Part 30

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, assertive 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-knob. Did he know who it was for whom he was opening his door? Split gasped. Did he anticipate 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 circumstance so often related) how Francis Madigan had seized and confiscated her cradle as soon as her sex 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 repetition. 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 sex-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.

Thus Sissy had taken possession of her and made of her, in the short time her enthusiasm lasted, a visible replica of that which Sissy tried to delude herself into thinking was her own character. In those days she cut poor Frank's curls off and plastered the child's hair down in a strong-minded fashion. She insisted upon her disciple's pronouncing clearly and distinctly. She inaugurated a regime of practical common sense, small rewards and severe punishments, and taught Frank how to count. But not to spell; for Sissy had introduced the fashion among Madigans of spelling out the word which was the key-note of a sentence--a proceeding that exasperated Frank. "Don't you let her have any c-a-n-d-y; Aunt Anne says 't ain't good for her," was a sample of the abuses that drove Frank nearly mad with curiosity and indignation.

But finally Sissy joined the Salvation Army with her protegee (religion had all the attraction of the impliedly forbidden to the Madigans), and was discovered by Francis Madigan one evening on C Street, putting up a fluent prayer in a nasal tremolo--an excellent imitation of the semi-hysterical falsetto of the bonneted enthusiast who had preceded her.

Madigan looked from Sissy--her hypocritical eyes upcast, while her soul was ravished by the whispered comment upon her precocity, to which she lent an encouraging ear--to Frank, kneeling angelically beside her. Something in himself, his enthusiastic, emotional, long-forgotten, youthful self, felt the tug of sympathy at the sight, and, after his first irritated start, he stood there behind the watching crowd with no thought of interference.

"You can thank your stars, you unco guid lassie," he said within himself, his sarcastic eyes on Sissy's holy face, "that you've not a more religious and more conventional man for a father. 'T is one like that would yank you out of your play-acting preaching, or my name's not Madigan--ahem!"

He did not know that the exclamation had been uttered aloud. Their father was unaware of the habit; but his daughters knew well that stentorian clearing of the throat which served for a warning that he was about to speak, and also a notification that he had spoken and would permit no difference of opinion. In the midst of her religio-dramatic ecstasy, Sissy heard that sound behind her, and jumped to her feet as though brought painfully back to a sorrowing, sinful world.

"And he tooked her," said Frances later, in relating the affair to an eager audience of Madigans, "and he whipped her awful!"

"With his whole hand?" asked Bep, feeling it to be the partizan's duty to doubt.