Snow-Blind

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.