Snow-Blind | Page 4

don't believe he'll get halfway there, Bella," he reassured the woman. "He'll come to his senses. You know how moody he is. Come over here and doctor up my ankle, please. 'Make a fuss over me, Bell.' Isn't that what I used to say?"
He coaxed until at last she came and knelt before him and removed his moccasin and heavy woolen sock. The strong white foot was like marble, but the ankle was swollen and discolored. Bella clicked her tongue. "He is a brute, you know!" She laughed shortly. Since Garth's departure she had become almost a human being. The deaf-mute look had melted from her, and a sardonic humor emerged; her eyes cleared; she could even smile. "Why do we care so much for him, Pete--the two of us?"
Pete winced under her touch and puckered his brows. "Because he's such a kid, I guess. He's always fretting after the moon."
"Don't you ever get angry with him, Pete? He does treat you shameful sometimes."
"N-no. Not often. He's always sorry and ashamed afterward. He'd like to be as kind as God. I believe if he could only fool us into thinking he was God, he could act like Him--ouch, Bella! Go easy."
"You're an awful smart boy, Pete. It's a sin you've never had any schooling."
"Schooling! Gosh! I've had all the schooling I could digest. Hugh beat it into me. He's taught me all he had in his head and a whole lot he never ought to have had there, I guess. But _you've_ taught me most, Bella--that's the truth of it."
"Me! I never knew anything. They saw to that. They never did anything for me at home but abuse me. Hugh Garth was the only relation I ever had in the world that spoke kind to me. Remember how I used to run over from my folks to tuck you into bed in your little room above the shop, Pete? No, you were too little."
"Of course, I remember," the boy replied. "The ankle's fine now, Bella. Let up. I can't stand that rubbing. Let me stick the foot up on another chair. There--that's great. It doesn't hurt near so bad now. I remember Hugh's bookshop; yes, I do--honest! I remember sitting on the ladder and listening to him talk to the students when they came in. He always was a gorgeous talker, Bella. They used to stand around and listen to his yarns like kids to a fairy story. Just the same as you and I do now--when we can get him into a good humor. But, you know, he used to like strangers best--to talk to, I mean."
Bella assented, bitterly. She had begun to clear the table of its almost untouched meal. "Because he could put it over better with a stranger. It isn't the truth Hugh likes--about himself, or others."
Pete had begun to whittle a piece of wood. He was a charming figure, slouching down in his chair, slim and graceful, his shapely golden head ruffled, his chin pressed against his chest. His expression was indescribably sweet and boyish, the shadow of anxiety and pain accentuating a wistful if determined cheerfulness. He was deliberately entertaining Bella, diverting her mind from its agony of apprehension. She saw through him, but like a sick child she took the entertainment languidly.
"Now, _you're_ too dead bent on the truth, Bella. You know you are. You're a regular bear for the truth."
"I can't see anything else," she said gloomily. "Things are just so to me--no blinking them."
He put his head a little to one side and contemplated her. "What do you see when you look into the water-bucket, Bella?"
"The water-bucket?" She flushed. "Just because you caught me prinking that once!"
"Well, if you had a mirror, what would you see in it, then?"
"An ugly old woman, Pete."
"There! Your mind's just the wrong-side-out of Hugh's. He won't see himself ugly, and you won't see yourself pretty. I'm the only sane fellow in this house."
"And you never in your life saw a pretty woman to remember her. Besides, you're too young." She said it with a tart sweetness and vanished into the kitchen.
With her departure Pete's whittling ceased, his hands fell slack and he began to stare out through the snow-walled window. His anxiety for Hugh slipped imperceptibly into a vague pondering over his own youthfulness. That's what those two were always telling him, sometimes savagely, sometimes tenderly! "You're too young." What did it mean to him, anyhow, that he was "too young"? A desolation from which at times he suffered in secret overcame him.
He was twenty-one or -two--or his memory lied. They had never celebrated his birthdays, but he was five or six years old when Hugh had been so suddenly, so unexplainably taken from the house, back there in the little Eastern college town where