LITMIR.BIZ

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      “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.

      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

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