The Madigans Part 23

They were all scampering through the long hall playing leap-frog--a specialty of Split's which her present costume facilitated--when Francis Madigan, candle in hand, came out of his room on his usual tour of nightly inspection. His short-sighted eyes fell upon Irene, a pretty, lithe, wavy-haired boy, before she and the twins bolted.

"What boy have you got there?" he demanded. "Send him home."

Kate took Frances up in her arms and covered the retreat; she knew how much the better part of valor was discretion.

Sissy remained standing, looking up at him. When she was alone with her father she was conscious of her poor little barren favorites.h.i.+p, though she dared not impose upon it. In the candle-light his harsh, rugged features stood out marked with lines of suffering.

"It's all right, father," she said, with a quick choice of the lesser irritation for him. "He'll go--right away. Good night."

"Good night, child."

But she walked a step or two with him, slipping her hand at last into his, and pressing it tenderly.

"Is--anything the matter, father?" she whispered.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "She walked a step or two with him"]

He threw back his head as though some one had struck him. It was not difficult to guess from whom the Madigans had inherited their fanatical desire to conceal emotion.

Sissy was terrified at what she had done, yet the vague trouble lay quivering before her, though still unnamed, in his working face.

"Father--I'm sorry," she sobbed.

He pushed her from him, but gently, and she crept into her bed and pulled the clothes over her head, that the twins might not hear her strangled sobbing.

"THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN"

With a shrill whistle of recognition, Jack Cody ran down the hill to meet Split toiling up.

The air is like ethereal champagne in Virginia City, and on a late summer's evening, after the sun's honeyed freshness has been strained through miles of it, it has a quality that makes playing outdoors intoxicating.

Split, though, had not been playing. There was business on hand and she had been downtown to buy eggs for the picnic, with the usual result. She had never yet succeeded in bringing home an unbroken dozen, nor did she ever hope to; but she was really out of temper at the extraordinary dampness of the paper bag, to which her two hands adhered stickily. She walked slowly upward, holding the eggs far in front of her like a votive offering to the culinary G.o.ds, unconscious of the betraying yellow streaks that beaded her blue gingham ap.r.o.n.

"Where you been, Split?" asked Cody, by way of an easy opening.

"Down to the grocery. Mrs. Pemberton's not laying decently these days."

"Mrs. Pemberton!"

"Sissy's gray hen, you know. Sissy called her that 'cause she's so stuck-up and thinks she's better than any other hen in the yard.

Besides, she's got only one chicken, and bosses him for all the world like Crosby."

Cody nodded. "What time you going to start in the morning? Six?"

"Uh-huh." Split dared not lift her eyes from the sticky trail that exuded from her.

"Sure?" the boy demanded.

"Sure--if only father don't keep us so long to-night that we can't get ready. We've got to be martyred to-night," she added gloomily.

Cody looked his resentment and sympathy. Delicacy and the fear of betraying some social disability on his own part of which he was unaware--some neglect of training which might be considered essential in well-regulated families--forbade his inquiring precisely what the process was. To him "martyring" meant some queer rite whose main and malicious purpose it was to keep Split indoors of an evening when the high mountain twilight was going to be long, long; and when the moon that followed it would be so brilliant that one might read by its light--if he weren't too wise, and too fond of hide-and-seek--out in the silver-flooded streets made vocal by childish cries.

"But it can't last the whole evening?" he asked appealingly, as she prepared to mount the steps, always accompanied by the silent yellow witness of her pa.s.sing.

She shook her head hopelessly, sniffing in a manner that showed plainly how little reliance she placed upon the generosity and judgment of adults. And Cody walked away, haunted by the tormenting vision of Split flying before him through the moonlit night: the only girl in town who had any originality about choosing hiding-places, or who could make a race worth while.

The family was a.s.sembled when Split reached the library and sat down, rebelliously sullen, beside Sissy. That young woman, though, wore an expression of purified patience, a submissive willingness to kiss the rod, that was eminently appropriate, however infuriating to the junior Madigans. But Sissy had known that it was coming. She could have foretold the martyrdom; all the signs of yesterday prophesied it, and she was reconciled.

It followed invariably that after the rare occasions when the pitiful curtain of his egotism had been blown aside by some chance breeze of destiny, and Francis Madigan had stood for a moment face to face with himself and his s.h.i.+rked responsibilities, he made the spasmodic effort to fulfil his paternal obligations, which the Madigans had learned to call their "martyring." He took from his library the book which had been most to him, which he had read all his life: for inspiration when he had been young and hopeful, for philosophy now that he was old and a failure. He was sincere in offering to his children the fruit of a great mind with comments by one that was sympathetic, able if not deep, and genuinely eager, for the moment, to share its enthusiasm.

But the sight of all this helpless though secretly critical womanhood disposed attentively about him invariably, through a.s.sociation of ideas, brought to his mind every similar and abortive attempt he had made in this direction. When he opened the book to read aloud to them, he was always irritated, with that deep-seated irascibility which has its foundation in self-discontent, however externals may influence or add to it.

Whatever Francis Madigan might have been, he was never intended for a pedagogue. His impatience of stupidity, his irritation at the slow, stumbling steps of immaturity, not to speak of his lack of judgment in his selection and his determination to persevere in reading aloud from the book of his choice, if he had to ram undigested wisdom whole into the mental stomachs of his offspring--all this would have deterred a less obstinate man. But Madigan, who had become a bully through weakness (forced to domineer unsuccessfully in his home by the conquering softness of his sister's disposition), had the bully's despairing consciousness of being in the wrong at the very moment of superficial victory; of being powerless in the very act of imposing himself upon his poor little women-folk; of recognizing the fact that, although he might lead them to the fountain of knowledge, he was unable to make them drink; and yet not daring to hesitate in his bullying, for fear that he might do nothing at all if he did not do this.

Now that his conscience was quickened, Madigan insisted to himself that the culture of his daughters' minds must be attended to. So he read aloud from "The Martyrdom of Man"; and enjoyed the sound of his voice--the irresistible accents of the cultured Irishman--a pleasure which the world shared with him; but not a martyred world of small women, over whose heads the long-sounding, musical periods of the poet-historian rolled, dropping only an occasional light shower of intelligence upon the untilled minds below.

"We will begin where we left off the last time," Madigan said harshly.

He remembered how long it had been since "last time," and how much his audience had had time to forget. "Where was that? Were any of you interested enough to remember?"

Miss Madigan looked up from her work, like an amiable but very silly hen who pretends to make a mental effort, yet, unfortunately, has nothing to make that effort with. Kate, with the consciousness that she was really the only one of Madigan's children capable of following the line of the historian's thought, flushed guiltily. Irene sat like a prisoner, looking out into the balmy evening. She could hear cries of "Free home!

Free home!" from down yonder in the paradise of the streets, in Crosby Pemberton's voice. Even Crosby, whose unnatural mother was the only lady of Split's acquaintance who was prejudiced against playing in the streets--even Crosby was out. While she--

"It was the fall of Carthage, wasn't it, father?" asked Sissy, sweetly.

If a glance from Split could have slain, Sissy had been dead. It was not the Madigan policy to encourage Francis Madigan in his belief that the seeds he sought to sow fell on fertile soil. If they had to be martyred in one sense, they declined to be in another. Besides, they knew and detested Sissy's hypocritical desire to "show off."

"It was, indeed, Cecilia," said Madigan, with a pathetic softening of his whole being. "'Tis a fine, stirring, terrible picture the historian gives us of the doomed city. Ahem!... 'And then, as if the birds of the air had carried the news, it became known all over northern Africa that Carthage was about to fall. And then, from the dark and dismal corners of the land, from the wasted frontiers of the desert, from the snowy lairs and caverns of the Atlas, there came creeping and crawling to the coast the most abject of the human race--black, naked, withered beings, their bodies covered with red paint, their hair cut in strange fas.h.i.+ons, their language composed of muttering and whistling sounds. By day they prowled around the camp, and fought with the dogs for the offal and the bones. If they found a skin, they roasted it on ashes, and danced around it in glee, wriggling their bodies and uttering abominable cries.

When the feast was over, they cowered together on their hams, and fixed their gloating eyes upon the city, and expanded their blubber-lips and showed their white fangs. At last-'"

A piercing scream came from Frances.

"Thousand devils!" Madigan burst forth, enraged at the interruption.

It was only that Bep and Fom, in the midst of a finger conversation carried on politely with a deaf-and-dumb alphabet, had had their attention attracted by the ghastly word-picture made so vivid by their father's voice. So, wearying of the innocuous desuetude of things, it occurred to them to present for Frank's entertainment a bodily representation of what the words meant to their minds. Safe in the obscurity of the table-cloth's circular shadow, down on the floor they wriggled, they prowled, they cowered and gloated and expanded their blubber-lips and showed their fangs. If they did not utter abominable cries, it was only because that particular detail was not needed to send the smallest Madigan into hysterics.

"Leave the room!" cried Madigan. "Leave the room, you ox!" looking wrathfully, but generally, down at the disturbance.

And three small Madigans, feeling that they had paid a small price for freedom, crept and crawled to the door--the most abject of the Madigan race till they were fairly outside, when they became the most jubilant.

"'At last,'" went on Madigan, a lingering growl of resentment in his voice, "'the day came. The harbor walls were carried by a.s.sault and the Roman soldiers pa.s.sed into--'"

"Father," interrupted Sissy, with the exasperating air of one who knows how soothing she is (like many a talented person, she was irretrievably ruined by her first success and she felt very intelligent)--"father, in what part of Rome was Carthage?"

Behind her father's back Split mouthed a threat of vengeance and shook her fist at the interested Sissy for wilfully prolonging the session.