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.
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
