THE AWAKENING OF SCIPIO
At noon the camp began to rouse. The heavy eyes, the languid stretch,
the unmeaning contemplation of the noontide sunlight, the slow
struggles of a somnolent brain. These things were suggested in the
gradual stirring of the place to a ponderous activity. The heavy
movement of weary diggers as they lounged into camp for their dinner
had no suggestion of the greedy passion which possessed them. They had
no lightness. Whatever the lust for gold that consumed them, all their
methods were characterized by a dogged endeavor which took from them
every particle of that nervous activity which belongs to the finely
tempered business man.
The camp was a single row of egregious dwellings, squat, uncouth,
stretching away on either side of the veranda-fronted store and
"gambling hell" which formed a sort of center-piece around which
revolved the whole life of the village. It was a poor, mean place,
shapeless, evil-smelling in that pure mountain air. It was a mere
shelter, a rough perch for the human carrion lusting for the orgy of
gold which the time-worn carcass of earth should yield. What had these
people to do with comfort or refinement? What had they to do with
those things calculated to raise the human mind to a higher spiritual
plane? Nothing. All that might come later, when, their desires
satisfied, the weary body sick and aching, sends fearful thoughts
ahead towards the drab sunset awaiting them. For the moment the full
tide of youth is still running strong. Sickness and death have no
terrors. The fine strength of powerful bodies will not allow the mind
to focus such things.
Out of the rugged hills backing the camp the gold-seekers struggle to
their resting-place. Here, one man comes clambering over the rough
bowlder-strewn path at the base of a forest-clad hill. Here, an atom
of humanity emerges from the depths of a vast woodland that dwarfs all
but the towering hills. Another toils up a steep hillside from the
sluggish creek. Another slouches along a vague, unmade trail. Yet
another scrambles his way through a low, dense-growing scrub which
lines the sides of a vast ravine, the favored locality of the
gold-seeker.
So they come, one by one, from every direction radiating about the
building, which is Minky's store. Their faces are hard. Their skin is
tanned to a leathery hue, and is of a texture akin to hide. They are
silent, thoughtful men, too. But their silence is of the vast world in
which they delve, and their thought is the thought of men absorbed in
their quest. No, there is no lightness, even in their happiest
moments. To be light, an intelligent swiftness of brain is needed. And
these derelicts have little of such. Although, when Minky's spirit has
circulated its poison through their veins, they are sometimes apt to
assume a burlesque of it.
Now the camp is wide awake. But it is only the wakefulness of the
mother who is roused by the hungry crying of her infant. It will
slumber again when appetites have been duly appeased.
The milk of human kindness is soured by the intense summer heat. The
men are "grouchy." They jostle harshly as they push up to Minky's
counter for the "appetizers" they do not need. Their greetings are
few, and mostly confined to the abrupt demand, "Any luck?" Then, their
noon-day drink gulped down, they slouch off into the long, frowsy
dining-room at the back of the store, and coarsely devour the rough
fare provided by the buxom Birdie Mason, who is at once the kindliest
and worst caterer imaginable.
This good-natured soul's position was not as enviable as one might
reasonably have supposed. The only woman in a camp of men, any one of
whom might reasonably strike a fortune in five minutes. The situation
suggests possibilities. But, alas, Birdie was just a woman, and, in
consequence, from a worldly point of view, her drawbacks were many.
She was attractive--a drawback. She was given to a natural desire to
stand first with all men--another drawback. She was eminently
sentimental--a still greater drawback. But greatest of all she was a
sort of public servant in her position as caterer, and, as such, of
less than no account from the moment the "beast" had been satisfied.
She had her moments, moments when the rising good-nature of her
customers flattered her, when she was fussed over, and petted, as men
are ever ready to treat an attractive member of the opposite sex. But
these things led nowhither, from a point of view of worldly advantage,
and, being just a woman, warm-hearted, uncalculating and profoundly
illogical, she failed to realize the pitfalls that lay before her, the
end which, all unsuspecting, she was steadily forging towards.
Scipio, like the rest, came into camp for his dinner. His way lay
along the bank of the creek. It was cooler here, and, until he neared
his home, there were no hills up which to drag his weary limbs. He had
had, as usual, an utterly unprofitable morning amidst the greasy ooze
of his claim. Yet the glitter of the mica-studded quartz on the
hillside, the bright-green and red-brown shading of the milky-white
stone still dazzled his mental sight. There was no wavering in his
belief. These toilsome days were merely the necessary probation for
the culminating achievement. He assured himself that gold lay hidden
there. And it was only waiting for the lucky strike of his pick. He
would find it. It was just a matter of keeping on.
In his simple mind he saw wonderful visions of all that final
discovery. He dreamt of the day when he should be able to install his
beautiful Jessie in one of those up-town palaces in New York; when an
army of servants should anticipate her every desire; when the twins
should be launched upon the finest academies the country possessed, to
gorge their young minds to the full with all that which the minds of
the children of earth's most fortunate must be stored. He saw his
Jessie clad in gowns which displayed and enhanced all those beauties
with which his devoted mind endowed her. She should not only be his
queen, but the queen of a social world, which, to his mind, had no
rival. And the happiness of such dreams was beyond compare. His labor
became the work of a love which stimulated his puny muscles to a pitch
which carried him beyond the feeling of any weariness. For himself he
wanted nothing. For Jessie and the twins the world was not great
enough as a possession.
And was she not worth it? Were they not worth it? Look at her, so
splendid! How she bore with him and all his petty, annoying ways! Her
disposition was not of this earth, he told himself. Would any other
woman put up with his ill-humors, his shortcomings? He realized how
very trying he must be to any bright, clever woman. He was not clever,
and he knew it, and it made him pity Jessie for the lot he had brought
her to.
And the twins. Vada was the image of her mother. The big, round, brown
eyes, the soft, childish mouth, the waving brown hair. And Jamie. He
had her eyes, too, and her nose, and her beautiful coloring. What a
mercy of Providence neither of them resembled him. But, then, how
could they, with such a mother? How it delighted him to think that he
was working for them, for her. A thrill of delight swept over him,
and added a spring to his jaded step. What mattered anything else in
the world. He was to give them all that which the world counted as
good. He, alone.
But it was not yet. For a moment a shadow crossed his radiant face as
he toiled up the hill to his hut. It was gone in a moment, however.
How could it stay there with his thought gilded with such high hopes?
It was not yet, but it would come--must come. His purpose was
invincible. He must conquer and wrench this wealth which he demanded
from the bosom of the hard old earth. And then--and then--
"Hello, kiddies," he cried cheerily, as his head rose above the
hilltop and his hut and the two children, playing outside it, came
into his view.
"Pop-pa!" shrieked Vada, dropping a paper full of loose dirt and
stones upon her sprawling brother's back, in her haste to reach her
diminutive parent.
"Uh!" grunted Jamie, scrambling to his feet and tottering heavily in
the same direction.
There was a curious difference in the size and growth of these twins.
Probably it utterly escaped the adoring eyes of their father. He only
saw the reflected glory of their mother in them. Their resemblance to
her was all that really mattered to him, but, as a matter of fact,
this resemblance lay chiefly in Vada. She was like her mother in an
extraordinary degree. She was well-grown, strong, and quite in advance
of her years, in her speech and brightness of intellect. Little Jamie,
while he possessed much of his mother in his face, in body was
under-sized and weakly, and his mind and speech, backward of
development, smacked of his father. He was absolutely dominated by his
sister, and followed her lead in everything with adoring rapture.
Vada reached her father and scrambled agilely up into his work-soiled
arms. She impulsively hugged his yellow head to her cheeks with both
her arms, so that when Jamie came up he had to content himself by
similarly hugging the little man's left knee, and kissing the
mud-stains on his trousers into liquid patches.
But Scipio was impartial. He sat Vada down and picked her brother up.
Then, taking the former's hand in his horny clasp, bore the boy
towards the house.
"You found any gold?" inquired Vada, repeating a question she had so
often heard her mother put.
"'Es any--dold?" echoed Jamie, from his height above Scipio's head.
"No, kiddies," the man replied, with a slight sigh.
"Oh," said Vada. But his answer had little significance for her.
"Where's your momma?" inquired Scipio, after a pause.
"Momma do hoss-ridin'," replied Jamie, forestalling his sister for
once.
"Yes," added Vada. "She gone ridin'. An' they'll come an' take us
wher' ther's heaps an' heaps o' 'piders, an'--an' bugs an' things. He
said so--sure."
"He? Who?"
They had reached the hut and Scipio set Jamie on the ground as he put
his question.
"The dark man," said Vada readily, but wrinkling her forehead
struggling for the name.
"Uh!" agreed Jamie. "Mister Dames."
Just for a moment a sharp question lit Scipio's pale eyes. But the
little ones had no understanding of it. And the next moment, as their
father passed in through the doorway, they turned to the sand and
stone castle they had been laboriously and futilely attempting to mold
into some shape.
"Now you bring up more stones," cried Vada authoritatively. "Run
along, dear," she added patronizingly, as the boy stood with his small
hands on his hips, staring vacantly after his father.
Scipio gazed stupidly about the living-room. The slop-stained table
was empty. The cookstove fire was out. And, just for a second, the
thought flashed through his mind--had he returned too early for his
dinner? No, he knew he had not. It was dinner-time all right. His
appetite told him that.
For the moment he had forgotten what the children had told him. His
simple nature was not easily open to suspicion, therefore, like all
people of slow brain, this startling break in the routine of his daily
life simply set him wondering. He moved round the room, and, without
being aware of his purpose, lifted the curtain of turkey red, which
served as a door to the rough larder, and peered in. Then, as he let
the curtain fall again, something stirred within him. He turned
towards the inner room, and his mild voice called--
"Jess."
His answer was a hollow echo that somehow jarred his nerves. But he
called again--
"Jess."
Again came the echo. Then Vada's small face appeared round the
door-casing.
"Mom-ma gone hoss-ridin'," she reminded him.
For an instant Scipio's face flushed. Then it paled icily under its
tan. His brain was struggling to grasp something which seemed to be
slowly enveloping him, but which his honest heart would not let him
believe. He stared stupidly at Vada's dirty face. Then, as the child
withdrew to her play, he suddenly crossed the room to the curtained
bedroom doorway. He passed through, and the flimsy covering fell to
behind him.
For a space the music of childish voices was the only sound to break
the stillness. The hum of buzzing insects seemed to intensify the
summer heat. For minutes no movement came from the bedroom. It was
like the dread silence before a storm.
A strange sound came at last. It was something between a moan and the
pained cry of some mild-spirited animal stricken to death. It had no
human semblance, and yet--it came from behind the dingy print curtain
over the bedroom doorway.
A moment later the curtain stirred and the ghastly face of Scipio
suddenly appeared. He moved out into the living-room and almost fell
into the Windsor chair which had last been occupied by his wife. A
sheet of notepaper was in his shaking hand, and his pale eyes were
staring vacantly at it. He was not reading. He had read. And that
which he had read had left him dazed and scarcely comprehending. He
sat thus for many minutes. And not once did he stir a muscle, or lift
his eyes from their fixed contemplation.
A light breeze set the larder curtain fluttering. Scipio started. He
stared round apprehensively. Then, as though drawn by a magnet, his
eyes came back to the letter in his hand, and once more fixed
themselves upon the bold handwriting. But this time there was
intelligence in his gaze. There was intelligence, fear, despair,
horror; every painful emotion was struggling for uppermost place in
mind and heart. He read again carefully, slowly, as though trying to
discover some loophole from the horror of what was written there. The
note was short--so short--there was not one spark of hope in it for
the man who was reading it, not one expression of feeling other than
selfishness. It was the death-blow to all his dreams, all his desire.
"I've gone away. I shall never come back. I can't stand this life
here any longer. Don't try to find me, for it's no use. Maybe what
I'm doing is wicked, but I'm glad I'm doing it. It's not your
fault--it's just me. I haven't your courage, I haven't any courage
at all. I just can't face the life we're living. I'd have gone
before when he first asked me but for my babies, but I just
couldn't part with them. Zip, I want to take them with me now, but
I don't know what Jim's arrangements are going to be. I must have
them. I can't live without them. And if they don't go with us now
you'll let them come to me after, won't you? Oh, Zip, I know I'm a
wicked woman, but I feel I must go. You won't keep them from me?
Let me have them. I love them so bad. I do. I do. Good-by
forever.
"JESSIE."
Mechanically Scipio folded the paper again and sat grasping it tightly
in one clenched hand. His eyes were raised and gazing through the
doorway at the golden sunlight beyond. His lips were parted, and there
was a strange dropping of his lower jaw. The tanning of his russet
face looked like a layer of dirt upon a super-whited skin. He scarcely
seemed to breathe, so still he sat. As yet his despair was so terrible
that his mind and heart were numbed to a sort of stupefaction,
deadening the horror of his pain.
He sat on for many minutes. Then, at last, his eyes dropped again to
the crushed paper, and a quavering sigh escaped him. He half rose from
his seat, but fell back in it again. Then a sudden spasm seized him,
and flinging himself round he reached out his slight, tanned arms upon
the dirty table, and, his head dropping upon them, he moaned out the
full force of his despair.
"I want her!" he cried. "Oh, God, I want her!"
But now his slight body was no longer still. His back heaved with mute
sobs that had no tears. All his gentle soul was torn and bleeding. He
had not that iron in his composition with which another man might have
crushed down his feelings and stirred himself to a harsh defense. He
was just a warm, loving creature of no great strength beyond his
capacity for human affection and self-sacrifice. And for the time at
least, his sufferings were beyond his control.
In the midst of his grief two little faces, and two pairs of round,
wondering eyes appeared in the doorway. Two small infantile minds
worked hard at the sight they beheld. Vada, whose quickness of
perception was so much in advance of her brother's, murmured in his
ear--
"Sleep."
"Uh, seep," nodded the faithful boy.
Then four little bare feet began to creep into the room. Four big
brown eyes shone with gleeful anticipation. Four chubby arms were
outstretched as though claiming the victim of their childish prank.
Vada led, but Jamie was close behind. They stole in, their small feet
making not the slightest sound as they tiptoed towards the stricken
man. Each, thrilling with excitement, was desperately intent upon
frightening him.
"Boo-h!" cried Vada, her round eyes sparkling as she reached Scipio's
side.
"Bo-oh!" echoed Jamie a second later, chuckling and gurgling a delight
he had no other means of expressing at the moment.
Scipio raised his haggard face. His unsmiling eyes, so pale and
unmeaning, stared stupidly at the children. And suddenly the merry
smile died out of the young faces, and an odd contraction of their
brows suggested a dawning sympathy which came wholly from the heart.
"You'se cryin', poppa," cried Vada impulsively.
"Uh," nodded the boy.
And thereupon great tears welled up into their sympathetic eyes, and
the twins wept in chorus. And somehow the tears, which had thus far
been denied the man, now slowly and painfully flooded his eyes. He
groped the two children into his arms, and buried his face in the
soft wavy hair which fell in a tangle about the girl's head.
For some moments he sat thus, something of his grief easing in the
flood of almost womanish tears. Until, finally, it was Jamie who saved
the situation. His sobs died out abruptly, and the boy in him
stirred.
"Me want t' eat," he protested, without preamble.
The man looked up.
"Eat?" he echoed vaguely.
"Yes. Dinner," explained Vada, whose tears were still flowing, but who
never failed as her little brother's interpreter.
There was a moment's pause while Scipio stared down at the two
faces lifted so appealingly to his. Then a change came into his
expressionless eyes. A smoldering fire began to burn, which seemed
to deepen their weakly coloring. His drawn face seemed to gather
strength. And somehow even his straw-colored hair, so scanty,
ill-grown and disheveled, looked less like the stubble it so much
resembled. It was almost as though a latent, unsuspected strength
were rousing within him, lifting him from the slough of despair by
which he was so nearly submerged. It was as though the presence of
his twins had drawn from him an acknowledgment of his duty, a sense
which was so strongly and incongruously developed in his otherwise
uncertain character, and demanded of him a sacrifice of all personal
inclination. They were her children. Yes, and they were his. Her
children--her children. And she was gone. They had no one to look
to, no one to care for them now, but--him.
He sprang to his feet.
"Why, yes, kiddies," he said, with a painful assumption of lightness.
"You're needing food sure. Say, I guess we won't wait for your momma.
We'll just hand her an elegant surprise. We'll get dinner ourselves."
Jamie gurgled his joyous approval, but Vada was more intelligible.
"Bully!" she cried. "We'll give her a surprise." Then she turned to
Jamie. "Surprise is when folks do things that other folks don't guess
you're going to, dear," she explained, to his utter confusion.
Scipio went to the larder and gathered various scraps of food, and
plates, and anything that seemed to him as being of any possible use
in a meal. He re-kindled the fire in the cookstove and made some
coffee. That he understood. There was no sign of his despair about him
now. Perhaps he was more than usually silent, but otherwise, for the
time at least, he had buried his trouble sufficiently deeply out of
sight, so that at any rate the inquiring eyes of the happy children
could see nothing of it.
They, too, busied themselves in the preparation. Vada dictated to her
father with never flagging tongue, and Jamie carried everything he
could lift to and fro, regardless of whether he was bringing or taking
away. Vada chid him in her childishly superior way, but her efforts
were quite lost on his delicious self-importance. Nor could there be
any doubt that, in his infantile mind, he was quite assured that his
services were indispensable.
At last the meal was ready. There was nearly everything of which the
household consisted upon the table or in close proximity to it. Then,
when at last they sat down, and Scipio glanced over the strange
conglomeration, his conscience was smitten.
"Seems to me you kiddies need bread and milk," he said ruefully. "But
I don't guess there's any milk."
Vada promptly threw herself into the breach.
"On'y Jamie has bread an' milk, pop-pa. Y'see his new teeth ain't
through. Mine is. You best cut his up into wee bits."
"Sure, of course," agreed Scipio in relief. "I'll get along down to
Minky's for milk after," he added, while he obediently proceeded to
cut up the boy's meat.
It was a strange meal. There was something even tragic in it. The
children were wildly happy in the thought that they had shared in this
wonderful surprise for their mother. That they had assisted in those
things which childhood ever yearns to share in--the domestic doings of
their elders.
The man ate mechanically. His body told him to eat, and so he ate
without knowing or caring what. His distraught mind was traveling
swiftly through the barren paths of hopelessness and despair, while
yet he had to keep his children in countenance under their fire of
childish prattle. Many times he could have flung aside his mask and
given up, but the babyish laughter held him to an effort such as he
had never before been called upon to make.
When the meal was finished Scipio was about to get up from his chair,
but Vada's imperious tongue stayed him.
"We ain't said grace," she declared complainingly.
And the man promptly dropped back into his seat.
"Sure," he agreed helplessly.
At once the girl put her finger-tips together before her nose and
closed her eyes.
"Thank God for my good dinner, Amen, and may we help fix up after?"
she rattled off.
"Ess," added Jamie, "tank Dod for my dood dinner, Amen, me fix up,
too."
And with this last word both children tumbled almost headlong from the
bench which they were sharing. Nor had their diminutive parent the
heart to deny their request.
The next hour was perhaps one of the hardest in Scipio's life. Nothing
could have impressed his hopeless position upon him more than the
enthusiastic assistance so cordially afforded him. While the children
had no understanding of their father's grief, while with every
heart-beat they glowed with a loving desire to be his help, their
every act was an unconscious stab which drove him until he could have
cried aloud in agony.
And it was a period of catastrophe. Little Vada scalded her hand and
had to be petted back to her normal condition of sunny smiles. Jamie
broke one of the few plates, and his tears had to be banished by
assurances that it did not matter, and that he had done his father a
kindness by ridding him of such an ugly plate. Then Vada stumbled into
the garbage pail and had to be carefully wiped, while Jamie smeared
his sparse hair with rancid dripping and insisted he was "Injun,"
vociferously proclaiming his desire to "talp" his sister.
But the crowning disaster came when he attempted to put his threat
into execution. He seized a bunch of her hair in his two chubby hands
and began to drag her round the room. Her howls drew Scipio's
attention from his work, and he turned to find them a struggling heap
upon the floor. He dashed to part them, kicked over a bucket of
drinking water in his well-meant hurry, and, finally, had to rescue
them, both drenched to the skin, from the untimely bath.
There was nothing for it but to strip off all their clothes and dress
them up in their nightgowns, for as yet he had no knowledge of their
wardrobe, and send them out to get warm in the sun, while he dried
their day-clothes at the cookstove.
It was the climax. The man flung himself into a chair and buried his
face in his hands. The mask had dropped from him. There was no longer
any need for pretense. Once more the grief and horror of his disaster
broke through his guard and left him helpless. The whole world, his
life, everything was engulfed in an abyss of black despair.
He was dry-eyed and desperate. But now somehow his feelings contained
an emotion that the first shock of his loss had not brought him. He
was no longer a prey to a weak, unresisting submission, the grief of
a tortured gentle heart. There was another feeling. A feeling of anger
and resentment which slowly grew with each moment, and sent the hot
blood surging furiously to his brain. Nor was this feeling directed
against Jessie. How could it be? He loved her so that her cruel
desertion of him appeared to be a matter for which he was chiefly to
blame. Yes, he understood. He was not the husband for her. How could
it be otherwise? He had no cleverness. He had always been a failure.
No, his anger was not against Jessie. It was the other. It was the man
who had robbed him of all he cared for in the world.
His anger grew hotter and hotter. And with this growing passion there
came an absolute revulsion of the motive force that had always
governed him. He wanted to hurt. He wanted to hurt this man, Lord
James. And his simple mind groped for a means to carry out his desire.
He began to think more quickly and clearly, and the process brought
him a sort of cold calmness. Again his grief was thrust out of his
focus, and all his mental energy was concentrated upon his desire. And
he conjured up a succession of pictures of the tortures and sufferings
he desired for this villain who had so wronged him.
But the pictures were too feeble and wholly inadequate to satisfy. So
gentle was his nature, that, even stirred as he was, he could not
conceive a fitting punishment for so great an offense. He felt his own
inadequacy, his own feebleness to cope with the problem before him,
and so he sat brooding impotently.
It was all useless. And as the minutes slipped by his anger began to
die out, merging once more into the all-absorbing grief that underlay
it. He was alone. Alone! He would never see her again. The thought
chilled him to a sudden nervous dread. No, no, it was not possible.
She would come back. She must come back. Yes, yes. She was his
Jessie. His beautiful Jessie. She belonged to him. And the children.
She loved them. How she loved them. They were theirs. Yes, she would
come back. Maybe she would come back at supper-time. She would
understand by then. Because she was good, and--and kind, and--No, no,
Fate could never be so cruel as to take her from him.
He rose and paced the floor with nervous, uneven strides. He plunged
his hand into his coat pocket and drew out the letter again. He
re-read it, with hot eyes and straining thought. Every word seemed to
sear itself upon his poor brain, and drive him to the verge of
distraction. Why? Why? And he raised his bloodshot eyes to the roof of
his hut, and crushed the paper in one desperate hand.
Then suddenly he started. His pale eyes took on a furtive frightened
expression. He glanced fearfully round the room as though someone was
in hiding to surprise his inspiration. Yes, that was it. Why not? He
was not afraid. He was afraid of no one. Yes, yes, he had the means.
He must make the opportunity. She was his. No one else had a right to
her. It was justifiable. It was no more than justice.
He moved towards the inner room. He was less furtive now. His purpose
had startled him at first, but now he was convinced it was right. To a
man of his character his resolve once taken there was only one thing
to do--to carry it out.
He passed into the bedroom, and, in a few moments, reappeared. Now he
was bearing something in his hand. He held it carefully, and in his
eyes was something like terror of what he held. The thing he carried
was an old-fashioned revolver. It was rusty. But it had a merciless
look about it. He turned it up gingerly. Then he opened the breach,
and loaded all the six chambers. Then he carefully bestowed it in his
coat pocket, where it bulged obtrusively.
Now he moved to the open doorway, and somehow his original furtiveness
had returned to him. Here he paused as the voice of the twins reached
and held him. They were still playing in the sun, banking up the sand
and stones in their futile attempt at castle building. He breathed
hard, as though summoning up all his decision. Then he spoke.
"Say, kiddies," he said firmly. "I'll be right back at supper."
And he moved out without another look in their direction, and walked
off in the direction of Minky's store.