He sat up to begin his story, pressing tobacco into his pipe. “Oh, it’s not so much of a story, Sylvie. It was last spring when the river was high and I’d been out with my traps. I was coming home along the river edge, pretty tired, a big load on my back. I came around a bend of the river, and not far below me a little black bear, round as a barrel, was trying to scramble over the flood on a very shaky log. The mother was on the other side, but I didn’t know that then. Well, there’s nothing in God’s world, Sylvie, so beguiling as a baby bear. This little fellow was scared by what he was doing, but he was bound he’d get across the river. He’d make a few steps; then he’d back up and half rise on his hind legs. I watched him a long time. Then he made up his mind he’d better make a dash for it. He began scrambling like a frantic kitten, and it was just in the most ticklish spot that he heard me and jumped and went rolling off into the river. I tell you, my heart came right up into my mouth.”
“Oh, was he drowned?” wailed Sylvie.
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. Bella was listening with her lowered eyes and tightened lips. She was interested in spite of herself; and Pete’s inscrutable face followed the story with absorption.
“Well, in he rolled with a splash and went rattling down the current, turning over and over. Like a fool, I threw away my hides, ran down the bank and jumped in after him—that is, I meant to hold on to a branch and stand out in the water and catch him as he went by. But the nymph I told you about had her own plans. She wrapped her arms round me, and away we went, bear all. Oh, yes, I’d caught the cub all right, and he was about half drowned by that time—no fight left in him.
“Well, for a bit it was a question whether the world wouldn’t be quickly and well rid of us both, but we tumbled up against a root and scrambled out, and when I’d rested, I picked up limp and trembling Master Bear and went back for my hides. And while I was collecting them, I heard a sort of grumpy, grumbling sound, and I looked up—and, by Jove, Mother Bear was coming across that log with the longest steps you ever saw. That’s when I ran to collect my gun—it was a little farther up the bank than my hides, worse luck!”
Even Bella had forgotten her bitterness in listening, and Pete’s parted lips were those of an excited child. Sylvie leaned forward in her chair, her cheeks tingling, her hands locked. Hugh had thrown himself into the action of his story; his face was slightly contorted as though sighting along a gun-barrel, his arm raised, the ungainliness of his deformity strongly accentuated. He was not looking at Sylvie; true to his nature and his habit, he had forgotten every one but that Hugh of adventure and of romance, the one companion of his soul. None of them was watching Sylvie, and when she gave a sharp, little cry, a queer start and then sat utterly still, Hugh accepted it—they all accepted it—as a tribute to his story-telling powers.
But Sylvie, leaning her elbows on her knees, raised trembling hands to her eyes and hid them. She sat very still, very white, while the story went on, vividly imagined, picturesquely told. When it was over, and the mother bear, after a worthy struggle, defeated, Hugh looked about for his applause. It came, grudgingly from Bella, eagerly from Pete—and from Sylvie in a sudden extravagant clapping of hands, a ripple of high, excited laughter, and a collapse in her chair. She had fainted in a limp little heap.
She came to in an instant, but seemed bewildered and, unprotesting, permitted herself to be carried to bed. She declared she felt quite well again and wanted only to be alone. She repeated this moaningly. “Oh, to be alone!”
Hugh seated himself on the end of the bed and kissed her forehead and her hand, but it quivered under his lips and was drawn away.
He came back into the living-room with a pale, bewildered face.