Milligan

“ What was a little queer⁠—it struck Milligan so, at any rate⁠—was an idea that began to grow in him from the very first week of his tenancy.
“That might be the very drawing the fellow wrote about,” occurred to him one night as he laboured at a lurid scenario which was to make his fortune. “Not impossible at all. It’s an old picture probably. Exactly what Hearn described, too. I wonder! Why not?”
Why not, indeed? A fellow⁠—especially a literary fellow⁠—should use his imagination. Milligan used his. Sometimes he used it in prolonged labour till the early hours. ”

“ Milligan is a dirty beast who belongs to the Shy-of-Water tribe and smokes a horror of a clay pipe. To think that I, who have mingled with gentlemen for the past four years, should be compelled to breathe his air is too much. I won't work under a man who habitually insults my honored father. If you haven't pride enough to rebel, I have. ”

“ Milligan's apartment I found Arthur in tears and his mother bending over him.
"You won't go, Remi! Oh, Remi, tell me you won't go," he sobbed.
I could not speak. Mrs. Milligan replied for me, telling Arthur that I had to do as I was told.
"Signor Vitalis would not consent to let us have you," said Mrs. Milligan in a voice so sad.
"He's a wicked man!" cried Arthur.
"No, he is not a wicked man," continued Mrs. Milligan; "he loves you ... and he needs you. He speaks like a man far above his position. ”

“ Milligan, "is to get his master's consent. I will write and ask him if he will come here, for we cannot return to Toulouse. I will send him his fare, and explain to him the reason why we cannot take the train. I'll invite him here, and I do hope he will accept.
"If he agrees to my proposition," added Mrs. Milligan, "I will then make arrangements with your parents, Remi, for of course they must be consulted."
Consult my parents! They will tell her what I have been trying to keep secret. That I am a foundling! Then neither Arthur nor Mrs. Milligan would want me! ”

“ I don't like to hear you say that you can't work under Milligan or any other man, for it shows a fundamental weakness. And then, too, the house isn't interested in knowing how you like your boss, but in how he likes you.
I understand all about Milligan. He's a cross, cranky old Irishman with a temper tied up in bow-knots, who prods his men with the bull-stick six days a week and schemes to get them salary raises on the seventh, when he ought to be listening to the sermon ”

“ Milligan's second son, Arthur, was born.
But the doctors said that this frail, delicate child could not live. He might die at any moment. In the event of his death, Mr. James Milligan would succeed to the fortune. He waited and hoped, but the doctors' predictions were not fulfilled. Arthur lived. It was his mother's care that saved him. When he had to be strapped to a board, she could not bear the thought of her son being closed up in a house, so she had a beautiful barge built for him, and was now traveling through France on the various canals. ”

“ Milligan's legs—I can't see the rest of him. They look neat and—and expensive."
"Probably it's just an agent; they're kind of thick lately. You go to the door and tell him we're just pretend people, while I'm putting the sweeper out of sight." ”

“ It was the third year of our Oxford life, and Milligan and I were now the "senior men" resident in college; we sat at one of the higher tables in hall, and occupied stalls in chapel. We generally attended lectures together, and many are the amusing tricks I recall which Milligan used to play—one especially, on a freshman named Dry—a pious youth in green spectacles, and with the general aspect of "Verdant Green." An undergraduate's gown is always adorned with two long strings behind ”

“ Coombe had just been in. She had been having a "first fitting" and in the privacy of the fitting room she had been perfectly frank with Miss Milligan. She had told Miss Milligan "things." She had told her things which would move a heart of stone, regardless of the fact that Miss Milligan's heart was made of the softest of soft materials and beat warmly under her spiky pin cushion. The fact that her eyes were hard and black had nothing to do with it; mistakes in eyes occur constantly in the best regulated families. ”

“ Lady Milligan! A dark young girl, with a tightly-curled fringe like a door mat, a half dirty blouse, red hands. She remembered.
“Yes, Lady Milligan,” she said to Sutton. “A vulgar woman; but what could one expect? She used to serve in a tobacconist’s shop.”
Sutton laughed.
[246] “Lady Milligan,” he said, “is nearly fifty; a very religious, proper woman. Do you understand?”
“Oh!” she breathed, seeming to collapse with this added indignity of Edred’s. “Yes. I understand. Spare me any more confirming proofs.”
She hid her face in the sofa-cushions, her shame choking her. ”

“ Even Miss Milligan's black currant eyes could see that her nerves were terribly wrong—she looked ghastly, poor thing! And all on account of a silly prejudice regarding patent medicines.
Esther, who exhibited no surprise at her mother's sudden collapse, helped Miss Milligan to unpin the linings.
"My mother has been a little longer than usual without her tonic," she calmly explained. "The other fittings can wait," and quickly, yet without flurry, she found Mary's hat, bag, gloves and parasol and picked up her handkerchief which she had flung upon the floor. ”

“ Milligan was keenly interested in social and especially in educational questions. In 1888 he went to Germany to inquire about technical education and continuation schools in that country; and the next year he visited Sweden to see the working of the Gottenburg licensing system. In Aberdeen he was an active philanthropist; and all over Scotland his services as a preacher were in much request.
When on the eve of retiring from his chair at Aberdeen owing mainly to failing eyesight, Milligan was suddenly seized with illness which soon proved fatal. He died at Edinburgh on 11 Dec. ”

“ You'd better figure on being here on the fourteenth, because Milligan's a pretty touchy Irishman, and I may be able to give you a point or two that will help you to keep on his mellow side. He's apt to feel a little sore at taking on in his department a man whom he hasn't passed on. ”

“ Milligan just stood there like a dumb Irishman and let me get through and go back and cuss him out all over again, with some trimmings that I had forgotten the first time, before he told me that you were the fellow who had made the bull. Naturally, I felt pretty foolish, and, while I tried to pass it off with something about your still being green and raw, the ice was mighty thin, and you had the old man running tiddledies. ”

“ Vitalis the same as the other men of the poorer class. I was not able to make distinctions, but the two months that I had lived with Mrs. Milligan had opened my eyes and developed my intelligence. Looking at my master with more attention, it seemed to me that in manner and bearing he appeared to be very superior. His ways were like Mrs. Milligan's ways....
Weeks passed. On our tramps, now, my eyes were always turned in the direction of the water, not to the hills. I was always hoping that one day I should see the Swan. If I saw a boat in the distance I always thought that it might be the Swan. ”

“ For Mullins, though depraved, perhaps, was an honest man, abhorring parsons and making no secret of his opinions—whence the bitter feeling.
All men, except those very big ones who are supermen, have something astonishingly despicable in them. The despicable thing in Milligan came uppermost now. He fairly chuckled. He met the snub with a calm, forgiving smile, and continued his shambling gait with what [160] dignity he could towards his bedroom opposite. Then he turned his head to see. His enemy would meet an infuriated hornet—an Egyptian hornet!—and might not notice it. He might step on it. ”

“ He conquered all outward sign of inward spiritual vexation; the wicked, he consoled himself, ever flourish like green bay trees. It was notorious that the righteous never have any luck at all! That was bad enough. But what was worse—and the Rev. James Milligan remembered for very long—was the superior ease with which Mullins had relegated both himself and hornet to the same level of comparative insignificance. Mullins ignored them both—which proved that he felt himself superior. Infinitely worse than the sting of any hornet in the world: he really was superior. ”

“ It seemed to me that it was the most abject thing in the world to be a foundling. I did not want Mrs. Milligan and Arthur to know. Would they not have turned from me in disdain!
"Mamma, we must keep Remi," continued Arthur.
"I should be very pleased to keep Remi with us," replied Mrs. Milligan; "we are so fond of him. But there are two things; first, Remi would have to want to stay..."
"Oh, he does! he does!" cried Arthur, "don't you, Remi? You don't want to go back to Toulouse?" ”

“ We arrived there with three sous in our pockets and the soles off our boots. But Vevy is not a little village; it is a town, and as for asking for Mrs. Milligan, or even an English lady with a sick son and a dumb girl, we knew that that would be absurd. There are so many English in Vevy; the place is almost like an English pleasure resort. The best way, we thought, was to go to all the houses where they might be likely to live. That would not be difficult; we had only to play our music in every street. We tried everywhere, but yet we could see no signs of Mrs. Milligan. ”

“ Miss Milligan did. She felt quite proud of her part in it. It is something to help a fellow woman and still more to get the better of a fellow man. Especially such a celebrated man as Dr. Callandar! She would order the fresh supply at once, that very afternoon, by the first mail. And as soon as the packet came she would see that Mrs. Coombe had it in person. "There is certain to be a few last touches necessary to the dress after it has been sent home," she remarked with a smile of truly Machiavellian subtlety.
"Yes!" said Mary. ”

“ I have forgotten Fear. It seems to me that all my life I have lived in fear. Now I am not afraid...."
It was when Bubble was entering the post office for the purpose of posting this letter that he met Miss Milligan, coming out. Miss Milligan was evidently in a hurry, so great a hurry that she had not time to question Bubble upon affairs in general as was her usual custom. Instead she asked him to do something for her. It was a trifling service, only to deliver to Mrs. Coombe a small postal packet which she held in her hand.
"It will only take you a few moments, Zerubbabel," she said. ”

“ Chicago, Sept. 10, 189—
Dear Father:
What a clever, indulgent, far-seeing old boy you are, to be sure. Your ultimatum that I must continue to be subject to Milligan sounds harsh at first reading, but I see your motive. You think by keeping me under him for a while I shall work like a fiend to get promotion, and thus escape his Celtic cussedness. I shall. No greater incentive to rise was ever offered a poor young man. In fact, you couldn't keep me down with Mike if you gave me ten thousand a year. My lacerated feelings are worth much more than that.
Ma is a pretty good Samaritan these days. ”

“ Because I tell you something's going to happen if we stay here, and besides we might find Mrs. Milligan and Arthur in France. If he has been ill she will be sure to take him on their barge, now the summer is coming. ”

“ I’m not in China, as you think I am. This”⁠—he tapped his chest, the chest of a successful business man⁠—“is not me. I’m not Milligan. Milligan is in that picture with the Chink. He’s in that boat. Sitting beside that Chink. Motionless. Being stared at by a succession of lodgers. Sitting in that stiff little boat. Very tiny. Not dead, but captive. Sitting without breath. Without feeling. Painted, yet alive. Caught on the surface of that placid Chinese lake until time or death dissolve the drawing⁠—”
I thought he was going to faint, but, oddly enough, I did not think him merely mad. ”

“ But I really didn't know the ass was a native animal in my country."
Milligan certainly possesses self-control. He was as grave as a government inspector opening a Graham tin can as he replied, "Those laugh best who laugh last, your lordship."
By the way, there was a little excitement [Pg 88] in the packing house yesterday which you may hear of in some other way. I'll tell you the straight facts. I happened to be over in the refining house during the noon hour, to get some butterine for a sandwich, when a fellow with some sort of monkey togs blew in and acted in a very suspicious manner. ”

“ Certainly, whatever it was, it was getting louder and it came to have a familiarity, but it was Ed who said, "Vilma, that's construction equipment. It's Big Mike!"
And I remember as he said it there was wonder in his voice, no more than that—just... wonder.
I asked, "What are they doing up there? Working any sort of night shift?"
"Naw. I'd know if they were."
Then in a few more seconds, "That noise is getting louder, isn't it, Vilma?"
"Yes," I agreed.
"Somebody's running the damned machine." Ed started to get out of bed. "It's coming this way. What's this? Some kind of joke?" ”

“ His big, broad face lit up, "So he says to me, Vilma, he says, 'Meglund, you been watchin' that steam shovel and fussin' around with it for quite a while now. Think you can take on the job?'"
Ed clapped his hands together almost like a kid. "Whaddya think of that, Vilma?"
Yeah, what I thought! I can also remember that almost directly Ed began to run Big Mike there were funny things went on over at the construction site, and I don't mean humorous! Ed would come home and tell me, "That shovel's a devil, Vilma. A big tough baby, and he's got a mind of his own. ”