"Well, I won't sing it this time," declared Sissy, seating herself at
the piano, yet making a last stand at the very guns.
But Kate and Irene burst forth in the opening chorus with all the verve
in the world. The Madigans never scorned expression when it was
understood that they were acting. And the twins, still pulling stage
properties out of the box, and even Frances, fantastically decorated
with a torn Irish lace fichu over the bifurcated, footed white garment
she still wore o' nights, joined joyfully in:
"'We are the flowers,
The fair young flowers,
That come at the voice of spring--'
DING--DONG!"
It was a familiar old Madigan joke, always greeted with a shriek of
laughter, to shout out the two notes of the accompaniment that
punctuated the musical phrases. Its observance now put even Sissy in
good humor, so that when the time came for the Recluse to make his
appearance, she left the piano, and stalking miserably about with the
preliminary cough with which the unfortunate Professor Trask was
afflicted, she sang her doleful recitative.
The Madigans were never literalists. They were of the impressionistic
school, which requires of the audience, as well as of the artist, high
imaginative powers. And here the audience of one moment was the actor of
the next, whose duty it was not to mind too closely the letter that
killeth, but to mimic irreverently, to exaggerate, to make of themselves
caricatures of the mannerisms of others, to nickname, to seize upon
every peculiarity with their quick, observant, cruel young eyes and
paint it in flesh-and-blood cartoons.
Thus, when the Rose, that "gentle flower in which a thorn is oft
concealed," sang her duet with the Nightingale (Sissy trilling weakly on
the piano, while Frank fluted her fingers affectedly as she had seen it
done that memorable night) it was done in the hollow, throaty tones of
the elder Miss Blind-Staggers, who had created the rôle; while the Lily
sang through her nose, which she wiped every now and then in a manner
unmistakably that of Henrietta Blind-Staggers.
"The Cantata of the Flowers" was never brought to a glorious completion
by the Madigans, even though they skipped uninteresting and difficult
parts, and, like the early Elizabethans, permitted no intermission
between acts. It was very often laughed to death. At times it became a
saturnalia of extravagant action, and it frequently ended in a free
fight, when the Rose and the Lily hinted too openly at the Recluse's
incurable tendency to sing off key. But that night it might have dragged
its saccharine length of melody to the coronation of the Rose and a
quick curtain if Miss Madigan had not walked right into the thick of it.
"Golly!" gasped Sissy, while Irene dodged behind Kate, who quickly
turned down the lamp, and a hush fell upon the rest.
But Miss Madigan had been writing, or rather rewriting, letters. She had
completely forgotten the heinous offense of the afternoon.
"Will you mail a letter for me, Sissy, the first thing in the morning?"
she asked, still preoccupied. "Why are you in the dark?"
"We're just going to bed," remarked Sissy, with soothing demureness,
taking the envelope from her aunt's hand and falling in with her mood,
as one does with the mentally afflicted.
When Miss Madigan, fatigued with the labor of composition, had gone back
to her room, Kate turned up the light again. "Same thing, I s'pose?" she
asked. "Circumstances-letter--huh?"
"I s'pose so. 'T ain't sealed," said Sissy, with resignation. "But she
always forgets to seal 'em." Then, suddenly inspired, she caught up
Professor Trask's pencil lying on the piano, and on the vacant half-page
at the end of Miss Madigan's letter she wrote in her best school-girl
hand:
You--whoever you are--needn't bother to answer this.
None of us Madigans wants your help or annybody else's.
It 't only that Aunt Anne's got the scribbles, and
we'll thank you to mind your own buisness.
_Sissy Madigan._
She read her composition to the startled but, on the whole, approving
Madigans, sealed the letter, and was ready for bed.
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 favoriteship, 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.
[Illustration:
"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 gods, unconscious of the betraying yellow
streaks that beaded her blue gingham apron.
"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 passing.
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 assembled 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 shirked 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 association 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 fashions,
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 assault and the
Roman soldiers passed 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.
But at Madigan's snort of disgust, the Indian profile of Split, below
its bushy crown of red, shone out malevolently. She did not know what
Sissy had done; she knew only that she had done something.
Sissy met her glance, and returned it with dignity. "I didn't mean that,
father, you know," she said priggishly. "I meant, of course, in what
part of Carthage was Rome."
"Oh, you did!" Madigan's smile was not pleasant.
"Ye-es," said Sissy, uncertainly.
"Well," said Madigan, explosively, "Rome was in the same part of
Carthage as Carthage was of Rome."
His jaw was set now, and his glowing dark eyes beneath their white
shaggy brows as he sought his place in the book were not encouraging.
But the enigmatic character of his response was not enough for Sissy,
dazed, yet greedy for glory. She glanced from Split, in whose ear Kate
was whispering something that seemed vastly to delight her, to her
father, who had begun to read again.
"I don't remember, father, please," she said as he paused a moment to
clear his throat. "What part was that?"
A sputtering giggle broke from Split. It was unlucky, for it turned
Madigan's wrath upon her.
"Outside!" he commanded, pointing to the door. "Outside, you ox!..."
"'Six days passed thus,'" the reading began again. (In almost the moment
the door had closed behind her, Split could be heard flying down the
outside steps two at a time. That he was sorely tried, Madigan's voice
showed plainly, and his shrunken audience looked apprehensively at one
another). "'Six days passed thus and only the citadel was left. It was
a steep rock in the middle of the town; a temple of the god of healing
crowned the summit.' The god of healing, Cecilia," he put in, with a
contempt that mantled the perfectionist's check with a resentful red,
"means that particular deity--"
A soft little snore came from Miss Madigan. Her head had fallen to one
side, and the lamp-light shone on her soft, pretty, high-colored face,
placid in its repose as a baby's.
In the moment that Madigan paused and looked at her, Sissy's hand sought
Kate's in terror. But the reader controlled himself with an effort,
remembering possibly that, after all, it was not his sister but his
daughters he was educating.
"'The rock was covered with people,'" he went on, skipping the
explanation he had intended giving to Sissy. And he read on for some
minutes without interruption, becoming more and more interested himself
in the vivid picture as it unrolled, and half declaiming it in his
enthusiasm, with a verve that accounted for Sissy's successful rendition
of "The Polish Boy" at school entertainments. "'The trumpets sounded,'"
he sang out. "'The soldiers, clashing their bucklers with their swords
and uttering the war-cry _Alala! Alala!_ advanced in--'"
"Mercy me!" exclaimed Miss Madigan, waked by his realistic shout, and
blinking her bright little eyes to accustom them to the light.
"Anne," said Madigan, tensely, "if you are not interested, you--are not
obliged to listen, of course. But it would be more--civil to withdraw
if--"
"Not interested?" she repeated, with gentle surprise, as she took up her
crocheting again. "Why, it's very interesting--most interesting; don't
you find it so, Kate?"
"'A man dressed in purple rushed out of the temple with an olive-branch
in his hand,'" Madigan began again, all the ardor gone from his voice.
"'This was Hasdrubal, the commander-in-chief, and the Robespierre of the
Reign of Terror. His--'"
"Missy Kate--want chocolate--picnic--" Wong stood open-mouthed in the
doorway. Consciousness of having interrupted the master, as well as
amazement at beholding him out of his own room after dinner, was too
much for him.
"What do you want, Wong?" demanded Madigan, harshly.
"Notting--oh, notting," murmured Wong, deprecatingly. "One picnic,
sabe, t'-malla morning."
"Irene--I mean Cecilia--Thousand devils!--Kate," stormed Madigan, in his
rage forgetting his daughter's precise appellation, "go out into the
kitchen and give your orders. If you had the least grain of common sense
you'd know that the first duty of a housekeeper is to have some system
about her work; to do things at the right time and not to interrupt the
evening's entertainment." He gulped a bit at this, though Kate's dropped
lids quickly hid the ironical gleam in her eye. "Well, why don't you
go--and stay? You might as well, or you'll forget something else and
interrupt us again."
A desire to make herself look very numerous, intelligent, and
appreciative possessed Sissy as the door closed on her big sister. She
was in the familiar frame of mind in which she disapproved of her
sisters, yet she was terrified lest, if she gave him time, her father
might draw the same inference that she had.
"Perhaps you'll let me read aloud for a while, father. Mr. Garvan often
has me read things to the class," she suggested quickly, when she saw he
was about to close the book.
Madigan hesitated. A succession of infuriating trifles had beat upon
his temper till it was worn thin. But Sissy's outstretched hand
conquered merely by suggestion. He put the book before her, pointed to
the place, got to his feet, and began pacing to and fro.
"'Carthage burned seventeen days before it was entirely consumed,'" read
Sissy. "'Then the plow was passed over the soil to put an end in legal
form to the existence of the city. House might never be built, corn
might never be sown, upon the ground where it had stood.'"
She read well, did Sissy, as she did most things. Little by little
Madigan's sharp, quick steps became less and less the bodily expression
of exasperated nerves, and tuned themselves to the meter of that pretty,
childish voice, intelligently giving utterance to the thoughtful
philosophy that had always soothed him. It lost some of its familiarity
and gained a new charm, coming from that small, round mouth which had an
almost faultless instinct for pronunciation. A feeble germ of fatherly
pride began to sprout beneath the soil upon which the child's
intelligent reading fell like a warm, spring rain.
"One moment, Cecilia." Madigan stopped in his walk, lifting an
apologetic hand to excuse the interruption. "You read just now of 'the
Britons of Cornwall gathering on high places and straining their eyes
toward the west; the ships which had brought them beads and purple cloth
would come again no more.' Now, to what does that refer?"
Sissy's hands flew to her breast; and before she had time to conceal, to
pretend, to affect, he had seen the blank expression of her face. You
see, she had been merely reading; not thinking. The sound of her own
voice had drowned the sense. To read intelligently a thing the
comprehension of which was far over her head was the utmost this
eleven-year-old could do. She had not the vaguest idea what she had been
reading. It was all a blank!
Madigan stood petrified; and the last little martyred ox, stuffing her
apron into her mouth, that she might not weep aloud, hurried from the
room.
A moment longer Madigan stood. Then he looked at Miss Madigan. That
lady's placid face had not changed a particle. She sat crocheting what
she called a fascinator, her white bone needle moving harmoniously in
and out of the blue wool. Had she heard a word that had been read? Her
brother knew better than to ask. Did it make the least difference to
her whether he read from "The Martyrdom of Man" or not?
Madigan shut the book with a bang. The "martyring," boomerang that it
had proved, was over.
* * * * *
The world seems new-born every summer morning in Virginia City. This
little mining-town, dry, sterile, and unlovely, and built at an absurd
angle up the mountain, is the poor relation of her fortunate cousins of
the high Alps; yet shares with them their birthright--an open, boundless
breadth of view, an endless depth of unpolluted, sparkling air, the
fresh, shining virginity of the new-created.
It was the sense of a nature-miracle, and the desire to penetrate still
farther and higher into the crystalline sky that crowned it, which sent
the Madigans every summer toiling up Mount Davidson. They did not know
it, but yearly the _Wanderlust_ seized them, and as all things in
Virginia point one way, they followed that suggestion--upward.