Snow-Blind | Page 7

two. They sat, each in a chair, the width of the room apart; below them, his grizzled head and warped face transfigured by its new tenderness, Hugh bent over the child in his arms. Pete held his tumult of curiosity, of interest, in leash. He could hear his heart pounding.
"You're safe now, and warm," Hugh was murmuring. "No need to be scared, no need. I'll take care of you. Go to sleep. I'm strong enough to keep off anything. You're safe and snug as a little bird in its nest. That's right. Go to sleep."
Pete's blue eyes dwelt on this amazing spectacle with curious wonder. This was a Hugh he had never seen before. For the first time in fifteen years, he realized, the man had forgotten himself.

CHAPTER IV
To Hugh Garth the girl told her story at last. She seemed to realize only dimly that there were two other living beings in this house, to her a house of darkness peopled only by voices--Pete's modest, rare boy speeches, Bella's brief, smothered statements. The great music of Hugh's utterance must indeed have filled her narrowed world. So it was to him she turned--he was always near her, sitting on the pelt beside the chair to which, after a day and night in Bella's bed, she was helped.
She had a charming fashion of speech, rather slow motions of her lips, which had some difficulty with "r" and "s," a difficulty which she evidently struggled against conscientiously, and as she talked, she gesticulated with her slim little hands. She was a touching thing sitting there in Hugh's carved throne--he an abdicated monarch at her feet, knee in hand, grizzled head tilted back, hazel eyes raised to her and filled with adoration.
"I am called Sylvie Doone," she said with that quaint struggle over the "S." "I was always miserable at home." She gave the quick sigh of a child. "You see, my father died when I was very little, and then my mother married again. We lived in the grimmest little town, hardly more than a dozen houses, beside a stream, up in Massachusetts--farming country, but poor farming, hard farming, the kind that twists the men with rheumatism, and makes the women all pinched and worn. Mother was like that. She died when I was thirteen. You see--there I was, so queerly fixed. I had to live with Mr. Pynche--there was no other home for me anywhere. And he kind of resented it. He had enough money not to need me for work--a sister of his did the housework better than I could--and yet he was poor enough to hate having to feed me and pay for my clothes. I was always feeling in the way, and a burden. There was nothing I could do.
"Then I saw something about the movies in a magazine, and pictures of girls, not much better-looking than me, making lots of money. I borrowed some money from a drug-store clerk who wanted to keep company with me--I've paid it back--and I went to New York. I did get a job. But I'm not a good actress."
She faltered over the rest--a commonplace story of engagements, of failures, until she found herself touring the West with a wretched theatrical troupe. "We were booked for a little town off there beyond your woods, and the train was stalled in a snowstorm. We got on a stage-coach, but it got stuck in a drift on one of those dreadful roads. I was freezing cold, and I thought I'd make a short cut through the woods. The road was running along the edge of a big forest of pines. I cut off while they were all working to dig out the horses.
"Mr. Snaring said, 'Look out for the bears!' and I laughed and ran up what looked like a snow-buried trail. There was a hard crust. The woods were all glittering and so beautiful. I ran into them, laughing. I was so glad to get away by myself from those people into the woods where it was so silent and sort of solemn--like being in a church again. I can't think how I got so lost. I meant to come round back to the road, but before I knew it, I didn't know which way the road was. The pines were so dense, so all alike, they looked almost as if they kept sort of shifting about me. I tried to follow back on my footprints, but in some places snow had shaken down from the branches. And there were so many--so dreadfully many other tracks--of animals--" She put her hands over her face and shrank down in her chair.
"Forget about them, Sylvie," Hugh admonished gently. "Even if there had been bears about, they wouldn't likely have bothered you any."
"I can't bring myself to