The Madigans Part 26

Old Westlake fancied he heard a mocking "indeed" that followed. In fact, an echo that had the queer effect of making him hear double seemed to accompany all his words. It came from the portieres, which were suspiciously bulky, and shook as though something more than the wind moved them.

"And how soon will she be home?" he asked.

"Kate? You mean Kate? Oh, I really do not know." Sissy p.r.o.nounced her words with pedantic care--a permissible thing among Madigans when adults were to be guyed.

Old Westlake (he was rather a handsome old fellow, with his regular features, his blond mustache, and prominent blue eyes) fidgeted uneasily. There must be some way, he felt, of moderating this half-chilly, half-critical atmosphere on the part of the smaller Madigans. But children were riddles to him, and the solutions his small experience offered were either too simple or too complex.

"She can't be intending to spend the whole day out?" he asked, conscious that he presented a ridiculous figure to the childish gray eyes lifted to his.

"No, I don't suppose she can," agreed Sissy. "Won't you come in?"

He followed her hesitatingly into the parlor and sat down, his eyes fixed upon the portieres over the front windows, which still appeared to be strangely agitated.

"You--do you think it will be worth while--my waiting?" he asked helplessly, as Cecilia was modestly about to withdraw.

She looked up at him with the bland look of intelligence which it takes a clever child to counterfeit.

"Worth while waiting for Kate?" she asked in accents half puzzled, half reproachful.

Old Westlake blushed to the roots of his close-cropped fair hair. He fancied he heard a m.u.f.fled gurgle behind the portieres that wasn't soothing.

"Oh--you mean, is she likely to come home soon?" added Sissy, gravely, eying his discomfiture. "I really do not know."

"Is Miss Madigan in?" asked the desperate man.

"Why, do you call her that? I told you she was out."

"No; you told me Katherine was out. Is she in?" he asked eagerly.

Sissy stared at him stupidly. He returned her stare contemplatively. He yearned to bribe her, but he didn't dare. She looked too old to be bought, too young to understand; yet he was sure she was neither.

"Katherine, Kate, and Miss Madigan are out," said Sissy, didactically.

"So are Kitty, Kathleen, and even Kathy--that's her latest; she wrote it that way in Henrietta Bryne-Stivers's autograph-alb.u.m."

The visitor looked bewildered. "I asked you whether your aunt is in,"

he said, with some impatience.

"I beg your pardon," retorted Sissy, ceremoniously. No Madigan begged pardon unless intending to be doubly offensive thereafter. "You asked me whether my sister was in."

"Is--your--aunt--in?" demanded Westlake, with insulting clearness.

"She--is--in. I'll--tell--her--you're--here."

"Please." Westlake bit the word out, promising himself that his first post-nuptial act would be to shake this small sister-in-law well for her impertinence.

And this was the pathos, as well as the absurdity of old Westlake--he was so confident.

But he was not so confident that he did not long for an ally. And when Split stepped out from behind the portieres, with a barefaced pretense of having just come through the long French window from the porch, he straightway invited her to go to the circus that evening with him and Kate.

There happened to be two sties on Split's left eye just then, and a third on the upper eyelid of the right one. But this, of course, was no reason for discouraging the overtures of a poor old man like Westlake, who, it appeared to Split, had some virtues, after all.

That evening Sissy, who was playing holey down on Taylor (a famous b.u.t.ton-string had Sissy, as token of her prowess; it had a sample of almost every b.u.t.toned frock worn in Virginia for the past ten years), watched the three as they set out for the tent far down at the foot of the hill. And three things occurred to her, as she stood looking after them, Bombey Forrest waiting vainly, meanwhile, for her to shoot: First, that if his desire was to propitiate the clan, old Westlake had selected the wrong Madigan: Split being not nearly so tenacious an enemy nor so loyal a friend as herself. Second, that that same Split looked "like a silly" with the white handkerchief bound over her left eye, and her right one swollen and teary. She wondered, did Sissy, that they should take such a fright with them. And thirdly, the censor of the family sins made a mental note to the effect that Kate Madigan was putting on altogether too many airs as she pulled on her gloves; there was an inexcusable self-consciousness about her manner toward the Avalanche; and as for old Westlake himself, he was clearly taking advantage of Split's blindness and casting such glances at that giddy Kate as she, Sissy, would certainly not have tolerated--if she had been invited to go to the circus. If only she had!

It must not be supposed that the esthetic side of life for the Madigans was represented wholly by women's walking-matches and the circus. There was also the Tridentata.

Of course the Tridentata--the name was supposed to have something to do with sage-brush--was very select. Naturally, for it had had its origin in Mrs. Pemberton's strenuous estheticism and double parlors--possessions of which few Comstockers could boast. But after the infant literary society had learned to stand alone, it adopted migratory habits, meeting now at the Misses Bryne-Stivers's cottage, now at Mrs.

Forrest's over-furnished rooms, and occasionally even at the Madigans'.

There was at least room enough at the Madigans; it was the one particular in which they were never stinted. The long, shabby parlor had sufficient seating-capacity, even if the chairs were not all, strictly speaking, presentable.

"Shall I bring in the Versiye fotoy?" asked Split on one of the occasions when the meeting of the Tridentata necessitated a real house-cleaning in which the full corps of Madigans took part.

"The Versailles _fauteuil_, Irene," replied Miss Madigan, doubtfully, "is not reliable. If I wasn't sure that Mrs. Pemberton, who has seen the real ones, would be sure to ask where it is, I'd keep it out; for the last time she came so near sitting on it while I was reading my paper on 'Home-keeping' that I got so nervous I left out all that part about the housewife's duty being, above all, to make a spiritual home: to diffuse about herself a home atmosphere, so that wherever she sat, wherever two or three gathered about her, there was the Sanctuary of the Church of Home, so to speak. And--"

"Then you want me to bring it in?" Split had too much to do to listen to Tridentata culture. Her humble office was merely to make ready for the literary feast and modest bodily refreshment to come.

It was one of the contradictions of Split's nature--her intense occasional domesticity and the practical good sense that marked her home economies. She rose now, basin in hand. Her sleeves were rolled up, her bushy hair, a troublesome half-length now, was bound up in a towel. She had been scrubbing and polis.h.i.+ng the zinc under the stove, and she was as happy as she was executive. She flew about trilling "The Zingara,"

with a smudge on her chin and a big kitchen-ap.r.o.n tied about her waist, looking like a dirty little slavey; yet putting the mark of her thoroughness upon everything she touched and Miss Madigan overlooked.

"The big rug from your room is to go over the hole by the window?" she asked perfunctorily, being half-way through the hall at the time.

"Oh, I'm so glad you remembered it," said Miss Madigan. "Mrs. Forrest tripped in that hole the last time. I thought it was exceedingly impolite of her to call attention to it that way, because--"

"Shall I turn the couch-cover?" demanded Split.

"I don't see how you can," said Miss Madigan, helplessly. "It's worn on the other side."

But with a tug Split had drawn it off, pillows and all, and she flew up-stairs, carrying Kate in her wake to help her pull down a portiere which she intended transforming into a couch-cover.

Things sentient as well as material were accustomed to doing double duty at the Madigans' on Tridentata nights. When Francis Madigan, forewarned that his bell would often be rung that evening, but that he was not expected to resent the insult, had retreated to his castle and pulled up the drawbridge behind him, the slavey, with Sissy as a.s.sistant, became doorkeeper, and, later, butler. Critics, of course, these two were ex officio; and from their station out in the chilly hall, they listened to and mocked at the literary program, which Miss Madigan had ent.i.tled, "A Night of All Nations."

The opening duet between Maude and Henrietta Bryne-Stivers they had heard before. Few people in Virginia, indeed, had not.

"Tras.h.!.+" Sissy p.r.o.nounced it in Professor Trask's best manner.

The reading from "Sodom's Ende," in the original, by the traveled Mrs.

Pemberton, was fiercely resented by her audience outside the gates. It always made a Madigan furious to hear a foreign tongue; for, apart from the affectation of strange p.r.o.nunciations, the deliberate mouthing of words (and you couldn't make Sissy Madigan believe that Mrs. Ramrod understood half of what she was reading in that guttural, heavy tongue), there was the impugnment of other people's lack of linguistic accomplishment.

The critical paper on Daudet that followed was read by Miss Henrietta Bryne-Stivers. While it was in progress the two Madigans out in the hall each read an imaginary paper on the same topic, finis.h.i.+ng with that identical courtesy which Henrietta had imported from Miss Jessup's school in the city. But Split tripped Sissy as she was bowing over low, and she fell, as softly as she could, to the floor. Miss Madigan looked out with a "S--s.h.!.+" Sissy cast off all blame in virtuous dumb-show, and in the pause the two heard Dr. Murchison's voice as Henrietta pa.s.sed him and the door, on her triumphant way back to her seat.

"Allow me to compliment you, Miss Henrietta," said the old doctor, pleasantly excited by so youthful a lady's literary discrimination. "You are really fond of Daudet, then?"

Henrietta blushed. "Oh, no, indeed, doctor!" she said deprecatingly. "At Miss Jessup's we girls were not permitted to read him, you know."

"Ah, I see," murmured the doctor. "Only to write about him?"

"Miss Jessup thought it was more--fitting, with the French authors,"

observed Henrietta.