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. Iaman ignorant lout. I might as well be fourteen, for all I know.”
“And Iama 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? Theymustbe 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,youtell 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 hateme. Bella,whydo 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 loveme?” 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 Iamgreat—because you think I am; that’s water to me—after a lifetime of thirst.”
“Hugh,amI 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 worshipyou!” 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.
In the big, rudely carved chair Sylvie leaned back her head and pressed her hands to her unseeing eyes. She was not sorry that Hugh had left her, for she was oppressed and unnerved by her own emotions. Until he had kissed her hair, she had not known that she loved him—or rather loved an invisible presence that had enveloped her in an atmosphere of sympathy, of protection, that had painted itself, so to speak, in heroic colors and proportions against her darkness, that had revealed both strength and tenderness in touch and movement, and warm, deep voice.
For until now Sylvie’s life had been entirely lacking in protection and tenderness; she had never known sympathy—her natural romanticism had been starved. The lacks in her life Hugh had supplied the more lavishly because he was aided, in her blindness, by the unrestricted powers of her fancy. But now in all the fervor of this, Sylvie felt, also for the first time, the full bitterness of her blindness. If she could see him—if only once! If she could see him!
And there came to Sylvie unreasonably, disconnectedly, a keen memory of Pete’s embrace when he had caught her up from falling on the hearth. A boy of fourteen? Strange that he should be so strong, that his heart should beat so loud, that his arms should draw themselves so closely, so powerfully about her. What were they really like, these people who moved unseen around her and who exerted such great power over her sudden helplessness?
She got up and began to walk to and fro restlessly, gropingly across the room. She wished now that Hugh would come back. He had been with her so constantly that she had grown utterly dependent upon him. The dense red fog that lay so thick about her, frightened her when Hugh was not there to keep her mind busy with his talk to paint pictures for her, to command her with his magnetic presence. She stood still and strained her eyes. Shemustsee again. If she tried hard, the red fog would surely lift. Happiness, and her new love, they would be strong enough to dispel the mist. There—already it was a shade lighter! She almost thought that she could make out the brightness of the fire. She went toward it and sat down on the bear-skin, holding out her tremulous, excited hands. And with a sudden impulse toward confidence she called: “Pete, O Pete! Come here a moment, please.”
He came, and she beckoned to him with a gesture and an upward, vaguely directed smile, to sit beside her. She was aware of the rigid reserve of his body holding itself at a distance.
“Pete,” she said wistfully, “what can I do to make you love me?”
He uttered a queer, sharp sound, but said nothing.
“Are you jealous?”
“No, Sylvie,” he muttered.
“Oh, how I wish I could see you, Pete! I know then I’d understand you better. Pete, try to be a little more—more human. Tell me about yourself. Haven’t you a bit of fondness for me? You see, I want—Pete—some day perhaps I’ll be your sister—”
“Then he has asked you to marry him?”
He was usually so quiet that she was startled at this new tone.
“Don’t,” she said. “Hush! We have only just found out. He went away because he couldn’t bear his own happiness. Pete—” She felt for him and her hand touched his cheek. “Oh, Pete, your face is wet. You’re crying.”
“No, I’m not,” he denied evenly. “It was melting from the roof when I came in.”
She sighed. “You are so strange, Pete. Will you let me kiss you now—since you are going to be my big little brother?”
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t.”
She laughed and crooked her arm about his neck, forcing his face down to hers. His lips were hard and cool.
The face that Sylvie imagined a boy’s face, shy and blushing, half frightened, half cross, perhaps a trifle pleased, was so white and patient a face in its misery that her blind tenderness seemed almost like an intentional cruelty. It was an intensity of feeling almost palpable, but Sylvie’s mouth remained unburnt, though it removed itself with a pathetic little twist of disappointment.
“You don’t need to say anything,” she said, “You’ve shown me how you feel. You can’t like me. You are sorry I came. And I want so dreadfully for some one just now to talk to—to help me, to understand. It’s all dark and wonderful and frightening. I wish I had a brother—”
She bent her face to her knees and began to cry simply and passionately. At that Pete found it easy to forget himself. He put his arm very carefully about her, laying one of his hands on her bent head and stroking her hair.
“You have a brother,” he said. “Right here.”
The dark small silken head shook. “No. You don’t like me.”
“I do—I do. Please tell me everything you feel like telling; I’d like awfully to help you, to understand, to listen to you. You see, you’ve been so much with Hugh, I haven’t had a chance to know you as he does. And I guess—well—maybe I’m sort of shy.”
She lifted her head at that, took his stroking hand and held it in both of hers under her chin, as a little girl holds her pet kitten for the pleasure of its warmth. “You must get over being shy with me, Pete. We both love Hugh; we both admire him so. I’d so love to talk to you about him—”
“Then do, Sylvie.”
“I’ve never seen him,” she sighed, “and you can see him all day long, Pete; will you try your best now to describe Hugh to me—every bit of him? Tell me the color of his eyes and the shape of his face and—everything. Tell me all you remember about him always.”
“I—I’m no good at that, Sylvie. A fellow you see all day long—why, you don’t know what he looks like, ‘specially if he’s your own brother.”
“Well, you certainly know the color of his eyes.”
“He has hazel eyes—I think you’d call them—”
“Yes?” she drank in his words eagerly, pressing his hand tighter in her excitement. “Go on. If only you were a girl, now, you’d do this so much better.”
“I—I—but I don’t know what else to say, Sylvie. He is very strong.”
“Of course. I know that. Didn’t he pick me up out of the snow and carry me home? He moved as though he had a feather on his arm. You are very strong too, Pete—verystrong. Areyoureyes hazel?”
“No; blue.”
“I always liked blue eyes. I like to imagine that Hugh is just the Viking sort of man I dreamed about when I was a little girl. You think I’m a silly goose, don’t you?”
“Yes, rather.”
“Don’t keep trying to pull your hand away, dear; you can’t guess how it comforts me. I’m awfully alone here, and strange. I don’t suppose you know how queer and frightening it’s been—this getting lost and being brought here in the dark, and then—living on in the dark, just trusting my instincts, my intuitions, instead of my eyes. Voices tell a lot about people, don’t they?—more than I ever dreamed they could. Pete, there is nothing in that—that splendid, generous thing Hugh did, the thing I am not to talk about, nothing to keep Hugh now from going back to the world—some place—that is, far away from where it happened—and beginning again, is there?”
“I hope not, Sylvie.”
She sighed. “Of course it was wonderful. If he hadn’t told me of it, I never should have known half of his greatness; yet I can’t help wishing he were free. It’s sad to think there will always be the memory of that dreadful suffering and danger in his life.”
“Very sad,” said Pete.
“How alone we both are—he and I! Bella, and you, Pete—don’t be angry, please—I don’t think you quite understand Hugh, quite appreciate him.”
“Perhaps not.”
“He has always been lonely. You are so young, and Bella is so stupid—stupid and cross.”
“No, she isn’t, Sylvie. I know Bella a lot better than you do. She’s not stupid or cross—”
“Well, I like you to stick up for your old nurse. She certainly must have loved you a lot to bring you way out here and to stay here all these years to take care of you. I wonder where she’ll go and what she’ll do when Hugh and I get married. You’re too old for a nurse now, Pete. Do you mind if I lean back against you that way? It’s so comfortable. I’d be happier without Bella, Pete, you know.”
“Would you, Sylvie? Well, Bella and I will have to go away together somewhere, I guess.”
“I didn’t say you, dear. I love you a lot—next best to Hugh. There’s something awfully sweet about you—you great strong overgrown thing! Your heart goesthump-thump-thump-thump, as though it was as big as the sun.... I feel much better and happier now. Things have got steady again. Only—I wish Hugh would come back.”
Pete gave a strangled sigh.
“He’ll be back.” And he began to draw himself away from her. “I think I hear him now, Sylvie.”
“Stay where you are,” she laughed. “Don’t be ashamed of being found with a sister leaning against you and holding your hand. Are you afraid of Hugh? I think sometimes he’s rather hard with you—I’ll have to speak to him about that. Oh”—in a sudden ecstasy—“how happy I am! I feel as light as the air. I want every one to be happy. Tell me when Hugh comes in how happy he looks, Pete—promise me, quick! There he is at the door now.”
“Yes,” he whispered, “I promise. Let me go, please, Sylvie.”
He pulled himself away and stood up. At the instant, the door was opened and shut quickly, stealthily. It was Hugh, breathing hard, gray with fear.
“They’re coming,” he said harshly. “Pete, they’re after me. Men are coming across the flat.”
“Did they see you?” Pete demanded anxiously.
“I don’t think so.” Hugh was breathing fast; he had evidently fled across the snow at top speed.
“Get in, then, quick—out of sight.” Pete was already tearing up boards above that long-waiting place of hiding. Hugh was about to step down into it when he glanced up and saw Sylvie. She was standing as the unseeing stand in moments of frightened bewilderment, her hands clasped, her head turning from side to side. “Look here,” whispered Hugh, still absorbed in his own danger, “don’t let them know that Sylvie just wandered in here. Don’t let them start asking her any questions; it’s too dangerous. Let her be—one of the family.” He smiled maliciously. “Let her be your wife, Pete.” Then, as though that picture had fired his love through its hint of jeopardy, he held out both arms suddenly: “Come here, Sylvie—lead her to me, Pete.”
The boy obeyed. But as her uncertain arms trembled about Hugh’s shoulders Pete turned sharply away. He heard the quick, anxious murmur of their voices:
“Hugh, dearest—are you afraid?” And his: “Trust me, little darling. Love me.” A kiss.
Then a sharp, whispered summons: “Quick, can’t you, Pete? Get these boards down.”
When Pete turned, Hugh had dropped into the darkness, and Sylvie stood flushed and with her hands over her face.
Bella had meantime been collecting the most characteristic of Hugh’s belongings—those that could not be supposed to belong to Pete—and now thrust them down into the hiding-place. The boards were rearranged, the rug laid evenly over them. Then the three stood staring at one another, listening helplessly to the nearing sounds.
“Oh, Pete,” Sylvie gasped, “tell me what I must do—or what I ought to say.”
“Tell them,” said Bella, “what Hugh told you—that you are Pete’s wife. They’ll be looking for a different household from that, and it will help to put them off.”
“But—but Pete won’t look old enough.”
“Yes, he will. He looks older than you,” Bella declared harshly. “You sit down and keep quiet; that’s the best you can do; and for God’s sake don’t look so scared. There’s a grave outside to show them, and nobody digs up a six-year-old grave. They won’t find Hugh. Nobody’s ever seen him. Don’t shake so, Sylvie. They may not even be after him; this country has sheltered other outlaws, you know. Hush! I hear them. I’ll be in the kitchen. Pete, be taking off your outdoor clothes. They’ll have seen Hugh’s tracks even if they haven’t seen him, so somebody’s got to have just come in. Be whistling and talking, natural and calm. Remember we’re all at home, just quiet and happy—no reason to be afraid. That’s it.”
Through her darkness Sylvie heard the knocking and Pete’s opening of the door, the scraping of snow, the questions, the simplicity of Pete’s replies.
Then she was made known. “My wife, gentlemen!” And a moment later: “My mother!” And she heard Bella’s greeting, loud and cheerful like that of a woman who is glad to see a visitor. Chairs were drawn up and cigarettes rolled and lighted. She smelt the sharp sweetness of the smoke. There was brief talk of the weather; Sylvie felt that while they talked, the two strangers searched the place and the faces of its inmates with cold, keen, suspicious eyes. She was grateful now for her blindness. There came a sharp statement:
“We’re looking for Ham Rutherford, the murderer.” Sylvie’s heart contracted in her breast.
“Well, sir,” laughed Pete, in his most boyish, light-hearted fashion, “that sounds interesting. But it’s a new name to me.”
“It’s an old case, however,” said the man, the man who spoke more like an Easterner than the sheriff. “Fifteen years old! They’ve dug it up again back East. The daughter of the man that was killed came into some money and thinks she can’t spend it any better than in hunting down her father’s murderer. Now, we’ve traced Rutherford to this country, and pretty close to this spot. He made a getaway before trial, and he came out here fifteen years ago. About two years later he sent back East for his kid brother—he’d be about your age now, Mr.—what you say your name was?—Garth, Peter Garth. You’ll have to excuse the sheriff; he’s bound to search your place.” Sylvie had heard the footsteps going through the three rooms. “A woman named Bertha Scrane, a distant cousin of Rutherford’s to whom he’d been kind, brought the child out. Now, Missis—what’s your name?”
“Bella Garth,” she said tranquilly. “I came out here with my husband, who died six years ago. He’s buried out there under the snow. I’ve lived here with my son and my son’s wife.”
“Yes. It’s not the household we’d been expecting to find. It’s a lonely place, Missis.” He looked at Sylvie. “I should think you’d prefer going to some town.”
“We’re used to it here now,” Bella answered.
“How’d your husband happen here, ma’am?”
“His health was poor; he’d heard of this climate, and he wanted to try trapping. He got on first-rate until the illness came so bad on him, and Pete’s done well ever since. We haven’t suffered any.”
“No, I guess not. You don’t look like you’d suffered.”
The talk went on, an awkward, half-disguised cross-questioning as to Bella’s birthplace, her life before she came out, her husband’s antecedents. She was extraordinarily calm, ready and reasonable with her replies.
“Well, sir”—the sheriff strolled back into the room—“I reckon these aren’t the parties we’re after. But look a-here, this is a description of Ham Rutherford. Likely you might have had a glimpse of him since you came into the country. When he made his getaway he was about thirty-two, height five feet eight, ugly, black-haired, noticeable eyes, manner violent. He was deformed, one leg shorter, one shoulder higher than the other, mouth twisted, and a scar across the nose. He’d been hurt in a fire when he was a child—”
Sylvie broke into a spontaneous ripple of mirth, the full measure of her relief. “Goodness,” she said with utter spontaneity. “There’s certainly never been a monster like that in this house, has there, Pete?”
It did more than all that had gone before to convince the inquisitors. From that minute there was a distinct relaxation; the evening, indeed, turned to one of sociability.
“We hate to inconvenience you, ma’am, but it seems like at this distance from town we’ve got to ask you for supper and a place to sleep.”
If it had not been for the thought of Hugh in hiding, that supper and the evening about the hearth would have been to Sylvie a pleasant one. The men, apparently laying aside all suspicion, were entertaining; their adventurous lives had bristled with exciting, moving, humorous experience. It was Sylvie herself, prompted by curiosity, believing as she did that the monster the sheriff had described bore no possible resemblance to the man she loved, who asked suddenly:
“Do tell us about the man you’re hunting for now—this Rutherford? Tell us about what he did.”
The Easterner gave her a look, and Bella, seeing it, chimed in: “Yes, sure. Tell us about his crime.”
Pete stood up and rolled another cigarette. Try as he might to steady his fingers, they trembled. He had never heard Hugh’s story. He did not want to hear it. The very name of Rutherford that had, in what now seemed to him another age, belonged to Hugh and to him was terrible in his ears. A sickness of dread seized him. Fortunately the eyes of neither of the men were upon him. Sylvie had their whole attention.
The detective spoke. “He was a storekeeper back in a university town, way East, where I came from. He kept a bookshop and had a heap of book-learning. I remember him myself, though I was a youngster. He was a wonderful, astonishing sort of chap, though as ugly as the devil; had a great gift of narration, never told the truth in his life, I guess, but that only made him all the more entertaining. And he had a temper—phew! Redhot! He’d fly out and storm and strike in all directions. That’s what did for him. Some fool quarrel about a book it was, and the man, a frequenter of the shop, a scholar, a scientist, professor at the university, accused Rutherford of lying. Rutherford had a heavy brass paper-cutter in his hand. The professor had a nasty tongue in his head. Well, a tongue’s no match for a paper-cutter. The professor said too much, called Rutherford a hump-backed liar and got a clip on the head that did for him.”
“It’s an ugly story,” said Sylvie. Bella and Pete retained their silence.
“Murder ain’t pretty telling, as a general thing,” remarked the sheriff.
“No, though I’ve heard of cases where a man was justified in killing another man—I mean to save some one he loved from dreadful suffering,” Sylvie replied.
“Well, ma’am, I don’t know about that. I’ve read stories that make it look that way, but in all my experience, it’s the cowards and the fools that kill, and they do it because they’re lower down, closer to the beast, or perhaps to an uncontrolled child, than most of us.”
“But there was a time,” Bella said, with a smothered passion, “when an insult to a gentleman’s honor had to be avenged.”
“Yes, ma’am,” drawled the sheriff, “in them history days things was fixed up to excuse animal doin’s, kind of neater and easier and more becomin’ than they are now. Well, Mr. Garth, can we have our beds? We’ve kept these ladies up talkin’ long enough. Your mother looks plum wore out.”
They slept in the bed usually shared by Pete and Hugh. Pete lay on the floor in the living-room not far from his brother’s hiding-place—lay there rigid and feverish, staring at the night. Sylvie, at Bella’s side, slept no better. Her imagination went over and over the story of Ham Rutherford’s crime. She saw the little dark bookshop, the professor’s thin, sneering face, the hideous anger of the cripple, the blow, the dead body, Rutherford’s arrest. And when her brain was sick, it would turn for relief to the noble story of Hugh’s self-sacrifice, only to be balked by a sense of unreality. What the detective had told, briefly and dryly, lived in her mind convincingly; but Hugh’s romance, that had glowed on his tongue, now lay lifeless on her fancy. Back her mind would go to the bookshop, the gibing professor, the heavy paper-cutter.
In the dawn she heard Bella get up with a deep-shaken sigh and go about her preparations for breakfast. But it was noon before the two men left.
Hugh came up from his hiding-place like a man risen from the dead. They helped him to his chair before the fire; they poured coffee down him, rubbed his blue, stiff hands. He sat looking up pitifully, his eyes turning from one to the other of them like those of a beaten hound. All the masterfulness, all the bombast, had been crushed out of him; even the splendor of his flaring hazel eyes was dimmed—they were hollow, hopeless, old. For a long time he did not speak, only drank the coffee and submitted himself meekly to their ministrations; then at last he touched Sylvie with a trembling hand.
“Sylvie,” he whispered brokenly.
“Hugh, dear, you’re safe now; please speak; please laugh; you frighten me more than anything—why is he so silent, Pete? Bella, tell me what’s wrong?”
“He’s been crouching there on the damp, cold ground for hours,” said Bella, “not knowing what might happen.” Her voice trembled; she passed a hand as shaking as her voice across Hugh’s bent head. “You’re safe now. You’re safe now,” she murmured.
Hugh’s teeth chattered, and he bent closer to the fire.
“Ugh—it was cold down there,” he said, “like a grave! Sylvie, come here.” Just an echo of his old imperious fashion it was—though the look was that of a beggar for alms. “Give me those warm little hands of yours.” She knelt close to him, rubbed his hands in hers, looking up at Pete with a tremulous mouth that asked for advice.
“He’ll be all right in a minute,” said Pete. “You talk to him, Sylvie.”
“Yes, you talk—you talk. Do you remember how I talked to you when you were afraid of the bears—ah!” He drew her head savagely against his breast, folded his arms about it, stroked the hair. “Sylvie! Is it all right? Can it be—the same?”
“Yes, yes, why not?”
“Were you frightened?”
“Not after the first. After they had described you, I knew that they were looking for the wrong man, and then I felt all right. I didn’t know—poor Hugh!—how cold and cramped you were. What a shame that you took a false alarm and hid yourself! I don’t believe there would have been a bit of danger if you’d stayed out. They’d never even heard of you, I suppose.”
Her talk, so gay, so strangely at cross-purposes with reality, was like a vivifying wine to him. The color came back into his face; a wild sort of relief lighted his eyes.
“Then it didn’t occur to you, Sylvie, that that brute might have been me—that the men might, after all, have been describing me—eh?” he asked, risking all his hope on one throw.
She laughed, and, lifting herself a little in his arms, touched her soft mouth to his. “But, Hugh, you told me your story, don’t you remember? And it is gloriously, mercifully different from Rutherford’s.”
He put his chin on his fist and stared over her head into the fire. She felt the slackening of his embrace and searched his arms with questioning fingers. “Why are you cross, Hugh? Did I say anything to hurt you? Let’s forget Ham Rutherford. I wonder where he is, poor, horrible wretch!”
“Dead—dead—dead,” Hugh muttered. “Dead and buried—or he ought to be. O God!” he groaned, and crushed her close against him; “I can’t ask you to love me, Sylvie—to marry me. Now you know what it is like to love a man who must be afraid of other men. What right have I to ask any woman to share my life?”
“But, Hugh—if I love you?”
“And you do love me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He laughed out at that, stood up, drawing her to stand beside him. “Bella—Pete,” he called, “do you hear—you two?” He beckoned them close, laid a hand on them, drew first one, then the other toward Sylvie. “She loves me. She sees me as I am!” Suddenly he put his grizzled head on Sylvie’s shoulder and wept. She felt her way back to the chair, sat down, and drew him to kneel with his arms about her, her head bent over him, her small hands caressing him. She looked at Pete for help, for explanations, but she could not see his pale, tormented face.
After a while Hugh was calm and sat at her feet, smoking. But he was unnaturally silent, and his eyes brooded upon her haggardly.
It was several days before Hugh regained his old vigor and buoyancy; then it came to life like an Antaeus flung down to mother earth. His hour of doubt, of self-distrust, of compunction, was whirled away like an uprooted tree on the flood of his happiness. He flung reason and caution to the four winds; he dared Bella or Pete to betray him, he played his heroic part with boisterous energy; his tongue wagged like a tipsy troubadour’s. What an empty canvas, a palette piled with rainbow tints, a fistful of clean brushes would be to an artist long starved for his tools, such was Sylvie’s mind to Hugh. She was darkness for him to scrawl upon with light; she was the romantic ear to his romantic tongue; she was the poet reader for his gorgeous imagery. He had not only the happiness of the successful lover, but even more, the happiness of the successful creator. What he was creating was the Hugh that might have been.
With Sylvie clinging to his hand, he now went out singing—the three of them together, great Hugh and happy artist Hugh all but welded into one man for her and for her love. Those were splendid days, days of fantastic happiness. Hugh’s joy, his sense of freedom, gave him a tenfold gift of fascination.
Yet one day—one of those dim, moist spring days more colorful to Hugh’s heart than any of his days—there cut into his consciousness like a hard, thin edge, a sense of a little growing change in Sylvie. It had been there—the change,—slightly, dimly there, ever since the sheriff’s visit. It was not that she doubted Hugh—such a suspicion would have struck him instantly aware and awake—but that she had become in some way uncertain of herself, restless, depressed, afraid. And it was always his love-making that brought the reaction, a curious, delicate, inner recoil, so delicate and slight, so deep beneath the threshold of her consciousness, that in the blind glory of his self-intoxication he missed it altogether—might, indeed, have gone on missing it, as she would have gone on ignoring or repressing it, if it had not been for their kiss on the mountain-top.
This was one of Hugh’s madnesses; he would take Sylvie up a mountain and show her his kingdom, show her himself as lord of the wilderness. He had been there before many times, to the top of their one mountain, always under protest from Bella and Pete. It was a bare rock exposed to half the world and all the eyes of Heaven; and for a man in hiding, a man who lived, yet whose name was carved above a grave, it was a very target for untoward accident. Some trader or trapper down in the forest might look up and behold the misshapen figure black and bold, against the sky. Yet there was never so mighty a Hugh as when he stood there defiant and alone. Now he wanted Sylvie to sense that tragic magnificence.
So they went out, Hugh’s arm about her, as strange a pair of lovers as ever tempted the spring—the great, scarred, uncouth, gray cripple and the slim, unseeing girl, groping and clinging, absolutely shut off from any contact with reality as long as this man should interpret creation for her. Sylvie turned back to wave at Pete, whom they had left standing in the doorway.
“I’ll be hunting for you if you stay out late,” he called—to which Hugh shouted back: “You hunting for us! Don’t fancy I can’t take care of this child, myself.”
“Both of them blind!” Pete muttered to himself in answer.
They were moving rather slowly across the rough, sagebrush-covered flat, and presently Hugh led Sylvie into the fragrant silence of the forest trail. To her it was all scent and sound. Hugh whispered to her what this drumming meant and that chattering and that sudden rattle almost under their feet.
They had to go slowly, Sylvie touching the trees here and there, along her side of the trail. He lifted her over logs and fallen trees, and sometimes, before he set her down, he kissed her. Then Sylvie would turn her head shyly, and he would laugh. Thus they made slow, sweet progress.
“I see more in the woods with your eyes than I ever could with my own,” she told him.
“I have eyes for us both,” he answered. “That’s why God gave me the eyes I have, because He knew the use I’d be making of them.”
“Is this the trail Pete follows to the trading-station?” she asked. “I wish you could take me there, Hugh, or—would you let him take me?”
He tightened his arm. “I can’t bear to have you out of my sight,” he answered.
She sighed. “It seems so queer that they haven’t tried to find me. Do you suppose they think that I’m dead? Did Pete mail my letter to Miss Foby, I wonder?”
“What does Miss Foby matter?” he asked jealously. “What does anything matter to you but—me? Here we leave Pete’s trail and I take you straight up the mountain, dear one. We’ll rest now and then; when we get to the rocky place just below the top, I’ll carry you. Are you happy? I always feel as if my heart melted with the snow when spring comes—a wild, free, tumbling feeling of softness and escape.”
She sighed. “Yes—if only I could see. I miss my eyes out of doors more than in the house. Does snow-blindness really last so long? Perhaps it was the nervous shock and the exhaustion as much as the glare. I am sure it all will just go suddenly some day. I stare and stare sometimes, and I feel as if I might see—almost.”
He frowned. “You mustn’t miss anything when you have me, Sylvie. Do you suppose I miss anything, now that I have you? My career, my old friends, my old life, my liberty, the world? That for everything!” He snapped his fingers. “If only I have you.”
“You love me so much,” she answered, as though she were oppressed, “it frightens me sometimes.”
“When you are wholly mine—” he began. “Well, wait till we get to the top of the mountain; there I’ll tell you all my plans. They’re as big and beautiful as the world. I feel, with your love, that I can move mountains. I can fashion the world close to my heart’s desire. We’ll leave this blank spot and go to some lovely, warm, smiling land where the water is turquoise and the sky aquamarine—”
“And perhaps my sight will come back.” It was almost a prayer.
He did not answer. They had come to a sharp sudden ascent. He took her in his arms, scrambled across the tumbled rocks, and set her down beside him on the great granite crest that rose like the edge of a gray wave. The clean, wild wind smote her and shook her and pressed back her hair and dress. She clung to him.
“Is it steep? Are we on the edge of a cliff, Hugh? I’m not afraid!”
“We’re on the very top of the world,” he told her breathlessly, his voice filled with a sense of awe, “our world, Sylvie, I’m master here. There’s no greater mind than my own in all that dark green circle. It’s pines, pines, pines to the edge of the earth, Sylvie, an ocean of purple and green—silver where the wind moves, treading down, like Christ walking on the water. And the sky is all gray, like stone.”
“Can you see the flat, the cabin?”
“The flat, yes—a round green spot, way down there behind us. The cabin? No. That’s in a hollow, you may be sure, well out of sight. I’m an outlaw, dearest, remember. There’s a curve of the river, like a silver elbow. And Sylvie, up above us, an eagle is turning and turning in a huge circle. He thinks he’s king. But, Sylvie, it’s our world—yours and mine. This is our marriage.”
She drew back. “What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you a feeling for such images? We’ll go before a parson—don’t be afraid. Would I frighten you, Sylvie? I love you too much for that. Why, Sylvie, what’s wrong?”
When his lips, clinging and compelling, had left hers, she bent her face to his arm and began to cry.
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know.... But please don’t kiss me like that, not like that!”
He released her and half turned, but her hands instantly hunted for him, found him and clung.
“Hugh, don’t be angry. Be patient with me. Try to understand. Perhaps it’s because I am in the dark. I do love you. I do. But you must wait. Soon it will be spring for me, too. You don’t understand? You’re angry? But I can’t explain it any better.”
“You can lay your hand on me,” he said hoarsely. “God knows I’m real enough.” And he thought so! “My love for you is here like a granite block, Sylvie.”
“I know. It is the one thing in the darkness that is real. I know you—your love, splendid and strong and brave. Wait just a little, Hugh. Try to be patient. Suddenly it will all come right. The fog will lift. Then we’ll really be on top of the mountain.” She laughed, but rather sadly.
“I will always hate this mountain-top,” he said. “I used to love it. I was so close to happiness, and now you’ve snatched it out of my reach.” He drew in sobbing breaths.
“No—it’s myself I’m keeping from happiness, not you,” she answered. “I know it will come right, but you must not hurry me. Dear Hugh, be patient.” She found his hand and raised it, a dead weight, to her lips. “Please be patient. Let’s go down out of this wind. I can’t see your world, and I’m cold.”
So, in silence—a dull gray silence Hugh led her down into the valley.