The Madigans | Page 6

cheeks. "D' ye
think I care if you want to kneel and kotow like other idiots? If you're
that kind--and I suppose you are, being a woman--pray and
be--blessed!"
It was the nearest thing to a paternal benediction that had ever come to
Sissy, but she was too wary a small actress to be moved by it out of her
rôle. Nor did her father wait to note the effect of his words. His heavy
step passed on and out of her room into his own, and the door slammed
between them.
In a moment Sissy was up; in another moment she had torn off her
clothes, blown out her candle, and jumped back into bed. She was
almost asleep when the twins came in, but she feigned the deepest of
slumbers when Bessie pushed a crackling piece of paper under her
pillow, though her fingers closed greedily about it as soon as the room
was quiet again.
She knew what it was--her precious compact with herself, that loyal
little Bep had recaptured from the enemy. She lay there, lulled by its
presence; and slowly, slowly she was dropping off into real slumber
when a sharply agonizing thought, an inescapable mental pin-prick,
roused her. It was Number 9. She had not touched the piano during the
whole of that strenuous day.
She withdrew her fingers reproachfully from the insistent reminder of
virtuous intention, and resolutely she turned her back on it and tried to
pretend herself to sleep. But every broken section of her treaty had a
voice, and above them all clamored the call of Number 9 that it was not
yet too late.
When Sissy rose wearily at last and draped the Mexican quilt about her,
the house was quiet. All youthful Madigans were abed, and the older
ones were in secure seclusion.
It was a small Saint Cecilia, with a short, stiff braid standing out from
one side of her head, and utterly without musical enthusiasm, that sat

down in the darkness at the old square piano. "La Gazelle" was out of
the question, for she had no lamp and she did not yet know the trills
and runs of her new "piece" by heart. But the five-finger exercises and
the scales that it had been her custom to run over slightingly while she
read from a paper novel by the Duchess open in front of her music--this
much of an atonement was still within her power.
With her bare foot on the soft pedal, that none might hear her, Sissy
played. It was dark and very quiet; the hush-hush of the throbbing
mines filled the night and stilled it. At times her heart stood still for
fear that she might be discovered; at other times the longing for a
sensational uncovering of her belated and extraordinary goodness
seized her, and her naked foot slipped from the cold pedal only to be
hurriedly replaced before the jangle of the keys could escape.
How long she practised, and whether she redeemed herself and Number
9, Sissy never knew, for she fell asleep at last over the keys and was
waked by a hoarse scream and a wild cry of "De debbil! De debbil!"
It was Wong, the Chinaman, who had but one name for all things
supernatural. Coming home from Chinatown, he was passing the glass
door near which the piano stood when he saw the slender figure in its
trailing white drapery bowed over the keys.
Sissy looked up, sleep still bewildering her, and yet awake enough to
be fearful of consequences. She tore open the door and sped after the
Chinaman to enlighten him, but her pursuit only confirmed Wong's
conception of that mission of malice which is devil's work on earth. A
terrified howl burst from him. There was only one being on earth of
whom he stood in greater awe than the thing he fancied he was fleeing
from; that one, logically, must be greater than It. Taking his very life in
his hand, he doubled, darted past the shivering Thing, flew on through
the open door, and made straight for the master's room.
For Sissy there was nothing to do but to follow.
"I wanted to be good," she wailed, unnerved, when Aunt Anne had her
by the shoulder and was catechizing her in the presence of a

nightgowned multitude of excited Madigans.
But succor came from an unexpected quarter. "Let the child alone,
Anne," growled Madigan, adjusting the segment of the leg of woolen
underwear which he wore for a nightcap; and seizing Sissy in his arms,
he bore her off to bed.
"Papa's pet! Papa's baby!" mouthed Irene, under her breath, as she
danced tauntingly along behind his back.
[Illustration: "Seizing Sissy in his arms, he bore her off to bed"]
And Sissy,