Snow-Blind | Page 7

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 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