and he patted her hand. "I don't know why
+a man like you lives off here in this wild place, but thank God, you
+do live here! Though," she added with wistfulness, twisting her soft
+mouth, "though I can't ever quite see why God should care much for
+a Sylvie Doone." She touched the lids of her closed eyes. "I wonder
+why it doesn't worry me more not to be able to see. Now that the
+pain's gone, I don't seem to care much."
+
+"Thank God. Perhaps, though," he added half-grudgingly, "in a few
+days you'll see again."
+
+She smiled. "I'd just love to see _you_. You must be wonderful!"
+
+"What makes you think that?" he asked, his warped face glowing.
+
+"You're so strong and young, such thick hair, such finely shaped hands
+and such a voice." Sylvie's associates had been of a profession that
+deals perpetually in personalities. "If I'd been blind a long time,
+I suppose I could just run my hand over your face, and I'd know what
+you look like. But I can't tell a thing." She felt for his face and
+brushed it eagerly with her fingers, laughing at herself. "I just
+know that you have thick eyelashes and are clean-shaven. Is Bella
+your wife? And that big little boy your son?"
+
+He started. "No, she's a faithful thing, the boy's nurse. And the
+kid's my young brother--a great gawk of a boy for his age, a regular
+bean-pole."
+
+"It's so hard to tell anything about people if you can't see them.
+I wouldn't have thought he was so big. Is he about fourteen or
+fifteen? He speaks so low and gently; he might be any age."
+
+"And a man's height--pretty near too big to lick, though he needs
+it."
+
+"And Bella, what's she like?"
+
+"A dried-up mummy of a woman."
+
+The kitchen door creaked. Hugh started and shot a look over his
+shoulder. Bella stood on the kitchen threshold with an expressionless
+face and lowered eyelids.
+
+"Why did you jump?" asked Sylvie nervously.
+
+Hugh wet his lips with his tongue. "Nothing. The door creaked. Go
+on. Tell me more, child," he urged.
+
+"No. I want to hear about you now. Tell me your story."
+
+Hugh clenched his hands and flushed darkly. He glanced over his
+shoulder with a furtive look, but Bella had gone.
+
+"No one else rightly knows my story, Sylvie. Will you promise me never
+to speak of it, to Bella, to Pete, to any one?"
+
+"Of course, I promise." Her face beamed with the pride of a child
+entrusted with a secret.
+
+Then, lowering his voice and moving closer to her chair, he began
+a fictitious history, a history of persecuted and heroic innocence,
+of reckless adventure, of daring self-sacrifice. The girl listened
+with parted lips. Her cheeks glowed. And behind the door, Bella too
+listened, straining her ears.
+
+The murmur of Hugh's recital, rising now and then to some melodramatic
+climax, then dropping cautiously, rippled on, broken now and again
+by Sylvie's ejaculations. Behind the door Bella stood like a wooden
+block, colorless and stolid as though she understood not a syllable
+of what she heard. But after a rigid hour she faltered away, stumbled
+across the kitchen and out into the snow.
+
+There, in the broad light of the setting sun, Pete rhythmically bent
+and straightened over his saw. The tool sang with a hissing, ringing
+rhythm, and the young man drove it with a lithe, long swing of body,
+forward and back, forward and back, in alternate postures of untiring
+grace. The air was not cold. There was the cloudy softness premonitory
+of a spring storm; the sun glowed like a dying fire through a long,
+narrow rift in the shrouded west. Pete had thrown aside his coat and
+drawn in his belt. The collar of his flannel shirt was open and turned
+back; his head was bare. The bright gold of his short hair, the
+scarlet of his cheeks, the vivid blue of his brooding eyes, made
+shocks of color against the prevailing whiteness. Even the indigo
+of his overalls and the dark gray of his shirt stood out with a
+curious value of tint and texture. His bare hands and forearms
+glowed. He was whistling with a boy's vigor and a bird's sweetness.
+
+Bella caught Pete's arm as it bent for one of the strong forward
+sweeps. He stopped, let go of his saw, and turned to her, smiling.
+
+Then--the smile gone: "What's wrong?"
+
+Her eyes flamed in her pale, tense face. "We've got to stop it, Pete,"
+she said. "It's horrible!"
+
+"What? Don't stand out here with those bare arms, Bella." He was
+pulling his own shirt-sleeves down over his glistening bronze forearms
+as he spoke.
+
+"We can't talk in the house," she said, "and I've got to talk. I--Do
+you know what Hugh's doing--what he's telling that girl? What he's
+letting her believe?"
+
+Pete shook his head, but at the same time turned his blue eyes away
+from her toward the glowing west.
+
+"Lies," said Bella. She laughed a short, explosive laugh. "He's got
+his ideal audience at last--a blind one. She thinks he's young and
+handsome and heroic. Pete, she thinks he's a hero. She thinks he's
+buried himself out here for the sake of somebody else. Oh, it's a
+regular romance, and it's been going on for hours--it's still going
+on. By now he believes it all himself. He's putting in the details.
+And Sylvie: 'Oh!' she's saying, and 'Ah, Mr. Garth, how you must have
+suffered! How wonderful you are!' And--look at me Pete--do you want
+to know what we are--according to him--you and I?"
+
+He did not turn his eyes from the west, even when she shook his arm.
+
+"I'm a dried-up mummy of a woman--faithful?--yes, I'm faithful--an
+old servant. And you're a child, an overgrown bean-pole of a boy,
+fourteen or fifteen years old."
+
+The young man stood tall and still--a statue of golden youth in the
+golden light--the woman clutching at his arm, her face twisted, her
+eyes afire, all the colorlessness of her body and the suppressed flame
+of her spirit pitilessly apparent.
+
+"Look at me, Pete."
+
+"Well," he sighed gently, "what of it?" He looked down at her and
+smiled. "It's the first good time he's had for fifteen years. You
+know we don't make him happy. I don't grudge him his joy, Bella, do
+you? It can't last long, anyway. Fairy tales can't hurt her--Hugh
+believes--almost--in his own inventions. She'll be going back--her
+friends will be hunting for her. I'll let her think I'm a bean-pole
+of a boy if it makes him any happier to have me one. And why do you
+care?"
+
+She drew in her breath. "Oh, I don't suppose I care--so much," she
+said haltingly. "But--think of the girl."
+
+His eyes widened a little and fell. "The girl?"
+
+"She's falling in love with him!"
+
+Pete threw back his head and laughed aloud. "Oh, Bella, you know,
+_that's_ funny!"
+
+"It's not. It's tragic. It's horrible. You'll see. Watch her face."
+
+"I have watched it." He spoke dreamily. "It's a very pretty and sweet
+face."
+
+"Pete, Hugh's robbing _you_."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes, you're young. You're ready for loving. This child--God sent
+her to you, to get you out of this desolation, to lead you back to
+loving and living, to give you what you ought to have--Life."
+
+It was as though she had struck him. He started and drew himself away.
+"Shut up, Bella," he said with boyish roughness and limped past her
+into the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+In these days Hugh must have known that his magic-making, as he led
+the little blind girl through the forest of his romancing, was at
+the mercy of those two that knew him for what he really was; except
+for queer, wild, threatening looks now and again, he gave no sign.
+He played his part magnificently, even trusting them to come in with
+help when they were given their cue. He had dominated them for so
+long that even they and the picture of him that they held in their
+minds were not so real as his dreams. It was a queer game, queer and
+breathless, played in this narrow space shut in by the white
+wilderness. And as the slow days went by, the low log house seemed
+to be filled more and more with smothered and conflicting emotions.
+A dozen times the whole extravaganza came near collapse; a dozen
+times Hugh saved it by a word, or Pete and Bella by a silence. Their
+parts were not easy, and although Pete still smiled, his young clear
+face grew whiter and more strained. Sylvie treated him always as
+though he were a child. She would pat his head and rumple his hair
+if he sat near her; once, suddenly, she kissed him lightly on the
+cheek, after he had moved the chair for her.
+
+"You're a dear, quiet boy," she said. "I frightened you to death,
+then, didn't I? Hasn't anyone ever kissed you before?" His cheek
+burned so that, touching it with her fingers, she laughed. "I've made
+you blush, poor kid! I know. Boys hate petting, don't they? You'll
+have to get used to it, Pete, because I mean to pet you--oh, a lot!
+You need some one to draw you out. These two people snub you too much.
+Boys of fourteen aren't quite children, after all, are they? Besides,
+they're interesting. I know. I was fourteen myself not such ages back.
+You're not cross, are you, Pete?"
+
+His eyes were misty, and his hands were cold. He could not understand
+his own emotion, his own pain. He muttered something and got himself
+away. She called him "sullen" and was angry with him, complaining
+to Hugh at supper that "Petey" had been "a bear" to her. Hugh
+simulated a playful annoyance and began to scold; then a sort of
+nervous fury came over him. He stamped and struck the table and
+snarled at Pete. The young man rose at his place and stared at his
+brother silently. There were two splotches of deep color on his
+cheeks. Sylvie protested: "Don't, please, be so angry with him. I
+was only teasing, just in fun. Bella, tell Hugh to stop. I had no
+business to kiss Pete. But I just wanted to pet something."
+
+Hugh's threatening suddenly stopped, and Pete sat down. In the
+strained silence Bella laughed. Her laughter had the sound of a
+snapped bow-string. Sylvie had pushed her chair back a little from
+the table and was turning her head quickly from one to the other of
+them. Her mouth showed a tremble of uncertainty. It was easy to see
+that she sensed a tension, a confusion. Hugh leaned forward and broke
+into a good-humored rattle of speech, and as Pete and Bella sat
+silent, Sylvie gradually was reassured. Near the end of the meal she
+put out her hand toward Pete.
+
+"Please don't be so cross with me, Pete! Give me a shake for
+forgiveness."
+
+He touched her hand, his eyes lowered, and drew his fingers away.
+She laughed.
+
+"How shy you are--a wild, forest thing! I'll have to civilize you."
+
+"Leave him alone," admonished Hugh softly, "leave him alone."
+
+As he said this, he did not look at Sylvie, but gazed somberly at
+Pete. It was a strange look, at once appealing and threatening,
+pitiful and dangerous. Pete fingered his fork nervously. Finally Bella
+stood up and began to clear the table with an unaccustomed clatter
+of noisy energy.
+
+"How long are you going to keep it up, Pete?" she asked him afterward.
+He was helping her wash the dishes, drying them deftly with a piece
+of flour-sacking.
+
+"Since we've let it begin, we'll have to go on with it to a finish,"
+he answered coldly. "After all"--he paused, polished a platter and
+turned away to put it on its shelf--"he's not doing anything so
+dreadful--just twisting the facts a little. I _am_ an ignorant lout.
+I might as well be fourteen, for all I know."
+
+"And I _am_ a mummy of a woman?"
+
+In pity for her he made to put his arm about her. "Don't be a goose,
+Bella," he said, but she flung his hand from her. "Why does it make
+you so sore and angry?" he asked wistfully. "Hugh is not pretty to
+look at, but perhaps Sylvie sees him better than we do--in a way;
+and if she learns to love him while she's blind, then, when she sees
+him, if she ever sees him--"
+
+"Chances are she never will. If her eyes don't get better soon, they
+likely never will."
+
+"Isn't it horrible?"
+
+"You don't seem to think so. So long's she has Hugh to paint pictures
+for her, what does she need eyes for? What's to come of it, Pete?
+She's falling in love with the fine figure of a hero he's made her
+believe he is. But how can he marry her?"
+
+"Couldn't he go off somewhere else and marry her and start again?
+Honest, I think if Hugh had some one who thought he was a god, he'd
+likely enough be one. He--he lives by--illusion--isn't that the word?
+It's kind of easy to be noble when some one you love believes you
+to be, isn't it? That's Hugh; he--"
+
+Bella threw down her rag, turned fiercely upon him and gripped his
+shoulders.
+
+"Are you a man or a child?" she said. "You love this girl yourself!"
+
+"No!" he cried and broke from her and went limping out into the frosty
+night with its comfortless glitter of stars.
+
+As soon as his ankle was stronger, Pete spent all day and most of
+the night on his skis, trying to outrun the growing shadow of his
+misery. Hugh's work fell on his shoulders. He had not only his
+accustomed chores, the Caliban duties of woodchopping and
+water-carrying, the dressing of wild meat, the dish-drying and heavier
+housework, the repairs about the cabin--but he had the trapping. In
+Hugh's profound new absorption he seemed to have forgotten the
+necessity for making a livelihood. During the first years of their
+exile they had lived on his savings, ordering their supplies by the
+mail, which left them at the foot of that distant trail leading into
+the forest. Thence Hugh, under shelter of night, would carry
+them--lonely, terrible journeys that taxed even his strength. When
+Pete grew big enough to load, he was sent to the trading-station,
+and Hugh became an expert trapper. The savings were not entirely
+spent, but they were no longer touched; the pelts brought a
+livelihood.
+
+Pete had had his instructions concerning his behavior at the
+trading-station; many years before, he had stammered a legend of a
+sickly father who had died, who was buried back there by the lonely
+cabin where he and his "mother" chose to live. Bella and Hugh had
+even dug up a mound for which they had fashioned a rude cross. It
+could be seen, in summer, from the living-room window--that mock grave
+more terrible in its suggestions than a real grave ever could have
+been. There was also a hiding-place under the boards of the floor.
+No one had ever seen the grave or driven Hugh into hiding. It was
+not an inquisitive country, and its desolation was forbidding. Pete
+had learned to discourage the rare sociability of the other traders.
+
+Now, however, the young man had not only to trade his pelts but to
+trap them, and for this business of trapping which was distasteful
+to him, he had not a tithe of Hugh's skill. His bundle of pelts
+brought him a sorry supply of necessities. He was ashamed, himself,
+and having dumped the burden from his shoulders to the kitchen floor
+would hurry into the other room, not to see Bella's expression when
+she opened her bundles.
+
+To-night Pete was tired; the load had not been heavy, but the snow
+was beginning to soften under the mild glowing of an April sun, and
+his skis had tugged at his feet and gathered a clogging mass. His
+body ached, and there was a sullen and despairing weight upon his
+spirit. A mob of rebels danced in his heart. He watched Hugh's face,
+saw the flaring adoration of his eyes, thought that Sylvie must feel
+the scorch of them on her cheek, so close. In his own eyes there
+showed a brooding fire.
+
+Bella broke into the room.
+
+"Look here," she said, "you'd better get to trapping again, Hugh
+Garth. Pete's pelts don't bring a quarter of what we need--especially
+these days."
+
+Sylvie quivered as though a wound had been touched. "Oh, you mean
+me," she said, "I know you mean me. I'm making trouble. I'm eating
+too much. I'll go. Pete, has anybody been asking about me at the
+post-office, trying to find me? They _must_ be hunting for me." She
+had stood up and was clasping and unclasping her hands. Hugh and Pete
+protested in one breath: "Nonsense, Sylvie!"
+
+And Pete went on with: "There hasn't been anyone asking about you,
+but--so much the better for us. You're safe here, and comfortable,
+aren't you? And--Hugh, _you_ tell her what it means to us to have
+her here."
+
+It was more of a speech than he had made since Sylvie's arrival, and
+it was not just the speech, in tone or manner, of a fourteen-year-old
+boy. There was a new somber note in his voice, too--some of the
+youthful quality had gone out of it. Sylvie took a step toward him,
+to thank him, perhaps, perhaps to satisfy, by laying her hand upon
+him, a sudden bewilderment; but in her blindness she stumbled on the
+edge of the hearth, and to save her from falling, Pete caught her
+in his arms. For an instant he held her close, held her fiercely,
+closer and more fiercely than he knew, and Sylvie felt the strength
+of him and heard the pounding of his heart. Then Hugh plucked her
+away with a smothered oath. He put her into a chair, crushed her hand
+in one of his, and turned upon Bella.
+
+"Go back into the kitchen," he ordered brutally; "trapping's not your
+business. You mind your cooking."
+
+"Be careful, Hugh!" Bella's whisper whistled like a falling lash,
+"I'll not stand that tone from you. Be careful!"
+
+"Oh," pleaded Sylvie, "why do you all quarrel so? Off here by
+yourselves with nobody else to care, I'd think you would just love
+each other. I love you all--yes, I do, even you, Bella, though I know
+you hate _me_. Bella, _why_ do you hate me? Why does it make you so
+angry to have me here? Does it make your work so much harder? I'll
+soon be better; I'm learning to feel my way about. I'll be able to
+help you. I should think you'd be glad to have a girl in the
+house--another woman. I'm sorry to be a nuisance, really I am. I'd
+go if I could."
+
+The lonely, deep silence, always waiting to fall upon them, shut down
+with suddenness at the end of her sweet, tearful quaver of appeal.
+For minutes no one spoke. Then Pete followed Bella out of the room.
+She had not answered Sylvie's beseeching questions, but had only stood
+with lowered head, her face working, her hands twisting her dress.
+She had run out just as her face cramped as though for tears.
+
+When the other two had gone, Hugh captured both of Sylvie's hands
+in his. "You don't mean that, do you?" he asked brokenly. "You don't
+mean you'd go away if you could, Sylvie!"
+
+At Hugh's voice she started and the color rushed into her cheeks.
+"If I make you quarrel, if I'm a nuisance, if Pete and Bella hate
+me so!"
+
+"But I"--he said--"I love you." He drew her head--she was sitting
+in her chair again--against his side. "No, don't smile at me like
+that; I don't mean the sort of love you think. I love you terribly.
+Can't you feel how I love you? Listen, close against my heart. Don't
+be frightened. There, now you know how I love you!"
+
+He rained kisses on her head resting droopingly against him.
+
+"How can a man like you love _me_?" she asked with wistful
+uncertainty.
+
+"A man like me?" Hugh groaned. "Ah, but I do--I do! You must stay
+with me always. Sylvie, somehow we will be married--you--and I!"
+
+"Now it frightens me," she whispered, "being blind. It does frighten
+me now. I want so terribly to see your face, your eyes. Oh, you
+mustn't marry a blind girl, a waif. You've been so noble, you've
+suffered so terribly. You ought to have some wonderful woman who would
+understand your greatness, would see all that you are."
+
+"Now," he sighed, "now I _am_ great--because you think I am; that's
+water to me--after a lifetime of thirst."
+
+"Hugh, _am_ I good enough for you?" She was sobbing and laughing at
+the same time.
+
+It was too much for him. He drew himself gently away. He whispered:
+"I can't bear being loved--being happy. I'll go out by myself for
+a bit alone. Sylvie, Sylvie! Every instant I--I worship _you_!" He
+threw himself down before her and pressed his face against her knees.
+She caressed the thick, grizzled hair. He stood up and then stumbled
+away from her, more blind than she, out of the house into the
+gathering night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+In the big, rudely carved chair Sylvie leaned back her head and
+pressed her hands to her unseeing eyes. She was not sorry that Hugh
+had left her, for she was oppressed and unnerved by her own emotions.
+Until he had kissed her hair, she had not known that she loved him--or
+rather loved an invisible presence that had enveloped her in an
+atmosphere of sympathy, of protection, that had painted itself, so
+to speak, in heroic colors and proportions against her darkness, that
+had revealed both strength and tenderness in touch and movement, and
+warm, deep voice.
+
+For until now Sylvie's life had been entirely lacking in protection
+and tenderness; she had never known sympathy--her natural romanticism
+had been starved. The lacks in her life Hugh had supplied the more
+lavishly because he was aided, in her blindness, by the unrestricted
+powers of her fancy. But now in all the fervor of this, Sylvie felt,
+also for the first time, the full bitterness of her blindness. If
+she could see him--if only once! If she could see him!
+
+And there came to Sylvie unreasonably, disconnectedly, a keen memory
+of Pete's embrace when he had caught her up from falling on the
+hearth. A boy of fourteen? Strange that he should be so strong, that
+his heart should beat so loud, that his arms should draw themselves
+so closely, so powerfully about her. What were they really like, these
+people who moved unseen around her and who exerted such great power
+over her sudden helplessness?
+
+She got up and began to walk to and fro restlessly, gropingly across
+the room. She wished now that Hugh would come back. He had been with
+her so constantly that she had grown utterly dependent upon him. The
+dense red fog that lay so thick about her, frightened her when Hugh
+was not there to keep her mind busy with his talk to paint pictures
+for her, to command her with his magnetic presence. She stood still
+and strained her eyes. She _must_ see again. If she tried hard, the
+red fog would surely lift. Happiness, and her new love, they would
+be strong enough to dispel the mist. There--already it was a shade
+lighter! She almost thought that she could make out the brightness
+of the fire. She went toward it and sat down on the bear-skin, holding
+out her tremulous, excited hands. And with a sudden impulse toward
+confidence she called: "Pete, O Pete! Come here a moment, please."
+
+He came, and she beckoned to him with a gesture and an upward, vaguely
+directed smile, to sit beside her. She was aware of the rigid reserve
+of his body holding itself at a distance.
+
+"Pete," she said wistfully, "what can I do to make you love me?"
+
+He uttered a queer, sharp sound, but said nothing.
+
+"Are you jealous?"
+
+"No, Sylvie," he muttered.
+
+"Oh, how I wish I could see you, Pete! I know then I'd understand
+you better. Pete, try to be a little more--more human. Tell me about
+yourself. Haven't you a bit of fondness for me? You see, I
+want--Pete--some day perhaps I'll be your sister--"
+
+"Then he has asked you to marry him?"
+
+He was usually so quiet that she was startled at this new tone.
+
+"Don't," she said. "Hush! We have only just found out. He went away
+because he couldn't bear his own happiness. Pete--" She felt for him
+and her hand touched his cheek. "Oh, Pete, your face is wet. You're
+crying."
+
+"No, I'm not," he denied evenly. "It was melting from the roof when
+I came in."
+
+She sighed. "You are so strange, Pete. Will you let me kiss you
+now--since you are going to be my big little brother?"
+
+"I can't," he whispered. "I can't."
+
+She laughed and crooked her arm about his neck, forcing his face down
+to hers. His lips were hard and cool.
+
+The face that Sylvie imagined a boy's face, shy and blushing, half
+frightened, half cross, perhaps a trifle pleased, was so white and
+patient a face in its misery that her blind tenderness seemed almost
+like an intentional cruelty. It was an intensity of feeling almost
+palpable, but Sylvie's mouth remained unburnt, though it removed
+itself with a pathetic little twist of disappointment.
+
+"You don't need to say anything," she said, "You've shown me how you
+feel. You can't like me. You are sorry I came. And I want so
+dreadfully for some one just now to talk to--to help me, to
+understand. It's all dark and wonderful and frightening. I wish I
+had a brother--"
+
+She bent her face to her knees and began to cry simply and
+passionately. At that Pete found it easy to forget himself. He put
+his arm very carefully about her, laying one of his hands on her bent
+head and stroking her hair.
+
+"You have a brother," he said. "Right here."
+
+The dark small silken head shook. "No. You don't like me."
+
+"I do--I do. Please tell me everything you feel like telling; I'd
+like awfully to help you, to understand, to listen to you. You see,
+you've been so much with Hugh, I haven't had a chance to know you
+as he does. And I guess--well--maybe I'm sort of shy."
+
+She lifted her head at that, took his stroking hand and held it in
+both of hers under her chin, as a little girl holds her pet kitten
+for the pleasure of its warmth. "You must get over being shy with
+me, Pete. We both love Hugh; we both admire him so. I'd so love to
+talk to you about him--"
+
+"Then do, Sylvie."
+
+"I've never seen him," she sighed, "and you can see him all day long,
+Pete; will you try your best now to describe Hugh to me--every bit
+of him? Tell me the color of his eyes and the shape of his face
+and--everything. Tell me all you remember about him always."
+
+"I--I'm no good at that, Sylvie. A fellow you see all day long--why,
+you don't know what he looks like, 'specially if he's your own
+brother."
+
+"Well, you certainly know the color of his eyes."
+
+"He has hazel eyes--I think you'd call them--"
+
+"Yes?" she drank in his words eagerly, pressing his hand tighter in
+her excitement. "Go on. If only you were a girl, now, you'd do this
+so much better."
+
+"I--I--but I don't know what else to say, Sylvie. He is very strong."
+
+"Of course. I know that. Didn't he pick me up out of the snow and
+carry me home?" He moved as though he had a feather on his arm. You
+are very strong too, Pete--_very_ strong. Are _your_ eyes hazel?"
+
+"No; blue."
+
+"I always liked blue eyes. I like to imagine that Hugh is just the
+Viking sort of man I dreamed about when I was a little girl. You think
+I'm a silly goose, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, rather."
+
+"Don't keep trying to pull your hand away, dear; you can't guess how
+it comforts me. I'm awfully alone here, and strange. I don't suppose
+you know how queer and frightening it's been--this getting lost and
+being brought here in the dark, and then--living on in the dark, just
+trusting my instincts, my intuitions, instead of my eyes. Voices tell
+a lot about people, don't they?--more than I ever dreamed they could.
+Pete, there is nothing in that--that splendid, generous thing Hugh
+did, the thing I am not to talk about, nothing to keep Hugh now from
+going back to the world--some place--that is, far away from where
+it happened--and beginning again, is there?"
+
+"I hope not, Sylvie."
+
+She sighed. "Of course it was wonderful. If he hadn't told me of it,
+I never should have known half of his greatness; yet I can't help
+wishing he were free. It's sad to think there will always be the
+memory of that dreadful suffering and danger in his life."
+
+"Very sad," said Pete.
+
+"How alone we both are--he and I! Bella, and you, Pete--don't be
+angry, please--I don't think you quite understand Hugh, quite
+appreciate him."
+
+"Perhaps not."
+
+"He has always been lonely. You are so young, and Bella is so
+stupid--stupid and cross."
+
+"No, she isn't, Sylvie. I know Bella a lot better than you do. She's
+not stupid or cross--"
+
+"Well, I like you to stick up for your old nurse. She certainly must
+have loved you a lot to bring you way out here and to stay here all
+these years to take care of you. I wonder where she'll go and what
+she'll do when Hugh and I get married. You're too old for a nurse
+now, Pete. Do you mind if I lean back against you that way? It's so
+comfortable. I'd be happier without Bella, Pete, you know."
+
+"Would you, Sylvie? Well, Bella and I will have to go away together
+somewhere, I guess."
+
+"I didn't say you, dear. I love you a lot--next best to Hugh. There's
+something awfully sweet about you--you great strong overgrown thing!
+Your heart goes _thump-thump-thump-thump_, as though it was as big
+as the sun. . . . I feel much better and happier now. Things have
+got steady again. Only--I wish Hugh would come back."
+
+Pete gave a strangled sigh.
+
+"He'll be back" And he began to draw himself away from her. "I think
+I hear him now, Sylvie."
+
+"Stay where you are," she laughed. "Don't be ashamed of being found
+with a sister leaning against you and holding your hand. Are you
+afraid of Hugh? I think sometimes he's rather hard with you--I'll
+have to speak to him about that. Oh"--in a sudden ecstasy--"how happy
+I am! I feel as light as the air. I want every one to be happy. Tell
+me when Hugh comes in how happy he looks, Pete--promise me, quick!
+There he is at the door now."
+
+"Yes," he whispered, "I promise. Let me go, please, Sylvie."
+
+He pulled himself away and stood up. At the instant, the door was
+opened and shut quickly, stealthily. It was Hugh, breathing hard,
+gray with fear.
+
+"They're coming," he said harshly. "Pete, they're after me. Men are
+coming across the flat."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"Did they see you?" Pete demanded anxiously.
+
+"I don't think so." Hugh was breathing fast; he had evidently fled
+across the snow at top speed.
+
+"Get in, then, quick--out of sight." Pete was already tearing up
+boards above that long-waiting place of hiding. Hugh was about to
+step down into it when he glanced up and saw Sylvie. She was standing
+as the unseeing stand in moments of frightened bewilderment, her hands
+clasped, her head turning from side to side. "Look here," whispered
+Hugh, still absorbed in his own danger, "don't let them know that
+Sylvie just wandered in here. Don't let them start asking her any
+questions; it's too dangerous. Let her be--one of the family." He
+smiled maliciously. "Let her be your wife, Pete." Then, as though
+that picture had fired his love through its hint of jeopardy, he held
+out both arms suddenly: "Come here, Sylvie--lead her to me, Pete."
+
+The boy obeyed. But as her uncertain arms trembled about Hugh's
+shoulders Pete turned sharply away. He heard the quick, anxious murmur
+of their voices:
+
+"Hugh, dearest--are you afraid?" And his: "Trust me, little darling.
+Love me." A kiss.
+
+Then a sharp, whispered summons: "Quick, can't you, Pete? Get these
+boards down."
+
+When Pete turned, Hugh had dropped into the darkness, and Sylvie stood
+flushed and with her hands over her face.
+
+Bella had meantime been collecting the most characteristic of Hugh's
+belongings--those that could not be supposed to belong to Pete--and
+now thrust them down into the hiding-place. The boards were
+rearranged, the rug laid evenly over them. Then the three stood
+staring at one another, listening helplessly to the nearing sounds.
+
+"Oh, Pete," Sylvie gasped, "tell me what I must do--or what I ought
+to say."
+
+"Tell them," said Bella, "what Hugh told you--that you are Pete's
+wife. They'll be looking for a different household from that, and
+it will help to put them off."
+
+"But--but Pete won't look old enough."
+
+"Yes, he will. He looks older than you," Bella declared harshly. "You
+sit down and keep quiet; that's the best you can do; and for God's
+sake don't look so scared. There's a grave outside to show them, and
+nobody digs up a six-year-old grave. They won't find Hugh. Nobody's
+ever seen him. Don't shake so, Sylvie. They may not even be after him;
+this country has sheltered other outlaws, you know. Hush! I hear them.
+I'll be in the kitchen. Pete, be taking off your outdoor clothes.
+They'll have seen Hugh's tracks even if they haven't seen him, so
+somebody's got to have just come in. Be whistling and talking, natural
+and calm. Remember we're all at home, just quiet and happy--no reason
+to be afraid. That's it."
+
+Through her darkness Sylvie heard the knocking and Pete's opening
+of the door, the scraping of snow, the questions, the simplicity of
+Pete's replies.
+
+Then she was made known. "My wife, gentlemen!" And a moment later:
+"My mother!" And she heard Bella's greeting, loud and cheerful like
+that of a woman who is glad to see a visitor. Chairs were drawn up
+and cigarettes rolled and lighted. She smelt the sharp sweetness of
+the smoke. There was brief talk of the weather; Sylvie felt that while
+they talked, the two strangers searched the place and the faces of
+its inmates with cold, keen, suspicious eyes. She was grateful now
+for her blindness. There came a sharp statement:
+
+"We're looking for Ham Rutherford, the murderer." Sylvie's heart
+contracted in her breast.
+
+"Well, sir," laughed Pete, in his most boyish, light-hearted fashion,
+"that sounds interesting. But it's a new name to me."
+
+"It's an old case, however," said the man, the man who spoke more
+like an Easterner than the sheriff. "Fifteen years old! They've dug
+it up again back East. The daughter of the man that was killed came
+into some money and thinks she can't spend it any better than in
+hunting down her father's murderer. Now, we've traced Rutherford to
+this country, and pretty close to this spot. He made a getaway before
+trial, and he came out here fifteen years ago. About two years later
+he sent back East for his kid brother--he'd be about your age now,
+Mr.--what you say your name was?--Garth, Peter Garth. You'll have
+to excuse the sheriff; he's bound to search your place." Sylvie had
+heard the footsteps going through the three rooms. "A woman named
+Bertha Scrane, a distant cousin of Rutherford's to whom he'd been
+kind, brought the child out. Now, Missis--what's your name?"
+
+"Bella Garth," she said tranquilly. "I came out here with my husband,
+who died six years ago. He's buried out there under the snow. I've
+lived here with my son and my son's wife."
+
+"Yes. It's not the household we'd been expecting to find. It's a
+lonely place, Missis." He looked at Sylvie. "I should think you'd
+prefer going to some town."
+
+"We're used to it here now," Bella answered.
+
+"How'd your husband happen here, ma'am?"
+
+"His health was poor; he'd heard of this climate, and he wanted to
+try trapping. He got on first-rate until the illness came so bad on
+him, and Pete's done well ever since. We haven't suffered any."
+
+"No, I guess not. You don't look like you'd suffered."
+
+The talk went on, an awkward, half-disguised cross-questioning as
+to Bella's birthplace, her life before she came out, her husband's
+antecedents. She was extraordinarily calm, ready and reasonable with
+her replies.
+
+"Well, sir"--the sheriff strolled back into the room--"I reckon these
+aren't the parties we're after. But look a-here, this is a description
+of Ham Rutherford. Likely you might have had a glimpse of him since
+you came into the country. When he made his getaway he was about
+thirty-two, height five feet eight, ugly, black-haired, noticeable
+eyes, manner violent. He was deformed, one leg shorter, one shoulder
+higher than the other, mouth twisted, and a scar across the nose.
+He'd been hurt in a fire when he was a child--"
+
+Sylvie broke into a spontaneous ripple of mirth, the full measure
+of her relief. "Goodness," she said with utter spontaneity. "There's
+certainly never been a monster like that in this house, has there,
+Pete?"
+
+It did more than all that had gone before to convince the inquisitors.
+From that minute there was a distinct relaxation; the evening, indeed,
+turned to one of sociability.
+
+"We hate to inconvenience you, ma'am, but it seems like at this
+distance from town we've got to ask you for supper and a place to
+sleep."
+
+If it had not been for the thought of Hugh in hiding, that supper
+and the evening about the hearth would have been to Sylvie a pleasant
+one. The men, apparently laying aside all suspicion, were
+entertaining; their adventurous lives had bristled with exciting,
+moving, humorous experience. It was Sylvie herself, prompted by
+curiosity, believing as she did that the monster the sheriff had
+described bore no possible resemblance to the man she loved, who
+asked suddenly:
+
+"Do tell us about the man you're hunting for now--this Rutherford?
+Tell us about what he did."
+
+The Easterner gave her a look, and Bella, seeing it, chimed in: "Yes,
+sure. Tell us about his crime."
+
+Pete stood up and rolled another cigarette. Try as he might to steady
+his fingers, they trembled. He had never heard Hugh's story. He did
+not want to hear it. The very name of Rutherford that had, in what
+now seemed to him another age, belonged to Hugh and to him was
+terrible in his ears. A sickness of dread seized him. Fortunately
+the eyes of neither of the men were upon him. Sylvie had their whole
+attention.
+
+The detective spoke. "He was a storekeeper back in a university town,
+way East, where I came from. He kept a bookshop and had a heap of
+book-learning. I remember him myself, though I was a youngster. He
+was a wonderful, astonishing sort of chap, though as ugly as the
+devil; had a great gift of narration, never told the truth in his
+life, I guess, but that only made him all the more entertaining. And
+he had a temper--phew! Redhot! He'd fly out and storm and strike in
+all directions. That's what did for him. Some fool quarrel about a
+book it was, and the man, a frequenter of the shop, a scholar, a
+scientist, professor at the university, accused Rutherford of lying.
+Rutherford had a heavy brass paper-cutter in his hand. The professor
+had a nasty tongue in his head. Well, a tongue's no match for a
+paper-cutter. The professor said too much, called Rutherford a
+hump-backed liar and got a clip on the head that did for him."
+
+"It's an ugly story," said Sylvie. Bella and Pete retained their
+silence.
+
+"Murder ain't pretty telling, as a general thing," remarked the
+sheriff.
+
+"No, though I've heard of cases where a man was justified in killing
+another man--I mean to save some one he loved from dreadful
+suffering," Sylvie replied.
+
+"Well, ma'am, I don't know about that. I've read stories that make
+it look that way, but in all my experience, it's the cowards and the
+fools that kill, and they do it because they're lower down, closer
+to the beast, or perhaps to an uncontrolled child, than most of us."
+
+"But there was a time," Bella said, with a smothered passion, "when
+an insult to a gentleman's honor had to be avenged."
+
+"Yes, ma'am," drawled the sheriff, "in them history days things was
+fixed up to excuse animal doin's, kind of neater and easier and more
+becomin' than they are now. Well, Mr. Garth, can we have our beds?
+We've kept these ladies up talkin' long enough. Your mother looks
+plum wore out."
+
+They slept in the bed usually shared by Pete and Hugh. Pete lay on the
+floor in the living-room not far from his brother's hiding-place--lay
+there rigid and feverish, staring at the night. Sylvie, at Bella's
+side, slept no better. Her imagination went over and over the story
+of Ham Rutherford's crime. She saw the little dark bookshop, the
+professor's thin, sneering face, the hideous anger of the cripple,
+the blow, the dead body, Rutherford's arrest. And when her brain was
+sick, it would turn for relief to the noble story of Hugh's
+self-sacrifice, only to be balked by a sense of unreality. What the
+detective had told, briefly and dryly, lived in her mind convincingly;
+but Hugh's romance, that had glowed on his tongue, now lay lifeless
+on her fancy. Back her mind would go to the bookshop, the gibing
+professor, the heavy paper-cutter.
+
+In the dawn she heard Bella get up with a deep-shaken sigh and go
+about her preparations for breakfast. But it was noon before the two
+men left.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Hugh came up from his hiding-place like a man risen from the dead.
+They helped him to his chair before the fire; they poured coffee down
+him, rubbed his blue, stiff hands. He sat looking up pitifully, his
+eyes turning from one to the other of them like those of a beaten
+hound. All the masterfulness, all the bombast, had been crushed out
+of him; even the splendor of his flaring hazel eyes was dimmed--they
+were hollow, hopeless, old. For a long time he did not speak, only
+drank the coffee and submitted himself meekly to their ministrations;
+then at last he touched Sylvie with a trembling hand.
+
+"Sylvie," he whispered brokenly.
+
+"Hugh, dear, you're safe now; please speak; please laugh; you frighten
+me more than anything--why is he so silent, Pete? Bella, tell me
+what's wrong?"
+
+"He's been crouching there on the damp, cold ground for hours," said
+Bella, "not knowing what might happen." Her voice trembled; she passed
+a hand as shaking as her voice across Hugh's bent head. "You're safe
+now. You're safe now," she murmured.
+
+Hugh's teeth chattered, and he bent closer to the fire.
+
+"Ugh--it was cold down there," he said, "like a grave! Sylvie, come
+here." Just an echo of his old imperious fashion it was--though the
+look was that of a beggar for alms. "Give me those warm little hands
+of yours." She knelt close to him, rubbed his hands in hers, looking
+up at Pete with a tremulous mouth that asked for advice.
+
+"He'll be all right in a minute," said Pete. "You talk to him,
+Sylvie."
+
+"Yes, you talk--you talk. Do you remember how I talked to you when
+you were afraid of the bears--ah!" He drew her head savagely against
+his breast, folded his arms about it, stroked the hair. "Sylvie! Is
+it all right? Can it be--the same?"
+
+"Yes, yes, why not?"
+
+"Were you frightened?"
+
+"Not after the first. After they had described you, I knew that they
+were looking for the wrong man, and then I felt all right. I didn't
+know--poor Hugh!--how cold and cramped you were. What a shame that
+you took a false alarm and hid yourself! I don't believe there would
+have been a bit of danger if you'd stayed out. They'd never even heard
+of you, I suppose."
+
+Her talk, so gay, so strangely at cross-purposes with reality, was
+like a vivifying wine to him. The color came back into his face; a
+wild sort of relief lighted his eyes.
+
+"Then it didn't occur to you, Sylvie, that that brute might have been
+me--that the men might, after all, have been describing me--eh?" he
+asked, risking all his hope on one throw.
+
+She laughed, and, lifting herself a little in his arms, touched her
+soft mouth to his. "But, Hugh, you told me your story, don't you
+remember? And it is gloriously, mercifully different from
+Rutherford's."
+
+He put his chin on his fist and stared over her head into the fire.
+She felt the slackening of his embrace and searched his arms with
+questioning fingers. "Why are you cross, Hugh? Did I say anything
+to hurt you? Let's forget Ham Rutherford. I wonder where he is, poor,
+horrible wretch!"
+
+"Dead--dead--dead," Hugh muttered. "Dead and buried--or he ought to
+be. O God!" he groaned, and crushed her close against him; "I can't
+ask you to love me, Sylvie--to marry me. Now you know what it is like
+to love a man who must be afraid of other men. What right have I to
+ask any woman to share my life?"
+
+"But, Hugh--if I love you?"
+
+"And you do love me?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He laughed out at that, stood up, drawing her to stand beside him.
+"Bella--Pete," he called, "do you hear--you two?" He beckoned them
+close, laid a hand on them, drew first one, then the other toward
+Sylvie. "She loves me. She sees me as I am!" Suddenly he put his
+grizzled head on Sylvie's shoulder and wept. She felt her way back
+to the chair, sat down, and drew him to kneel with his arms about
+her, her head bent over him, her small hands caressing him. She looked
+at Pete for help, for explanations, but she could not see his pale,
+tormented face.
+
+After a while Hugh was calm and sat at her feet, smoking. But he was
+unnaturally silent, and his eyes brooded upon her haggardly.
+
+It was several days before Hugh regained his old vigor and buoyancy;
+then it came to life like an Antaeus flung down to mother earth. His
+hour of doubt, of self-distrust, of compunction, was whirled away
+like an uprooted tree on the flood of his happiness. He flung reason
+and caution to the four winds; he dared Bella or Pete to betray him,
+he played his heroic part with boisterous energy; his tongue wagged
+like a tipsy troubadour's. What an empty canvas, a palette piled with
+rainbow tints, a fistful of clean brushes would be to an artist long
+starved for his tools, such was Sylvie's mind to Hugh. She was
+darkness for him to scrawl upon with light; she was the romantic ear
+to his romantic tongue; she was the poet reader for his gorgeous
+imagery. He had not only the happiness of the successful lover, but
+even more, the happiness of the successful creator. What he was
+creating was the Hugh that might have been.
+
+With Sylvie clinging to his hand, he now went out singing--the three
+of them together, great Hugh and happy artist Hugh all but welded
+into one man for her and for her love. Those were splendid days, days
+of fantastic happiness. Hugh's joy, his sense of freedom, gave him
+a tenfold gift of fascination.
+
+Yet one day--one of those dim, moist spring days more colorful to
+Hugh's heart than any of his days--there cut into his consciousness
+like a hard, thin edge, a sense of a little growing change in Sylvie.
+It had been there--the change,--slightly, dimly there, ever since
+the sheriff's visit. It was not that she doubted Hugh--such a
+suspicion would have struck him instantly aware and awake--but that
+she had become in some way uncertain of herself, restless, depressed,
+afraid. And it was always his love-making that brought the reaction,
+a curious, delicate, inner recoil, so delicate and slight, so deep
+beneath the threshold of her consciousness, that in the blind glory
+of his self-intoxication he missed it altogether--might, indeed, have
+gone on missing it, as she would have gone on ignoring or repressing
+it, if it had not been for their kiss on the mountain-top.
+
+This was one of Hugh's madnesses; he would take Sylvie up a mountain
+and show her his kingdom, show her himself as lord of the wilderness.
+He had been there before many times, to the top of their one mountain,
+always under protest from Bella and Pete. It was a bare rock exposed
+to half the world and all the eyes of Heaven; and for a man in hiding,
+a man who lived, yet whose name was carved above a grave, it was a
+very target for untoward accident. Some trader or trapper down in
+the forest might look up and behold the misshapen figure black and
+bold, against the sky. Yet there was never so mighty a Hugh as when
+he stood there defiant and alone. Now he wanted Sylvie to sense that
+tragic magnificence.
+
+So they went out, Hugh's arm about her, as strange a pair of lovers
+as ever tempted the spring--the great, scarred, uncouth, gray cripple
+and the slim, unseeing girl, groping and clinging, absolutely shut
+off from any contact with reality as long as this man should interpret
+creation for her. Sylvie turned back to wave at Pete, whom they had
+left standing in the doorway.
+
+"I'll be hunting for you if you stay out late," he called--to which
+Hugh shouted back: "You hunting for us! Don't fancy I can't take care
+of this child, myself."
+
+"Both of them blind!" Pete muttered to himself in answer.
+
+They were moving rather slowly across the rough, sagebrush-covered
+flat, and presently Hugh led Sylvie into the fragrant silence of the
+forest trail. To her it was all scent and sound. Hugh whispered to
+her what this drumming meant and that chattering and that sudden
+rattle almost under their feet.
+
+They had to go slowly, Sylvie touching the trees here and there, along
+her side of the trail. He lifted her over logs and fallen trees, and
+sometimes, before he set her down, he kissed her. Then Sylvie would
+turn her head shyly, and he would laugh. Thus they made slow, sweet
+progress.
+
+"I see more in the woods with your eyes than I ever could with my
+own," she told him.
+
+"I have eyes for us both," he answered. "That's why God gave me the
+eyes I have, because He knew the use I'd be making of them."
+
+"Is this the trail Pete follows to the trading-station?" she asked.
+"I wish you could take me there, Hugh, or--would you let him take
+me?"
+
+He tightened his arm. "I can't bear to have you out of my sight,"
+he answered.
+
+She sighed. "It seems so queer that they haven't tried to find me.
+Do you suppose they think that I'm dead? Did Pete mail my letter to
+Miss Foby, I wonder?"
+
+"What does Miss Foby matter?" he asked jealously. "What does anything
+matter to you but--me? Here we leave Pete's trail and I take you
+straight up the mountain, dear one. We'll rest now and then; when
+we get to the rocky place just below the top, I'll carry you. Are
+you happy? I always feel as if my heart melted with the snow when
+spring comes--a wild, free, tumbling feeling of softness and escape."
+
+She sighed. "Yes--if only I could see. I miss my eyes out of doors
+more than in the house. Does snow-blindness really last so long?
+Perhaps it was the nervous shock and the exhaustion as much as the
+glare. I am sure it all will just go suddenly some day. I stare and
+stare sometimes, and I feel as if I might see--almost."
+
+He frowned. "You mustn't miss anything when you have me, Sylvie. Do
+you suppose I miss anything, now that I have you? My career, my old
+friends, my old life, my liberty, the world? That for everything!"
+He snapped his fingers. "If only I have you."
+
+"You love me so much," she answered, as though she were oppressed,
+"it frightens me sometimes."
+
+"When you are wholly mine--" he began. "Well, wait till we get to
+the top of the mountain; there I'll tell you all my plans. They're
+as big and beautiful as the world. I feel, with your love, that I
+can move mountains. I can fashion the world close to my heart's
+desire. We'll leave this blank spot and go to some lovely, warm,
+smiling land where the water is turquoise and the sky aquamarine--"
+
+"And perhaps my sight will come back." It was almost a prayer.
+
+He did not answer. They had come to a sharp sudden ascent. He took
+her in his arms, scrambled across the tumbled rocks, and set her down
+beside him on the great granite crest that rose like the edge of a
+gray wave. The clean, wild wind smote her and shook her and pressed
+back her hair and dress. She clung to him.
+
+"Is it steep? Are we on the edge of a cliff, Hugh? I'm not afraid!"
+
+"We're on the very top of the world," he told her breathlessly, his
+voice filled with a sense of awe, "our world, Sylvie, I'm master here.
+There's no greater mind than my own in all that dark green circle.
+It's pines, pines, pines to the edge of the earth, Sylvie, an ocean
+of purple and green--silver where the wind moves, treading down, like
+Christ walking on the water. And the sky is all gray, like stone."
+
+"Can you see the flat, the cabin?"
+
+"The flat, yes--a round green spot, way down there behind us. The
+cabin? No. That's in a hollow, you may be sure, well out of sight.
+I'm an outlaw, dearest, remember. There's a curve of the river, like
+a silver elbow. And Sylvie, up above us, an eagle is turning and
+turning in a huge circle. He thinks he's king. But, Sylvie, it's our
+world--yours and mine. This is our marriage."
+
+She drew back. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Haven't you a feeling for such images? We'll go before a
+parson--don't be afraid. Would I frighten you, Sylvie? I love you
+too much for that. Why, Sylvie, what's wrong?"
+
+When his lips, clinging and compelling, had left hers, she bent her
+face to his arm and began to cry.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I don't know. . . . But please don't kiss me like
+that, not like that!"
+
+He released her and half turned, but her hands instantly hunted for
+him, found him and clung.
+
+"Hugh, don't be angry. Be patient with me. Try to understand. Perhaps
+it's because I am in the dark. I do love you. I do. But you must wait.
+Soon it will be spring for me, too. You don't understand? You're
+angry? But I can't explain it any better."
+
+"You can lay your hand on me," he said hoarsely. "God knows I'm real
+enough." And he thought so! "My love for you is here like a granite
+block, Sylvie."
+
+"I know. It is the one thing in the darkness that is real. I know
+you--your love, splendid and strong and brave. Wait just a little,
+Hugh. Try to be patient. Suddenly it will all come right. The fog
+will lift. Then we'll really be on top of the mountain." She laughed,
+but rather sadly.
+
+"I will always hate this mountain-top," he said. "I used to love it.
+I was so close to happiness, and now you've snatched it out of my
+reach." He drew in sobbing breaths.
+
+"No--it's myself I'm keeping from happiness, not you," she answered.
+"I know it will come right, but you must not hurry me. Dear Hugh,
+be patient." She found his hand and raised it, a dead weight, to her
+lips. "Please be patient. Let's go down out of this wind. I can't
+see your world, and I'm cold."
+
+So, in silence--a dull gray silence Hugh led her down into the valley.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+They came down the hill rapidly and carelessly. Hugh, stung by pain
+and anger, threw himself over the rocks, and Sylvie was too proud
+to show her timidity or to ask for help. She crept and climbed up
+and down, saving herself with groping hand, letting one foot test
+the distances before she put the other down. At last the rattle of
+his progress sounded so far below that she quavered: "Aren't you
+going to wait for me, Hugh?"
+
+He stopped short, and for a moment watched her silently; then, smitten
+by the pathos of her progress--a little child, she seemed, against
+the mountain toppling so close behind her--he came swinging up to
+her and gave her his hand.
+
+"You _need_ me, anyway, don't you?" he asked with a tender sort of
+roughness.
+
+She couldn't answer because she didn't want him to know that he had
+made her cry. She kept her face turned from him and hurried along
+at his side.
+
+"Why do you go so fearfully fast?" she was forced at last to protest.
+
+"Because I want to get down from this accursed mountain. I want to
+get down into the woods again where I was happy."
+
+"Hugh"--she pulled at his arm--"you are only a child after all."
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Well--" She stopped. "Go home alone, then. I'll be no worse off than
+when you found me the first time. Pete will come out and hunt for
+me. He has a far sweeter temper than you, Hugh, and doesn't think
+only of himself."
+
+He swung away at that, resting his hand against a big rock to clear
+a hole; then, seeing her about to step down into it, he pivoted back,
+caught her up bodily in his arms, and, laughing, ran with her down
+the hill, bounding over the rocks, leaping over the crevices, while
+she clung to him in fright.
+
+"You silly child!" he cried. "This is the way I'll take you home.
+Now I've got you, and I'll punish you well, too." She clung to him
+and begged him to stop. She was frightened by their rash, plunging
+progress, by his speech. She struggled. "Let me down. I won't be
+carried like this against my will. Hugh, let me down!"
+
+"All right!" He fairly flung her from him on a grassy spot. He was
+about to leave her when a rushing rattle sounded above them. The
+boulder he had twice used to turn his own weight upon was charging
+down the hillside! Just in time he caught Sylvie, threw her to one
+side and fell prone, helpless, in the path of the slide. He cried
+out, flinging up his arm, and, as though his cry had been of magic,
+the boulder faltered and stopped. A root half buried just above his
+body had made a hollow and a ledge; it had rocked the rolling fragment
+back up on its haunches, so to speak, and balanced it to a stop.
+
+"Hugh! Hugh!" sobbed Sylvie. "What was it? Are you hurt?"
+
+She crept up to him.
+
+"No," Hugh told her, breathing heavily. "It was a rolling rock."
+
+"How did you stop it? You must be hurt, crushed, bruised."
+
+"My arm's wrenched--not badly." He had in fact wrenched it slightly.
+
+"Your poor arm! You were so quick, so strong. You didn't think of
+your own life. And I've been so cruel. Hugh, Hugh, kiss me."
+
+Hugh took his reward, none the less sweet to his strange nature, in
+that it was only potentially earned. And joy, like a warm flood, crept
+up again to his heart. He sat on the hillside and held his small love
+close. One of his arms moved stiffly, and he groaned a little. She
+rubbed it for him.
+
+"You'd better come home and let Bella and me fix it. It may be badly
+hurt. You're sure it isn't broken?" she asked.
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+"Lean on me! I'll help you down. You can tell me where to step."
+
+"Nonsense," he laughed, his very blood singing warm with relief. "A
+strained arm won't hurt my walking apparatus. We had a lover's
+quarrel, didn't we? And the boulder was peacemaker. Bless the
+boulder!"
+
+"Don't joke, dear. You saved my life at the risk of your own. Are
+you always doing insane, generous, dangerous things? Think if you
+had been--" She shivered.
+
+"Do you suppose my life is worth anything to me without yours,
+Sylvie?" He bent his head and kissed her again, but he had learned
+his lesson, and there was restraint and timidity in that kiss.
+
+"The sun's come out," cried Sylvie.
+
+"Yes, it's splendidly bright. There's a clean slit in the sky; there
+at the western edge the dark gray cap is being lifted inch by inch,
+the way a boy lifts his cap to see the butterfly he's caught. All's
+gold behind it, Sylvie, burning gold. The rocks are like bright
+copper. And the pines, they're incandescent, phosphorescent green--"
+
+"If I could only see it!"
+
+Down near the pines a tall, still figure stood watching them. It was
+Pete, and his smile, usually so frank and sweet, had now a sardonic
+twist. As they came down out of their sun into his shadow, he spoke
+with a drag to his syllables.
+
+"Hullo," he said. "That was a narrow escape you had, you two!"
+
+The voice might have been a pistol-shot for the start it gave to Hugh.
+
+"Why, it's Pete. We must be late, Pete," Sylvie called joyously. "Did
+you see how Hugh saved my life? He threw himself down before the rock
+and stopped it. He's hurt his poor arm. The great stone was right
+on top of us, and he threw me out of the way and set his own strength
+against it. I couldn't see the rock, Pete, but it felt like a
+mountain."
+
+"It was big enough to smash you both," said Pete.
+
+He looked at Hugh, whose eyes glared in a strained, shamed face. The
+older man's fingers worked nervously; he opened his lips and closed
+them again. It was easy to understand the travail of his mind,
+unwilling to forego the imaginary bit of heroism, and yet abashed
+by the boy's awareness of the lie.
+
+Pete gave one short laugh; then, springing suddenly across a fallen
+tree that separated them, he caught Sylvie up into his arms.
+
+"You can't carry her with a wrenched arm," he said, half gayly, half
+tauntingly, "and at the best rate she can go, it will be night before
+we get her home. I'm strong. I'll carry her myself."
+
+Sylvie laughed protesting that she was being treated like a doll,
+and resigned herself to Pete's swift, smooth stride. It was as though
+she were skimming through space, so quietly did his moccasined feet
+press the pine-needled earth, so exquisitely did his young strength
+save her from any jar. He whistled softly through his teeth as he
+ran in long, swift strides. And as he did not speak to her, she lay
+silent, yet strangely peaceful and happy. Hugh was left far behind.
+The forest fragrance moved cool and resinous against her face.
+
+"I feel as if we could go on and on forever," she said with a sigh,
+"forever and ever and ever."
+
+"We will," he answered through his teeth, hardly pausing in his
+whistling for the odd reply. "We will."
+
+But for all that, he set her gently and suddenly down, and she knew
+that she stood again at the cabin door.
+
+"Pete, where are you?" she asked.
+
+But he had disappeared, still in utter silence, like a genie whose
+task is done.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+"What did he say to you? What did he say to you?" asked Hugh again
+and again.
+
+Sylvie laughed at him.
+
+"He didn't say anything--hardly a word, except that he pretended he
+was going on forever. He said: 'We will, we will.' That's absolutely
+all, Hugh. Don't be so silly. What _could_ he say?"
+
+"I don't know," Hugh answered. "He might have made fun of me."
+
+"Fun of you! After saving my life! I'd have boxed his ears! No, no,
+Peter wouldn't do that. He's afraid of me."
+
+She was so proud of this that Hugh, perforce, laughed. It was after
+supper, and they had walked a little way from the cabin. They were
+standing just above the river on a little hillock topped with three
+big pines. The dusk was thick about them; stars pricked the soft sky.
+Sylvie was wrapped in Hugh's coat, and they were linked by their hands
+hanging at their sides. Every one but Sylvie had been very silent
+at supper, but she had told her story of Hugh's heroism again and
+again until finally even Hugh had grumbled at "the fuss."
+
+"What makes you think anyone could be afraid of you?" He smiled down
+at the small dark head which did not reach his shoulder.
+
+"He's afraid I'll kiss him. Don't grip my hand that way; it hurts.
+You couldn't be jealous of a boy! Besides, I _don't_ kiss him any
+more. I never have kissed him but that once--no, twice, when I told
+him that I was going to be his sister."
+
+"You told him that?" Hugh's voice had an odd anxiety. "How did he
+take it?"
+
+"I don't think he was very enthusiastic. He loves you so much, Hugh;
+you are the very heart of his universe, and I suppose he is jealous
+of your love for me. Since then he's avoided me and is as dumb as
+a fish when I talk to him. I think his body has outgrown his mind,
+Hugh."
+
+"Perhaps. I don't know," he answered.
+
+"And Bella is so silent, too. Hugh, it must have been a lonely life
+for you before I came. Those two people, though they love you so much,
+are not companionable. I think, Hugh, that they aren't able to
+understand you. You are so brilliant, and they are so dull; you are
+so articulate, and they are so dumb; you are so warm, so quick to
+see, to feel, to sympathize, while they are so slow and so cold. Dear
+Hugh, I'm glad I came. I am stupid myself, but I have enough
+intelligence to understand you--a little, haven't I, dear?"
+
+"So much more than enough!" The low speech with its tremor of humility
+was almost lost.
+
+"What a noise the river makes!" he said presently.
+
+"Yes. And the pines. The whole air is full of rushing and sighing
+and clapping and rattling. Sounds tell me so much now. They fill my
+whole life. It is very queer. Why, a voice means more to me now, I
+think, than a face ever did. . . . Is it a deep river, Hugh?"
+
+"Now it is--deep and dangerous. But it goes down very quickly when
+the snow at its source has melted. In summer it is a friendly little
+brook, and in the fall a mere trickle that hardly wets your shoe.
+I have a boat here tied to the root of one of these trees, a boat
+I made myself, to pole across when the stream is too deep for wading.
+I'll take you out in it when the flood's down; it wouldn't last
+fifteen minutes now. In the spring, Sylvie, a nymph comes down from
+the mountain, a wild white nymph. She has ice-green hair and
+frost-white arms; you can see her lashing the water, and if you
+listen, you can hear her sing and cry. Let's go in, dear; you're tired
+and cold--I can feel you shivering. We'll start a big fire, and I'll
+tell you how that nymph caught me once and nearly strangled me with
+her cold, wet arms. I was trying to save--you'll laugh when I tell
+you about it--a baby bear."
+
+Pete and Bella made room for them silently about the hearth where
+Pete had already built up a fire. Sylvie groped her way to the throne
+from which the other woman slipped half furtively and so noiselessly
+that Sylvie never guessed her usurpation.
+
+"Hugh is going to tell us a story," she said, and rested her head
+back so that her small chin pointed out and her slim neck was drawn
+up--"a wonderful story about the river and a bear. I hope it's a baby
+bear, Hugh, for you know how I feel about bears. I honestly think
+that being so afraid of seeing them is what made me blind!" She gave
+her small, shy laugh. "I thought I saw them everywhere I looked that
+day and night. It seems so long ago now, and yet it is not so many
+weeks. I can still hear Hugh's voice calling out to me across the
+snow. And now," she said, "the snow's all gone and none of you are
+strangers any more, and--Go on with your story, Hugh."
+
+Pete added a log to the fire so that the flames stretched up bravely
+and made a great fan of light against which they all seemed painted
+like ornamental figures, Hugh lounging along the rug to make a
+striking central figure. Bella was drawn up rigidly on a stiff, hard
+chair; she hemmed a long, coarse towel with her blunt, work-roughened
+fingers.
+
+Pete sat opposite Sylvie on the floor, his back against the corner
+of the fireplace, his knees drawn up in his hands, his head a little
+bent. He too--from under his long level brows--looked for the most
+part at Hugh, not devotedly, not wistfully, but with a somber
+wondering. It was only now and then, and as though he couldn't help
+it, that the blue, smouldering Northern eyes were turned to Sylvie
+on her throne. Then they would brighten painfully, and his lips would
+tighten so that the dimple, meant for laughter, cut itself like a
+touch of pain into his cheek. The firelight heightened his
+picturesqueness--the dull blue of his shirt, open at the round, smooth
+throat, the dark gold-brown of his corduroy trousers, against which
+the long, tanned hands, knit strongly together, stood out in the rosy,
+leaping light--beautifully painted against the background of old brown
+logs.
+
+Yet it was Hugh, after all, who dominated the room by right of his
+power, his magnetism, the very distortion of his spirit. Here in this
+lonely square of light and warmth, surrounded by a world of savage,
+lawless winds heightening the voices of vast loneliness, these three
+people were imprisoned by him, a Merlin of the West.
+
+He sat up to begin his story, pressing tobacco into his pipe. "Oh,
+it's not so much of a story, Sylvie. It was last spring when the river
+was high and I'd been out with my traps. I was coming home along the
+river edge, pretty tired, a big load on my back. I came around a bend
+of the river, and not far below me a little black bear, round as a
+barrel, was trying to scramble over the flood on a very shaky log.
+The mother was on the other side, but I didn't know that then. Well,
+there's nothing in God's world, Sylvie, so beguiling as a baby bear.
+This little fellow was scared by what he was doing, but he was bound
+he'd get across the river. He'd make a few steps; then he'd back up
+and half rise on his hind legs. I watched him a long time. Then he
+made up his mind he'd better make a dash for it. He began scrambling
+like a frantic kitten, and it was just in the most ticklish spot that
+he heard me and jumped and went rolling off into the river. I tell
+you, my heart came right up into my mouth."
+
+"Oh, _was_ he drowned?" wailed Sylvie.
+
+Hugh rose and stood with his back to the fire, dominating the room
+even more convincingly, with his vivid ugliness. Sylvie's face turned
+up to him like a white flower to the sun it lives by, without seeing.
+It was strange to watch the adoration, the worship on that small face,
+and at the same time to behold the grotesqueness toward which it was
+directed. Bella was listening with her lowered eyes and tightened
+lips. She was interested in spite of herself; and Pete's inscrutable
+face followed the story with absorption.
+
+"Well, in he rolled with a splash and went rattling down the current,
+turning over and over. Like a fool, I threw away my hides, ran down
+the bank and jumped in after him--that is, I meant to hold on to a
+branch and stand out in the water and catch him as he went by. But
+the nymph I told you about had her own plans. She wrapped her arms
+round me, and away we went, bear all. Oh, yes, I'd caught the cub
+all right, and he was about half drowned by that time--no fight left
+in him.
+
+"Well, for a bit it was a question whether the world wouldn't be
+quickly and well rid of us both, but we tumbled up against a root
+and scrambled out, and when I'd rested, I picked up limp and trembling
+Master Bear and went back for my hides. And while I was collecting
+them, I heard a sort of grumpy, grumbling sound, and I looked up--and,
+by Jove, Mother Bear was coming across that log with the longest steps
+you ever saw. That's when I ran to collect my gun--it was a little
+farther up the bank than my hides, worse luck!"
+
+Even Bella had forgotten her bitterness in listening, and Pete's
+parted lips were those of an excited child. Sylvie leaned forward
+in her chair, her cheeks tingling, her hands locked. Hugh had thrown
+himself into the action of his story; his face was slightly contorted
+as though sighting along a gun-barrel, his arm raised, the
+ungainliness of his deformity strongly accentuated. He was not looking
+at Sylvie; true to his nature and his habit, he had forgotten every
+one but that Hugh of adventure and of romance, the one companion of
+his soul. None of them was watching Sylvie, and when she gave a sharp,
+little cry, a queer start and then sat utterly still, Hugh
+accepted it--they all accepted it--as a tribute to his story-telling
+powers.
+
+But Sylvie, leaning her elbows on her knees, raised trembling hands
+to her eyes and hid them. She sat very still, very white, while the
+story went on, vividly imagined, picturesquely told. When it was over,
+and the mother bear, after a worthy struggle, defeated, Hugh looked
+about for his applause. It came, grudgingly from Bella, eagerly from
+Pete--and from Sylvie in a sudden extravagant clapping of hands, a
+ripple of high, excited laughter, and a collapse in her chair. She
+had fainted in a limp little heap.
+
+She came to in an instant, but seemed bewildered and, unprotesting,
+permitted herself to be carried to bed. She declared she felt quite
+well again and wanted only to be alone. She repeated this moaningly.
+"Oh, to be alone!"
+
+Hugh seated himself on the end of the bed and kissed her forehead
+and her hand, but it quivered under his lips and was drawn away.
+
+He came back into the living-room with a pale, bewildered face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Next day there came out of that room a new Sylvie or rather a dozen
+new Sylvies: a flighty witch of a Sylvie who tempted her blindness
+with rash ventures about the rooms and even out of doors, who
+laughed at Hugh and led him on, and drew him out to his maddest
+improvisations, who treated Pete to snubs and tauntings that stung
+like so many little whips; and again a Sylvie who was still and timid
+and a trifle furtive, who rarely spoke, but sat with locked hands
+in an attitude of desperate concentration and seemed to be planning
+something secret and dangerous; and then there was a haughty,
+touch-me-not Sylvie; and a Sylvie who mysteriously wept. But all of
+these Sylvies showed an impetuous, new tenderness toward Bella.
+
+"I've been all wrong about you, Bella," she confessed. "I know you're
+not really old and ugly and cross at all. Let me touch your face."
+Bella, awkward and flushed, had no choice but to submit to the flick
+of the light, young fingers. "I'm learning the touch of the blind,"
+Sylvie boasted. "Now, listen--isn't this right? You have thick,
+straight eyebrows and deep-set eyes; are they blue or brown, Bella,
+or bright gray?"
+
+"They're gray," said Pete.
+
+Hugh was watching from eyes sunk in a nervous, pallid face. He had
+come in from his traps in the midst of Sylvie's experiment.
+
+"And she has a nice, straight, strong, short nose, and a mouth that
+she holds too tight. Loosen your mouth, Bella; it might be very sweet
+if you gave it a chance. And she has a sharp chin--not pretty, your
+chin, but--look! If you'd soften your hair, pull it over your ears
+and forehead--Why do you brush it back that way? It _must_ be
+unbecoming. And, Bella, it's curly, or would be with a little freedom.
+What color is your hair?"
+
+"Gray--like my eyes," said Bella, scarlet now, and trying to draw
+herself away.
+
+"Is it really gray, Pete? Tell me the truth, if you can."
+
+"Her hair is a very light brown," said Pete, flushed as scarlet now
+as Bella; "sort of a grayish brown; you wouldn't notice any gray
+hairs, hardly."
+
+"Bella, I'm sure you don't look a day older than thirty-five. Your
+skin feels smooth and young. Why do you let Hugh call you an old
+woman? Poor Bella, I'm afraid you've spoiled those two boys?"
+
+Sylvie turned suddenly and imperiously upon the men, and Bella made
+her escape, not from the room, for she was too stirred, too full of
+an excited suspense, to bring herself to leave. From a far corner,
+near the window through which came the soft May wind, she watched
+them.
+
+"Now, Pete," said Sylvie, "it's your turn. If I'm to learn the touch
+of the blind, I must have practice. What can I make of you! Come here.
+Why don't you come?" She stamped her foot. "My, but you are badly
+trained. Really, Hugh, you ought to discipline him. Wait until I am
+your sister-in-law."
+
+Hugh started angrily. "Don't joke about that!" he threatened in a
+harsh, sudden voice.
+
+She turned toward him with quickness and bent her head sidelong as
+though listening intently for what else he might have to say. Her
+lips were set close and narrow. She had listened to him like this,
+almost breathlessly, ever since her sudden faintness, listened as
+though she would draw his very soul in through her ears.
+
+He too flushed. "It's life and death to me, Sylvie," he pleaded.
+
+"Life and death--life _or_ death," she repeated strangely. She stood,
+as if turning the speech over in her mind, then gave her head a quick
+little shake like a diver coming to the surface of deep water, and
+moved a step toward Pete. "Are you coming, boy, or not? I want to
+feel your face."
+
+"Do as she says," Hugh commanded harshly, and Pete came slowly to
+her and stood with his hands locked behind him, bending over the
+little figure. She put her hands on his shoulders and gave him a
+shake, and smiled.
+
+"Such a big, strong boy! Where's your face?" It winced and paled under
+her touch. His eyes fell, shifted, could not meet Hugh's, who watched
+with unsteady breathing and white lips.
+
+"Your face is as smooth as a girl's, Pete. What a wide, low forehead
+and crisp, short hair; it ripples back from your temples. You must
+be a pretty boy! A neat nose and a round, hard chin and--oh, Pete,
+Pete! I believe you have a dimple. How absurd! A great, long dimple
+like a slit in your right cheek. Why do you blink your eyes so?
+They're long eyes, with thick, short lashes. What a strong, round
+neck! I think I like your face."
+
+She patted his cheek, the pat more like a smart slap. He pulled away.
+"That's for disobedience. Come back. I'm not through with you. Where's
+your mouth? A big, long mouth. Pete, why does your mouth tremble?"
+Her hand fell from his lips, and she turned away. "Take me out for
+a walk, Hugh, please," she said. "This cabin is stuffy, now that the
+days are warm. I want to sit under the pines and listen to the river.
+You can tell me one of your wonderful stories about yourself."
+
+"What does it mean, Bella?" Pete asked breathlessly when Hugh had
+gone out, not so much leading the girl as hurrying after her to save
+her from the rashness of her impetuous progress. "What does it mean?"
+Pete was as white as paper.
+
+"I don't know." Bella came over from the window and stood by the
+fireplace, rolling her arms in her apron and shaking her head. "She's
+a crazy little witch. She'll drive us mad. Hugh is half mad now--have
+you noticed? She won't let him touch her. And you, poor boy! Pete,
+why don't you go away?"
+
+"I've thought about it," he said. "I--I can't." He flung himself down
+in Hugh's chair and rested his head in his hands.
+
+Bella bent over him. "Poor Pete! It's cruel for you--and," she added
+softly, uncertainly, "and for me."
+
+"For you too, Bella?" He looked up at her through tears.
+
+She nodded her head, and her face worked. "Perhaps you could take
+her back to her friends, Pete?"
+
+"And leave Hugh? Didn't you hear what he said, Bella? Life and death!
+It would kill him if she should go away with me. Or--he'd follow and
+kill me."
+
+"Yes," Bella assented somberly; "yes, he'd kill you. The devil is
+still living in his heart."
+
+"No. Sylvie will marry him. Hugh gets his will." Pete shook his head.
+"Wait a few days--you'll see. She's fighting against him now; I don't
+know why--some instinct. But though he tells her so many lies, he
+doesn't lie about one thing. He loves her. He does love her."
+
+"No! No!" Bella's passion, tearing its way through her long habit
+of repression, was almost terrifying. "He loves the image she has
+of him. If he knew that she could see him as I do, his love would
+shrivel up like a flower in a drought. Hugh can't love the truth.
+He can't love anything but his delusions. Pete, tell her the truth.
+For God's sake, tell her the truth. Give her back her eyesight. Let
+her know his name, his story--his _face_!"
+
+"Don't dare ask me, Bella!"
+
+"Why not?" She seemed to be out of breath, like a person who has been
+climbing in thin air. Her lips were dry.
+
+"Because--well, would you do it yourself?"
+
+"Ah! He would hate me, if I did. But you, Pete, when Sylvie loved
+you--and if she knew you, she would surely love you; any woman
+would--why, then you could bear Hugh's hatred. I have only him--only
+him."
+
+She locked her hands and lifted them to her forehead and was now
+making blind steps toward the kitchen door.
+
+Pete followed her, and turning her about, drew down the hands from
+her face.
+
+"Bella--_you_? Without saying a word? All these years?"
+
+Under the first pressure of sympathy that her agony had ever known,
+she could not speak. She bent her head for an instant against his
+arm, then moved away from him, groping through the kitchen door, back
+to her unutterable loneliness.
+
+Pete stood staring after her. A new Bella, this, not the cousin, the
+little cousin from the farm; not the nurse who had saved him from
+Hugh's hardness and told him limping fairy tales and doctored his
+hurts; not the accepted necessity, but a woman--a woman young, yes,
+young. In the instant when he had glimpsed her face, broken and
+quivering, the tight lips parted and the hair disarranged about
+flushed, quivering cheeks, the eyes deep with widened pupils, she
+had revealed beauty and passion--the two halves of youth. How blind,
+how blind Hugh had been, blind and selfish and greedy, drinking up
+the woman's heart, feeding upon her youth!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+"When you sit so silent, Pete," Sylvie said softly, "I sometimes
+wonder if you're not staring at me."
+
+"When I'm making a trap," he answered, smiling a little to himself
+and instinctively shifting his gaze, "I can't very well be staring
+at you, can I?"
+
+He was kneeling on the ground before the cabin door, she sitting on
+the low step under the shadow of the roof. Her chin rested on the
+backs of her hands, the limber wrists bent up a little, the sleeves
+slipped away from her slim, white wrists. Her face was brightly rosy,
+her lips very red--at once a little stern, yet very sweet.
+
+"Traps are cruel," she said.
+
+"I think so myself. But we have to make a living, don't we?"
+
+"Aren't you ashamed of yourself sometimes, Pete?"
+
+"For making traps, and catching live things in them?"
+
+"Yes. It's a sort of deceitful cruelty, catching the little blind,
+wandering wild things."
+
+"Blind?" he repeated blankly, then flushed.
+
+"Yes, blind. But it wasn't only that I meant."
+
+"What else ought I to be ashamed of?"
+
+"Of living on your brother." He winced sharply, but she went on
+coolly: "Of staying here in the wilderness. You are a big boy now.
+Many a boy of your age, even smaller and weaker, has gone out in the
+world to make his own way. There's no reason for _you_ to hide, is
+there? _You_ haven't sacrificed your life for anyone."
+
+"No," he answered doubtfully, "n-no; but, you see, Sylvie, some one
+has to take the skins. It isn't safe for Hugh."
+
+"Yes, of course. So that's what you'll do all your life--carry loads
+to and fro, between this cabin and the trading-station. But if Hugh
+goes away himself?"
+
+"Yes?" he asked breathlessly.
+
+His skillful hands paused in their fashioning of a snare.
+
+"You know, of course, that he wants to take me away with him, to marry
+me, to start life again."
+
+"And--and you will, Sylvie?"
+
+"Give me your advice," she said. She pressed her red lips together;
+her face was bent upon him as though she watched.
+
+"But," he stammered, "you tell me all the time, a dozen times a day,
+that I'm badly trained. What good's my advice?"
+
+"_Are_ you badly trained?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"You are absurdly unselfish, Pete!" She moved a chip along the ground
+with her foot, but Pete failed to notice this curious seeing gesture.
+
+"Why? What do you mean?"
+
+She waited, waited until, in the sickness of his vague suspense, his
+hands had turned cold and the color had sucked itself in irregular
+heartbeats from his lips.
+
+At last she spoke deliberately. "You would lay down your life for
+your friend?" she said. It was almost a whisper.
+
+Pete's face went red and white and red again. Through the tumult of
+his heart he searched for loyal words.
+
+"I love Hugh--if that's what you mean," he said.
+
+"I love you?" she repeated softly, perversely. "Did you say 'Hugh'
+or 'you,' Pete?"
+
+His face tightened; faint lines came about his mouth. "I said 'Hugh!'"
+
+"Ah--you love only him--nobody else in all the world?"
+
+Her young and wistful voice came to him like a fragrance. He struggled
+as though his spirit were fighting in deep water. He tried to remember
+Hugh. He rose up slowly to meet this passionate moment, and now he
+made a short step toward the waiting girl. She _was_ waiting,
+breathing fast. Pete's arms quivered at his sides.
+
+A hand gripped the quivering muscles and turned him about. Hugh had
+come up behind, without sound, on moccasined feet. His face was gray;
+his eyes were drawn into slits; his distorted mouth was trying to
+become a straight, hard line. The effort gave a twitch to the pale,
+lower lip.
+
+Sylvie stood up, singing as though in absent-minded idleness, and
+vanished into the house. It would have been difficult to tell whether
+or not she had heard Hugh's arrival.
+
+"What's the matter?" Pete stammered like a boy wakened from a dream
+to behold a lifted cane. "Let go my arm, Hugh. Your fingers cut."
+
+"Come away from the house," said Hugh coldly, tightening the iron
+grip as though Pete's wincing gave him satisfaction. "Come up here
+by the pines. I want to talk to you."
+
+"I'll come," said Pete. "Let go my arm."
+
+There was that in his voice that compelled obedience. Hugh's hand
+fell and knotted into a fist. Pete walked beside him up the abrupt
+slope of their hollow to the little hill above the river. Its noise
+was loud in the still, sunny air. There was no wind stirring. It was
+high noon. A sloping tent of shadow drooped from the pines and made
+a dark circle about their roots. In this transparent, purplish tent
+the brothers faced each other. Pete's lips were tremulous, and Hugh's
+distorted.
+
+"Now," said Hugh, breathing irregularly and speaking very low, "I'll
+tell you what I think of you."
+
+"No, Hugh, don't," Pete pleaded. "You'll say things you don't
+mean--unkind things, terrible things. I don't deserve it from you.
+You--you think that I--that I--"
+
+"Go on. Don't stop. Tell me what I think--I think--that you--that
+you--"
+
+It was an unbearable moment, an impossible atmosphere, for the
+revelation of a first love. Pete felt stripped and shamed.
+
+"You think that I was telling Sylvie, that Sylvie--that I--"
+
+Hugh lifted his hand and struck. The younger man sprang back, then
+forward, and was at his elder's throat. For an instant they struggled,
+silently, terribly, slipping on the red pine-needles. Then Pete gave
+a hard laugh. "Are we tigers?" he asked, and he pulled himself back
+and leaned, shaking, against a tree-trunk, gripping it with his hands.
+His blue eyes were cold and blazing in his white face, against which
+Hugh's blow had made a mark. "You won't strike me again," Pete said.
+All boyishness was gone from his hard, level voice. "Go on. Say what
+you like. I'll listen."
+
+"You liar!" stormed Hugh. "You cheat!"
+
+Pete laughed again.
+
+A certain quality in his bitter self-control flicked Hugh. He tried
+to emulate the young man's coolness.
+
+"I've trusted you," he began again; "and behind my back you have been
+trying to win the love of the woman who has promised to be my wife."
+
+"I have not."
+
+"You were not making love to her there, then, when I came up behind
+you? When you were so excited that you didn't hear me? when you were
+moving toward her--trembling all over? _I_ felt your arm!"
+
+Pete's eyes dropped, then lifted as though under a great weight.
+
+"And you say you're not a liar!"
+
+"I _am_ a liar, though not in the way you mean. We are all liars.
+We have caught that little blind girl in a trap. We have lied to her,
+all three of us--Bella and I, and you, Hugh--you have lied most of
+all."
+
+"She loves me," Hugh panted. "She knows me. She understands me."
+
+"Yes," Pete answered, trembling. "I've seen that. I've kept quiet.
+Bella and I have given you your happiness. Now you thank me by
+striking me and calling me a liar and a cheat!"
+
+Hugh, even in the midst of his bitter and suspicious rage, felt the
+justice of the reproach. He paused, looked about, then came close,
+put a hand on each of his brother's shoulders, searching the white,
+young face with his wild eyes.
+
+"I must have Sylvie," he groaned. "Pete, I must. You don't know; you
+can't know--" He dropped his grizzled head against Pete's neck, and
+his breath caught. "You don't know what I felt when I saw you there,
+when I thought--Tell me the truth, Pete. You are not going to take
+my love, my only joy, my one prize away from me?"
+
+After a long and difficult silence Pete put his arm half mechanically
+across the twisted, gasping back.
+
+"Of course not, Hugh. I--I couldn't. But I've had to play a part,
+and it's not come easy. You must have guessed how hard it's been,
+because you seem to have guessed how I--how Sylvie--Perhaps if I
+went away?"
+
+He was gripped again, shaken a little. "No, don't leave me. Wait.
+It won't be long. She will go away with me soon, as soon as she gets
+over a girl's timidity. Pete, she does love me. She does. Don't stand
+dumb; tell me that she does."
+
+"She does," Pete repeated tonelessly.
+
+"I'm sorry I struck you. I have a devil's temper. And I think of you
+as still a boy. I wanted to beat you. A few years ago I would have
+beaten you." He put this forward as though it were a reasonable
+excuse.
+
+"Yes." Pete smiled grimly. "I can remember your beatings." He drew
+himself away. "Shall we go back?"
+
+Hugh still held him, though at arm's length. "First I must have a
+promise from you." He spoke sternly.
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"I want your promise to keep hands off, to hold your tongue to the
+end."
+
+"You won't trust me, then?"
+
+"Not since I watched you moving toward her, not since I felt your
+arm."
+
+Pete was silent. He studied the ground. There was a sullen look on
+his face, and his tightened mouth deepened the odd, incongruous
+dimple.
+
+"Well, perhaps you're right. I promise." He flashed up a blue
+desperation of young eyes as he asked: "How long will it last, Hugh?"
+
+"Not long. Not long. Surely not long."
+
+"I promise."
+
+"Give me your hand."
+
+They came back down from the hill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Pete looked forward with white-hot impatience to the day of his trip
+to the trading-station; twelve hours of relief, it would mean, from
+the worst pressure of his torment--twelve hours of merciful solitude
+in the old, voiceful friendliness of his forest trail. He started
+early, at the break of a sweet, singing dawn. The earth was elastic
+under his feet, the air tingling and mellow with a taste of growth;
+the flooded river chattered loudly like a creature half beside itself
+with joy. Pete came out of the dark and silent cabin in which he had
+made his tiptoe preparations, and lifted his face, letting the light,
+soft fingers of the wind, cooler and softer even than Sylvie's, smooth
+out the knots of suffering from his tired brain. He shook his
+shoulders before settling them under the load of pelts. He would,
+he swore, just for this day, be a boy again. He sprang lightly up
+from the hollow and strode forward with long, swift steps, swinging
+a companionable stick in his free hand.
+
+Loneliness and the dawn and love had made a poet of the young man,
+so that he had the release of poetry and forgot reality in its
+translation into a tale that is told. He thought of Sylvie, but he
+thought of her as a man thinks of a lovely memory. He went through
+the wood with his chin lifted, half smiling, almost happy, an integral
+part of the wild, glad, wistful spring.
+
+It was not until the afternoon when he was nearing the station--just,
+in fact, before he left the wood-trail for the rutted, frontier
+road--that his mind was caught as sharply as a cloth by a needle,
+by the light sound of following steps. In the solitude of that trail
+which his feet alone had worn, the sound brought him to a stop with
+a sense of terror and suspense. His mind leaped to Hugh, and for the
+first time in his loyal life Pete remembered, and remembering, felt
+a creeping on his skin, that this brother of his, who had grown harsh
+and jealous and suspicious, had been a murderer. The cold, unkindly
+memory slid along his senses like a snake. On the edge of the sloping
+road-bank, studded with little yellow flowers, just where the trees
+stopped, Pete set down his load and waited, instinctively bracing
+his body, drawing it back beneath the shelter of one of the big pines.
+
+The steps were light and swift and stealthy. In the purplish confusion
+of the distance, a tangled and yet ordered regiment of trunks and
+boughs, sun-splotches and shadow-blots, through which the uncertain
+trail seemed to rise like a slender thread of smoke to the pale,
+flecked sky, Pete made out a moving shape. It slipped in and out;
+it hesitated, hurried, paused, moved on. With a shudder of relief
+and of surprise, Pete saw it; out from behind the great, close trunks
+came Sylvie, her chin lifted, her hands stretched out on either side,
+brushing the swinging branches along the trail, her small head turning
+from this side to that, as though she listened in suspense.
+
+Pete called out her name and ran quickly to meet her. Forgetting his
+part of a dull, sullen boy, he spoke eagerly, catching her hand,
+watching the warm, happy blush flow in her cheeks.
+
+"Where were you?" she asked. She had stood to wait for him as soon
+as his voice reached her. "I couldn't see--I mean, I lost the sound
+of your steps. I've been following you for hours and hours and hours.
+I was so afraid of being lost again that I didn't dare drop too far
+behind."
+
+"But why didn't you call to me? Why have you come? Is anything wrong
+at home?"
+
+Her fingers moved uncertainly in his grasp, like the fingers of a
+shy child. "Nothing is wrong. I wanted to come with you. I wanted
+to go to the trading-station and the post-office. I didn't dare ask
+you to take me with you. I was afraid you'd send me home. I suppose
+I'll be a nuisance, but--Oh, Pete, please be nice to me and take care
+of me, won't you?" She paused, turned her face away from him and
+smiled. "After all, since you have called me your wife before
+witnesses, you ought to introduce me to your friends at the
+trading-station, oughtn't you? They might think it was queer that
+I should hide myself, now that the snow has gone."
+
+He dropped her hand. Suddenly he realized the consequences, the
+necessary effect upon Hugh of this willful venture of hers.
+
+"Does Hugh know where you are?" he asked painfully.
+
+"No. I ran away. I heard you getting ready, and I just felt that I
+couldn't bear to be left behind. I slipped out of bed so quietly that
+Bella didn't even stir, and I dressed just as quietly, and when you
+had gone half across the clearing, I ran out after you, listening
+to your steps. You see, I have the hearing, as well as the touch,
+of the blind." This was said with a cunning sort of recklessness;
+but Pete, absorbed in his anxiety, did not challenge the improbable
+statement. "Please don't be angry with me, Pete." She touched his
+hand where it hung at his side. "Can't I have my adventure? Let's
+call it _ours_."
+
+In spite of himself, the young man's pulse quickened, but his face
+and voice were stern.
+
+"Do you know that we'll be very late?" he said. "It will be midnight
+before we can possibly make it back to the cabin, if you can even
+do it at all. You'll have to spend the night somewhere at the station.
+What will they think? They will be anxious, Bella and Hugh."
+
+"But what can they think?" Her cheeks were unexplainably scarlet.
+"If I choose to trust you to take care of me, why should they grumble?
+And I won't have to spend the night. You don't know how strong I am.
+I'm very strong. I don't feel tired. We'll go back by moonlight.
+There's a beautiful moon."
+
+"It will be almost morning." He made a reckless gesture. "Well, it's
+too late to think of that now. Come on."
+
+He threw himself down the bank, held up his hands to catch hers, and
+swung her down beside him. The sun slanted warmly along the road and
+just ahead flickered the blue ripples of a lake.
+
+Sylvie moved quickly and easily beside him, barely touching his arm
+with her hand. She seemed definitely to decide to put away her
+childishness. She treated him as though she had forgotten his supposed
+youth; she talked straightforwardly, with a certain dignity, about
+her childhood, about her amusing and pitiful experience as a
+third-rate little actress, and she asked him a question now and then
+half diffidently, which he answered in stumbling, careful speech,
+always weighed upon by his promise, by the deception he must practice,
+by the dread of what must come. Nevertheless, minute by minute, his
+pulse quickened. This, God be thanked, would mean the end. The
+insufferable knot of circumstance, so fantastic, so extravagantly
+unlivable and unreal, would break, Hugh would tear the tangle of his
+making to tatters with angry hands when they got back. His difficult
+trust in Pete's promise would go down under the strain of these long
+and unexplained hours of Sylvie's absence in his company. It was the
+last act in the extravaganza, queer and painful, that had twisted
+them all out of their real shapes for the confusion of a blind waif.
+This adventure that Sylvie's impatience had planned would bring down
+the curtain. After all, no matter what came of it, Pete was glad.
+The color warmed his face; his blue eyes deepened; he smiled down
+at Sylvie beside him. For this hour she seemed to belong to him
+rightfully, naturally, by her own will. He let go of his inhibitions
+and resigned himself to Fate.
+
+When, on the far shore of the lake, the low walls of the
+trading-station came in sight, a double image, reflected faithfully
+with the strip of sand at its door, the low, level wall of pines
+behind and the blue, still sky above, Pete caught the girl's hand
+in his.
+
+"Here we are, Sylvie," he said. "Keep quiet and follow my lead.
+Remember, now, that I am supposed to be your husband and you my wife.
+Can you play that part?"
+
+She nodded, bending down her face so that he saw only the tip of her
+small, sunburnt chin. She was hatless; the sun struck blue, bright
+lines in her black hair.
+
+"I'll be careful, Pete."
+
+She pressed his hand, and he returned the pressure.
+
+The station was full of silent curiosity; a couple of squaws, a
+serious buck Indian, and a bearded trapper or two made little secret
+of their observation. In the far corner of the big, bare room, down
+one side of which ran a long and littered counter, there was another,
+even more interested spectator of the young couple's entrance. He
+sat at a small table under one of the high, unshaded windows, and
+from over a spread-out time-table he gave them a large and heavy share
+of his attention. He was a man of middle age and sturdy build, round,
+clean-shaven, dressed in Eastern outing clothes of dignified
+correctness. He put on a pair of glasses to peer closer at the two
+who came in hand in hand like adventuring children, with the lithe,
+half-fearful grace of wild things.
+
+A tall and sallow man behind the counter smiled under his long,
+ragged, blond mustache and made a gesture of polite greeting.
+
+"Well, you've sure kept us in the dark as to your movements, Peter
+Garth. We had no notion there was a bride in these parts until the
+sheriff brought us back word the other day. Ma'am, I'm glad to make
+your acquaintance." He glanced keenly and curiously at Sylvie's
+averted face.
+
+"I'd have been here before," she said, "but I've been suffering from
+snow-blindness."
+
+"Ah, that's bad sometimes. Your eyes are better now?"
+
+"Y-yes, I think so."
+
+"I can give you a first-class lotion, lady."
+
+Sylvie and he discussed the lotion while Pete stood, drawn up, proud
+and silent, his cheeks flushed, waiting to dispose of his pelts. The
+bartering prolonged itself in spite of his best endeavors. Sylvie
+seemed to have no sense of peril or anxiety. She insisted upon taking
+a bite of early supper, forced coffee and bread and meat upon her
+companion, and chatted affably. Pete saw that the Eastern stranger
+had riveted upon her his attention, that he observed every gesture,
+listened to every word, and while she ate, that he walked over and
+asked a few murmured questions of the trader, nodding his head, then
+shaking it over the answers as though they confirmed some suspicion
+or anxiety.
+
+At last Pete could bear the delay no longer. Gruffly he bade Sylvie
+come with him. He caught her hand and led her out, she looking back
+over her shoulder like a loath child. They had gone but a few yards
+along the beach trail when the sober, solid gentleman came out across
+the porch and waved his hand to them. Pete hastened his steps without
+replying. Then came a summons in a loud, full, authoritative voice:
+"Hi, there! One moment, please."
+
+It was already evening; the lake was ruffled rosily under a sunset
+light. Pete stopped and turned. He waited, pale, tightlipped, and
+formidable; Sylvie moved a little closer to him. This mysterious
+summons gave her a first little spasm of distrust and fear. The man's
+square body and square, serious face bore down upon them, freighted
+with incongruous judgments. He came sturdily, defying the unspoken
+threat of loneliness.
+
+He spoke when he came up to them--spoke with evident effort.
+
+"My friends," he said, "I am a minister of the gospel, and though
+my mission in this wilderness does not rightly include you in its
+ministrations, still, my conscience, the commands of my Master, will
+not allow me to neglect so obvious and urgent a call for spiritual
+aid."
+
+He cleared his throat. "Your name I didn't catch," he said doubtfully,
+and Pete did not supply the knowledge, "but I heard you introduce
+this young woman as your wife. I watched her very closely; I watched
+you, too, sir; I took the liberty of making some inquiries about you.
+I have had much and varied experience in the study of human nature."
+Here he put out a broad, clean hand with square finger-tips and lifted
+Sylvie's brown, unwilling left hand high from her side. "I am a
+minister of the gospel," he repeated. "In a land where such a symbol
+is thought much of, this woman has no wedding-ring. There is no
+register of your marriage here in the one spot where such a
+registration might have been most conveniently made--"
+
+Sylvie jerked away her fingers; Pete laid down his load and slowly
+drew his right hand into a terrible fist.
+
+"No, no!" The square-tipped fingers were lifted deprecatingly. "You
+must not be angry with me, my children. I am not here to judge you.
+I have no knowledge of your temptation, of your difficulties; you
+have met and loved in a wild and difficult land. I was not even sure
+of my surmise. Now, however; your silence and your anger confirm my
+opinion. I want only to offer you my services. Will you continue in
+your life and love as I have seen them to be, or will you, if only
+for the sake of other lives not yet your responsibility--perhaps,
+will you take advantage of this opportunity which God has now given
+you and let me make you indeed man and wife?"
+
+Pete's fist was still terrible, and his lips were gathering their
+words, when Sylvie unbelievably spoke.
+
+"Pete," she asked tremulously, and he felt her drawing even closer
+to his side, "Pete, don't you want--you _do_ want--I know--I mean,
+will you, would you--marry me?"
+
+He was dumb as a rock, and gray. His hand opened; he stared from her
+to the impossible intruder, the worker of the miracle, or rather for
+he felt like a beast trapped, the strange layer of the snare. For
+an instant the lake and the forest and the red sky turned in a great
+wheel before his eyes. Then he caught Sylvie's wrist almost brutally
+in his hand. "Be quiet!" he said; it was the savage speaking to his
+woman. "You've gone mad. Come with me. As for you, sir, my marrying
+or not marrying is none of your business--"
+
+The minister looked sadly up into the young man's white and rigid
+face.
+
+"God be with you!"
+
+He bowed, turned and walked back along the beach, hands locked behind
+his broad tweed back, his head bent.
+
+Pete tightened his grip on Sylvie's arm. "Come," he said to her as
+harshly as before. "We must hurry. It's nearly night."
+
+Sylvie set her small teeth tight, bent down her head, and followed
+him without a word. Their silence seemed to grow into a pressure,
+a weight. It bent Pete's shoulders and Sylvie's slender neck, and
+whitened their lips. All that they did not dare to say aloud bulked
+itself, huge and thunderous, before the combined consciousness which
+makes a strange third companion in such dual silences. They dared
+not pause, or look at each other, or move their strained lips for
+fear truth, the desperate, treacherous truth, would leap out and link
+them like a lightning-flash. The somber forest enveloped them. They
+moved through it as through a deep wall that opened by enchantment.
+The moon came up, gibbous and white and glittering, paler than silver;
+and the forest became streaked and mottled with its light. A soft,
+sudden wind tore the light and shade into eerie, dancing ribbons and
+tatters and shreds. There were such sounds as are not heard in
+daylight--moon sounds and cloud sounds and sounds of dark wind;
+branches talked and other small voices answered in anxious undertones.
+A moose rubbed his antlers and coughed. They heard his big body
+hulking through a swamp down there in a well of darkness.
+
+"I can't go so fast." Sylvie's shaken voice moved doubtfully. "I'm
+tired."
+
+She pulled at his arm and stopped. The whole forest seemed to sway
+and stir and urge them to haste and secrecy.
+
+"A storm's coming," Pete answered. "I can't carry you, Sylvie, unless
+I leave my load."
+
+"Do you think I'd let you carry me?" she answered through her set
+teeth. "I'd rather die here than let you lift me up in your arms.
+I'll go on till I drop. I don't care for the storm. But I can't walk
+so fast. How can you see? The moon isn't--can't be, I mean--very,
+very bright here in the woods."
+
+"The moon? There's a big storm-cloud just going to wipe it out.
+Listen! Don't you hear that thunder, that wind?"
+
+The storm blew its distant trumpets, shouted louder, trampled the
+world with great steps, crashed and came upon them with a wet, cold
+blast. They were stunned with noise, dazzled with flashes, smothered
+and beaten with long, wet whips. Under a big rocking pine which
+shouted with a hundred confused tongues they found a dangerous
+shelter. Not far from them a tree was struck, splitting their ears,
+half stunning them. When the worst was over, Pete drew Sylvie out
+relentlessly and started in the heavily falling rain. The storm was
+drawing away, but the night was still impenetrably black. They walked
+for a few groping yards when Pete gave a sudden desperate laugh and
+stopped.
+
+"What's the good of this! We're off the trail. We'll have to wait
+for the light. My God! How cold and wet and trembling you are." He
+threw down his pack, took off his coat, wet only on the outside, and
+wrapped it closely about her. She felt that he parted branches for
+her, and she knew that they were in a dry, still, scented place whose
+walls stirred and breathed. She sank down beside him on the smooth
+pine-needles and crept close. They were giddy, beaten and confused;
+they felt each other's trembling warmth; for greater comfort she
+tucked her hands under his arm. Her head dropped back against his
+shoulder so that her breath fell on his cheek. He felt the silent
+tears of her humiliation, hot and bitter and human after the cold,
+impersonal wetness of rain. It was as though a hand drew them together
+in the darkness; they moved numbly at the same instant, by the same
+impulse; then with a sort of convulsion they were in each other's
+arms. Cold, wet, tremulous, their lips met. The night became the
+beating of a heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Hugh sat in his great carved chair, his hands laid out across the
+bulky arms, his head bent forward a little so that his eyes
+encompassed all the restless beauty of the fire. After nightfall,
+when the wind began to shake the cabin, he had built up the fire,
+and its light now fought ruddily against the whiteness of the moon.
+Hugh had not lighted his lamp, nor let Bella light it, but he told
+her to make some strong coffee and keep it hot on the stove. "When
+Sylvie comes in," he had said, "she'll be exhausted. We'll give her
+a hot drink and send her to bed, eh, Bella! The foolish child!" This
+had been said softly, but with a wild, half-vacant look which Bella
+could not meet.
+
+It was her belief that Pete and Sylvie had gone, not to return that
+night or any other night. In a desperate, still fashion she guarded
+this flaming conviction, peering up from long contemplations of it
+to learn whether there flickered any light of torment on Hugh's face.
+But all day, after the queer blankness of face and eyes with which
+he had first received her news of Sylvie's disappearance, he had been
+alternately gay and tranquil. All morning he had mended his boat,
+and in the afternoon he had cleaned his gun; and whenever he could
+cajole Bella into being his audience, he had talked. His talk was
+all of Sylvie, of her pretty childishness, her sweet, wayward ways,
+of her shyness, her timidity; and later, when supper was cleared away
+and he had throned himself in the center of that familiar circle of
+firelight, he had dropped his beautiful voice to a lower key and had
+boasted of Sylvie's love for him.
+
+Bella sat on a big log sawed to the height of a low stool. She sat
+with her face bent down between her hands as though she were saving
+her eyes from the fire, but those bright, devoted eyes never left
+Hugh's face, though sometimes they made of it but a blurred image
+set in the broken crystals of her tears.
+
+Thus, together, they heard the first rumble of the storm and saw the
+white squares of moonlight wiped from the floor as with a dark cloth.
+Next, the windows seemed to jump at them and jump away. "Lightning!"
+said Hugh. "She'll be afraid! Will Pete be able to comfort her? Will
+he, Bella?" Then, because she took courage to look into his face,
+she saw that his heart had been burnt all day, but that his faith,
+stronger than his fear, had kept the flame smothered, almost below
+his consciousness.
+
+While the storm raged across their roof, beat a brutal tattoo close
+above their deafened heads, pushed at the door, drove a pool of water
+under the threshold, Hugh walked up and down, to and fro, from fire
+to window, from door to wall, but not fast, rather with a sort of
+stateliness. Sometimes he looked sidelong at Bella's expressionless,
+listening face. At last he forced himself back to the chair and sat
+there, mechanically polishing the barrel of his gun, but his tongue
+still spoke the saga of illusion. It stopped when the storm dropped
+into the bottomless silence of dawn. Then there was only the dripping
+from their eaves. Hugh sat there, very white, his gun laid across
+his lap. Bella, as white, lifted her face.
+
+"They're coming," she whispered, and got stiffly to her feet.
+
+Hugh moved back into his chair, turning sidewise and gathering himself
+as though for a spring. His nervous hands clutched at his gun. Upon
+the silence the door opened, and Pete and Sylvie came into the room.
+Wet and storm-beaten and beautiful they were, with scarlet cheeks.
+
+Pete came quickly over to Hugh's chair; he let fall his pack and gazed
+resolutely down at his brother's face.
+
+"Sylvie had a fancy to come with me to the trading-station," he said.
+"She came out after me and didn't overtake me until just where the
+trail comes out into the road. We hurried back, but the storm caught
+us. It was pitch-black in the woods; we couldn't keep the trail. We
+had to wait for daylight. I hope you weren't too anxious about her,
+Hugh.--Bella"--he glanced over his shoulder--"could you make us some
+hot coffee and help Sylvie into some dry clothes? We are properly
+drenched, both of us."
+
+This speaker of terse, authoritative sentences was not the boy that
+had gone out that morning. That boy was gone forever.
+
+Hugh stood up and looked slowly from Sylvie, who had stayed near the
+door and held her head up like a queen, to Pete.
+
+"Where were you," he asked gently--"where were you while it stormed?"
+
+Pete moved toward the fire, holding out his hands. "Ugh!" he shivered,
+"I'm numb with cold."
+
+"Where were you," Hugh repeated, "during the storm?"
+
+Pete lifted his eyes slowly. They were bluer than the blue heart of
+a sapphire. "Under a pine-tree," he answered casually enough, and
+then, just as Hugh would have smiled, the color creeping up into his
+lips, Pete's young and honest blood poured over his forehead,
+engulfing him, blazing the truth across his face. Bella saw it and
+clenched her hands. Sylvie's cheeks, too, caught fire. Hugh turned
+from him, blinded by terror, saw Sylvie's trembling mouth in her dyed
+countenance, and turned back. He lifted the hand that had held, all
+this while, to the chair, and balled it into a fist.
+
+"Don't strike him," said Sylvie quietly, not moving from her place
+by the door. "Don't ever strike him again--_Ham Rutherford_!"
+
+Hugh's bones seemed to crumble; his knees bent; he leaned back against
+the chair, holding to it behind him with both hands. The gun clattered
+to the floor. In the silence Sylvie walked across the room and lifted
+her face. As if for the first time they saw her eyes, black and
+brilliant and young, sharpening the softness of her features. She
+looked at Hugh mercilessly, pitilessly.
+
+"I've been able to see you for a long time now, Ham Rutherford," she
+said. "And the instant I first saw you, I knew your name. Ever since
+the night you told me that story about the river, I've been watching
+you. You are a great and infamous liar! Yes, I know that you once
+killed a man for telling you that. Kill me if you like, for I am going
+to repeat it after him--a liar, hideous and deformed outside and in.
+I have no pity for a liar. Not even your physical misfortune shall
+shield you! You have made too great a mockery of it. You brought me
+here, blind, as helpless as one of the things you catch in your traps,
+and you played the hero with me. And you fed me with lies and lies
+and lies. I've eaten and drunk them until I'm sick. Now stand up and
+look at the truth. You are to eat that until _you_ are sick.--No,
+Bella; no, Pete; I'm going to speak; no one can stop me. I know you
+love him. How you can look at him and see him as he is and know what
+he has done and still love him, I can't understand. Now, Hugh
+Garth--the name you tried to make me love you by--I'll tell these
+people that love you, some of the beautiful fables with which you
+tried to win _my_ love. Maybe, then, they will begin to see you as
+you are. Here is the first: 'There was once a very noble youth who
+had a friend--'"
+
+"Don't!" Hugh groaned pitifully, his head bent before her.
+
+"Perhaps I won't; after all, it's not interesting unless you're fool
+enough, or blind enough, to be tricked into fancying it's the truth.
+But let me tell them some of the other things. This noble youth, this
+man sacrificed his life for his friend and bore the blame of that
+friend's guilt. He is as handsome as a Viking, the very ideal of a
+girl's imagination, strong and shapely and graceful. Has he a humped
+shoulder and a lame leg and a scarred face revealing his scarred soul?
+Answer me."
+
+Hugh flinched as though under a lash.
+
+Pete put out his hand uncertainly; his face was drawn with pain.
+"Sylvie--stop. You _must_ stop. You're too cruel. He did lie to you,
+but remember, that was because he--"
+
+The brilliant black eyes flashed back at him.
+
+"Because he loved me, you were going to say? When you love a woman,
+do you try to ruin her life? Do you creep up in the dark under cover
+of her blindness and touch her with some dreadful, poisonous wound?
+You don't know my horror of that man, Pete. Oh, he kissed--kissed
+me!" She shivered. "A murderer! Yes, a murderer. Oh, Ham Rutherford,
+if I could only _make_ you see yourself! If I could give you my eyes
+when they opened, and I saw Pete's beauty and Bella's sweetness and
+the horrible ugliness of you! And then, day by day--you see, I was
+afraid to let you know that I _had_ seen you. I was in terror of you,
+of what you might do to me. I was afraid of you all; you had all
+deceived me. Day by day I learned the utter distortion of you, mind,
+body, and soul. How could I help but--but--" She faltered and half
+turned to Pete, holding out her hands. Her indignation at the
+treachery practiced upon her, an anger that had grown in silence to
+unbearable heat, had spent itself in words. She was all for
+consolation now--for sympathy. But Pete stepped back from her. He
+was looking at Hugh, and his clear, young face was an open wound.
+
+Hugh pushed himself up and slowly lifted his face. It was then that
+he saw Sylvie's hands stretched out to Pete. He started--no one knew
+what the convulsive movement meant; but as he started--the gun tripped
+him. He caught it up carelessly, blindly. There was a flash--a crash.
+Pete leaped and bent, holding his arm. Blood spurted between his
+fingers, soaking his wet sleeve; and Sylvie, crying aloud, wrapped
+him in trembling, protective arms.
+
+"I'm not much hurt," he said half dazedly. "It--it was an accident.
+He didn't mean it. I was looking at him. The gun went off. He didn't
+shoot at me. . . . _Hugh_!"
+
+The man was staring straight ahead of him, and now he drew his hand
+across his eyes, the fingers crooked as though they tore a veil.
+
+"Now," he said, "I do see myself just as I am. Yes, I did shoot at
+you. Yes, I think I meant to kill you. I must have meant to kill you.
+That's the truth. For the second time I'm a murderer. Yet now, as
+God lives, even if I am down in the dust, I'll lay hold of my stars.
+I'm going to walk out of your lives so that they can shape themselves
+to their own good ends. Sylvie can shape yours with you, Pete." He
+hesitated a moment. "If a coward, a murderer, can say 'God bless you,'
+take that blessing!"
+
+He picked up his gun and shuffled across the floor, flinching aside
+from Bella as though he could bear no further touch or word, and went
+out of the door, letting in the brightness of the sunrise.
+
+Pete had sunk into a chair, faint from the shock and weakness of his
+wound; and Sylvie bent over him. For a minute, in great and bitter
+loneliness Bella stood and watched them; then she followed Hugh.
+
+He had put down his gun and gone slowly up from the hollow and was
+walking along the river-bank. He had the look of a man who strolls
+in meditation. When he came to his boat where it lay near the roots
+of the three big pines, he turned it over--he had been mending its
+bottom the morning of yesterday--and began to push it down toward
+the plunging stream. The glitter of morning took all the swirlings
+and ripplings and plungings of the swift water in its golden hands.
+Hugh steadied the boat. Above him on the bank Bella spoke quietly.
+
+"Hugh," she said, "look up at me. What are you going to do?"
+
+He lifted his face, still holding to the boat.
+
+"What are you going to do?" she repeated.
+
+"Why do you want to know? You've heard the truth."
+
+She came down the bank and stood beside him so close that her hair,
+loosened by the wind, was blown against his shoulder. She pressed
+it back and gazed into his eyes. The inner glow had worn through at
+last. She was all warmth, all flame now. She smiled with soft and
+parted lips. "Do you think that was the truth of you, my dear," she
+said, "_my_ truth of you? I have always seen you as you are. But"--she
+drew a big breath, like a climber who has reached the height--"but--I
+came to you, didn't I?"
+
+Hugh's eyes widened, the pupils swallowing her light. "You--you came
+to me? Not for Pete's sake?"
+
+"Never for his sake."
+
+"But, Bella--you laughed at me."
+
+"Yes, once, for your poor folly in trying to be what you are not.
+When have I ever laughed at what you are? It's what you are I've
+loved, my dear, just what you are--a tormented child. Only be honest
+with me, Hugh. Tell me what do you want: the moon now or--or all the
+truth?"
+
+"I want the truth--and the end," he said. "I'm going down the river."
+
+She glanced at the flood as though it were a brook. "I am going with
+you then. You must take me. My life has always been yours."
+
+He laid one of his hands on either of her cheeks so that her face
+was framed for him to read. It was flushed; the deep eyes were
+beautiful.
+
+"You--all these empty years! _You_, Bella." It was as though he saw
+her now for the first time. The revelation dazzled him. "I've gone
+thirsty, with wine at my elbow, until it's too late." He shook his
+shoulders. "Come with me, then, if you must."
+
+She stepped into the boat and sat in the stern, her hands folded in
+her lap, her eyes in their great and sudden beauty still fixed on
+his face. The wind blew her hair wildly in a long, streaming veil
+across her forehead, down her cheek, out over her shoulder. She was
+beautiful with the joy that was hers at last.
+
+Hugh stepped in and stood to push the boat out from the shore. His
+eyes never left hers. It was a deep, long look of which her soul
+drank, quenching its thirst. Very slowly the boat moved; then it
+turned. A hand seemed to grip it's prow. There was a mighty, confused
+roaring in their ears; the bank seemed to be snatched back from them.
+The sunlight, shone into Hugh's face. Suddenly he caught at his oar.
+
+"The river is not so high," he shouted; "the flood's going down."
+He looked away from her and back. "We have--just a chance. We'll leave
+it to the river. It may be the end of you and me--or, Bella, it may
+be the beginning."
+
+He steadied the boat with all his skill. It was drawn with frightful
+swiftness down the swollen stream.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before noon Sylvie and Pete moved slowly across the open space and
+went back along their forest trail. They walked like lovers, and
+Sylvie's arm helped to support him. Just before he stepped in among
+the trees he turned for a long, desolate, backward look.
+
+Now the hoop of green, once white as paper under the noon sun, and
+the level, circular rim of the forest are empty and silent except
+for the rattling of the river and the moving of the pines against
+the fixed, grave stars. The human tragedy--or was it comedy?--has
+burnt itself out like the embers of a camp-fire that will never again
+be kindled in that lonely spot.
+
+  THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Snow-Blind, by Katharine Newlin Burt
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