Snow-Blind

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.