She had a charming fashion of speech, rather slow motions of her lips, which had some difficulty with “r” and “s,” a difficulty which she evidently struggled against conscientiously, and as she talked, she gesticulated with her slim little hands. She was a touching thing sitting there in Hugh’s carved throne—he an abdicated monarch at her feet, knee in hand, grizzled head tilted back, hazel eyes raised to her and filled with adoration.
“I am called Sylvie Doone,” she said with that quaint struggle over the “S.” “I was always miserable at home.” She gave the quick sigh of a child. “You see, my father died when I was very little, and then my mother married again. We lived in the grimmest little town, hardly more than a dozen houses, beside a stream, up in Massachusetts—farming country, but poor farming, hard farming, the kind that twists the men with rheumatism, and makes the women all pinched and worn. Mother was like that. She died when I was thirteen. You see—there I was, so queerly fixed. I had to live with Mr. Pynche—there was no other home for me anywhere. And he kind of resented it. He had enough money not to need me for work—a sister of his did the housework better than I could—and yet he was poor enough to hate having to feed me and pay for my clothes. I was always feeling in the way, and a burden. There was nothing I could do.
“Then I saw something about the movies in a magazine, and pictures of girls, not much better-looking than me, making lots of money. I borrowed some money from a drug-store clerk who wanted to keep company with me—I’ve paid it back—and I went to New York. I did get a job. But I’m not a good actress.”
She faltered over the rest—a commonplace story of engagements, of failures, until she found herself touring the West with a wretched theatrical troupe. “We were booked for a little town off there beyond your woods, and the train was stalled in a snowstorm. We got on a stage-coach, but it got stuck in a drift on one of those dreadful roads. I was freezing cold, and I thought I’d make a short cut through the woods. The road was running along the edge of a big forest of pines. I cut off while they were all working to dig out the horses.
“Mr. Snaring said, ‘Look out for the bears!’ and I laughed and ran up what looked like a snow-buried trail. There was a hard crust. The woods were all glittering and so beautiful. I ran into them, laughing. I was so glad to get away by myself from those people into the woods where it was so silent and sort of solemn—like being in a church again. I can’t think how I got so lost. I meant to come round back to the road, but before I knew it, I didn’t know which way the road was. The pines were so dense, so all alike, they looked almost as if they kept sort of shifting about me. I tried to follow back on my footprints, but in some places snow had shaken down from the branches. And there were so many—so dreadfully many other tracks—of animals—” She put her hands over her face and shrank down in her chair.
“Forget about them, Sylvie,” Hugh admonished gently. “Even if there had been bears about, they wouldn’t likely have bothered you any.”
“I can’t bring myself to tell you about that time—I can’t!”
“Don’t, then—only, how did you live through the night, my dear?”
“I don’t know—except that I never stayed still. I got out from the trees because I was afraid of bears, and I lost my hat. The sun was like fire shining up from underneath and down from up above. My eyes began to hurt almost at once, and by the time night came, it was agony. The darkness didn’t seem to help me any either; the glare still seemed to come in under my lids. I couldn’t sleep for the pain. I knew I’d freeze if I stood still, so I kept moving all night, trampling round in circles, I suppose. Next morning the terrible glare began again. Then everything went red. I was nearly crazy when you found me, Mr. Garth.”
“Please call me Hugh,” he murmured, taking her hand in his. “I feel in a way that you belong to me now—I saved you from dying alone there in the cold and brought you back to my home. I’ve got jettison rights, Sylvie.” She let him hold her hand, and flushed.