The Spirit of Sweetwater | Page 6

"It's very good of you, but you can do nothing."
"It is impossible," he broke forth in answer, and his voice gave her a perceptible shock. "There must be something I can do. If it will help you there is my arm--its blood is yours." He stammered a little. "It isn't right that one so young and beautiful should die. We won't let you die. There must be something I can do. This wind and sun--and the good water will work with us to do you good."
His voice moved her, and she smiled with the tears on her lashes. "It does me good just to look at you. You are so big and brown. I saw you at the spring last night. Perhaps I have come at last----" She coughed--a weak, flat sound which made him shudder.
She tried to reassure him. "Really, I have coughed less than at any time during the last five months."
He faced her again. "Miss Ross, I felt last night a sudden desire to help you. I believed I had the power to help you--I don't know why--I'm not a healer." He smiled for the first time. "But I felt perfectly sure I could do you good. I feel that way now. I never had such a feeling toward any person before. It is just as strange to me as it is to you."
She was looking at him now with musing eyes.
"That is the curious part of it," she said. "It doesn't seem strange at all. It seems as if I had been wanting to hear your voice--as if I had known of you all my life----" She tried to suppress her coughing, and he was in agony during the paroxysm. The nurse came hurrying out, and while he waited at one side Clement felt that if he could have taken her by the hands he could have prevented it. It was a singular conviction, but it was most definite, and had a peculiar air of actuality.
When she lay quiet he approached again and said: "I'll go now. I must not tire you. But remember, I'm going to come and see you, and I'm going to do you good. Every time I see you I am going to will to you some of my vitality--my love of life. For I love life--it is beautiful to live."
She gave him her hand, and he bowed and left her.
She lay quietly after he went away and smiled, a little, wan smile, which made her pallor the more pitiful. It was all so romantic and wonderful--this big man's coming. He was so unspoiled and so direct of manner. She had the hope he would come again, and it seemed not impossible that he might help her, his voice was so stirring and his hands so big and strong.
Yet she was beyond the reach of even the conjectures of passion. She had come to a certain exterior resignation to her fate. The world had lost its poignant interest--it was now a pageant upon which she was looking for the last time, yet she was too tired, too indifferent to lift her hand to stay it in its course even had it been within her power.
At times, however, she rebelled at her fate. There were hours, even yet, when she lay alone in her bed hearing her father's regular stertorous breathing till a great wave of longing to live swept upon her, and she was forced to turn her face to her pillow to stifle her mingled coughing and sobbing.
"Oh, Father, let me live! I want to live like other women. Oh, dear Father, grant me a little life!"
These waves of passionate rebellion left her weaker, sadder, more indifferent than ever, and as coldly pallid almost as if death had already claimed her.
On the night following Clement's talk with her she fell asleep while musing upon one mind's influence upon another. Perhaps if she could only believe she might be helped; perhaps he was sent to help her. It had been long since such a personality had stood before her--indeed, no such man had ever touched her hand or looked into her eyes.
He came down out of the mountain heights with the elemental vigor of wind and sun and soil about him like an aura. A man of great natural refinement, he had grown strong and simple and masterful in his close contact with Nature. The clay that might have brutalized another nature had made him a mystic.
There was something mysterious in his eyes, in the clasp of his hand. The world was all inexplicable to her anyhow. Perhaps God had sent him to help her just as He sends healing water down from the mountain peaks.
In thinking these things she fell asleep, and it seemed at once that she was well again,