Katharine Newlin Burt

“ Are we on the edge of a cliff, Hugh? I’m not afraid!”
“We’re on the very top of the world,” he told her breathlessly, his voice filled with a sense of awe, “our world, Sylvie, I’m master here. There’s no greater mind than my own in all that dark green circle. It’s pines, pines, pines to the edge of the earth, Sylvie, an ocean of purple and green—silver where the wind moves, treading down, like Christ walking on the water. And the sky is all gray, like stone.”
“Can you see the flat, the cabin?” ”

“ Sylvie will marry him. Hugh gets his will.” Pete shook his head. “Wait a few days—you’ll see. She’s fighting against him now; I don’t know why—some instinct. But though he tells her so many lies, he doesn’t lie about one thing. He loves her. He does love her.”
“No! No!” Bella’s passion, tearing its way through her long habit of repression, was almost terrifying. “He loves the image she has of him. If he knew that she could see him as I do, his love would shrivel up like a flower in a drought. Hugh can’t love the truth. He can’t love anything but his delusions. Pete, tell her the truth. ”

“ Hugh!”
The man was staring straight ahead of him, and now he drew his hand across his eyes, the fingers crooked as though they tore a veil.
“Now,” he said, “I do see myself just as I am. Yes, I did shoot at you. Yes, I think I meant to kill you. I must have meant to kill you. That’s the truth. For the second time I’m a murderer. Yet now, as God lives, even if I am down in the dust, I’ll lay hold of my stars. I’m going to walk out of your lives so that they can shape themselves to their own good ends. Sylvie can shape yours with you, Pete.” ”

“ Between the woman, who went on with her work as though no one had come into the room, and the silent smiling youth, Hugh Garth prowled the floor like a shadow thrown by a moving light.
He was a man of forty-five, gray-haired, misshapen, heavy above the waist and light to meanness below; a man lame in one leg and with an ill-proportioned face, malicious, lined, lead-colored; a man who limped and leaped about the room with a fierce energy, the while his tongue, gifted with a rich and resonant voice, poured vitriol upon the silence. ”

“ Pete stood staring after her. A new Bella, this, not the cousin, the little cousin from the farm; not the nurse who had saved him from Hugh’s hardness and told him limping fairy tales and doctored his hurts; not the accepted necessity, but a woman—a woman young, yes, young. In the instant when he had glimpsed her face, broken and quivering, the tight lips parted and the hair disarranged about flushed, quivering cheeks, the eyes deep with widened pupils, she had revealed beauty and passion—the two halves of youth. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ This was one of Hugh’s madnesses; he would take Sylvie up a mountain and show her his kingdom, show her himself as lord of the wilderness. He had been there before many times, to the top of their one mountain, always under protest from Bella and Pete. It was a bare rock exposed to half the world and all the eyes of Heaven; and for a man in hiding, a man who lived, yet whose name was carved above a grave, it was a very target for untoward accident. Some trader or trapper down in the forest might look up and behold the misshapen figure black and bold, against the sky. ”

“ Hugh flinched as though under a lash.
Pete put out his hand uncertainly; his face was drawn with pain. “Sylvie—stop. You must stop. You’re too cruel. He did lie to you, but remember, that was because he—”
The brilliant black eyes flashed back at him.
“Because he loved me, you were going to say? When you love a woman, do you try to ruin her life? Do you creep up in the dark under cover of her blindness and touch her with some dreadful, poisonous wound? You don’t know my horror of that man, Pete. Oh, he kissed—kissed me!” She shivered. “A murderer! Yes, a murderer. ”

“ As if for the first time they saw her eyes, black and brilliant and young, sharpening the softness of her features. She looked at Hugh mercilessly, pitilessly.
“I’ve been able to see you for a long time now, Ham Rutherford,” she said. “And the instant I first saw you, I knew your name. Ever since the night you told me that story about the river, I’ve been watching you. You are a great and infamous liar! Yes, I know that you once killed a man for telling you that. Kill me if you like, for I am going to repeat it after him—a liar, hideous and deformed outside and in. I have no pity for a liar. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And when her brain was sick, it would turn for relief to the noble story of Hugh’s self-sacrifice, only to be balked by a sense of unreality. What the detective had told, briefly and dryly, lived in her mind convincingly; but Hugh’s romance, that had glowed on his tongue, now lay lifeless on her fancy. Back her mind would go to the bookshop, the gibing professor, the heavy paper-cutter.
In the dawn she heard Bella get up with a deep-shaken sigh and go about her preparations for breakfast. But it was noon before the two men left. ”

“ To-night Pete was tired; the load had not been heavy, but the snow was beginning to soften under the mild glowing of an April sun, and his skis had tugged at his feet and gathered a clogging mass. His body ached, and there was a sullen and despairing weight upon his spirit. A mob of rebels danced in his heart. He watched Hugh’s face, saw the flaring adoration of his eyes, thought that Sylvie must feel the scorch of them on her cheek, so close. ”

“ 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 collapse; a dozen times Hugh saved it by a word, or Pete and Bella by a silence. Their parts were not easy, and although Pete still smiled, his young clear face grew whiter and more strained. Sylvie treated him always as though he were a child. She would pat his head and rumple his hair if he sat near her ”

“ But now in all the fervor of this, Sylvie felt, also for the first time, the full bitterness of her blindness. If she could see him—if only once! If she could see him!
And there came to Sylvie unreasonably, disconnectedly, a keen memory of Pete’s embrace when he had caught her up from falling on the hearth. A boy of fourteen? Strange that he should be so strong, that his heart should beat so loud, that his arms should draw themselves so closely, so powerfully about her. ”

“ Hugh groaned. “Ah, but I do—I do! You must stay with me always. Sylvie, somehow we will be married—you—and I!”
“Now it frightens me,” she whispered, “being blind. It does frighten me now. I want so terribly to see your face, your eyes. Oh, you mustn’t marry a blind girl, a waif. You’ve been so noble, you’ve suffered so terribly. You ought to have some wonderful woman who would understand your greatness, would see all that you are.” ”

“ Her lips were tight set; her chin held out with an air of dogged effort which seemed to possess no relation to her mechanical occupation, yet to have a strong habitual relation to her state of mind. She seemed, in fact, under a shell of self-control, to conceal an inner light, like a dimly burning dark-lantern. Her expression was dumb. She moved about like a deaf-mute. Indeed, her stillness and stony self-repression were extraordinary.
A youth rose from a chair near the stove and greeted Hugh as he entered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While the storm raged across their roof, beat a brutal tattoo close above their deafened heads, pushed at the door, drove a pool of water under the threshold, Hugh walked up and down, to and fro, from fire to window, from door to wall, but not fast, rather with a sort of stateliness. Sometimes he looked sidelong at Bella’s expressionless, listening face. At last he forced himself back to the chair and sat there, mechanically polishing the barrel of his gun, but his tongue still spoke the saga of illusion. ”

“ Hugh Garth seemed to leap through paper like a tiny active clown as he dropped down into the small space shoveled clear in front of his hidden cabin door. The roof was weighted with drift, so that a curling mass like the edge of a wind-crowded wave about to break hung low over the eaves. Long icicles as thick as a man’s arm stretched from roof to ground in a row of twisted columns. Under this overhanging cornice of snow near the door there was a sudden icy purple darkness. ”

“ And he thought so! “My love for you is here like a granite block, Sylvie.”
“I know. It is the one thing in the darkness that is real. I know you—your love, splendid and strong and brave. Wait just a little, Hugh. Try to be patient. Suddenly it will all come right. The fog will lift. Then we’ll really be on top of the mountain.” ”

“ Pete looked forward with white-hot impatience to the day of his trip to the trading-station; twelve hours of relief, it would mean, from the worst pressure of his torment—twelve hours of merciful solitude in the old, voiceful friendliness of his forest trail. He started early, at the break of a sweet, singing dawn. The earth was elastic under his feet, the air tingling and mellow with a taste of growth ”

“ I don’t suppose you know how queer and frightening it’s been—this getting lost and being brought here in the dark, and then—living on in the dark, just trusting my instincts, my intuitions, instead of my eyes. Voices tell a lot about people, don’t they?—more than I ever dreamed they could. Pete, there is nothing in that—that splendid, generous thing Hugh did, the thing I am not to talk about, nothing to keep Hugh now from going back to the world—some place—that is, far away from where it happened—and beginning again, is there? ”

“ He looks older than you,” Bella declared harshly. “You sit down and keep quiet; that’s the best you can do; and for God’s sake don’t look so scared. There’s a grave outside to show them, and nobody digs up a six-year-old grave. They won’t find Hugh. Nobody’s ever seen him. Don’t shake so, Sylvie. They may not even be after him; this country has sheltered other outlaws, you know. Hush! I hear them. I’ll be in the kitchen. Pete, be taking off your outdoor clothes. They’ll have seen Hugh’s tracks even if they haven’t seen him, so somebody’s got to have just come in. ”

“ We both love Hugh; we both admire him so. I’d so love to talk to you about him—”
“Then do, Sylvie.”
“I’ve never seen him,” she sighed, “and you can see him all day long, Pete; will you try your best now to describe Hugh to me—every bit of him? Tell me the color of his eyes and the shape of his face and—everything. Tell me all you remember about him always.”
“I—I’m no good at that, Sylvie. A fellow you see all day long—why, you don’t know what he looks like, ‘specially if he’s your own brother.” ”

“ Don’t, for God’s sake, baby him, Bella. Don’t start being a grandmother before you’ve ever been a sweetheart. You’re too young for the one even if you’re getting a bit too old for the other!”
Bella flushed deep and hot. She went to her place, and Pete hobbled to his, opposite his brother. Between them the woman sat, dyed deep in her sudden unaccustomed wave of scarlet. Pete’s whiteness too was stained in sympathy. But Hugh only chuckled. “As for the pelts,” he said royally, “I’ll take them down myself.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ His eyes fell, shifted, could not meet Hugh’s, who watched with unsteady breathing and white lips.
“Your face is as smooth as a girl’s, Pete. What a wide, low forehead and crisp, short hair; it ripples back from your temples. You must be a pretty boy! A neat nose and a round, hard chin and—oh, Pete, Pete! I believe you have a dimple. How absurd! A great, long dimple like a slit in your right cheek. Why do you blink your eyes so? They’re long eyes, with thick, short lashes. ”

“ In pity for her he made to put his arm about her. “Don’t be a goose, Bella,” he said, but she flung his hand from her. “Why does it make you so sore and angry?” he asked wistfully. “Hugh is not pretty to look at, but perhaps Sylvie sees him better than we do—in a way; and if she learns to love him while she’s blind, then, when she sees him, if she ever sees him—”
“Chances are she never will. If her eyes don’t get better soon, they likely never will.” ”

“ It could be seen, in summer, from the living-room window—that mock grave more terrible in its suggestions than a real grave ever could have been. There was also a hiding-place under the boards of the floor. No one had ever seen the grave or driven Hugh into hiding. It was not an inquisitive country, and its desolation was forbidding. Pete had learned to discourage the rare sociability of the other traders.
Now, however, the young man had not only to trade his pelts but to trap them, and for this business of trapping which was distasteful to him, he had not a tithe of Hugh’s skill. ”

“ He—he lives by—illusion—isn’t that the word? It’s kind of easy to be noble when some one you love believes you to be, isn’t it? That’s Hugh; he—”
Bella threw down her rag, turned fiercely upon him and gripped his shoulders.
“Are you a man or a child?” she said. “You love this girl yourself!”
“No!” he cried and broke from her and went limping out into the frosty night with its comfortless glitter of stars.
As soon as his ankle was stronger, Pete spent all day and most of the night on his skis, trying to outrun the growing shadow of his misery. Hugh’s work fell on his shoulders. ”