Scipio family

“ Think of him! Will y’u please to think of him after that shell game? He begging honest work and denied all over, everywhere, till his hat and his clothes and his boots were in holes, and his body was pretty near in holes—think of him, just a kind of hollo’ vessel of hunger lying in that stable while the shell-game cheat goes off with his pockets full of gold.” Scipio spoke with heat.
“Yes, I know. But, if Bellyful afterward could only feel sorry and try—”
“Are you figuring to fix that up?”—he was still hotter—“because I forbid you to monkey with the truth. Because I never was sorry.” ”

“ He knew himself resourceful. Dislike of Horacles and Uncle had been enough to start his wish to thwart them—if there was anything to thwart; but now pride and gratitude{44} fired him; he had been trusted; he cared more to be trusted than for anything on earth; he must rise equal to it now! The Agent had evidently taken the paper away with him—and so Scipio absurdly read all the papers. He collected old ones, and laid his hands upon the new the moment they were out of the mail-bag. It may be said that he lived daily in a wrapping of newspapers. ”

“ Therefore, white light to an eye fatigued for yellow will appear blue—blue being yellow’s complementary color. Shall I go on?{133}”
“Don’t y’u!” Scipio begged. “I’d sooner believe y’u done it to me.”
“I can show you sheep.” It was the boy again. We had not noticed him come from the corral to our wagon, by which he now stood. His eyes were now eagerly fixed upon me; as they looked into mine they seemed almost burning with some sort of appeal.
“Hello, Timberline!” said Scipio, not at all unkindly. “Still holding your job here? Well, you better stick to it. You’re inclined to drift some.” ”

“ Often the Indian will join, like a child, in mirth which he does not comprehend. High Bear’s smile shone from his corner at young Scipio, whom he fancied so much that he had offered him his fourteenth daughter to wed as soon as his leg should be well. But Scipio had sorrow{53}fully explained to the father that he was already married—which was true, but which I fear would in former days have proved no impediment to him. Perhaps some day I may tell you of the early marriages of Scipio as Scipio in hospital narrated them to me. ”

“ Yet nevertheless Scipio saw him shoot one or two more doubtful glances at Horacles as that happy clerk continued his activities.
Horacles had an audience (which he liked) , and he held his audience—and who could help liking that? The bucks and squaws watched him, sometimes nudging one another, and they smiled and grunted their satisfaction at his news. Cheaper prices was something which their primitive minds could take in as well as any of us.
“Why you not sell cheap like him?” they asked their friend “Sippo.” “We stay then. Not go his store.” ”

“ They were outside the store, sitting under a tree, waiting for the returning Agent to appear. But he did not come, and the suspense added to Scipio’s wretchedness.
“He put me in charge,” he kept repeating.
“The driver ain’t responsible when a stage is held up,” reasoned the Virginian.
Scipio hardly heard him. “He put me in charge,” he said. Then he worked round to Horacles again. “He ain’t got strength. He ain’t got beauty. He ain’t got riches. He ain’t got brains. He’s just got sense enough for parlor conjuring tricks—not good ones, either. ”

“ This caused Scipio to look frowningly across Buffalo Horn to where the Culloden Ranch buildings lay clear in the blue crystal of the afternoon light. “Marriage ain’t learned in a day,” he remarked, “any more than ropin’ stock is. He ain’t learned how to be married yet.”
Again I thought of Scipio’s past adventures and remembered that the best critics are they who have failed in art. ”

“ I thought first y’u didn’t have a handkerchief.”
“I wonder if he has me beat?” muttered poor Scipio.
The Virginian now had a word of consolation. “Don’t y’u see,” he again pointed out, “that no newspaper could have helped you? If it could why did he go away to Washington without tellin’ you? He don’t look for you to deal with troubles he don’t mention to you.”
“I wonder if Horacles has me beat?” said Scipio once more.
The Virginian standing by the seated, brooding man clapped him twice on the shoulders, gently. It was enough. They were very fast friends. ”

“ It’s not you I’m making war on. I do hope there’s no hard feelings—”
“Not a feelin’, Horacles! How can y’u entertain such an idea?” Scipio shook him by the hand and smiled like an angel at him—a fallen angel. “What’s the use of me keepin’ this store open to-morrow? Nobody’ll be here to spend a cent. Guess I’ll shut up, Horacles, and come watch the Injuns all shoppin’ like Christmas over to your place.”
The Virginian sustained his indifference, and added to Scipio’s pleasure. But during breakfast the Virginian broke down. ”

“ And Scipio’s bleached blue eye grew cold. Later injuries one may forgive, but school ones never.
“Didn’t you whale him?” asked the Agent.
“Every time,” said Scipio, “till he told Uncle. Uncle was mayor of Gallipoleece then. So I wasn’t ready to get expelled,—I got ready later; nothin’ is easier than gettin’ expelled,—but I locked up my lunch after that.”
“Uncle’s pretty good to him,” muttered the Agent. “Got him this position.—Well, nobody will expel you here. Look after things. I’ll feel easy to think you’re on hand.” ”

“ Darkness was gathering in the store.
“Hand all same foot,” shouted Scipio, with gestures, “mouth all same hand. Can eat fire. Can throw ear mile off and listen you talk.” Here Horacles removed a dollar from the hair of High Bear’s fourteenth daughter, threw it into one boot, and brought it out of the other. The daughter screamed and burrowed behind her sire. All the Indians had drawn close together, away from the counter, while Scipio on top of the counter talked high and low, and made gestures without ceasing. “Hand all same mouth. Foot all same head. ”

“ Uncle Pasco, with unchanged indulgence, repeated. “You’ll do in time. Keep studying seasoned men. That’s what.” And he finished his meal. “You’ll find your six-shooter in the place where I’ll put it.”
The old gentleman opened the door, and, leaving Scipio in the chair, walked briskly by the corral into the trees and mounted his old pink mare. From the door of the cabin Scipio watched him amble away along the banks of Spit-Cat. ”

“ Scipio then confessed, “to be smellin’ buckskin and leather and groceries instead of ether and iodoform.”
“Guess you were pretty sick,” observed the clerk, with relish.
“Yes. Oh, yes. I was pretty sick. That’s right. Yes.” Scipio had continued through these slowly drawled remarks to look at the ceiling. Then his glance dropped to the level of Horacles, and keenly fixed that unconscious youth’s plump little form, pink little face, and mean little mustache. Behind one ear stuck a pen, behind the other a pencil, as the assistant clerk was arranging some tins of Arbuckle’s Arioso coffee. ”

“ Scipio's death removed a man who might have been a powerful advocate on his behalf; the vague relationship of clientship in which the family of Marius had stood to the clan of the Herennii [802] —a relation common between Roman families and the members of Italian townships, and in this case probably dating from a time before Arpinum had received full Roman rights—seems never to have led to active interference on his behalf on the part of the representatives of that ancient Samnite house. Perhaps the Herennii were too weak to assist the fortunes of their client ”

“ I said. “We were talking of a third man.”
“A man,” said Scipio. “Yes.”
“I can cook, I can pack, I can cook good bread, and I can show you sheep, and if I don’t you needn’t to pay me a cent,” entreated the boy.
“He sure means what he says,” Scipio commented. “It’s your trip.”
Thus it was I came to hire Timberline.
Dawn showed him in the same miserable rags he wore on my first sight of him at the corral, and these proved his sole visible property of any kind; he didn’t possess a change of anything, he hadn’t brought away from Rongis so much as a handkerchief tied up with things inside it ”

“ The baffled Virginian grinned. “I’ll throw you out,” he said, “and break all your laigs and bones and things fresh.”
“I wish Uncle was going to be there,” said Scipio.
Nearly everybody else was there: the Agent, bearing his ill fortune like a philosopher; some officers from the Post, and the doctor; some enlisted men, blue-legged with yellow stripes; civilians male and female, honorable and shady; and then the Indians. Wagons were drawn up, ponies stood about, the littered plain was populous. Horacles moved behind the counter, busy and happy ”

“ The disconsolate Scipio took a pull at his cigar,—he had taken one between every sentence. “Damn his false teeth.”
The Virginian looked grave. “Don’t be hasty.{49} Maybe the day will come when you and me’ll need ’em to chew our tenderloin.”
“We’ll be old. Horacles is twenty-five.”
“Twenty-five is certainly young to commence eatin’ by machinery,” admitted the Virginian.
“And he’s proud of ’em,” whined Scipio. “Proud! Opens his bone box and sticks ’em out at y’u on the end of his tongue.”
“I hate an immodest man,” said the Virginian. ”

“ Nobody else had, it appeared; and Scipio smoked for a while.{74}
“Well,” he remarked at length, with a certain gloom, like one who speaks from an offended heart, “a man don’t enjoy bein’ mistrusted. Not if there’s never been nothing to justify it.” He said no more, waiting for some one to draw the desired inference from this utterance.
After a matter of some five minutes the inference was appreciated, and he received a counter-offer, so to speak, a trifle too obviously aimed. “Them hands at the Flat Iron,” said the offerer, “has most finished their job, ain’t they?” ”

“ He had followed Scipio’s pointing finger to where Horacles was happily practising a trick with a glass and a silver dollar behind the counter.
“Heap cheap,” repeated Scipio, “because” (here he leaned close to High Bear and whispered) “because his uncle medicine-man. He big medicine-man, too.{54}”
High Bear’s eyes rested for a moment on Horacles. Then he shook his head. “Ah, nah,” he grunted. “He not medicine-man. He fall off horse. He no catch horse. My little girl catch him. Ah, nah!” High Bear laughed profusely at “Sippo’s” joke. ”

“ Have a care, said my mother, to make it plain and decent, without anything like pomp or parade. It can scarcely be too humble for my husband, whom all the town knows to have been low in rank and indigent in circumstances. Madam, replied Scipio, though he had been the meanest and most destitute of the human race, I would not bate one button in the array of his posthumous honors. My master's credit is at stake in the proper conduct of the ceremony; he has been in an ostensible situation under the Duke of Lerma, and his father ought to be buried with all the forms of state and nobility. ”

“ By heaven, our pates the jingling cap befits!
We are the clowns; the country louts, the wits.
Bruno. Here comes knave Scipio, the Prince's friend,
Stuck like a wild-flower in his love-lock's shade,
Replacing us, poor withered hothouse blooms.
We'll dust his livery with wordy strokes,
And in his own outspoken chaff deride him.
Enter Scipio.
Felice. By Jove, we will!—Come hither, Scipio. Master of wit, lord of a cabbage-bed, Knight of the cudgel, toady, knave, and clown, Beseech your mightiness to signify To us, your humble servants, what's o'clock? Scipio. ”

“ Every one felt that to gain this distinction would be for him a real victory, far outweighing any official position or honourable distinction which either patricians or plebeians could confer. Of all the great and good men in the State they adjudged the best and noblest to be P. Scipio, the son of the Cnaeus Scipio who had fallen in Spain; a young man not yet old enough to be quaestor. ”

“ Don Scipio. Ha! ha! ha! can't forget Pedrillo.—But come, ha' done with your Pedrillos now—be yourself, son-in-law.
Ped. Yes, I will be yourself, son-in-law, you are sure of that honour, Don Scipio; but pray, what fortune am I to have with your daughter? You are a grey-headed old fellow, Don Scipio, and by the course of nature, you know, you cannot live long.
[54]
Don Scipio. Pardon me, sir, I don't know any such thing. ”

“ The young Scipio of my story, who is, I may say, an imaginary character, but is supposed to belong to a younger generation than Scipio Africanus the Younger, the conqueror of Carthage, would therefore be her great-nephew. Scipio himself was her nephew by adoption (being the adopted son of her brother) , and her first cousin by blood. (He was a son of Æmilius Paullus, and she was the daughter of Æmilius Paullus's sister.) He was also her son-in-law. Her elder son Tiberius was born in 163 B.C., and was therefore seventeen at this time; the younger, Caius, was about nine. ”

“ Into the yawning ocean of my ears,
Entranced as by the music of the spheres.
Cophetua's bride was humbler than she is;
Yet is she humblest of the maids I know.
Mage Hymen will transmute girl to princess;
My empress love enthroned her long ago.
Scipio. I know this wonder.
Felice. Which the Prince praises?
Scipio. Ay. She is indeed a miracle. Her mother is a woman; and there
are those who will swear she was once no higher than her grandam's
armchair. It is reported that she eats when she is hungry ”