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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

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*** 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





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