“How wonderful and glorious are your works, O my Father.” And at such times she would gaze upon him with awe as feeling that he was in a very special sense favoured by the Most High.
Then when the train flew along some swaying cobweb-like trestle bridge with the mist beneath hiding the awful depths and a suggestion of impalpability, of travelling upon the track of a moonbeam, was impossible to avoid, she would cling to him in real terror, feeling, as all sensitive intelligences must in those situations, how tenuous a thread separated them from the next world. But she always failed to see any change in the steady gaze of his eye, or to feel any tremor in his firmly knit muscles, not even when they swung out around some tremendous curve on the scarp of a mountain and the struts beneath them sprung and complained at their weight.
At last she felt a little piqued; it seemed so strange that this entirely inexperienced man could be so free from any apprehension while she who had seen it all so often before trembled to her heart’s core. Was it insensibility or inability to grasp the wonderful facts, or was it superiority of mind to all things happening upon earth because of intimacy with the Creator of all things? And so she asked him why he seemed so unimpressed with all these marvels that all other people held in such awe and reverence; did he not really think them very wonderful and inspiring? And he, turning his deep eyes from her, answered—
“My dear young lady, it is all very wonderful, but when I look up at the stars and the sun, or out upon the sea, I feel more impressed at these glorious works of my Father. And I feel very small but very happy; I think that He who does all these things by the word of His Power condescends to notice me, to assure me that I am precious in His sight. I am not unconscious or dense really—I do admire and wonder, but I cannot for one moment forget the Glory of God which is to this amazing show as the substance is to the shadow. I feel much more than this, but I cannot say, I only love and worship.”
Alas for Miss Stewart’s happiness, she had grown to love this simple stalwart man with an intensity that frightened her, as she had felt that she was absolutely proof against any feeling of the kind. To all her openness and kindness he responded respectfully yet almost as her equal, but though the invitation to do so was almost palpable he never overstepped an invisible line drawn between them. Old man Stewart was indeed wise when he decided that this was a man to be trusted to the limit.
And so the great car sped on through freezing cold and scorching heat, parched up desert and glowing prairie, until it drew near to the young giant of the West, Chicago, that centre of the marvels of the United States, humming with evil, fragrant with good, but in any case fully, luxuriantly alive.
CHAPTER XVIII A Hero in Spite of Himself
It must not be supposed that in all these long conversations with Miss Stewart, while her father told stories turn about with the contented Captain Taber, C. B. ever forgot his friend for one moment. The memory of Merritt had faded almost entirely, or only came now and then with a little pang of contrition that such devoted love as he had been shown by that strange man had been so little requited. Had he been given to reasoning these things out he would have known that the secret of his love for Captain Taber was that he had been able to give himself up entirely to his service, for it will ever be found that the deepest love is that which gives itself to the beloved object. True love is self-sacrificing, not passively recipient, and so even in this beautiful journey, surrounded by all luxury and associated with so charming a personality as that of Miss Stewart, C. B. never for one instant wavered in his deep affection for his charge.