To a man of cities there would have been nothing particularly unusual in this sight of a well-groomed man and girl in the tonneau of an automobile. The man was a familiar type, of medium size, precise, his outing clothes just a trifle garish; the girl trim and sweet-faced, and stylish from the top of her head to the soles of her expensive little boots. But no moment of Bill's life had ever been fraught with a greater wonder. None had ever such a quality of the miraculous. None had ever gone so deep.
He had not known many women, this dark man of the forests. He had seen Indian squaws in plenty, stolid and fat, he had known a few of the wives of the Bradleyburg men,—women pretty enough, good housekeepers, neatly clad and perhaps a little saddened and crushed by the very remorselessness of this land in which they lived. But there had been no girls in Bradleyburg to grow up with, no schoolday sweethearts. He had known the dark and desolate forests, never a sweetheart's kiss. His mother was now but a memory: tenderness, loveliness, personal beauty to hold the eyes had been wholly without his bourne. And he gazed at Virginia Tremont as a man might look at a celestial light.
If the girl could have seen the swift flood of worship that flowed into his face, she would have felt no scorn. She was of the cities, caste had hardened her as far as it could harden one of her nature, she was a thoroughbred to the last inch, used to flattery and the attentions of men of her own class; yet she would have held no contempt for this tall, bronzed man that looked at her with such awe and wonder. The surge of feeling was real in him; and reality is one thing, over the broad earth, that no human being dares to scorn. If she could have read deeper she would have found in herself an unlooked-for answer, in a small measure at least, to a lifelong dream, an ideal come true, and even she—in her high place—would have known a little whisper of awe.
All his life, it seemed to him, Bill had dreamed dreams—dreams that he would not admit into his conscious thought and which he constantly tried to disavow because he considered their substance did not exist in reality and thus they were out of accord with the realism with which he regarded life. On the long winter nights, when the snow lay endless and deep over the wilderness, and the terrible cold locked the land tight, he would sit in his trapping cabins, gazing into the smoke clouds from his pipe, and a tender enchantment would steal over him. He would have admitted to no human being those wistful and beautiful hours that he spent alone. He was known as a man among men, one who could battle the snows and meet the grizzly in his lair, and he would have been ashamed to reveal this dreamy, romantic side of his nature, these longings that swept him to the depths. He would go to his bed and lie for long, tingling, wakeful hours stirred by dreams that through no earthly chance could he conceive as coming true. Arms about him, lips near, beauty and tenderness and hallowed wakenings,—he had imagined them all in his secret hours.
In the deep realms of his spirit, it seemed to him, he had always known this girl,—this straight, graceful, lovely being with eyes of an angel and smile of a happy child. He had denied her existence, and here she was before him. Dark hair, waving and just a little untidy in the brisk wind, oval face and determined little chin, shadowing lashes and the exquisite contrasts of brunette beauty, a glimpse of soft, white flesh at the throat through her dark furs, smart tailored suit and dainty hands,—they were all known to him of old. For all the indifference and distance with which she looked at him and at the other townspeople, there was a world of girlish sweetness in her face. For all her caste, there was spiritual beauty and gracious charm in every facial line.
Curiously, Bill had no tinge of the resentment he might have expected that his dream should come half-true only to be shattered like the bubble it was. Because he had no delusions. He knew that he was only an employee, that a girl of her caste would ever regard him as the great regard those that serve them—kindly but impersonally—but for now he asked for nothing more. To him she was a creature past belief, a being from another world, and he was content to serve her humbly. He knew that he was of the forest and she of the cities of men, and soon they would take separate trails. His only comfort, heretofore, had been that his dream could not possibly come true, that the stuff of which it was made could never exist in the barren, dreadful, accursed place that was his home; but his nature was too big and true for any bitterness—to hate her because she was of a sphere so infinitely apart from his. But he wouldn't give her his love, he told himself, only his adoration. He wasn't going to be foolish enough to fall in love with a star! Yet he was swept with joy, for did not a whole month intervene before she would go back to her kind? Would she not be in his own keeping for a while, before she left him to his forests and his snows? Could he not see her across the fire, exult in her beauty, even aid her in finding her lost lover? His eye kindled and his face flushed, and he leaped to help her from the tonneau.
"I suppose you are Mr. Bronson?" she asked.
It was the same friendly but impersonal tone that he had expected, but he felt no resentment. His spirits had rallied promptly; and he was already partly adjusted to the fact that his joy in the journey would consist of the mere, unembellished fact of her presence.
"Yes. Of course this is Miss Tremont and Mr. Lounsbury. And just as soon as I pack the horses we'll be ready to start."
"I don't see why you haven't got 'em already packed," Lounsburg broke in. "If I ran my business in this shiftless way——"