“When you sit so silent, Pete,” Sylvie said softly, “I sometimes wonder
if you’re not staring at me.”
“When I’m making a trap,” he answered, smiling a little to himself and
instinctively shifting his gaze, “I can’t very well be staring at you,
can I?”
He was kneeling on the ground before the cabin door, she sitting on the
low step under the shadow of the roof. Her chin rested on the backs of
her hands, the limber wrists bent up a little, the sleeves slipped away
from her slim, white wrists. Her face was brightly rosy, her lips very
red--at once a little stern, yet very sweet.
“Traps are cruel,” she said.
“I think so myself. But we have to make a living, don’t we?”
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself sometimes, Pete?”
“For making traps, and catching live things in them?”
“Yes. It’s a sort of deceitful cruelty, catching the little blind,
wandering wild things.”
“Blind?” he repeated blankly, then flushed.
“Yes, blind. But it wasn’t only that I meant.”
“What else ought I to be ashamed of?”
“Of living on your brother.” He winced sharply, but she went on coolly:
“Of staying here in the wilderness. You are a big boy now. Many a boy of
your age, even smaller and weaker, has gone out in the world to make his
own way. There’s no reason for _you_ to hide, is there? _You_ haven’t
sacrificed your life for anyone.”
“No,” he answered doubtfully, “n-no; but, you see, Sylvie, some one has
to take the skins. It isn’t safe for Hugh.”
“Yes, of course. So that’s what you’ll do all your life--carry loads to
and fro, between this cabin and the trading-station. But if Hugh goes
away himself?”
“Yes?” he asked breathlessly.
His skillful hands paused in their fashioning of a snare.
“You know, of course, that he wants to take me away with him, to marry
me, to start life again.”
“And--and you will, Sylvie?”
“Give me your advice,” she said. She pressed her red lips together; her
face was bent upon him as though she watched.
“But,” he stammered, “you tell me all the time, a dozen times a day,
that I’m badly trained. What good’s my advice?”
“_Are_ you badly trained?”
“I suppose so.”
“You are absurdly unselfish, Pete!” She moved a chip along the ground
with her foot, but Pete failed to notice this curious seeing gesture.
“Why? What do you mean?”
She waited, waited until, in the sickness of his vague suspense, his
hands had turned cold and the color had sucked itself in irregular
heartbeats from his lips.
At last she spoke deliberately. “You would lay down your life for your
friend?” she said. It was almost a whisper.
Pete’s face went red and white and red again. Through the tumult of his
heart he searched for loyal words.
“I love Hugh--if that’s what you mean,” he said.
“I love you?” she repeated softly, perversely. “Did you say ‘Hugh’ or
‘you,’ Pete?”
His face tightened; faint lines came about his mouth. “I said ‘Hugh!’”
“Ah--you love only him--nobody else in all the world?”
Her young and wistful voice came to him like a fragrance. He struggled
as though his spirit were fighting in deep water. He tried to remember
Hugh. He rose up slowly to meet this passionate moment, and now he made
a short step toward the waiting girl. She _was_ waiting, breathing fast.
Pete’s arms quivered at his sides.
A hand gripped the quivering muscles and turned him about. Hugh had come
up behind, without sound, on moccasined feet. His face was gray; his
eyes were drawn into slits; his distorted mouth was trying to become a
straight, hard line. The effort gave a twitch to the pale, lower lip.
Sylvie stood up, singing as though in absent-minded idleness, and
vanished into the house. It would have been difficult to tell whether or
not she had heard Hugh’s arrival.
“What’s the matter?” Pete stammered like a boy wakened from a dream to
behold a lifted cane. “Let go my arm, Hugh. Your fingers cut.”
“Come away from the house,” said Hugh coldly, tightening the iron grip
as though Pete’s wincing gave him satisfaction. “Come up here by the
pines. I want to talk to you.”
“I’ll come,” said Pete. “Let go my arm.”
There was that in his voice that compelled obedience. Hugh’s hand fell
and knotted into a fist. Pete walked beside him up the abrupt slope of
their hollow to the little hill above the river. Its noise was loud in
the still, sunny air. There was no wind stirring. It was high noon. A
sloping tent of shadow drooped from the pines and made a dark circle
about their roots. In this transparent, purplish tent the brothers faced
each other. Pete’s lips were tremulous, and Hugh’s distorted.
“Now,” said Hugh, breathing irregularly and speaking very low, “I’ll
tell you what I think of you.”
“No, Hugh, don’t,” Pete pleaded. “You’ll say things you don’t
mean--unkind things, terrible things. I don’t deserve it from you.
You--you think that I--that I--”
“Go on. Don’t stop. Tell me what I think--I think--that you--that you--”
It was an unbearable moment, an impossible atmosphere, for the
revelation of a first love. Pete felt stripped and shamed.
“You think that I was telling Sylvie, that Sylvie--that I--”
Hugh lifted his hand and struck. The younger man sprang back, then
forward, and was at his elder’s throat. For an instant they struggled,
silently, terribly, slipping on the red pine-needles. Then Pete gave a
hard laugh. “Are we tigers?” he asked, and he pulled himself back and
leaned, shaking, against a tree-trunk, gripping it with his hands. His
blue eyes were cold and blazing in his white face, against which Hugh’s
blow had made a mark. “You won’t strike me again,” Pete said. All
boyishness was gone from his hard, level voice. “Go on. Say what you
like. I’ll listen.”
“You liar!” stormed Hugh. “You cheat!”
Pete laughed again.
A certain quality in his bitter self-control flicked Hugh. He tried to
emulate the young man’s coolness.
“I’ve trusted you,” he began again; “and behind my back you have been
trying to win the love of the woman who has promised to be my wife.”
“I have not.”
“You were not making love to her there, then, when I came up behind you?
When you were so excited that you didn’t hear me? when you were moving
toward her--trembling all over? _I_ felt your arm!”
Pete’s eyes dropped, then lifted as though under a great weight.
“And you say you’re not a liar!”
“I _am_ a liar, though not in the way you mean. We are all liars. We
have caught that little blind girl in a trap. We have lied to her, all
three of us--Bella and I, and you, Hugh--you have lied most of all.”
“She loves me,” Hugh panted. “She knows me. She understands me.”
“Yes,” Pete answered, trembling. “I’ve seen that. I’ve kept quiet. Bella
and I have given you your happiness. Now you thank me by striking me and
calling me a liar and a cheat!”
Hugh, even in the midst of his bitter and suspicious rage, felt the
justice of the reproach. He paused, looked about, then came close, put a
hand on each of his brother’s shoulders, searching the white, young face
with his wild eyes.
“I must have Sylvie,” he groaned. “Pete, I must. You don’t know; you
can’t know--” He dropped his grizzled head against Pete’s neck, and his
breath caught. “You don’t know what I felt when I saw you there, when I
thought--Tell me the truth, Pete. You are not going to take my love, my
only joy, my one prize away from me?”
After a long and difficult silence Pete put his arm half mechanically
across the twisted, gasping back.
“Of course not, Hugh. I--I couldn’t. But I’ve had to play a part, and
it’s not come easy. You must have guessed how hard it’s been, because
you seem to have guessed how I--how Sylvie--Perhaps if I went away?”
He was gripped again, shaken a little. “No, don’t leave me. Wait. It
won’t be long. She will go away with me soon, as soon as she gets over
a girl’s timidity. Pete, she does love me. She does. Don’t stand dumb;
tell me that she does.”
“She does,” Pete repeated tonelessly.
“I’m sorry I struck you. I have a devil’s temper. And I think of you as
still a boy. I wanted to beat you. A few years ago I would have beaten
you.” He put this forward as though it were a reasonable excuse.
“Yes.” Pete smiled grimly. “I can remember your beatings.” He drew
himself away. “Shall we go back?”
Hugh still held him, though at arm’s length. “First I must have a
promise from you.” He spoke sternly.
“What do you want?”
“I want your promise to keep hands off, to hold your tongue to the end.”
“You won’t trust me, then?”
“Not since I watched you moving toward her, not since I felt your arm.”
Pete was silent. He studied the ground. There was a sullen look on his
face, and his tightened mouth deepened the odd, incongruous dimple.
“Well, perhaps you’re right. I promise.” He flashed up a blue
desperation of young eyes as he asked: “How long will it last, Hugh?”
“Not long. Not long. Surely not long.”
“I promise.”
“Give me your hand.”
They came back down from the hill.