THE UNKNOWN PASSENGER
For a long time we rode on in silence, Uncle Job sitting back in the corner of the stage, busy with the sad thoughts that darkened his fine face. Perhaps he might have spoken some word had we been alone, but there was another passenger, in the person of a tall gentleman with melancholy visage, who sat beside him wrapped in a great military cloak, as the fashion was at that time. Whether he came from Little Sandy or beyond I did not know, for we found him thus and asleep when we got into the stage. Nor did he arouse himself till the sun was well up and the air full of warmth and the perfume of the prairie. Then he stirred uneasily, and finally, after a prodigious yawn that cracked his jaws and caused his face to open up cavernous depths one would not have thought possible in any man, he opened his eyes and looked about. Amid such struggles, I idly speculated, man must first have awakened to life; and pleased at the conceit, I stared at him the harder, looking point-blank into his worn face as if some secret lay hidden there, though I knew that only impertinence prompted my rude behavior.
Of all situations in life there is no such place in the world for studying mankind or spying out their secrets as the old-fashioned stagecoach. Of escape to the modest and shrinking there is none, and of concealment not so much as a wink. Here all alike yield up their treasures, however loth. A gimlet could not more surely penetrate the heart than the cold, unfriendly eyes that peer into yours scarce a yard away. Old people of discretion and some pretense of manners may put a limit to their curiosity, but the young none whatever. Thus I sat watching our fellow-traveler, noting the processes of his awakening, and wondering what kind of a man he would turn out to be—merchant, or preacher, or boor, or all in one. For youth is ever thus inquisitive, and more often than otherwise at the expense of good manners, as in my case; but it is upon such small things, it may be said in excuse, that the mind is constructed and some knowledge of men and affairs finally attained.
When the gentleman at last awoke, he after a while took notice of my fixed attention, but not unkindly. Stroking the beard that covered his lower face, and seeing only an inquisitive youth, he opened his eyes to the full and smiled down on me with kind benignancy. This smile so instantly transformed the man, brightening his face and lighting up the depths of his eyes, that I stirred uneasily, as if by some imperceptible movement he had taken the place of the one I had been watching: and this was true; for when the smile died away, the other man—and it was another man—with the worn face and inscrutable eyes straightway reappeared. This other man, homely in looks, neither invited nor repelled confidence, but his face had about it something I had never seen before and shall never see again. Youthful, it had an air of immeasurable age and sphinx-like silence and mystery, the face of a man still young, but without mirth or hopefulness. Of its melancholy there was no fathoming the depth or cause. Worn and seamed, shadows filled its cavities and lingered about its shrunken surfaces, giving it an air of weariness one never sees except in the faces of those who have suffered much. Its expression was as of a man who looked at you from out his grave, but not forbiddingly. Rather as if seeing nothing in the surroundings he craved, or that could by any possibility satisfy his longings. Such, too, was the man as I afterward came to know him, and as all the world finally knew him. For through the cracked and shrunken surfaces of his face a great soul looked out, but a face wherein expectation was lost in disappointment and dreary waiting. Seen in the shadows of the stage, its angularities and deep-sunken eyes saddened the beholder as might the wailing of the wind on an autumn day; and this, it was apparent, would ever form its fixed expression, no matter what fortune might come to brighten the life of its possessor.
His hands, great like his body, lay limp before him, and in their huge proportions bore evidence of the usage such hands are put to in a new country when poverty leads the way. Observing them, my eyes again sought his face to determine, if I might, what manner of man he was, but to this scrutiny his eyes returned no answer. They were, as I have said, as if belonging to a dead man, or one feigning to be dead, yet having in their hidden depths a spark of life that might need only occasion to cause them to burn with indignation or warm with love. Above the veiled face that might hide an emperor's front or only plodding vacuity there rose a towering head, disfigured but not hidden by the hair that clung about it, as if filled with tears or winter's rain. Seeing, and not seeing, I sat, absorbed and staring, yet not forgetting his greeting and the sudden change that followed. Surely a man must be something out of the common, I idly reasoned, to have one moment the mien of a god and the next to shrink to nothing. Such change, I dimly saw, as it is sometimes given the young to see, could not be natural, but had its origin in some misery of life that led its possessor to seek rest and opportunity in evasion, or else had changed the man from what he was at first. Every part of this singular being corresponded to his face, so that no loophole was left by which to come at his real presence. Thus balked, my mind filled with romantic imaginings concerning him as he had stood revealed by his benign salutation, and I saw—though only as a youth might see such things and ponder them—that the face was one that in its processes could at will still the minds of men or cause them to follow its possessor, if profit in trade or other motive called forth its hidden power; a face that at the fireside or in the turmoil of politics, if its owner were that way inclined, would win and retain the love of those about him; a face so hidden or so open in its candor that no one would think otherwise than that its every thought stood revealed. A noble face, and without wrong, but concealing in its depths, as I afterward came to know, ambitions so boundless and hopes so great that the means necessary to attain their ends in this undeveloped country appeared so commonplace and vulgar that every instinct of the man's aspiring soul revolted at the disgusting sacrifice. Such, truly, was the inward nature of the then unknown man who sat silently facing me as we went forward in the warmth of that far-off day. Not all that I have said, indeed, came to me as I sat staring, but something akin to it, afterward to find more mature expression as I grew to man's estate.
While thus watching and dreaming, I became conscious, in turn, of his fixed attention. Not, indeed, as if he saw me, but as if studying some natural object, as if wondering within himself whether the thing he looked at was of vegetable or animal growth—a cabbage, perhaps, or a man just sprouting. Observing his look, I dropped my eyes and turned away, and seeing this, he relaxed his gaze, and reaching forward laid his great hand on mine, saying:
"Well, my young friend, why do you turn away? Never did I see a look more steadfast or prolonged."
"I hope you'll excuse me, sir," I answered, ashamed and blushing.
"There is nothing to excuse; but did my face interest you because it is homely, or was there something else you saw there besides plainness? Come, tell me! First, though, let us be friends"; and clasping my hands in his, the God-like smile again lighted up his face, driving the dark shadows before it as the summer wind drives the black clouds across a lowering sky. "If I had a son, I should like him to be something like you in complexion and build; so come now, tell me of what you were thinking."
His voice—and this I noticed—seemed not to have any beginning or ending, but fell on the morning air like a chime of bells heard afar off through the silent woods, so sweet and soft it was. Nor could I feel embarrassment in his presence once he had spoken, but rather as if contact with him had in some way made me more worthy of regard. Because of this I responded freely enough to what he said, answering: