The Madigans Part 16

"No, I--didn't. I--couldn't."

"Coorse not; coorse not, but ye--"

"Let me out!" cried Split.

The sneer in his voice had set her aflame. She rose in the sleigh, cast off the furs, and, stamping like a fury, tried to seize the reins.

"Ho! Ho!" The old monarch's bowed broad shoulders shook with laughter as he caught her trembling hands and held them. "What a little spitfire! A divvle of a temper ye've got, my dear. Cody, now, does he like gyurls with such a temper?"

"Will you let me out?" Her voice was hoa.r.s.e with anger.

"Can't ye wait till we get t' a crossin', ye little termagant?"

"No--no!" She tore her hands from him, and, with a quick, lithe leap from the low sleigh, landed, a bit dazed, in the snow banked high on the side of the street.

Uncle Sammy stared after her a moment. Then he remembered the boy behind.

"Hi--there!" he cried, looking over his shoulder as he reached for his whip. "Git!"

But Cody had the street-boy's quickness. All he had to do was to let go the end of rope he held, and the leg-breaker slipped smoothly back, while the king's runnered chariot shot ahead, drawn by the flying horses on whose backs the whip had descended.

"Ugh!" shivered Split, as she made her way out of the drift. "It's cold, Jack. Let's run."

Together they hauled the leg-breaker up the hill, parting at the snow-caked, wandering flights of steps, which seemed weary and worn with their endless task of climbing the mountain to Madigan's door.

Irene mounted them quickly. She was cold, and it had grown very dark and late; so late that the lamp shone out from the dining-room, warning her that it must be dangerously near to dinner-time. She had reached the last flight when Sissy came flying out along the porch to meet her.

"Split--ssh!" she cautioned, with a friendliness that surprised Split, who remembered how well she had washed that round, innocent face in the snow only a few hours ago--the face of Sissy, the unforgiving. "Dinner's ready," she went on, "but father isn't down yet. Go round the back way, and you can get in without his knowing how late you are."

Split did not budge. The sight of Sissy had made her a Madigan again, prepared for any emergency the appearance of her arch-enemy might portend. "What are you up to?" she demanded suspiciously.

"Oh!" Sissy turned haughtily on her heel. "If you want to go in and catch it--go."

But Split did not want to catch it. Her day's experience had made her content to bear the eccentricities of her humble foster-father, but she was by no means anxious to be the instrument that should provoke a characteristic expression of them.

She slipped around the back way, pa.s.sing through Wong's big kitchen, the heat and odors of which were grateful messages of cheer to her chilled little body. She flew up-stairs and tore off her wet clothing, and was out in the hall, b.u.t.toning hastily as she walked, when the door-bell rang.

In some previous existence Split Madigan must have been a most intelligent horse in some metropolitan fire department. It was her instinct still to run at the sound of the bell; every other Madigan, therefore, delighted in preventing that impulse's gratification. But this time Bessie came hurriedly to meet her and even speed her on her errand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Oh, you needn't glare at me!' exclaimed Bep"]

"Quick--it's your father, Split!" she cried.

Split looked at her. She trusted Bep no more than she did Sissy, whose lieutenant the blonde twin was.

"Oh, you needn't glare at me!" exclaimed Bep, her guilty conscience sensitive to accusation by implication. "Fom told me all you told her about him. She was 'fraid you were coming after her for letting you fall off the see-saw, and she told me the whole thing. She said you expected him to-night--don't you?"

"How--do you know it's--my father that's at the door?" demanded Split, all the warier of the enemy because of her acquaintance with her secret.

"Why!" Bep opened clear, china-blue eyes, as shallow and baffling as bits of porcelain. "Hasn't he been here once for you already, while you were out?"

Split turned and ran down the hall. In the minute this took she had lived through a long, heart-breaking, childish regret--regret for the familiar, apprehension of the unknown. It was so warm and snug in this Madigan house; she seemed so to belong there. Why must that unknown parent come to claim her just now, when her spirit was still sorely vexed with the failings of the various fathers she had borne with in one short afternoon!

She got to the top of the staircase that led down to the front door, when she saw that some one had preceded her. It was Madigan, who was on his way down to dinner; poor old Madigan, with his slippered, slow, but positive tread, his straight, a.s.sertive back expressing indignation, as it always did when his door-bell was rung. Oh, that familiar old back!

Something swelled in Split's throat and held her choking, as she grasped the banister and gazed yearningly down upon him. For a moment she had the idea of flying down past him to save him from what was coming. But it was too late; already he had his hand on the door-k.n.o.b. Did he know who it was for whom he was opening his door? Split gasped. Did he antic.i.p.ate what was coming? Some one ought to tell him--to break it to him--to--

But evidently Split herself could not have done this, for in almost the identical moment that Madigan resentfully threw open the door, a stream of water was dashed into his astonished face.

From her point of vantage on the stairway Split saw a paralyzed Sissy, the empty pitcher in her guilty hand, the grin of satisfaction frozen on her panic-stricken round face; while, before she fled, her eyes shot one quick, hunted glance over Madigan's dripping head to the joyous enemy above.

And Split was joyous. Her explosive laugh pealed out in the second before fear of her father stifled it. So this was how Sissy had planned to get even; so this was the plot behind Bep's baffling blue eyes! And only the accident of Madigan's going to the door had saved Split--and confounded her enemy.

Oh, it was good to be a Madigan! Standing there dry and triumphant, Split hugged herself--her very own self--her individuality, which at this minute she would not have changed for anything the world had to offer. To be a Madigan, one's birthright to laugh and do battle with one's peers; and to win, sometimes through strength, sometimes through guile, sometimes through sheer luck--but to win!

THE LAST STRAW

Young as she was, Frances Madigan had known a great sorrow. She remembered (or fancied she did, having heard the circ.u.mstance so often related) how Francis Madigan had seized and confiscated her cradle as soon as her s.e.x had been avowed.

"It's too bad, Madigan!" was the form in which Dr. Murchison had made the announcement of her birth.

"It's the last straw--that's what it is," Madigan answered grimly, bearing the cradle out to the woodshed. There he chopped it to pieces, as though defying a perverse destiny to send him another daughter.

With tears running down her cheeks, Frances had witnessed the pathetic sight--or, if she had not, she believed she had; which was quite as effective in her narrative of the occurrence.

"And he took my cwadle," Frank was accustomed to relate, with an abused sniff to punctuate each phrase, "and he chopped it wif the hatchet all in little bits o' pieces."

"How big, Frank?" Sissy liked to ask.

"Teeny-weeny bits--little as that," Frank whined, still in character, and showing a small finger-nail. "And--"

"And then what did you do?" prompted Sissy.

Frank stamped her foot. The cynical tone of the question grated upon an artistic temperament at the crucial moment when it was composing and acting at the same time. "Don't you say it, Sissy Madigan!" she cried petulantly. "I can say it myself. And then"--turning to Maude Bryne-Stivers, to whom she was telling the touching incident, with a resumption of her first manner, and her most heartrending tone--"and then I looked first at my cwadle and then at my father, and I cwied--and cwied--and cwied--and--"

One is limited at four and is apt to strive for emphasis by the simple method of repet.i.tion. Frank always "cwied and cwied" till some interruption came to the rescue and furnished a climax.

"You dear little lump of sugar!" cried Miss Bryne-Stivers at the proper moment, lifting the chubby mourner off her feet and out of her pose at the same time.

And Frank, seated on the lady's lap, was content with her effect.

It was a small matter, anyway, with Frank Madigan--the loss of a pose or two; she had so many. A parody of parodies was the smallest Madigan, and her jokes were the shadows of shades of jokes handed down ready-made to her. Yet she was convinced that they were good; otherwise the Madigans would not have laughed at them long before she adopted them.

She herself was a victim--as was the gentleman after whom she was named--of a surplusage of femininity about the house. All female children are mothers before they are girls, the earliest s.e.x-tendency having a scientific precedence over others; and the Madigans "played with" their smallest sister bodily, as with a doll whose mechanism presented more possibilities than that of any mechanical toy they had seen--in some other child's possession. Later they were charmed--if but for a while--by the field her mentality provided for experimental work.

There were times when Frances Madigan had a mother for every day in the week; there were days when she had no mother at all; and there were occasions when she was adopted as a whole, and for a stated time, by some Madigan with a theory, which was tried upon her with all the remorselessness of a faddist before she was given over as completely to its successor.