The Finding of Jasper Holt by Grace Livingston Hill

Every moment, and leaving behind the friendly faces on the platform.

The girl who had just entered the car looked about her in dismay at the rough looking crowd by whom she was surrounded. It was the last long stretch of her journey now, out on the plains and across the desert, and the porter of the sleeper had refused to let her enter the Pullman coach without a Pullman ticket. Of course it would be all right when the conductor came, but -- suppose her brother-in-law had forgotten to telegraph for the reservation and she should have to spend the night in this car?

She slipped into the only vacant seat and sat anxiously awaiting the coming of the conductor, who was not anywhere in sight.

For the most part the people about her were rough, stolid looking men, with hard brown faces. Here and there a woman was huddled wearily into a corner of the seat trying to sleep. They were commonplace folk, nearly all of them, and their very ordinariness brought her some measure of assurance, yet she shuddered at the thought of spending her night huddled into a seat, like the other women, with all those men about, free to gaze on her as she slept.

She glanced across the aisle where the seat was turned over and two men faced each other, an old man and a young one. The old man sat just across from her, his coarse stubbly face turned boldly toward her. He had crafty little eyes that intruded with their merest glance, windows out of which Coarseness, Hate, Cruelty and Fear alike might look; a sensual loose-hung mouth, and a whole repulsive atmosphere of cunning that made his face seem utterly evil. Insensibly she shrank farther away and looked hurriedly about to see if perchance there might not after all be another vacant seat where she could be entirely out of his range. Then her eyes suddenly met the eyes of his companion who faced her, the young man in the turned-over seat, and she wondered how she could have failed to notice him at once. There was something about his face -- perhaps it was the splendid gray eyes that were looking at her so keenly and respectfully, or was it the firm chin and almost stern set of the beautiful lines of lip and brow -- that gave her confidence in him at once. For there was a strength and beauty in his face such as one seldom sees blended in a man, which marked him at once as being different from others. There was nothing weak nor womanish about him, in spite of the perfect modelling of his features and the clear coloring of his skin. The fine golden-brown hair that rippled back from his forehead like a halo gave the impression of curling out of perverseness rather than from the owner's wish.

He was tall and lean and wiry, yet giving the idea of great strength and fine training. If it had not been for an abnormal gravity and the sternness about his mouth she would have judged him to be a mere boy, yet there was an air of maturity about him that puzzled her. But his gray eyes met hers kindly, understandingly, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking -- all her anxiety -- and would let her know that she was safe, that he would see that she was safe! It was with an almost startled feeling that she met his eyes a second time as if to be sure she had not been mistaken, and then settled back into her seat, somehow comforted, assured; as if he had spoken to her and told her not to fear. It was really as if something had looked out of their two souls and acknowledged a sort of mute introduction. And yet he had not been obtrusive, and almost immediately his eyes had been withdrawn from her face as if he would not intrude. He was looking now at the dreadful old man, rebuking him for his interest in her it would seem, rebuking most effectually yet without a word, for the old man wriggled around uneasily in his seat and turned his eyes away to look out of the window, the hate in his face getting the uppermost as he cast a furtive, fearsome glance at the younger man and then turned back to the window.

They were a curious pair; the younger man had the air of being the keeper of the older one. The girl wondered how they came to be travelling together, they seemed so absolutely alien to each other. It was obvious that the young man had some power over the other, and this fact gave the girl comfort.

To these two men the entrance of the lovely girl into the monotony of the journey was a refreshment. Even the old man, Scathlin, whose low type of life received only fleshly impressions, and who had grown up from his tainted babyhood without honor for any woman, felt the fineness of her nature, the rareness of her modest beauty as she came near.

To Jasper Holt she was the sudden startling revelation of some pure dream of his childhood, the reality of which he had come to doubt. His knowledge of the world told him that probably she was frail and human and selfish like all the rest if one came to know her, but for the sake of what she seemed to be he was glad of the vision, and would protect her at all costs because she was a woman and ought to have been perfect. That was his attitude toward the world of women at that time.

Nevertheless as he looked again at the pure profile turned now toward her window, and studied the sweet outline of the firm little chin, pleasant lips, the gentle contour of cheek and lash and brow, the luminous eyes that were glowing for the moment at the stain of sunset beginning to trickle through the gloomy gray of the sky, he could not but feel that here was something different. It was something for which he had been hoping all his life -- searching for, but never finding. Something it was good just to know existed; something whose existence would make even a stranger better and braver and purer.