Snow-Blind | Page 6

of getting quick news of Hugh! Why had Bella and he let this thing happen? Why had they stood helplessly by and allowed the rash fool to go singing to his own destruction? They might have held him by force, if not by argument, long enough to bring him to his senses. They had been weak; they were always weak before Hugh's magnetic strength--always the audience, the following; Bella, for all her devastating tongue, no less than himself. And Hugh's liberty, perhaps his life, might be the price of their acquiescence.
Straining forward in his chair, listening, there came to Pete, across the silence, the sound of skis.
He rose and hopped to the door, flinging it wide. He could not see above the top of the drift which rose just beyond the roof to a height of nine or ten feet, but listening intently, he thought he recognized a familiar slight unevenness in the sliding of the skis.
"Bella!" he shouted, his boy-voice ringing with relief. "Bella! Here's Hugh. He's come back."
Bella was instantly at his side. They stood waiting in the doorway. Against the violet sky darkening above the blue wall of snow, a bulky figure rose, blotting out the light. It half slid, half tumbled down upon them, clumsy and shapeless.
"Let us in," panted Hugh. "Let us in."
Slipping his feet from the straps of his skis, he staggered past them and they saw that he was carrying a woman in his arms.

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