Snow-Blind | Page 9

daring self-sacrifice. The girl listened with parted
lips. Her cheeks glowed. And behind the door, Bella too listened,
straining her ears.
The murmur of Hugh's recital, rising now and then to some
melodramatic climax, then dropping cautiously, rippled on, broken now
and again by Sylvie's ejaculations. Behind the door Bella stood like a
wooden block, colorless and stolid as though she understood not a
syllable of what she heard. But after a rigid hour she faltered away,
stumbled across the kitchen and out into the snow.
There, in the broad light of the setting sun, Pete rhythmically bent and
straightened over his saw. The tool sang with a hissing, ringing rhythm,
and the young man drove it with a lithe, long swing of body, forward
and back, forward and back, in 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