Snow-Blind

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

Under a noon sun the vast, flat country, buried deep in snow, lay like a paper hoop rimmed by the dark primeval forest; its surface shone with an unbearable brightness as of sun-struck glass, every crystal gleaming and quivering with intense cold light. To the north a single blunt, low mountain-head broke the evenness of the horizon line.

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.

As Hugh plunged down into it, his face lost a certain rapt brightness and shadowed deeply. He let slip the load of fresh pelts from his back, drew his feet from the skis which he stuck up on their ends in the snow, and removed the fur cap from his head and the huge dark spectacles from his eyes. Then, crouching, he went in at the low, ill-hung door. It stuck to its sill, and he cursed it; all his movements expressed the anger of frustration. He slammed the door behind him.

Buried in drifts, the cabin was dim even at this bright hour of noon. The stove glowed in a corner with a subdued redness, its bulging cheeks and round mouth dully scarlet. The low room was pleasant to look at, for it had the beauty of brown bark and the salmon tints of old rough boards, and its furniture, wrought painstakingly by an unskillful hand, had the charm of all handwork even when unskilled. Some of the chairs were rudely carved, one great throne especially, awkward, pretentious, and carefully ornate.

There was, too, a solid table in the center of the floor; and on it a woman was setting heavy earthenware plates nicked and discolored. She was heavy and discolored herself, but like the stove, she too seemed to have a dull glow. She was no longer young, but she might still have encouraged her youthfulness to linger pleasantly; she was not in the least degree beautiful, but she might have fostered a charm that lurked somewhere about her small, compact body and in her square, dark face. Her hair of a sandy brown was stretched back brutally so that her bright, devoted eyes—gray and honest eyes, very deep-set beneath their brows—lacked the usual softness and mystery of women's eyes. 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....