JESSIE'S LETTER
Scipio's long day was almost over. The twins were in bed, and the
little man was lounging for a few idle moments in the doorway of his
hut. Just now an armistice in his conflict of thought was declared.
For the moment the exigencies of his immediate duties left him
floundering in the wilderness of his desolate heart at the mercy of
the pain of memory. All day the claims of his children had upborne
him. He had had little enough time to think of anything else, and
thus, with his peculiar sense of duty militating in his favor, he had
found strong support for the burden of his grief.
But now with thought and muscles relaxed, and the long night
stretching out its black wings before him, the gray shadow had risen
uppermost in his mind once more, and a weight of unutterable
loneliness and depression bore down his spirit.
His faded eyes were staring out at the dazzling reflections of the
setting sun upon the silvery crests of the distant mountain peaks. In
every direction upon the horizon stretched the wonderful fire of
sunset. Tongues of flame, steely, glowing, ruddy, shot up and athwart
the picture in ever-changing hues before his unseeing eyes. It was all
lost upon him. He stared mechanically, while his busy brain struggled
amongst a tangle of memories and thought pictures. The shadows of his
misfortune were hard besetting him.
Amidst his other troubles had come a fresh realization which filled
him with something like panic. He had been forced to purchase stores
for his household. To do so he had had to pay out the last of his
fourth ten-dollar bill. His exchequer was thus reduced to ten dollars.
Ten dollars stood between him and starvation for his children. Nor
could he see the smallest prospect of obtaining more. His imagination
was stirred. He saw in fancy the specter of starvation looming,
hungrily stretching out its gaunt arms, clutching at his two helpless
infants. He had no thought for himself. It did not occur to him that
he, too, must starve. He only pictured the wasting of the children's
round little bodies, he heard their weakly whimperings at the ravages
of hunger's pangs. He saw the tottering gait as they moved about,
unconscious of the trouble that was theirs, only knowing that they
were hungry. Their requests for food rang in his ears, maddening him
with the knowledge of his helplessness. He saw them growing weaker day
by day. He saw their wondering, wistful, uncomprehending eyes, so
bright and beautiful now, growing bigger and bigger as their soft
cheeks fell away. He--
He moved nervously. He shifted his position, vainly trying to rid
himself of the haunting vision. But panic was upon him. Starvation--that
was it. Starvation! God! how terrible was the thought. Starvation! And
yet, before--before Jessie had gone he had been no better off. He had
had only fifty dollars. But somehow it was all different then. She was
there, and he had had confidence. Now--now he had none. Then she was
there to manage, and he was free to work upon his claim.
Ah, his claim. That was it. The claim lay idle now with all its hidden
wealth. How he wanted that wealth which he so believed to be there.
No, he could not work his claim. The children could not be left alone
all day. That was out of the question. They must be cared for.
How--how?
His brain grew hot, and he broke out into a sweat. His head drooped
forward until his unshaven chin rested upon his sunken chest. His eyes
were lusterless, his two rough hands clenched nervously. Just for one
weak moment he longed for forgetfulness. He longed to shut out those
hideous visions with which he was pursued. He longed for peace, for
rest from the dull aching of his poor torn heart. His courage was at a
low ebb. Something of the nature of the hour had got hold of him. It
was sundown. There was the long black night between him and the
morrow. He felt so helpless, so utterly incapable.
But his moment passed. He raised his head. He stood erect from the
door casing. He planted his feet firmly, and his teeth gritted. The
spirit of the man rose again. He must not give way. He would not. The
children should not starve while there was food in the world. If he
had no money, he had two strong hands and--
He started. A sudden noise behind him turned him facing about with
bristling nerves. What was it? It sounded like the falling of a heavy
weight. And yet it did not sound like anything big. The room was quite
still, and looked, in the growing dusk, just the same as usual.
Suddenly the children leapt into his thought, and he started for the
inner room. But he drew up short as he passed behind the table. A
large stone was lying at his feet, and a folded paper was tied about
it. He glanced round at the window and--understood.
He stooped and picked the missile up. Then he moved to the window and
looked out. There was no one about. The evening shadows were rapidly
deepening, but he was sure there was no one about. He turned back to
the door where there was still sufficient light for his purposes. He
sat down upon the sill with the stone in his hand. He was staring at
the folded paper.
Yes, he understood. And instinctively he knew that the paper was to
bring him fresh disaster. He knew it was a letter. And he knew whence
it came.
At last he looked up. The mystery of the letter remained. It was there
in his hand, waiting the severing of the string that held it, but
somehow as yet he lacked the courage to read it. And so some moments
passed. But at last he sighed and looked at it again. Then he reached
round to his hip for his sheath-knife. The stone dropped to the
ground, and with it the outer covering of the letter. With trembling
fingers he unfolded the notepaper.
Yes, it was as he expected, as he knew, a letter from Jessie. And as
he read it his heart cried out, and the warm blood in his veins seemed
to turn to water. He longed for the woman whose hand had penned those
words as he had never longed for anything in his life. All the old
wound was ruthlessly torn open, and it was as though a hot, searing
iron had been thrust into its midst. He cared nothing for what she had
done or was. He wanted her.
It was a letter full of pathetic pleading for the possession of Vada.
It was not a demand. It was an appeal. An appeal to all that was his
better nature. His honesty, his manliness, his simple unselfishness.
It was a letter thrilling with the outpourings of a mother's heart
craving for possession of the small warm life that she had been at
such pains to bestow. It was the mother talking to him as he had never
heard the wife and woman talk. There was a passion, a mother love in
the hastily scrawled words that drove straight to the man's simple
heart. One little paragraph alone set his whole body quivering with
responsive emotion, and started the weak tears to his troubled eyes.
"Let me have her, Zip. Let me have her. Maybe I've lost my right,
but I'm her mother. I brought her into the world, Zip. And what
that means you can never understand. She's my flesh and blood.
She's part of me. I gave her the life she's got. I'm her mother,
Zip, and I'll go mad without her."
He read and re-read the letter. He would have read it a third time,
but the tears blinded his eyes and he crushed it into his pocket. His
heart yearned for her. It cried out to him in a great pity. It tore
him so that he was drawn to words spoken aloud to express his
feelings.
"Poor gal," he murmured. "Poor gal. Oh, my Jessie, what you done--what
you done?"
He dashed a hand across his eyes to wipe away the mist of tears that
obscured his vision and stood up. He was face to face with a situation
that might well have confounded him. But here, where only his heart
and not his head was appealed to, there was no confusion.
The woman had said he could not understand. She had referred to her
motherhood. But Scipio was a man who could understand just that. He
could understand with his heart, where his head might have failed him.
He read into the distracted woman's letter a meaning that perhaps no
other man could have read into it. He read a human soul's agony at the
severing of itself from all that belonged to its spiritual side. He
read more than the loss of the woman's offspring. He read the
despairing thought, perhaps unconscious, of a woman upon whom
repentance has begun its work. And his simple heart went out to her,
yearning, loving. He knew that her appeal was granted even before he
acknowledged it to himself.
And strangely enough the coming of that letter--he did not pause to
think how it had come--produced a miraculous change in him. His spirit
rose thrilling with hope, and filled with a courage which, but a few
moments before, seemed to have gone from him forever. He did not
understand, he did not pause to think. How could he? To him she was
still his Jessie, the love and hope of his life. It was her hand that
had penned that letter. It was her woman's heart appealing to his
mercy.
"God in heaven," he cried, appealing to the blue vault above him in
which the stars were beginning to appear. "I can't refuse her. I just
can't. She wants her so--my poor, poor Jessie."
* * * * *
It was late in the evening when Scipio returned from the camp driving
Minky's buckskin mule and ancient buckboard. His mind was made up. He
would start out directly after breakfast on the morrow. He had
resorted to a pitiful little subterfuge in borrowing Minky's
buckboard. He had told the storekeeper that he had heard of a prospect
some distance out, and he wanted to inspect it. He said he intended to
take Vada with him, but wished to leave Jamie behind. Minky, as a
member of the Trust, had promptly lent him the conveyance, and
volunteered to have Jamie looked after down at the store by Birdie
until he returned. So everything was made easy for him, and he came
back to his home beyond the dumps with the first feeling of
contentment he had experienced since his wife had deserted him.
Having made the old mule snug for the night on the leeward side of the
house, he prepared to go to bed. There was just one remaining duty to
perform, however, before he was free to do so. He must set things
ready for breakfast on the morrow. To this end he lit the lamp.
In five minutes his preparations were made, and, after one final look
round, he passed over to the door to secure it. He stood for a moment
drinking in the cool night air. Yes, he felt happier than he had done
for days. Nor could he have said why. It was surely something to do
with Jessie's letter, and yet the letter seemed to offer little enough
for hope.
He was going to part with Vada, a thought which filled him with
dismay, and yet there was hope in his heart. But then where the head
might easily enough fail his heart had accepted responsibility. There
was a note in the woman's appeal which struck a responsive chord in
his own credulous heart, and somehow he felt that his parting with
Vada was not to be for long. He felt that Jessie would eventually come
back to him. He felt, though he did not put the thought into words,
that no woman could feel as she did about her children, and be utterly
dead to all the old affection that had brought them into the world.
He turned away at last. The air was good to breathe to-night, the
world was good after all. Yes, it was better than he had thought it.
There was much to be done to-morrow, so he would "turn in."
It was at that moment that something white lying at his feet caught
his eye. Instantly he remembered it, and, stooping, picked it up. How
strange it was the difference of his feelings as he lifted the outer
wrapping of Jessie's letter now. There was something almost reverent
in the way he handled the paper.
He closed the door and secured it, and went across to the lamp, where
he stood looking down at the stained and dirty covering. He turned it
over, his thoughts abstracted and busy with the woman who had folded
it ready for its journey to him. Yes, she had folded it, she had sent
it, she--
Suddenly his abstraction passed, and he bent over the disfiguring
finger-marks. There was writing upon the paper, and the writing was
not in Jessie's hand. He raised it closer to his eyes and began to
read. And, with each word he made out, his faculties became more and
more angrily concentrated.
"You'll hand the kid over at once. I'll be on the Spawn City trail
ten miles out. If you ain't there with the kid noon to-morrow
there's going to be bad trouble.
James."
"James! James!" Scipio almost gasped the name. His pale eyes were hot
and furious, and the blood surged to his brain.
He had forgotten James until now. He had forgotten the traitor
responsible for his undoing. So much was Jessie in his life that James
had counted for little when he thought of her. But now the scoundrel
swept all other thoughts pell-mell out of his head. He was suddenly
ablaze with a rage such as he had never before experienced. All that
was human in him was in a state of fierce resentment. He hated James,
and desired with all his small might to do him a bodily hurt. Yes, he
could even delight in killing him. He would show him no mercy. He
would revel in witnessing his death agonies. This man had not only
wronged him. He had killed also the spiritual purity of the mother of
his children. Oh, how he hated him. And now--now he had dared to
threaten. He, stained to his very heart's core with villainy, had
dared to interfere in a matter which concerned a mother's pure love
for her children. The thought maddened him, and he crushed the paper
in his hand and ground it under his heel.
He would not do it. He could not. He had forgotten the association to
which he was sending the innocent Vada. No, no. Innocent little Vada.
Jessie must do without her.
He flung himself into a chair and gave himself up to passionate
thought. For two hours he sat there raging, half mad with his hideous
feelings against James. But as the long hours slipped away he slowly
calmed. His hatred remained for the man, but he kept it out of his
silent struggle with himself. In spite of his first heated decision he
was torn by a guiding instinct that left him faltering. He realized
that his hatred of the man, and nothing else, was really responsible
for his negative attitude. And this was surely wrong. What he must
really consider was the welfare of Vada, and--Jessie. The whole thing
was so difficult, so utterly beyond him. He was drawn this way and
that, struggling with a brain that he knew to be incompetent. But in
the end it was again his heart that was victorious. Again his heart
would take no denial.
Confused, weary, utterly at a loss to finally decide, he drew out
Jessie's letter again. He read it. And like a cloud his confusion
dispersed and his mind became clear. His hatred of James was thrust
once more into the background. Jessie's salvation depended on Vada's
going. Vada must go.
He sighed as he rose from his chair and blew out the lamp.
"Maybe I'm wrong," he murmured, passing into the bedroom. "Maybe.
Well, I guess God'll have to judge me, and--He knows."