Reality or vision, he had caught a glimpse of something so entirely different from anything his imagination or experience had ever suggested to him, that at first he could do no more than permit passively its influences to adjust themselves to his being.
Curiosity, speculation, longing,--all the more active emotions remained in abeyance while outwardly, for three days, Harry Thorpe occupied himself only with the needs of the Fighting Forty at Camp One.
In the early morning he went out with the gang.While they chopped or heaved, he stood by serene.Little questions of expediency he solved.Dilemmas he discussed leisurely with Tim Shearer.
Occasionally he lent a shoulder when the peaveys lacked of prying a stubborn log from its bed.Not once did he glance at the nooning sun.His patience was quiet and sure.When evening came he smoked placidly outside the office, listening to the conversation and laughter of the men, caressing one of the beagles, while the rest slumbered about his feet, watching dreamily the night shadows and the bats.At about nine o'clock he went to bed, and slept soundly.
He was vaguely conscious of a great peace within him, a great stillness of the spirit, against which the metallic events of his craft clicked sharply in vivid relief.It was the peace and stillness of a river before it leaps.
Little by little the condition changed.The man felt vague stirrings of curiosity.He speculated aimlessly as to whether or not the glade, the moonlight, the girl, had been real or merely the figments of imagination.Almost immediately the answer leaped at him from his heart.Since she was so certainly flesh and blood, whence did she come? what was she doing there in the wilderness? His mind pushed the query aside as unimportant, rushing eagerly to the essential point: When could he see her again? How find for the second time the vision before which his heart felt the instant need of prostrating itself.His placidity had gone.That morning he made some vague excuse to Shearer and set out blindly down the river.
He did not know where he was going, any more than did the bull moose plunging through the trackless wilderness to his mate.Instinct, the instinct of all wild natural creatures, led him.And so, without thought, without clear intention even,--most would say by accident,--he saw her again.It was near the "pole trail"; which was less like a trail than a rail-fence.
For when the snows are deep and snowshoes not the property of every man who cares to journey, the old-fashioned "pole trail" comes into use.It is merely a series of horses built of timber across which thick Norway logs are laid, about four feet from the ground, to form a continuous pathway.A man must be a tight-rope walker to stick to the pole trail when ice and snow have sheathed its logs.
If he makes a misstep, he is precipitated ludicrously into feathery depths through which he must flounder to the nearest timber horse before he can remount.In summer, as has been said, it resembles nothing so much as a thick one-rail fence of considerable height, around which a fringe of light brush has grown.
Thorpe reached the fringe of bushes, and was about to dodge under the fence, when he saw her.So he stopped short, concealed by the leaves and the timber horse.
She stood on a knoll in the middle of a grove of monster pines.
There was something of the cathedral in the spot.A hush dwelt in the dusk, the long columns lifted grandly to the Roman arches of the frond, faint murmurings stole here and there like whispering acolytes.The girl stood tall and straight among the tall, straight pines like a figure on an ancient tapestry.She was doing nothing--just standing there--but the awe of the forest was in her wide, clear eyes.
The great sweet feeling clutched the young man's throat again.But while the other,--the vision of the frost-work glade and the spirit-like figure of silence,--had been unreal and phantasmagoric, this was of the earth.He looked, and looked, and looked again.He saw the full pure curve of her cheek's contour, neither oval nor round, but like the outline of a certain kind of plum.He appreciated the half-pathetic downward droop of the corners of her mouth,--her red mouth in dazzling, bewitching contrast to the milk-whiteness of her skin.
He caught the fineness of her nose, straight as a Grecian's, but with some faint suggestion about the nostrils that hinted at piquance.
And the waving corn silk of her altogether charming and unruly hair, the superb column of her long neck on which her little head poised proudly like a flower, her supple body, whose curves had the long undulating grace of the current in a swift river, her slender white hand with the pointed fingers--all these he saw one after the other, and his soul shouted within him at the sight.He wrestled with the emotions that choked him."Ah, God! Ah, God!" he cried softly to himself like one in pain.He, the man of iron frame, of iron nerve, hardened by a hundred emergencies, trembled in every muscle before a straight, slender girl, clad all in brown, standing alone in the middle of the ancient forest.
In a moment she stirred slightly, and turned.Drawing herself to her full height, she extended her hands over her head palm outward, and, with an indescribably graceful gesture, half mockingly bowed a ceremonious adieu to the solemn trees.Then with a little laugh she moved away in the direction of the river.
