Snow-Blind | Page 9

alternate postures of untiring grace. The air was not cold. There was the cloudy softness premonitory of a spring storm; the sun glowed like a dying fire through a long, narrow rift in the shrouded west. Pete had thrown aside his coat and drawn in his belt. The collar of his flannel shirt was open and turned back; his head was bare. The bright gold of his short hair, the scarlet of his cheeks, the vivid blue of his brooding eyes, made shocks of color against the prevailing whiteness. Even the indigo of his overalls and the dark gray of his shirt stood out with a curious value of tint and texture. His bare hands and forearms glowed. He was whistling with a boy's vigor and a bird's sweetness.
Bella caught Pete's arm as it bent for one of the strong forward sweeps. He stopped, let go of his saw, and turned to her, smiling.
Then--the smile gone: "What's wrong?"
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--God 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 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