The Twins of Suffering Creek Part 5

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, G.o.d, 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 antic.i.p.ation. 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 a.s.sumption 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.sisted 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sistance 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 a.s.surances 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 spa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sion 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.