Snow-Blind

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.