Bella brought the soup, and Hugh, raising the small black head on the crook of his arm, forced a spoonful between the clenched teeth. The girl swallowed and began again to whimper: “Oh, my eyes! My eyes! They hurt me so!” She turned her face against Hugh’s chest and clung to him.
“They’ll be better soon,” he soothed her; then fiercely to Bella: “Can’t we do something? Don’t you know what to do?”
Again Bella went to the kitchen, moving like an automaton. Hugh coaxed and murmured, feeding the girl in spite of her pain. He managed to force a little of the soup down her throat, and a faint stain of color came back to her lips and cheeks. Bella presently reappeared with salve and lotion, and Hugh helped her hold the swollen lids apart, his big hands very skillful, while she gently washed out the eyes. Then they put the salve on her sun-scorched face. She sighed as though in some relief, and again snuggled against Hugh.
“Don’t go away, please,” she pleaded in a sweet trickle of voice. “I’m scared to feel you gone. You’re so warm. You’re so strong. Will you talk to me again, please? Your voice is so comforting, so beau-ti-ful.”
So Hugh talked. The others drew away and watched and listened. They did not look at each other. 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. Go to sleep.”
Pete’s blue eyes dwelt on this amazing spectacle with curious wonder. This was a Hugh he had never seen before. For the first time in fifteen years, he realized, the man had forgotten himself.
CHAPTER IV
To Hugh Garth the girl told her story at last. She seemed to realize only dimly that there were two other living beings in this house, to her a house of darkness peopled only by voices—Pete’s modest, rare boy speeches, Bella’s brief, smothered statements. The great music of Hugh’s utterance must indeed have filled her narrowed world. So it was to him she turned—he was always near her, sitting on the pelt beside the chair to which, after a day and night in Bella’s bed, she was helped.