The Potter and the Clay: A Romance of Today

by Maud Howard Peterson

And then he became dimly conscious of a low moaning sound and he lay still trying, to place it, because Mackenzie was not there to tell him what it was, and he had forgotten what Mackenzie had said it was, but he still tried to concentrate his thoughts on the dream face that was growing faint and fainter. The effort was a complete failure, and the low moaning increased. He fixed it slowly as coming from the next bed. He turned his head toward it weakly. The incoherent ravings became a piteous and conscious cry for water.

The gray dawn crept in slowly and up to the trooper's bed, and by its light Trevelyan could see him turning his head restlessly from side to side. Still the cry for water reached him.

It did not seem to affect him much at first, or pierce the consciousness of pity, but it annoyed him, and it kept coming between him and the dream face he was struggling so desperately to hold. And then it struck on him suddenly like a blow and he awoke to the man's anguish and the man's need—how often he had answered to that need and cry before! He looked toward the farthest corner of the room where an orderly lay sleeping from exhaustion. The man was half sick anyway, from a recent attack of the scourge. He did not want to call him; but if he would only awaken—if he only would.

He waited. There was no sound from the corner; there was no movement in the hall that would tell of Clarke's return, and the low cry went on. Since the day he had joined Mackenzie he had followed and responded to that cry as the soldier follows and responds to the first low notes of the bugle. He pushed himself over to the edge of the bed and tried to sit up but the motion increased his agony and he lay still. He wondered blindly if he could do it. Then he let himself roll over the side of the bed and his big frame fell with a dull thud on the rough boards of the floor. He lay there a second, but there was no movement from the corner. He pulled himself up, took half a dozen steps toward the water bucket in the near corner, and then the cramp came back again in his legs, and he fell forward, and began to creep toward it on his hands and knees. The dream face was fading and being swallowed up in a breaking crest of white sea foam, and there seemed to be nothing in the world but the man's cry and his own pain.

He reached the bucket and he dipped in the glass that stood near and filled it, and then began his slow journey to the man's bed. By the deepening light in the east the man could see the great creeping figure approaching, and he drew back, afraid.

"It's only I, McHennessy. I've got some water—" the voice trailed off, but the trooper caught the word "water" and he struggled to a reclining position and waited. The figure moved so slowly and his throat was a burning sheet of flame! Why didn't he come faster—what was the matter that he didn't come faster; and McHennessy's blood-shot eyes were riveted on the slowly moving figure.

Trevelyan reached him at length and pulled himself up with a supreme effort, with the glass balanced very carefully in his hand. He was striving—striving too—after that elusive dream face.

He leaned over McHennessy with the water, and McHennessy with a sigh of ecstasy struggled up in his bed and leaned forward to touch his parched lips to the glass.

Trevelyan brought it up nearer and his hand wavered. He controlled it with a great effort of will for a moment, and then the glass trembled and its contents were spilt over McHennessy, and the glass crashed into shivers as it fell to the floor beside the bed. Trevelyan flung out his arms suddenly, groping for the dream face that had gone.

The orderly, awakened by the crash, started up and ran over to where Trevelyan lay on the floor by the side of McHennessy, who was swearing over the unexpected bath, and as he staggered beneath Trevelyan's weight, Mackenzie came quickly forward from the threshold of the door. Together they carried Trevelyan back to bed and Mackenzie silently drew the coverings over his rigid body and stood looking down at the livid lips and listening to the slow, feeble breathing. Once he picked up the hand that lay on the outside of the covering and examined it, and then laid it back in its resting place.