Snow-Blind

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.