The Madigans Part 24

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 s.h.a.ggy 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed thus and only the citadel was left. It was a steep rock in the middle of the town; a temple of the G.o.d of healing crowned the summit.' The G.o.d 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, clas.h.i.+ng 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 cla.s.s," 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nunciation. 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 ap.r.o.n 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, s.h.i.+ning 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 _Wanderl.u.s.t_ seized them, and as all things in Virginia point one way, they followed that suggestion--upward.

They were spared the usual struggle with Frances (who, after being coaxed, bribed, threatened, and bullied, had at last annually to be run away from), for the reason that Frank had not slept well after the martyring, and was still dreaming of creeping, crawling things with blubber-lips and gloating eyes when, in the pellucid dawn, Jack Cody found the Madigans waiting, in clean calicoes, perched on their bottommost step.

The sun was barely over the top of Sugar Loaf, and the town, scantily shrubberied (for water costs as many dollars in Virginia as there are weeks in the year), lay sleeping in soft chill shadow below them, looking oddly picturesque and strange in the unfamiliar light.

"Say," said Cody, "I think I see that Pemberton kid coming up Taylor. Is he coming along?"

"No," said Sissy, promptly.

"Yes," said Split, firmly.

"Well, _I_ didn't ask him," from Sissy, with a haughty air of saying the last word. The Madigans were quite accustomed to being social arbiters in their own small world.

"Well, I did," remarked Split, easily.

A pugnacious red overshot Sissy's face. Crosby was her property, to browbeat and maltreat as seemed best to her. She felt that Irene's interference in a matter that was purely personal was unwarranted as it was intolerable.

"He always has such good cream-tarts," explained Split.

"Well, he can have 'em and keep 'em," declared Sissy, savagely, turning her back as Crosby yodeled a greeting and waved his hat gaily to her.

Cody grinned. "I think that kid better stay at home. It won't be much picnic for him, will it, Sissy?"

Sissy sniffed. "He's Split's company," she said loftily. "She'll make things pleasant for him."

But Crosby, glad to be among the enticing Madigans at any price, and innocently joying in the picnic spirit that possessed him, came whooping to his fate.

"Say," he said eagerly, putting down his basket with the air of one who has a good story to tell, "do you know, I almost got caught this morning. Ma said I wasn't to go, but I bet I wouldn't stay at home. So I told Delia to put up my lunch last night, and to put in a lot of those cream-tarts you like, Sissy--you used to like, Sissy...."

But Sissy, actuated by a delicate desire not to interfere in the slightest with Split's plans for the entertainment of her guest, was deep in conversation with Jack Cody. Crosby's jaw fell. He saw her give her round tin lunch-bucket--the one he had so often carried to school for her--to Cody, to sling with his own upon a leather strap. And as he watched her start up the ravine carrying one end of the strap, and the washerwoman's boy the other, he wondered pa.s.sionately within himself at the faithlessness and ingrat.i.tude of women.