half a day the smallest of Madigans was supposed to be doing
kindergarten work, with a mild infusion of the practical in the shape of
a-b-c's.
It did not occur to this young lady to try to disown the substitute. On
the contrary, she was exceedingly proud of her proprietary interest in
the teacher. She leaned her plump hand upon that august person's knee in
all the easy charm of intimacy when the baby class gathered about her,
and was so intoxicated by reflected glory that she forgot the two
letters of the alphabet she was supposed to know.
There was one thing no Madigan--not even Kate--could pretend to: to be
patient was beyond them all, talented as they were.
"It's 'B,' Frank!" the substitute cried, in her exasperation forgetting
the dignified demeanor she had adopted. "Say 'B,' 'B,' you stupid!"
In that terrible moment Frank realized that there were drawbacks to
being too well acquainted with the teacher. Her eyes filled with tears
of chagrin. "'B, B, you stupid!'" she sobbed.
And a quick, clear laugh from the substitute completed the
demoralization of the mixed primary. It was not, strictly speaking, "in
order" when Mr. Garvan visited it.
* * * * *
Oh, to be out of school, at the end of that first day of adulthood! To
be unwatched, to be free, to be little and young, if that pleased one!
To walk up the hill and along the main street, and then, just as one was
about to turn the corner prosaically and mount still higher--then to
come face to face with a creature so elegant, so visibly "dressed," that
no gambler in town could outshine him. By sheer good luck, to have been
introduced to this dandy in one's capacity of teacher of the mixed
primary that very morning, when he had been given permission by Mr.
Garvan to make an announcement at the school concerning special
privileges granted school-children at the "high-class minstrel
performance" given at Lally's Opera House. To be unhampered now by the
timidities of office, and ready to pick up the gage of coquetry his
saucy glance threw down. And so, after the smallest second's
hesitation,--the woman in one stifling both the child's and the
substitute's hesitation,--to allow the gaudy stranger to walk beside one
the length of C Street. And though the sidewalk was crowded, for stocks
were up, and one had to wriggle one's way through the people packed
tight in front of the brokers' offices, yet, in the very teeth of the
townsfolk, to joy shamelessly in flirtation with this gorgeous, shining,
flattering stranger--a social outlaw, as well as a bird of passage, the
very disrepute of whose profession made temptation more subtly sweet!
* * * * *
"Split," whispered Sissy, her voice muffled with shame,--it was a week
later,--"Kate walked with a minstrel! What shall we do?"
"Did she? Who told on her--Mrs. Ramrod? Well," added Split, out of the
depths of experience, "it must have been that day she substituted."
OLD MOTHER GIBSON
Imprisoned in skirts, Jack Cody was awaiting his mother and relief, when
there came a knock at the door, and a voice distinctly not Jane Cody's
said:
"I beg your pardon, I'm sure, but your town's so jolly dark, I believe
I've lost my way. I'm looking for--My word, what's that!"
A parabola of light had suddenly shot out athwart the soft black night.
It seemed to come from the hill to the left, and it was accompanied by
the tinkle of shattered glass.
"It's the Madigans." Jack's voice was wistful and his gaze was turned
longingly upward.
"Madigans!" exclaimed the stranger, looking in amazement from the boyish
face surmounting a shapeless woman's gown to the thing it watched so
yearningly--a light flaring brightly on the hill, a lot of small dancing
figures silhouetted blackly against it, the smell of coal-oil, and the
shrill excited laughter of children.
"Upon my soul, yours is a strange country," the man went on--"stranger
even than it looks. How in the world did you know that I was looking for
the Madigans?"
"Are you?" asked the boy, dully. His body might be down in Jane Cody's
cabin, but his soul was up aloft there where the Madigans held high
carnival.
"Yes, I am," answered the stranger, his eyes fixed upon the odd figure
before him.
"Well, there they are," the boy said, pointing upward to the grotesque
dancing shadows.
"Eh?--I beg your pardon, I--I don't understand. Just what has happened?"
asked the stranger.
"Nothin'," said Jack. "The lamp gets tipped over when they're playing
Old Mother Gibson, and they just throw it out so's not to set the house
afire."
"Every night?" asked the man, in the polite tone strangers adopt in
striving to fathom a local mystery.
"Nope," said the boy, in a matter-of-fact tone. "They can't play it
every night; sometimes their aunt won't let 'em."
"You appear to know them." There was a smile hidden beneath the voice;
but Jack was thinking, not of the questioner, indistinguishable in the
darkness, but of the mad carnival up yonder on the hill.
"Yep. That's Split," he said. "That one--see--with the bushy lot of
hair, singing and cake-walking in front. She can do a cake-walk better'n
any nigger I ever see."
"Indeed!"
"That's Frank, the baby--the one that's screamin' so. You can tell her
squeals; they're laughin' ones, you know."
"I suppose I ought to know. Anyway, I'm glad to be told."
"Over on the side there, where there's a kind of blotch, is the twins;
they must be fighting. Don, the dog, 's mixed up in it somehow."
"My word!" exclaimed the man, softly, to himself.
"That's Kate dancing round on the porch, and the one standing high-like,
right next to the fire, with her arms up stiff, as if she was running
the whole show, sort of--of--"
"A priestess, say, invocating the Goddess of Kerosene!"
"Huh?--Well, that's Sissy."
"Oh, is it? Tell me--is she nice--Sissy?"
"What?" asked the boy, so surprised that he withdrew his attention from
on high and stared out at the man on the door-step.
There came a laugh out of the darkness. "It is an odd question, but then
everything is so odd out here, I half hoped you wouldn't notice it. But
you do know them, evidently. I wonder--do you mind going up there with
me and showing me the way?"
But his last question had suddenly recalled to Jack Cody the reason why
he wasn't at that moment one of the dancing black figures on the hill.
The boy looked from his mother's wrapper to the man's face, growing more
distinct now, out on the door-step, and the amused expression he saw
there his sore egotism attributed to a personal cause. So he promptly
slammed the door in the man's face.
There was an instant's pause out in the blackness, made denser now that
the candle's light from the cabin was cut off; then a short, nonplussed
laugh.
"Miles, old chap," the young man was saying to himself, as he turned
cautiously to jump from the stoop and mount the hill, "this is Bedlam
you've fallen into--this mad little mining-town ten thousand miles off
in a brand-new corner of the world, all hills and characters! Now, what
might be the sex of that animal you were talking to? And what in the
name of peace are these Madigans? Are they the ones you're look--Steps,
as I value my immortal soul!" he exclaimed, rubbing his shin where he
had struck against the wandering Madigan stairway. "It would not have
surprised me, now, if I had had to climb that hill on my hands and
knees, and stand on my head when I got to the door, to knock at it with
my heels!"
* * * * *
Miss Madigan's demeanor was beautiful to see. Just a bit--oh, the least
bit of I-told-you-so in her manner, but also a generous willingness to
postpone the acceptance of apologies due to one long misunderstood, and
to take for granted the family's obligation.
"The estate must be worth at least ten thousand a year," she confided in
her delighted perturbation to Frances, as she curled her hair. And Frank
looked up at her, soulful and uncomprehending, and a bit cross-eyed, for
the curl dangling down over her nose. "He'll marry Kate, of course--I
had no idea he was so young. He'll just be the savior of the whole
family. It's a providence,--Miles Madigan's dying when he did,--and
wasn't it fortunate that Nora sent my letter back?... You will be good
at the table, Frances, and show cousin Miles how nicely you can use your
fork?... He is practically a cousin.... Have you washed your hands?"
"Hm-mm," murmured Frank, mendaciously. And then, as Aunt Anne appeared
to doubt her word, "Just you ask God if I haven't," she suggested
solemnly, carefully putting her hands behind her.
But Miss Madigan had no time to put questions to so distant an
authority. She had Wong to placate--Wong with his wash-day face on,
grim, ill-tempered, hurried, defying the world to put even the smallest
additional burden on his shoulders on Monday. And Miles Morgan just
arrived from Ireland!
And Francis talking to him in the library, in that distant, watchful,
uncompromising way of his, that was just as likely as not to send the
young man off in a huff.
"One needn't insult a man just because he's rich and a relative!" Miss
Madigan's exclamation was uttered aloud unconsciously, so excited was
she. It ended with a gasp, as Sissy collided with her on the way from
peeking through the half-open library door at her father and his guest.
It was the bedroom, Kate's and Irene's, that Sissy was bound for; for
there, in solemn conclave, the junior Madigans were assembled, waiting
for their scout's report.
"He's big--but not so big as the Avalanche," she began the moment she
had shut the door behind her and faced the questioning eyes that
commanded her to stand and deliver. "He's straight, too, but not so
poker-stiff as Mrs. Ramrod. He's got a big haw-haw voice, and scrubs
every word he says with a tooth-brush before he says it. His hands are
as white--as white; and they're cleaner than Crosby Pemberton's. He's
got a tan shirt on, plaited in front, and every time Aunt Anne moves
he's up like a jumping-jack till she gets sat down again. He says 'My
word!' and 'in the States'--like that. He's got a mustache the color of
your hair, Split, a scrubby, stiffy little mustache. His eyes are little
twinkling things, and I believe--" she paused in her indictment to give
the criminal the benefit of the doubt--"I do believe he had gloves on
when he first came! I won't be sure; but, anyway, I hate him."
A gratified sigh rose from the Madigans assembled. It was good to have
definite information, to know that this Miles Morgan was hatable. For
the Madigans loved to hate any one who could put them under
obligations--when they did not spend their very souls in a passion of
gratitude to him. But for this interloping, distant relative from
foreign shores they were prepared. They were ready to outrage him, to
throw his patronage in his teeth, if he dared offer it, to out-Madigan
the Madigans, if that were necessary; to disgust him and satisfy their
pride, wounded by the insolence of his prosperity. Yes, it was good to
hear Sissy's frank declaration of war. For war was as the breath of the
Madigans' nostrils. They knew themselves there, and, though they might
have trusted Sissy, they had feared for a moment that her report might
not be all they had hoped.
"We'll show him," said Split.
"A patronizing, affected Irishman!" snorted Sissy, informally now that
her official duties were ended.
"He thinks he'll come out here and run the whole family," said Fom,
aggrieved.
"And show off how rich he is, and turn up his nose at things," said Bep,
"and boss us. I'd like to see him try it!"
"And be shocked at what we don't know, and what we do do, and what we
haven't seen and learned. I dare him just to say 'abroad' to me!" cried
Kate, with a flash in her eye.
A chorus of groans went up from the indignant assemblage.
"Aunt Anne," put in Frank, a bit puzzled, "says he's the savior of the
fam'ly. What's a--"
"The savior of the family! The savior!" mocked Sissy, genuflecting
sarcastically. "The savior of the family will have you sent to a
convent, Split, 'where young ladies are taught to behave properly.' The
savior'll get a nursemaid for you, Frank, and you'll have to go about
always holding her hand and wearing socks in the English style that'll
show your bare, naked legs and--"
"I won't! I won't!" Tears of terror stood in Frank's eyes.
"The savior'll put a stop, Fom, to your--Kate Madigan, are you changing
your dress?" Sissy's voice fell suddenly, and she put the question in a
calm, magisterial tone that sent every eye in the room on a query toward
the eldest Madigan.
Kate turned at bay. She had slipped off her waist, and the red was
flushing her long throat and small, spirited face. "Well, miss, suppose
I am?" she demanded hotly.
"She always changes her dress for dinner, you know," came in a sarcastic
sneer from Split. "She wants to show our dear cousin how swell we are.
We all wear low-necked rigs, and father has his swallowtail, and--"
"Shall I bring you the curling-iron, Kathy?" mocked Sissy.
"Don't you want a rose for your hair, Kathleen?"
"Or a ribbon here and there, as Mrs. Ramrod says, Kitty?"
"Aunt Anne says," said Frank, feeling that this was some sort of game
and that her turn had come, "he's going to mawwy you. Is he, Kate?"
The white cashmere with the red-embroidered rosebuds slipped from Kate's
hand. All innocent of malicious intent, Frank's shot had scored. The cry
of the Pack that leaped about her could not touch Kate after this. She
was frozen in by maidenly prudery, by childish self-consciousness, by
Madigan perversity. When the bell rang she went in to dinner in her old
pink gingham, her head high, her lips set, her eyes unseeing.
"She's got 'em," Sissy whispered to Split.
"Yep, that's the sulks all right," Split nodded.
"This is Kate." Miss Madigan, brave in her new purple gown with the lace
collar at her throat, shot a reproachful glance at the unadorned young
lady of the house. "Your cousin, Miles Morgan, Kate."
"Howd' ye do?" Kate said coldly, ignoring his outstretched hand and
passing on to her seat, where she began busily to serve the butter.
The savior of the family looked after her, interested. Though guilty of
every count in Sissy's indictment, he was not accustomed to being
overlooked by such very young ladies.
"And this is Irene," said Miss Madigan, a tremor in her voice; she, too,
knew now that Kate "had 'em." "This one is Cecilia; the twins, Bessie
and Florence; and Frances, the baby."
The savior of the family glanced along the line of five blank faces, and
felt the perfunctory touch of five small, slippery hands with nothing
more human about their clasp than the childish masks above them.
"I say, how do you tell one another apart?" he asked, with a sudden
gleam in his eye, as they passed him and slid into their places.
A dozen pitying eyes looked coldly at him; half a dozen small mouths
curved disdainfully. His remark seemed to make them more than ever like
mechanisms--hostile ones.
Miss Madigan dropped the soup-ladle in her confusion. To that
experienced lady there was something ominous about so unbroken a union
of Madigans; she remembered with sorrow the few times any subject had
found them unanimous.
But Madigan came in just then, took his seat at the head, looked
mechanically for the banished dog and the cat, and Dusie, chirping
madly in her cage to attract his attention to the fact of her cruel and
unusual imprisonment. He cleared his throat and took up the carver--and
immediately Miles Morgan was conscious of an unbending of the small
Madigans--a cuddling together, so to speak, and a swift interchange of
impressions.
"You haven't given me an opportunity to explain, Miss Madigan--" he
began, in the pause during which Madigan carved strenuously.
"'Aunt Anne,' if you please, my dear boy," urged Miss Madigan, warmly.
"The relationship's distant, but now that you are with us we can have no
ceremony out here in the wilds."
"Oh, thank you." The savior, turning toward her, saw the fattest little
Madigan nudge her red-haired neighbor savagely. She was evidently angry
at something. "It's good of you to take me in like this. What I want to
say is that the train was late crawling crookedly up and around the
mountains. I had no idea of arriving in the evening and coming in upon
you this way. But when I got here, the town looked so savage, don't you
know, so--drear--and desolate and--and flimsy, I got a bit
home-sick--there! The thought of all you people, my own people, housed
somewhere in the spraddling town, called to me. I positively couldn't
wait till morning. You'll forgive me--Aunt Anne?"
A suppressed gurgle came from a blonde Madigan on the other side of the
table, choking over her soup at this endearment. A brunette just her
height spoke rapidly to her and persuasively, but to no avail. Alarming
sounds came from the victim till presently a very dignified, small fat
person rose from her seat, made her way to the nearly suffocated blonde,
gave her a thump between the shoulder-blades that brought tears of
another variety to the sufferer's eyes, and walked composedly back to
her seat.
"How can you be so rough, Sissy!" Aunt Anne exclaimed in an agitated
voice.
"Ah--Sissy!" The savior leaned forward, looking across with a smile in
his eye that might have melted any heart save so savage a Madigan's. "So
you are Sissy."
"My name," said that young person, meeting his smiling eye coldly, "is
Cecilia."
"But your friends call you Sissy?"
"Yes, my friends do," admitted the perfectionist, with an accent that
was supposed to be crushing.
"And you sign yourself so in your letters?" he went on pleasantly.
"My letters?"
"Yes; your informal little notes, you know."
Sissy laid down her spoon. A sudden distaste for eating, for living, for
breathing had come upon her. She had forgotten her postscript to that
unhappy letter; it was all so long ago, and Aunt Anne's letters never
had had a sequel! But before her now the savior's head seemed to bob up
and down sickeningly, while a voice cried in her ears so loud she
fancied the whole table must hear it:
"You--whoever you are--needn't bother to answer this.
None of us Madigans wants your help or annybody else's.
It's only that Aunt Anne's got the scribbles, and we'll
thank you to mind your own business.
_"Sissy Madigan."_
The savior threw back his head in a quite boyish way and laughed aloud
as he watched her face.
A cold rage seized Sissy. To be laughed at before the whole table! She
hated him; she knew she hated him!
"I don't understand," said Madigan, feeling called upon to say
something that was not vituperative at his own dinner-table. "You could
never have seen a note of Sissy's, Mr. Morgan?"
"Never." The savior lied like a gentleman.
But he was mistaken if he supposed that he had placated Cecilia. She
would not even meet his eyes, those eyes that twinkled so enjoyingly.
The savior tried Irene.
"You and I have hair the same color," he said genially. "I hope your
temper isn't like mine, too."
"I hope not," she answered stiffly.
He laughed again, that big, amused laugh. Split's eyes shot fire.
Evidently the Madigans were funnier than they knew.
"Now, I wonder," he said, "would that be a compliment or a confession?"
"Irene is trying and succeeding better every day in gaining
self-control," interposed Aunt Anne, with hasty amiability. To discuss
Irene's temper in committee of the whole, like that--the temerity of the
man! "Won't you have some more mutton?" she pressed. "It's wash-day, you
know, and it's just a pick-up dinner; but we're so glad to have you, if
you'll excuse--"
"The apology's due from me, you know," he interrupted. "And the good
fortune's mine, too. Fancy me dining the evening of my arrival at that
brick barn they call the hotel down yonder! It will be hard enough when
I really have to live there."
"You do not surely expect--" began Madigan, pausing over his
strawberries.
"To live 'out West'? Will you let me tell you how it happened, Mr.
Madigan? There isn't much to it--just this: Miles Madigan, as you
know--do you know?--was not the man to leave much behind him. Not that
he'd deliberately wrong a fellow, poor old chap, but--well--oh, you
understand! Well, when his solicitors got through subtracting and
dividing and subdividing, the heir--one Miles Morgan, bred to do
nothing, and with a talent for that profession, I must admit--found
himself poor, with just enough to live on. The ten thousand a year
had--just slipped through Miles Madigan's fingers."
"Oh!" Miss Madigan's voice was sympathizing, disappointed.
"Then"--it was Frank's clear treble; she hadn't understood much, but she
knew what "poor" meant: a Madigan learned that early--"then you're not
going to mawwy Kate?"
Kate went white, while Miss Madigan's delicate face flushed purple, and
Split pinched Sissy's arm, in her excitement, till that young woman
cried aloud.
"Frances--outside!" stormed Madigan.
"Oh, Mr. Madigan--please!" deprecated the savior, holding out his arms
to the whimpering Frances, who jumped into them as to a refuge. "No,
little girl," he said, bending down to reassure her, "I'm going to marry
Sissy; that's why I came out here."
A gasp of relief parted Kate's trembling lips. She was very near being
fond of the detested savior in that moment, in her gratitude to him for
not having looked at her.
But oh, the disdain of Sissy! It was such a very poor joke, in her
opinion. Her round little face with its dots for features looked so sour
and supercilious, as she passed the savior with averted eyes on her way
out of the dining-room,--the children were withdrawing now,--that he
could not resist putting out a hand to stop her.
"You will have me, Sissy?" he begged with a laugh. "Think of a man
coming clear out here with so little encouragement as I had. Such
devotion might appeal to a heart of stone!"
His enemy stood with downcast eyes, the red slowly mounting to the
smoothed-back brown hair.
"Sissy's Number One in her class," ventured Frank, as a recommendation.
"I'm not!" flamed forth Sissy. "I never was, or--or if I was it was
because of--of--"
"Why, Sissy!" interjected Miss Madigan, grieved.
"Of a mistake of some sort," suggested the savior, soothingly. "Well, I
suppose I could marry a girl that was only Number Two."
"I'm never Number Two--never! I'm Number--Twenty!" Sissy's eyes were
raised for a moment to his--a revelation of the insulted dignity
seething within her.
"Oh, well, a Number Twenty wife is good enough; but we'd have to live in
Ireland, I suppose," said the savior, philosophically.
A passion of wrath at his dullness filled the clever Sissy, and she
sought for a moment before she found the weapon to hurt him.
"In Ireland, you know," she said, as deliberately as she could for fear
of breaking into tears before she had delivered the insult, "the pigs
live in the parlor, and--and the children have no place to sleep and--go
barefooted!"
"Oh!" The savior was stunned for an instant, but he recovered. "No, I
didn't know. But in Nevada, I'm told, the Indians eat Irishmen alive,
and those that are left are shot down by white desperados on C Street
every day just at noon! We couldn't live here, could we?"
Sissy gasped. She opened her lips as if to speak, but closed them again,
and suddenly, in the instant's pause, there came an irresistible giggle
from Split, already out in the hall.
Sissy's hands flew to her breast. She shook off her suitor's detaining
hand and bolted.
"I couldn't help it," the savior said to Madigan, who was looking at him
with that perplexed frown which the manifestation of his children's
eccentricities so often brought to his face. "She is delightful. What
jolly times we'll have getting acquainted! How fortunate you are, Mr.
Madigan, to have these--"
Madigan threw up his head, a challenge in his eye. Was he even to be
congratulated upon his misfortunes?