“What did he say to you? What did he say to you?” asked Hugh again and
again.
Sylvie laughed at him.
“He didn’t say anything--hardly a word, except that he pretended he was
going on forever. He said: ‘We will, we will.’ That’s absolutely all,
Hugh. Don’t be so silly. What _could_ he say?”
“I don’t know,” Hugh answered. “He might have made fun of me.”
“Fun of you! After saving my life! I’d have boxed his ears! No, no,
Peter wouldn’t do that. He’s afraid of me.”
She was so proud of this that Hugh, perforce, laughed. It was after
supper, and they had walked a little way from the cabin. They were
standing just above the river on a little hillock topped with three big
pines. The dusk was thick about them; stars pricked the soft sky. Sylvie
was wrapped in Hugh’s coat, and they were linked by their hands hanging
at their sides. Every one but Sylvie had been very silent at supper, but
she had told her story of Hugh’s heroism again and again until finally
even Hugh had grumbled at “the fuss.”
“What makes you think anyone could be afraid of you?” He smiled down at
the small dark head which did not reach his shoulder.
“He’s afraid I’ll kiss him. Don’t grip my hand that way; it hurts. You
couldn’t be jealous of a boy! Besides, I _don’t_ kiss him any more. I
never have kissed him but that once--no, twice, when I told him that I
was going to be his sister.”
“You told him that?” Hugh’s voice had an odd anxiety. “How did he take
it?”
“I don’t think he was very enthusiastic. He loves you so much, Hugh; you
are the very heart of his universe, and I suppose he is jealous of your
love for me. Since then he’s avoided me and is as dumb as a fish when I
talk to him. I think his body has outgrown his mind, Hugh.”
“Perhaps. I don’t know,” he answered.
“And Bella is so silent, too. Hugh, it must have been a lonely life for
you before I came. Those two people, though they love you so much, are
not companionable. I think, Hugh, that they aren’t able to understand
you. You are so brilliant, and they are so dull; you are so articulate,
and they are so dumb; you are so warm, so quick to see, to feel, to
sympathize, while they are so slow and so cold. Dear Hugh, I’m glad I
came. I am stupid myself, but I have enough intelligence to understand
you--a little, haven’t I, dear?”
“So much more than enough!” The low speech with its tremor of humility
was almost lost.
“What a noise the river makes!” he said presently.
“Yes. And the pines. The whole air is full of rushing and sighing and
clapping and rattling. Sounds tell me so much now. They fill my whole
life. It is very queer. Why, a voice means more to me now, I think, than
a face ever did.... Is it a deep river, Hugh?”
“Now it is--deep and dangerous. But it goes down very quickly when the
snow at its source has melted. In summer it is a friendly little brook,
and in the fall a mere trickle that hardly wets your shoe. I have a boat
here tied to the root of one of these trees, a boat I made myself, to
pole across when the stream is too deep for wading. I’ll take you out in
it when the flood’s down; it wouldn’t last fifteen minutes now. In
the spring, Sylvie, a nymph comes down from the mountain, a wild white
nymph. She has ice-green hair and frost-white arms; you can see her
lashing the water, and if you listen, you can hear her sing and cry.
Let’s go in, dear; you’re tired and cold--I can feel you shivering.
We’ll start a big fire, and I’ll tell you how that nymph caught me
once and nearly strangled me with her cold, wet arms. I was trying to
save--you’ll laugh when I tell you about it--a baby bear.”
Pete and Bella made room for them silently about the hearth where Pete
had already built up a fire. Sylvie groped her way to the throne from
which the other woman slipped half furtively and so noiselessly that
Sylvie never guessed her usurpation.
“Hugh is going to tell us a story,” she said, and rested her head back
so that her small chin pointed out and her slim neck was drawn up--“a
wonderful story about the river and a bear. I hope it’s a baby bear,
Hugh, for you know how I feel about bears. I honestly think that being
so afraid of seeing them is what made me blind!” She gave her small, shy
laugh. “I thought I saw them everywhere I looked that day and night. It
seems so long ago now, and yet it is not so many weeks. I can still hear
Hugh’s voice calling out to me across the snow. And now,” she said, “the
snow’s all gone and none of you are strangers any more, and--Go on with
your story, Hugh.”
Pete added a log to the fire so that the flames stretched up bravely
and made a great fan of light against which they all seemed painted
like ornamental figures, Hugh lounging along the rug to make a striking
central figure. Bella was drawn up rigidly on a stiff, hard chair; she
hemmed a long, coarse towel with her blunt, work-roughened fingers.
Pete sat opposite Sylvie on the floor, his back against the corner of
the fireplace, his knees drawn up in his hands, his head a little bent.
He too--from under his long level brows--looked for the most part at
Hugh, not devotedly, not wistfully, but with a somber wondering. It was
only now and then, and as though he couldn’t help it, that the blue,
smouldering Northern eyes were turned to Sylvie on her throne. Then they
would brighten painfully, and his lips would tighten so that the dimple,
meant for laughter, cut itself like a touch of pain into his cheek. The
firelight heightened his picturesqueness--the dull blue of his shirt,
open at the round, smooth throat, the dark gold-brown of his corduroy
trousers, against which the long, tanned hands, knit strongly together,
stood out in the rosy, leaping light--beautifully painted against the
background of old brown logs.
Yet it was Hugh, after all, who dominated the room by right of his
power, his magnetism, the very distortion of his spirit. Here in this
lonely square of light and warmth, surrounded by a world of savage,
lawless winds heightening the voices of vast loneliness, these three
people were imprisoned by him, a Merlin of the West.
He sat up to begin his story, pressing tobacco into his pipe. “Oh, it’s
not so much of a story, Sylvie. It was last spring when the river was
high and I’d been out with my traps. I was coming home along the river
edge, pretty tired, a big load on my back. I came around a bend of the
river, and not far below me a little black bear, round as a barrel, was
trying to scramble over the flood on a very shaky log. The mother was
on the other side, but I didn’t know that then. Well, there’s nothing in
God’s world, Sylvie, so beguiling as a baby bear. This little fellow was
scared by what he was doing, but he was bound he’d get across the river.
He’d make a few steps; then he’d back up and half rise on his hind legs.
I watched him a long time. Then he made up his mind he’d better make a
dash for it. He began scrambling like a frantic kitten, and it was just
in the most ticklish spot that he heard me and jumped and went rolling
off into the river. I tell you, my heart came right up into my mouth.”
“Oh, _was_ he drowned?” wailed Sylvie.
Hugh rose and stood with his back to the fire, dominating the room even
more convincingly, with his vivid ugliness. Sylvie’s face turned up to
him like a white flower to the sun it lives by, without seeing. It was
strange to watch the adoration, the worship on that small face, and at
the same time to behold the grotesqueness toward which it was directed.
Bella was listening with her lowered eyes and tightened lips. She was
interested in spite of herself; and Pete’s inscrutable face followed the
story with absorption.
“Well, in he rolled with a splash and went rattling down the current,
turning over and over. Like a fool, I threw away my hides, ran down the
bank and jumped in after him--that is, I meant to hold on to a branch
and stand out in the water and catch him as he went by. But the nymph
I told you about had her own plans. She wrapped her arms round me, and
away we went, bear all. Oh, yes, I’d caught the cub all right, and he
was about half drowned by that time--no fight left in him.
“Well, for a bit it was a question whether the world wouldn’t be quickly
and well rid of us both, but we tumbled up against a root and scrambled
out, and when I’d rested, I picked up limp and trembling Master Bear and
went back for my hides. And while I was collecting them, I heard a sort
of grumpy, grumbling sound, and I looked up--and, by Jove, Mother Bear
was coming across that log with the longest steps you ever saw. That’s
when I ran to collect my gun--it was a little farther up the bank than
my hides, worse luck!”
Even Bella had forgotten her bitterness in listening, and Pete’s parted
lips were those of an excited child. Sylvie leaned forward in her chair,
her cheeks tingling, her hands locked. Hugh had thrown himself into the
action of his story; his face was slightly contorted as though sighting
along a gun-barrel, his arm raised, the ungainliness of his deformity
strongly accentuated. He was not looking at Sylvie; true to his nature
and his habit, he had forgotten every one but that Hugh of adventure
and of romance, the one companion of his soul. None of them was watching
Sylvie, and when she gave a sharp, little cry, a queer start and then
sat utterly still, Hugh accepted it--they all accepted it--as a tribute
to his story-telling powers.
But Sylvie, leaning her elbows on her knees, raised trembling hands to
her eyes and hid them. She sat very still, very white, while the story
went on, vividly imagined, picturesquely told. When it was over, and the
mother bear, after a worthy struggle, defeated, Hugh looked about for
his applause. It came, grudgingly from Bella, eagerly from Pete--and
from Sylvie in a sudden extravagant clapping of hands, a ripple of high,
excited laughter, and a collapse in her chair. She had fainted in a limp
little heap.
She came to in an instant, but seemed bewildered and, unprotesting,
permitted herself to be carried to bed. She declared she felt quite well
again and wanted only to be alone. She repeated this moaningly. “Oh, to
be alone!”
Hugh seated himself on the end of the bed and kissed her forehead and
her hand, but it quivered under his lips and was drawn away.
He came back into the living-room with a pale, bewildered face.