The Spirit of Sweetwater | Page 4

The whole world had changed for him. It was no longer a
question of ore and amalgams, it was a question of when he should see
again that sad, slender woman with the hopeless smile.
He had now a great fear that she would not be able to come down to
breakfast at all, but as her coming was his only hope of seeing her he
clung to it. Eight o'clock seemed to him to be the latest hour that any
one not absolutely bedridden would think of breakfasting, and at four
minutes past the hour he entered the dining-room.
The negro waiter tried to seat him near the door, but he pushed on
down the hall toward a little group near one of the sunny windows,
which he took to be the sick girl and her father, and so it proved.
His seat at a table next to theirs brought her profile between him and
the window, and the light around her head seemed to glorify her till she
shone like a figure in a church window. She seemed not concerned with
earth. He was more deeply moved than ever before in his life, but he
concealed it--the only sign of emotion was in the tremor of his hands.
He studied the sick girl as closely as he could without seeming to stare.
She was even more lovely than he had thought. His eyes, accustomed
only to rough women, found in her beauty that which was flower-like,
seraphic.
Her face was very thin, and her neck too slender to uphold the heavy
masses of her brown hair. Her hands were only less expressive of
suffering than her face. The father was as bluff and portly and irascible
as she was patient and gentle. He bullied the waiter because he did not
know how else to express his anxiety.
"Waiter, this steak is burned--it's hard as sole leather. Take it back and
bring me----"
"Please don't, father; the trouble is with me. I have no desire for food."

She smiled at the waiter so sweetly that he nodded as if to say, "I don't
mind him, miss."
The father turned his attention to the country.
"Yes, there is another fraud. I was told it would help your appetite, and
here you are with less than when you left Hot Springs. If I'd had my
way----"
She laid a hand on his arm, and when he turned toward her his eyes
were dim with tears. He blew his nose and coughed, and looked away
after the manner of men, and suffered in silence.
Once she turned and looked at Clement, and her eyes had a mystical,
impersonal look, as though she saw him afar off, not as an individual
but as a type of some admirable elemental creature. He could not
fathom her attitude toward him, but he thought he saw in her every
action the expression of a soul that had relinquished its hold on things
of the earth. Her desire to live was no longer personal. She did all that
she did for her father and her friends wholly to please them.
The desire to aid her came upon Clement again--so powerful it carried
with it an unwavering belief that he could help her.
What was his newly-acquired wealth good for if he could not aid her?
Wealth? Yes--his blood! He looked at his great brown hand and at his
big veins full of blood. Why should she die when he had so much life?
Meanwhile his common sense had not entirely fled him. He perceived
that they were not poor, and he reflected that they had probably tried all
climates and all the resources of medical science; also that the father
had quite as much red blood in his veins as any other man; and these
considerations gave him thought as he watched them rise and go out
upon the little veranda.
Clement was not a markedly humble person under ordinary conditions.
He had a fashion of pushing rather heedlessly straight to his
purpose--which now was to speak to her, to meet her face to face, to

touch her hand and to offer his aid. Naturally he sought the father's
acquaintance first. This was not difficult, for the waiters in the
dining-room had been pointing him out to the guests as "Mr. Clement,
the meyonaire minah." The newspaper correspondents had made his
name a familiar one to the whole United States as "one of the sudden
multi-millionaires of Gold Creek."
The porter had "passed the word" to the head waiter, and the head
waiter had whispered it to one or two others. It was almost as exciting
as having a Presidential candidate enter the room. Clement was too new
in his riches, however, to realize the extent of all this