Books: Missy

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This etext was produced by Charles Franks, Ralph Zimmermann and
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MISSY

by DANA GATLIN

TO
VIOLA ROSEBORO'

CONTENTS

I THE FLAME DIVINE

II "YOUR TRUE FRIEND, MELISSA M"

III LIKE A SINGING BIRD

IV MISSY TACKLES ROMANCE

V IN THE MANNER OF THE DUCHESS

VI INFLUENCING ARTHUR

VII BUSINESS OF BLUSHING

VIII A HAPPY DOWNFALL

IX DOBSON SAVES THE DAY

X MISSY CANS THE COSMOS

CHAPTER I

THE FLAME DIVINE

Melissa came home from Sunday-school with a feeling she had never
had before. To be sure she was frequently discovering, these days,
feelings she had never had before. That was the marvellous reward of
having grown to be so old; she was ten, now, an advanced age--almost
grown up! She could look back, across the eons which separated her
from seven-years-old, and dimly re-vision, as a stranger, the little
girl who cried her first day in the Primary Grade. How absurd seemed
that bashful, timid, ignorant little silly! She knew nothing at all.
She still thought there was a Santa Claus!--would you believe that?
And, even at eight, she had lingering fancies of fairies dancing on
the flower-beds by moonlight, and talking in some mysterious
language with the flowers!

Now she was much wiser. She knew that fairies lived only in books
and pictures; that flowers could not actually converse. Well. . .
she almost knew. Sometimes, when she was all alone--out in the
summerhouse on a drowsy afternoon, or in the glimmering twilight
when that one very bright and knowing star peered in at her,
solitary, on the side porch, or when, later, the moonshine stole
through the window and onto her pillow, so thick and white she could
almost feel it with her fingers--at such times vague fancies would
get tangled up with the facts of reality, and disturb her new,
assured sense of wisdom. Suddenly she'd find herself all mixed up,
confused as to what actually was and wasn't.

But she never worried long over that. Life was too complex to permit
much time for worry over anything; too full and compelling in every
minute of the long, long hours which yet seemed not long enough to
hold the new experiences and emotions which ceaselessly flooded in
upon her.

The emotion she felt this Sunday was utterly new. It was not
contentment nor enjoyment merely, nor just happiness. For, in the
morning as mother dressed her in her embroidered white "best" dress,
and as she walked through the June sunshine to the Presbyterian
church, trying to remember not to skip, she had been quite happy.
And she had still felt happy during the Sunday-school lesson, while
Miss Simpson explained how our Lord multiplied the loaves and fishes
so as to feed the multitude. How wonderful it must have been to be
alive when our Lord walked and talked among men!

Her feeling of peaceful contentment intensified a little when they
all stood up to sing,

"Let me be a little sunbeam for Jesus--" and she seemed, then, to
feel a subtle sort of glow, as from an actual sunbeam, warming her
whole being.

But the marvellous new feeling did not definitely begin till after
Sunday-school was over, when she was helping Miss Simpson collect
the song-books. Not the big, thick hymn-books used for the church
service, but smaller ones, with pasteboard backs and different
tunes. Melissa would have preferred the Sunday-school to use the
big, cloth-covered hymnals. Somehow they looked more religious; just
as their tunes, with slow, long-drawn cadences, somehow sounded more
religious than the Sunday-school's cheerful tunes. Why this should
be so Melissa didn't know; there were many things she didn't yet
understand about religion. But she asked no questions; experience
had taught her that the most serious questions may be strangely
turned into food for laughter by grown-ups.

It was when she carried the song-books into the choir-room to stack
them on some chairs, that she noticed the choir had come in and was
beginning to practise a real hymn. She loitered. It was an
especially religious hymn, very slow and mournful. They sang:

"A-a--sle-e-e-ep in Je-e-e--sus--Ble-e-es--ed sle-e-e-ep--From which
none e-e-ev--er Wake to we-e-e-ep--"

The choir did not observe Melissa; did not suspect that state of
deliciousness which, starting from the skin, slowly crept into her
very soul. She stood there, very unobtrusive, drinking in the sadly
sweet sounds. Up on the stained-glass window the sunlight filtered
through blue-and-red-and-golden angels, sending shafts of heavenly
colour across the floor; and the fibres of her soul, enmeshed in
music, seemed to stretch out to mingle with that heavenly colour. It
was hard to separate herself from that sound and colour which was
not herself. Tears came to her eyes; she couldn't tell why, for she
wasn't sad. Oh, if she could stand there listening forever!--could
feel like this forever!

The choir was practising for a funeral that afternoon, but Melissa
didn't know that. She had never attended a funeral. She didn't even
know it was a funeral song. She only knew that when, at last, they
stopped singing and filed out of the choir-room, she could hardly
bear to have them go. She wished she might follow them, might tuck
herself away in the auditorium somewhere and stay for the church
service. But her mother didn't allow her to do that. Mother insisted
that church service and Sunday-school, combined, were too much for a
little girl, and would give her headaches.

So there was nothing for Missy to do but go home. The sun shone just
as brightly as on her hither journey but now she had no impulse to
skip. She walked along sedately, in rhythm to inner, long-drawn
cadences. The cadences permeated her--were herself. She was sad, yet
pleasantly, thrillingly so. It was divine. When she reached home,
she went into the empty front-parlour and hunted out the big, cloth-
covered hymnal that was there. She found "Asleep in Jesus" and
played it over and over on the piano. The bass was a trifle
difficult, but that didn't matter. Then she found other hymns which
were in accord with her mood: "Abide with Me"; "Nearer My God to
Thee"; "One Sweetly Solemn Thought." The last was sublimely
beautiful; it almost stole her favour away from "Asleep in Jesus."
Not quite, though.

She was re-playing her first favourite when the folks all came in
from church. There were father and mother, grandpa and grandma
Merriam who lived in the south part of town, Aunt Nettie, and Cousin
Pete Merriam. Cousin Pete's mother was dead and his father out in
California on a long business trip, so he was spending that summer
in Cherryvale with his grandparents.

Melissa admired Cousin Pete very much, for he was big and handsome
and wore more stylish-looking clothes than did most of the young men
in Cherryvale. Also, he was very old--nineteen, and a sophomore at
the State University. Very old. Naturally he was much wiser than
Missy, for all her acquired wisdom. She stood in awe of him. He had
a way of asking her absurd, foolish questions about things that
everybody knew; and when, to be polite, she had to answer him
seriously in his own foolish vein, he would laugh at her! So, though
she admired him, she always had an impulse to run away from him. She
would have liked, now, in this heavenly, religious mood, to run away
lest he might ask her embarrassing questions about it. But, before
she had the chance, grandpa said:

"Why Missy, playing hymns? You'll be church organist before we know
it!"

Missy blushed.

"'Asleep in Jesus' is my favourite, I think," commented grandma.
"It's the one I'd like sung over me at the last. Play it again,
dear."

But Pete had picked up a sheet of music from the top of the piano.

"Let's have this, Missy." He turned to his grandmother. "Ought to
hear her do this rag--I've been teaching her double-bass."

Missy shrank back as he placed the rag-time on the music-rest.

"Oh, I'd rather not--to-day."

Pete smiled down at her--his amiable but condescending smile.

"What's the matter with to-day?" he asked.

Missy blushed again.

"Oh, I don't know--I just don't feel that way, I guess."

"Don't feel that way?" repeated Pete. "You're temperamental, are
you? How do you feel, Missy?"

Missy feared she was letting herself in for embarrassment; but this
was a holy subject. So she made herself answer:

"I guess I feel religious."

Pete shouted. "She feels religious! That's a good one! She guesses
she--"

"Peter, you should be ashamed of yourself!" reproved his
grandmother.

"She's a scream!" he insisted. "Religious! That kid!"

"Well," defended Missy, timid and puzzled, but wounded to unwonted
bravery, "isn't it proper to feel like that on the Sabbath?"

Pete shouted again.

"Peter--stop that! You should be ashamed of yourself!" It was his
grandfather this time. Grandpa moved over to the piano and removed
the rag-time from off the hymnal, pausing to pat Missy on the head.

But Peter was not the age to be easily squelched.

"What does it feel like, Missy--the religious feeling?"

Missy, her eyes bright behind their blur, didn't answer. Indeed, she
could not have defined that sweetly sad glow, now so cruelly
crushed, even had she wanted to.

Missy didn't enjoy her dinner as much as she usually did the midday
Sunday feasts when grandpa and grandma came to eat with them. She
felt embarrassed and shy. Of course she had to answer when asked why
she wasn't eating her drumstick, and whether the green apples in
grandma's orchard had given her an "upset," and other direct
questions; but when she could, she kept silent. She was glad Pete
didn't talk to her much. Yet, now and then, she caught his eyes upon
her in a look of sardonic enquiry, and quickly averted her own.

Her unhappiness lasted till the visitors had departed. Then, after
aimlessly wandering about, she took her Holy Bible out to the
summerhouse. She was contemplating a surprise for grandpa and
grandma. Next week mother and Aunt Nettie were going over to Aunt
Anna's in Junction City for a few days; during their absence Missy
was to stay with her grandparents. And to surprise them, she was
learning by heart a whole Psalm.

She planned to spring it upon them the first night at family
prayers. At grandma's they had prayers every night before going to
bed. First grandpa read a long chapter out of the Holy Bible, then
they all knelt down, grandpa beside his big Morris chair, grandma
beside her little willow rocker, and whoever else was present beside
whatever chair he'd been sitting in. Grandpa prayed a long prayer;
grandma a shorter one; then, if any of the grandchildren were there,
they must say a verse by heart. Missy's first verse had been, "Jesus
wept." But she was just a tiny thing then. When she grew bigger, she
repeated, "Suffer the little children to come unto Me." Later she
accomplished the more showy, "In My Father's house are many
mansions; I go there to prepare a place for you."

But this would be her first whole Psalm. She pictured every one's
delighted and admiring surprise. After much deliberation she had
decided upon the Psalm in which David sings his song of faith, "The
Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."

How beautiful it was! So deep and so hard to understand, yet,
somehow, all the more beautiful for that. She murmured aloud, "I
will fear no evil--for Thou art with me--Thy rod and Thy staff they
comfort me"; and wondered what the rod and staff really were.

But best of all she liked the last verse:

"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;
and I will dwell in the house o£ the Lord forever."

To dwell in the house of the Lord forever!--How wonderful! What was
the house of the Lord? . . . Missy leaned back in the summerhouse
seat, and gazed dreamily out at the silver-white clouds drifting
lazily across the sky; in the side-yard her nasturtium bed glowed up
from the slick green grass like a mass of flame; a breeze stirred
the flame to gentle motion and touched the ramblers on the
summerhouse, shaking out delicious scents; distantly from the
backyard came the tranquil, drowsy sounds of unseen chickens. Missy
listened to the chickens; regarded sky and flowers and green--
colours so lovely as to almost hurt you--and sniffed the fragrant
air. . . All this must be the house of the Lord! Here, surely
goodness and mercy would follow her all the days of her life.

Thus, slowly, the marvellous new feeling stole back and took
possession of her. She could no longer bear just sitting there
quiet, just feeling. She craved some sort of expression. So she rose
and moved slowly over the slick green grass, pausing by the blazing
nasturtium bed to pick a few vivid blossoms. These she pinned to her
dress; then went very leisurely on to the house-to the parlour--to
the piano--to "Asleep in Jesus."

She played it "with expression." Her soul now seemed to be flowing
out through her fingers and to the keyboard; the music came not from
the keyboard, really, but from her soul. Rapture!

But presently her mood was rudely interrupted by mother's voice at
the door.

"Missy, Aunt Nettie's lying down with a headache. I'm afraid the
piano disturbs her."

"All right, mother."

Lingeringly Missy closed the hymnal. She couldn't forbear a little
sigh. Perhaps mother noted the sigh. Anyway, she came close and
said:

"I'm sorry, dear. I think it's nice the way you've learned to play
hymns."

Missy glanced up; and for a moment forgetting that grown-ups don't
always understand, she breathed:

"Oh, mother, it's HEAVENLY! You can't imagine--"

She remembered just in time, and stopped short. But mother didn't
embarrass her by asking her to explain something that couldn't be
explained in words. She only laid her hand, for a second, on the
sleek brown head. The marvellous feeling endured through the
afternoon, and through supper, and through the evening--clear up to
the time Missy undressed and said her prayers. Some special
sweetness seemed to have crept into saying prayers; our Lord Jesus
seemed very personal and very close as she whispered to Him a
postlude:

"I will fear no evil, for Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I'll dwell in Thy house forever, O Lord--Amen."

For a time she lay open-eyed in her little white bed. A flood of
moonlight came through the window to her pillow. She felt that it
was a shining benediction from our Lord Himself. And indeed it may
have been. Gradually her eyes closed. She smiled as she slept.

The grace of God continued to be there when she awoke. It seemed an
unusual morning. The sun was brighter than on ordinary mornings; the
birds outside were twittering more loudly; even the lawnmower which
black Jeff was already rolling over the grass had assumed a
peculiarly agreeable clatter. And though, at breakfast, father
grumbled at his eggs being overdone, and though mother complained
that the laundress hadn't come, and though Aunt Nettie's head was
still aching, all these things, somehow, seemed trivial and of no
importance.

Missy could scarcely wait to get her dusting and other little
"chores" done, so that she might go to the piano.

However, she hadn't got half-way through "One Sweetly Solemn
Thought" before her mother appeared.

"Missy! what in the world do you mean? I've told you often enough
you must finish your practising before strumming at other things."

Strumming!

But Missy said nothing in defence. She only hung her head. Her
mother went on:

"Now, I don't want to speak to you again about this. Get right to
your exercises--I hope I won't have to hide that hymn-book!"

Mother's voice was stern. The laundress's defection and other
domestic worries may have had something to do with it. But Missy
couldn't consider that; she was too crushed. In stricken silence she
attacked the "exercises."

Not once during that day had she a chance to let out, through music,
any of her surcharged devotionalism. Mother kept piling on her one
errand after another. Mother was in an unwonted flurry; for the next
day was the one she and Aunt Nettie were going to Junction City and
there were, as she put it, "a hundred and one things to do."

Through all those tribulations Missy reminded herself of "Thy rod
and Thy staff." She didn't yet know just what these aids to comfort
were; but the Psalmist had said of them, "they shall comfort me."
And, somehow, she did find comfort. That is what Faith does.

And that night, after she had said her prayers and got into bed,
once more the grace of God rode in on the moonlight to rest upon her
pillow.

But the next afternoon, when she had to kiss mother good-bye, a
great tide of loneliness rushed over Missy, and all but engulfed
her. She had always known she loved mother tremendously, but till
that moment she had forgotten how very much. She had to concentrate
hard upon "Thy rod and Thy staff" before she was able to blink back
her tears. And mother, noticing the act, commented on her little
daughter's bravery, and blinked back some tears of her own.

In the excitement of packing up to go to grandma's house, Missy to a
degree forgot her grief. She loved to go to grandma's house. She
liked everything about that house: the tall lilac hedge that
separated the yard from the Curriers' yard next door; the orchard
out in back where grew the apples which sometimes gave her an
"upset"; the garden where grandpa spent hours and hours
"cultivating" his vegetables; and grandma's own particular garden,
which was given over to tall gaudy hollyhocks, and prim rows of
verbena, snap-dragon, phlox, spicy pinks, heliotrope, and other
flowers such as all grandmothers ought to have.

And she liked the house itself, with its many unusual and delightful
appurtenances: no piano--an organ in the parlour, the treadles of
which you must remember to keep pumping, or the music would wheeze
and stop; the "what-not" in the corner, its shelves filled with
fascinating curios--shells of all kinds, especially a big conch
shell which, held close to the ear, still sang a song of the sea;
the marble-topped centre-table, and on it the interesting "album" of
family photographs, and the mysterious contrivance which made so
lifelike the double "views" you placed in the holder; and the lamp
with its shade dripping crystal bangles, like huge raindrops off an
umbrella; and the crocheted "tidies" on all the rocking-chairs, and
the carpet-covered footstools sitting demurely round on the floor,
and the fringed lambrequin on the mantel, and the enormous fan of
peacock feathers spreading out on the wall--oh, yes, grandma's was a
fascinating place!

Then besides, of course, she adored grandpa and grandma. They were
charming and unlike other people, and very, very good. Grandpa was
slow-moving, and tall and broad--even taller and broader than
father; and he must be terribly wise because he was Justice-of-the-
Peace, and because he didn't talk much. Other children thought him a
person to be feared somewhat, but Missy liked to tuck her hand in
his enormous one and talk to him about strange, mysterious things.

Grandma wasn't nearly so big--indeed she wasn't much taller than
Missy herself; and she was proud of her activity--her "spryness,"
she called it. She boasted of her ability to stoop over and, without
bending her knees, to lay both palms flat on the floor. Even Missy's
mother couldn't do that, and sometimes she seemed to grow a little
tired of being reminded of it. Grandma liked to talk as much as
grandpa liked to keep silent; and always, to the running
accompaniment of her tongue, she kept her hands busied, whether
"puttering about" in her house or flower-garden, or crocheting
"tidies," or knitting little mittens, or creating the multi-coloured
paper-flowers which helped make her house so alluring.

That night for supper they had beefsteak and hot biscuits and
custard pie; and grandma let her eat these delicacies which were
forbidden at home. She even let her drink coffee! Not that Missy
cared especially for coffee--it had a bitter taste; but drinking it
made her feel grown-up. She always felt more grown-up at grandma's
than at home. She was "company," and they showed her a consideration
one never receives at home.

After supper Cousin Pete went out somewhere, and the other three had
a long, pleasant evening. Another agreeable feature about staying at
grandma's was that they didn't make such a point of her going to bed
early. The three of them sat out on the porch till the night came
stealing up; it covered the street and the yard with darkness,
crawled into the tree tops and the rose-bushes and the lilac-hedge.
It hid all the familiar objects of daytime, except the street-lamp
at the corner and certain windows of the neighbours' houses, which
now showed square and yellow. Of the people on the porch next door,
and of those passing in the street, only the voices remained; and,
sometimes, a glowing point of red which was a cigar.

Presently the moon crept up from behind the Jones's house, peeping
stealthily, as if to make sure that all was right in Cherryvale. And
then everything became visible again, but in a magically beautiful
way; it was now like a picture from a fairy-tale. Indeed, this was
the hour when your belief in fairies was most apt to return to you.

The locusts began to sing. They sang loudly. And grandma kept up her
chatter. But within Missy everything seemed to become very quiet.
Suddenly she felt sad, a peculiar, serene kind of sadness. It grew
from the inside out--now and then almost escaping in a sigh. Because
it couldn't quite escape, it hurt; she envied the locusts who were
letting their sadness escape in that reiterant, tranquil song.

She was glad when, at last, grandpa said:

"How'd you like to go in and play me a tune, Missy?"

"Oh, I'd love to, grandpa!" Missy jumped up eagerly.

So grandpa lighted the parlour lamp, whose crystal bangles now
looked like enormous diamonds; and a delicious time commenced.
Grandpa got out his cloth-covered hymnal, and she played again those
hymns which mingle so inexplicably with the feelings inside you. Not
even her difficulties with the organ--such as forgetting
occasionally to treadle, or having the keys pop up soundlessly from
under her fingers--could mar that feeling. Especially when grandpa
added his bass to the music, a deep bass so impressive as to make it
improper to question its harmony, even in your own mind.

Grandma had come in and seated herself in her little willow rocker;
she was rocking in time to the music, her eyes closed, and saying
nothing--just listening to the two of them. And, playing those
hymns, with grandpa singing and grandma listening, the new religious
feeling grew and grew and grew in Missy till it seemed to flow out
of her and fill the room. It flowed on out and filled the yard, the
town, the world; and upward, upward, upward--she was one with the
sky and moon and stars. . .

At last, in a little lull, grandpa said:

"Now, Missy, my song--you know."

Missy knew very well what grandpa's favourite was; it was one of the
first pieces she had learned by heart. So she played for him "Silver
Threads among the Gold."

"Thanks, baby," said grandpa when she had finished. There was a
suspicious brightness in his eyes. And a suspicious brightness in
grandma's, too. So, though she wasn't unhappy at all, she felt her
own eyes grow moist. Grandpa and grandma weren't really unhappy,
either. Why, when people are not really unhappy at all, do their
eyes fill just of themselves?

And now was the moment of the great surprise at hand. Missy could
scarcely wait. It must be admitted that, during the interminable
time that grandpa was reading his chapter--it was even a longer
chapter than usual to-night--and while grandma was reading her
shorter one, Missy was not attending. She was repeating to herself
the Twenty-third Psalm. And even when they all knelt, grandpa beside
the big Morris chair and grandma beside the little willow rocker and
Missy beside the "patent rocker" with the prettiest crocheted tidy--
her thoughts were still in a divine channel exclusively her own.

But now, at last, came the time for that channel to be widened; she
closed her eyes tighter, clasped her hands together, and began:

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want, He maketh me to lie down
in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. . ."

How beautiful it was! Unconsciously her voice lifted--quavered--
lowered--lifted again, with "expression." And she had the oddest
complex sensation; she could, through her tightly closed eyes,
vision herself kneeling there; while, at the same time, she could
feel her spirit floating away, mingling with the air, melting into
the night, fusing with all the divine mystery of heaven and earth.
And her soul yearned for more mystery, for more divinity, with an
inexpressible yearning.

Yet all the time she was conscious of the dramatic figure she made,
and of how pleased and impressed her audience must be; in fact, as
her voice "tremuloed" on that last sublime "Surely goodness and
mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in
the house of the Lord forever," she unclosed one eye to note the
effect.

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