As I said, her nose was sensitive and proud. There might have once been scorn in the curve of her nostril. Not now. Sorrow and pity had educated away the scorn, as they had the tones of challenge from her voice. Firmness, self-respect, latent indignation, remained untouched. A strong woman, whose power was intense and passionate. Calm, till the time came, and then flame. Beware of arousing her! Not that there was revenge in her face. No; no stab or poison there. But she was a woman to die by an act of will, rather than be wronged. She was one who could hold an insulter by a steady look, while she grew paler, paler, purer, purer, with a more unearthly pureness, until she had crushed the boiling blood back into her heart, and stood before the wretch white and chill as a statue, marble-dead.
What a woman to meet in a Mormon caravan! And yet how able to endure whatever a dastard Fate might send to crush her there!
Her hair was caught back, and severely chided out of its wish to rebel and be as beautiful as it knew was its desert. It was tendril hair, black enough to show blackness against Fulano’s shoulder. Chide her locks as she might, they still insisted upon flinging out here and there a slender curling token of their gracefulness, to prove what it might be if she would but let them have their sweet and wilful will.
Her eyes were gray, with violet touches. Her eyebrows defined and square. If she had had passionate or pleading dark eyes,—the eyes that hardly repress their tears for sorrow or for joy,—and the temperament that such eyes reveal, she would long ago have fevered or wept herself to death. No woman could have looked at the disgusts of that life of hers through tears, and lived. The gray eyes meant steadiness, patience, hope without flinching, and power to master fate, or if not to master, to defy.
She was somewhat pale, thin, and sallow. Plodding wearily and drearily over those dusty wastes toward exile could not make her a merry Nut-Brown Maid. Only her thin, red lips proved that there were still blushes lurking out of sight.
A mature woman; beyond girlhood, body and soul. With all her grave demeanor, she could not keep down the wiles of gracefulness that ever bubbled to the surface. If she could but be her happy self, what a fair world she would suddenly create about her!
She was dressed in rough gray cloth, as any lady might be for a journey. She was evidently one whose resolute neatness repels travel-stains. After the tawdry, draggled silks of the young women we had just seen, her simplicity was charmingly fresh. Could she and they be of the same race of beings? They were apart as far as coarse from fine, as silvern from brazen. To see her here among this horde was a horror in itself. No horror the less, that she could not blind herself to her position and her fate. She could not fail to see what a bane was beauty here. That she had done so was evident. She had essayed by severe plainness of dress to erase the lady from her appearance. A very idle attempt! There she was, do what she would, her beauty triumphing over all the wrong she did to it for duty’s sake.
All these observations I made with one glance. Description seems idle when one remembers how eyes can see at a flash what it took æons to prepare for and a lifetime to form.
Brent and I exchanged looks. This was the result of our fanciful presentiments. Here was visible the woman we had been dreading to find. It still seemed an impossible vision. I almost believed that the old gentleman’s blanket would rise with him and his daughter, like the carpet of Fortunatus, and transport them suddenly away, leaving us beside a Mormon wagon in Sizzum’s camp and in the presence of a frowzy family cooking a supper of pork.
I looked again and again. It was all real. There was the neat, comfortable wagon; there was the feeble, timid old gentleman, pottering about; there was this beautiful girl, busy with her tea, and smiling tenderly over her father.