Snow-Blind Part 3

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--G.o.d 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 s.p.a.ce 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 rea.s.sured. 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 G.o.d, he'd likely enough be one. He--he lives by--illusion--isn't that the word?

It's kind of easy to be n.o.ble 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 ch.o.r.es, 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.