The Spirit of Sweetwater | Page 2

be hopelessly outside all this youth and brilliancy and merriment, and he looked upon it all with a certain wistfulness.
He perceived at length that the strollers were not all of the same conditions. There were rough, brown cow-boys from La Junta and Cajon, and miners in rough dress down from the gulches for a night, but mainly the promenaders appealed to him with elegance of dress and manner.
Many of the ladies came without hats, which added to the charm of their eyes and hair. Some of them looked twice at the tall man with the big mustache and broad hat, who seemed to be watching for some tardy friend.
As he studied them his memory freshened and he came to understand them better. He analyzed them into familiar types. This was a banker and his wife from some small town--the wife fussy and consequential, the husband coldly dignified. This group was composed of a doctor and his daughters. Behind them came a merchant from some Nebraska town--he rough of exterior, his children dainty of dress and very pretty. Occasionally a group of college-bred girls came up without escort--alert, self-helpful and serene. They saw Clement at once, and studied him carefully as they drank their beauty cup at the circular bench before the spring. All good-looking men had interest to them.
All classes came, a varied stream, yet they were Western, and of the well-to-do condition for the larger part.
The deft boy swung the glasses of water on his tripartite dipper with ceaseless splash and clink. There was a pleasant murmur of talk in which an Eastern listener would have heard the "r" sound well-defined. There were many couples seated about the pavilion on the benches and railings. It was all busy yet tranquil. Each loiterer had fed, had taken his draught of healing water--and this was the hour of pleasant gossip and repose. Clement fell at last to analyzing the action of the boy who supplied the water at the pool. He slammed the glasses into the pool, and set them on the bench with a click as regular as a pump. Occasionally, however, he was indifferent. With some of his customers he handled the glasses as if they contained nectar, thus indicating his generous patrons. Once he stopped and dipped the glass into the pool with his own hand--a doubtful action--and extended it with a bow to a young lady who said "thank you" so sweetly that he blushed and stammered in reply.
All this fixed Clement's attention, and as the young girl lifted the glass in her slim hand he wondered how she had escaped his notice for a single moment. A woman at his side said sighfully, "There is that consumptive girl again, she hasn't long to stay." She was as pale, as fragile, and as lovely as the mountain columbine. Her face was thin, and her head shapely, but her eyes! They burned like rarest topaz--deep, dark and sad. Clement shivered as he felt them fixed upon him, and yet he could not turn away as he should have done.
He gazed at her with a sudden feeling which was not awe, nor compassion, nor love, but was all of these. He felt in his soul the subtlest sadness in all the world--the sadness of a strong man who looks upon a beautiful young girl who is dying.
Extremest languor was in every movement. She was dressed in dark, soft garments--very simple and graceful in effect, and her bearing was that of one accustomed to willing service from others. Her smile was as sad as her eyes which had in them the death-shadow.
Clement's action, the unwavering self-forgetful intentness of his look, arrested her attention, and she returned his gaze for an instant, and then turned away and took the arm of an elderly gentleman who stood beside her. She moved slowly, as an invalid walks when for the first time she is permitted a short walk in the outdoor air, leaning heavily on her companion.
The big miner roused himself and stood straight and tall, hesitating whether to follow or not--a sudden singular pain in his heart, as if he were losing something very close to his life.
He obeyed the impulse to follow, and moved down the path, just out of reach of observation, he fancied. As he made way through the crowd he grew aware again of his heavy limbs, of his great height, of his swinging, useless hands. It had been so long since he had mingled with a holiday company, he appeared as self-conscious as a boy.
Once the fair invalid turned and looked back, but she was too far away for him to discern the expression of her face. He was not possessed of self-esteem enough to believe she had turned to look for him.
He followed them in their