Books: Missy

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So ended the first lesson. The second occurred at the chance mention
of one Charlie White, a Cherryvale youth likewise a student at the
University.

"Oh, he's not very prominent," commented Pete, and his tone damned
poor Charlie for all eternity.

"Why isn't he?" asked Missy interestedly.

"Oh, I don't know--he's just a dub."

"A dub?"

"Yep, a dub." Pete had just made a "date" with Polly, so he beamed
on her benignantly as he explained further: "A gun--a dig-a greasy
grind."

"But isn't a smart person ever prominent?"

"Oh, sometimes. It all depends."

"Is Polly Currier a grind?"

"I should hope not!" as if defending the lady from an insulting
charge.

Missy looked puzzled; then asked:

"Does she ever pass?"

"Oh, now and then. Sometimes she flunks. Polly should worry!"

Here was strange news. One could be smart, devote oneself to study--
be a "greasy grind"--and yet fail of prominence; and one could fail
to pass--"flunk"--and yet climb to the pinnacle of prominence.
Evidently smartness and studiousness had nothing to do with it, and
Missy felt a pleasurable thrill. Formerly she had envied Beulah
Crosswhite, who wore glasses and was preternaturally wise. But maybe
Beulah Crosswhite was not so much. Manifestly it was more important
to be prominent than smart.

Oh, if she herself could be prominent!

To be sure, she wasn't pretty like Polly Currier, or even like her
own contemporary, Kitty Allen--though she had reason to believe that
Raymond Bonner had said something to one of the other boys that
sounded as if her eyes were a little nice. "Big Eyes" he had called
her, as if that were a joke; but maybe it meant something pleasant.
But the High School did not have a Glee Club or Dramatic Society
offering one the chance to display leadership gifts. There was a
basket-ball team, but Missy didn't "take to" athletics. Missy
brooded through long, secret hours.

The first week of September school opened, classes enrolled, and the
business of learning again got under way. By the second week the
various offshoots of educational life began to sprout, and notices
were posted of the annual elections of the two "literary societies,"
Iolanthe and Mount Parnassus. The "programmes" of these bodies were
held in the auditorium every other Friday, and each pupil was due
for at least one performance a semester. Missy, who was an
Iolanthian, generally chose to render a piano solo or an original
essay. But everybody in school did that much--they had to--and only
a few rose to the estate of being "officers."

The Iolanthians had two tickets up for election: the scholastic,
headed by Beulah Crosswhite for president, and an opposition framed
by some boys who complained that the honours always went to girls
and that it was time men's rights were recognized. The latter
faction put up Raymond Bonner as their candidate. Raymond was as
handsome and gay as Beulah Crosswhite was learned.

It was a notable fight. When the day of election arrived, the
Chemistry room in which the Iolanthians were gathered was electric
with restrained excitement. On the first ballot Raymond and Beulah
stood even. There was a second ballot--a third--a fourth. And still
the deadlock, the atmosphere of tensity growing more vibrant every
second. Finally a group of boys put their heads together. Then
Raymond Bonner arose.

"In view of the deadlock which it seems impossible to break," be
began, in the rather stilted manner which befits such assemblages,
"I propose that we put up a substitute candidate. I propose the name
of Miss Melissa Merriam."

Oh, dear heaven! For a second Missy was afraid she was going to cry-
-she didn't know why. But she caught Raymond's eye on her, smiling
encouragement, and she mistily glowed back at him. And on the very
first vote she was elected. Yes. Miss Melissa Merriam was president
of Iolanthe. She was prominent.

And Raymond? Of course Raymond had been prominent before, though she
had never noticed it, and now he had helped her up to this noble
elevation! He must think she would adorn it. Adorn!--it was a lovely
word that Missy had just captured. Though she had achieved her
eminence by a fluke,

Missy took fortune at the flood like one born for success. She mazed
the whole school world by a meteoric display of unsuspected
capacities. Herself she amazed most of all; she felt as if she were
making the acquaintance of a stranger, an increasingly fascinating
kind of stranger. How wonderful to find herself presiuing over a
"meeting" from the teacher's desk in the Latin room, or over a
"programme" in the auditorium, with calm and superior dignity!

Missy, aflame with a new fire, was not content with the old
hackneyed variety of "programme." It was she who conceived the idea
of giving the first minstrel show ever presented upon the auditorium
boards. It is a tribute to Missy's persuasiveness when at white heat
that the faculty permitted the show to go beyond its first
rehearsal. The rehearsals Missy personally conducted, with Raymond
aiding as her first lieutenant-and he would not have played second
fiddle like that to another girl in the class-he said so. She
herself chose the cast, contrived the "scenery"; and she and Raymond
together wrote the dialogue and lyrics. It was wonderful how they
could do things together! Missy felt she never could get into such a
glow and find such lovely rhymes popping right up in her mind if she
were working alone. And Raymond said the same. It was very strange.
It was as if a mystic bond fired them both with new talents-Missy
looked on mixed metaphors as objectionable only to Professor Sutton.

Her reputation-and Raymond's-soared, soared. Her literary talent
placed her on a much higher plane than if she were merely "smart"-
made her in the most perfect sense "prominent."

After the minstrel triumph it was no surprise when, at class
elections, Melissa Merriam became president of the Juniors. A few
months before Missy would have been overwhelmed at the turn of
things, but now she casually mounted her new height, with assurance
supreme. It was as though always had the name of Melissa Merriam
been a force. Raymond said no one else had a look-in.

At the end of the term prominence brought its reward: Missy failed
in Geometry and was conditioned in Latin. Father looked grave over
her report card.

"This is pretty bad, isn't it?" he asked.

Missy fidgeted. It gave her a guilty feeling to bring that
expression to her indulgent father's face.

"I'm sorry, father. I know I'm not smart, but-" She hesitated.

Father took off his glasses and thoughtfully regarded her.

"I wasn't complaining of your not being 'smart'--'smart' people are
often pests. The trouble's that this is worse than it's ever been.
And today I got a letter from Professor Sutton. He says you evince
no interest whatever in your work."

Missy felt a little indignant flare within her.

"He knows what responsibilities I have!"

"Responsibilities?" repeated father.

Here mother, who had been sitting quietly by, also with a
disapproving expression, entered the discussion:

"I knew all that Iolanthe and class flummery would get her into
trouble."

Flummery!

Missy's voice quavered. "That's a very important part of school
life, mother! Class spirit and all--you don't understand!" "I
suppose parents are seldom able to keep up with the understanding of
their children," replied mother, with unfamiliar sarcasm. "However,
right here's where I presume to set my foot down. If you fail again,
in the spring examinations, you'll have to study and make it up this
summer. You can't go with Aunt Isabel."

Lose the Colorado trip! The wonderful trip she had already lived
through, in vivid prospect, a hundred times! Oh, mother couldn't be
so cruel! But Missy's face dropped alarmingly.

"Now, mamma," began father, "I wouldn't-"

"I mean every word of it," reaffirmed mother with the voice of doom.
"No grades, no holiday. Missy's got to learn balance and moderation.
She lets any wild enthusiasm carry her off her feet. She's got to
learn, before it's too late, to think and control herself."

There was a moment's heavy pause, then mother went on,
significantly:

"And I don't know that you ought to buy that car this spring, papa."

The parents exchanged a brief glance, and Missy's heart dropped even
lower. For months she had been teasing father to buy a car, as so
many of the girls' fathers were doing. He had said, "Wait till
spring," and now-the universe was draped in gloom.

However, there was a certain sombre satisfaction in reflecting that
her traits of frailty should call forth such enthrallingly sinister
comments. "Lets any wild enthusiasm carry her off her feet"--
"before, it's too late"--"must learn to control herself--"

Human nature is an interesting study, and especially one's own
nature when one stands off and regards it as a problem Allen,
mysterious and complicated. Missy stared at the endangered recesses
of her soul--and wondered what Raymond thought about these perils-
for any girl. He liked her of course, but did he think she was too
enthusiastic?

Yet such speculations did not, at the time, tie up with views about
the Colorado trip. That was still the guiding star of all her hopes.
She must study harder during the spring term and stave off the
threatened and unspeakable calamity. It was a hard resolution to put
through, especially when she conceived a marvellous idea-a "farce"
like one Polly Currier told her about when she was home for her
Easter vacation. Missy wrestled with temptation like some Biblical
martyr of old, but the thought of Colorado kept her strong. And she
couldn't help feeling a little noble when, mentioning to mother the
discarded inspiration-without allusion to Colorado-she was praised
for her adherence to duty.

The sense of nobility aided her against various tantalizing chances
to prove anew her gifts of leadership, through latter March, through
April, through early May--lengthening, balmy, burgeoning days when
Spring brings all her brightly languid witchery in assault upon drab
endeavour.

The weather must share the blame for what befell that fateful Friday
of the second week in May. Blame? Of course there was plenty of
blame from adults that must be laid somewhere; but as for Missy, a
floating kind of ecstasy was what that day woke in her first, and
after the worst had happened--But let us see what did come to pass.

It was a day made for poets to sing about. A day for the young man
to forget the waiting ledger on his desk and gaze out the window at
skies so blue and deep as to invite the building of castles; for
even his father to see visions of golf-course or fishing-boat
flickering in the translucent air; for old Jeff to get out his lawn-
mower and lazily add a metallic song to the hum of the universe. And
for him or her who must sit at schoolroom desk, it was a day to
follow the processes of blackboard or printed page with the eyes but
not the mind, while the encaged spirit beat past the bars of dull
routine to wing away in the blue.

Missy, sitting near an open window of the "study room" during the
"second period," let dreamy eyes wander from the fatiguing Q. E.
D.'s of the afternoon's Geometry lesson; the ugly tan walls, the
sober array of national patriots hanging above the encircling
blackboard, the sea of heads restlessly swaying over receding rows
of desks, all faded hazily away. Her soul flitted out through the
window, and suffused itself in the bit of bright, bright blue
showing beyond the stand-pipe, in the soft, soft air that stole in
to kiss her cheek, in the elusive fragrance of young, green, growing
things, in the drowsy, drowsy sound of Mrs. Clifton's chickens
across the way. . .

Precious minutes were speeding by; she would not have her Geometry
lesson. But Missy didn't bring herself back to think of that; would
not have cared, anyway. She let her soul stretch out, out, out.

Such is the sweet, subtle, compelling madness a day of Spring can
bring one.

Missy had often felt the ecstasy of being swept out on the yearning
demand for a new experience. Generally because of something
suggestive in "reading" or in heavenly colour combinations or in sad
music at twilight; but, now, for no definable reason at all, she
felt her soul welling up and up in vague but poignant craving. She
asked permission to get a drink of water. But instead of quenching
her thirst, she wandered to the entry of the room occupied by
Mathematics III A--Missy's own class, from which she was now
sequestered by the cruel bar termed "failure-to-pass." Something was
afoot in there; Missy put her ear to the keyhole; then she boldly
opened the door.

A tempest of paper-wads, badinage and giggles greeted her. The
teacher's desk was vacant. Miss Smith was at home sick, and the
principal had put Mathematics III A on their honour. For a time
Missy joined in their honourable pursuit of giggles and badinage.
But Raymond had welcomed her as if the fun must mount to something
yet higher when she came; she felt a "secret, deep, interior urge"
to show what she could do. The seductive May air stole into her
blood, a stealthy, intoxicating elixir, and finally the Inspiration
came, with such tumultuous swiftness that she could never have told
whence or how. Passed on to her fellows, it was caught up with an
ardour equally mad and unreckoning. One minute the unpastored flock
of Mathematics III A were leaning out the windows, sniffing in the
lilac scents wafted over from Mrs. Clifton's yard; the next they
were scurrying, tip-toe, flushed, laughing, jostling, breathless,
out through the cloak-room, down the stairs, through the side-door,
across the stretch of school-yard, toward a haven beyond Mrs.
Clifton's lilac hedge.

Where were they going? They did not know. Why had they started? They
did not know. What the next step? They did not know. No thought nor
reason in that, onward rush; only one vast, enveloping, incoherent,
tumultuous impulse--away! away! Away from dark walls into the open;
away from the old into the new; away from the usual into the you-
don't-know-what; away from "you must not" into "you may." The wild,
free, bright, heedless urge of Spring!

Behind their fragrant rampart they paused, for a second, to spin
about in a kind of mental and spiritual whirlpool. Some began
breaking off floral sprays to decorate hat-band or shirt-waist. But
Missy, feeling her responsibility as a leader, glanced back, through
leafy crevices, at those prison-windows open and ominously near.

"We mustn't stay here!" she admonished. "We'll get caught!"

As if an embodiment of warning, just then Mrs. Clifton emerged out
on her front porch; she looked as if she might be going to shout at
them. But Raymond waited to break off a lilac cluster for Missy. He
was so cool about it; it just showed how much he was like the Black
Prince--though of course no one would "understand" if you said such
a thing.

The fragrantly beplumed company sped across the green Clifton yard,
ruthlessly over the Clifton vegetable garden, to the comparative
retreat of Silver Street, beyond. But they were not yet safe--away!
away! Missy urged them westward, for no defined reason save that
this direction might increase their distance from the danger zone of
the High School.

Still without notion of whither bound, the runaways, moist and
dishevelled, found themselves down by the railroad tracks. There, in
front of the Pacific depot, stood the 10:43 "accommodation" for
Osawatomie and other points south. Another idea out of the blue!

"Let's go to Osawatomie!" cried Missy.

The accommodation was puffing laboriously into action as the last
Junior clambered pantingly on. But they'd all got on! They were on
their way!

But not on their way to Osawatomie.

For before they had all found satisfactory places on the red plush
seats where it was hard to sit still with that bright balminess
streaming in through the open windows--hard to sit still, or to
think, or to do anything but flutter up and down and laugh and
chatter about nothing at all--the conductor appeared.

"Tickets, please!"

A trite and commonplace phrase, but potent to plunge errant, winging
fancies down to earth. The chattering ceased short. No one had
thought of tickets, nor even of money. The girls of the party looked
appalled--in Cherryvale the girls never dreamed of carrying money to
school; then furtively they glanced at the boys. Just as furtively
the boys were exploring into pockets, but though they brought forth
a plentiful salvage of the anomalous treasure usually to be found in
school-boys' pockets, the display of "change" was pathetic. Raymond
had a quarter, and that was more than anyone else turned out.

The conductor impatiently repeated:

"Tickets, please!"

Then Missy, feeling that financial responsibility must be recognized
in a class president, began to put her case with a formal dignity
that impressed every one but the conductor.

"We're the Junior class of the Cherryvale High School--we wish to go
to Osawatomie. Couldn't we--maybe--?"

Formal dignity broke down, her voice stuck in her throat, but her
eyes ought to have been enough. They were big and shining eyes, and
when she made them appealing they had been known to work wonders
with father and mother and other grown-ups, even with the austere
Professor Sutton. But this burly figure in the baggy blue uniform
had a face more like a wooden Indian than a human grown-up--and an
old, dyspeptic wooden Indian at that. Missy's eyes were to avail her
nothing that hour.

"Off you get at the watering-tank," he ordained. "The whole pack of
you."

And at the watering-tank off they got.

And then, as often follows a mood of high adventure, there fell upon
the festive group a moment of pause, of unnatural quiet, of "let
down."

"Well, what're we going to do now?" queried somebody.

"We'll do whatever Missy says," said Raymond, just as if he were Sir
Walter Raleigh speaking of the Virgin Queen. It was a wonder someone
didn't start teasing him about her; but everyone was too taken up
waiting for Missy to proclaim. She set her very soul vibrating; shut
her eyes tightly a moment to think; and, as if in proof that
Providence helps them who must help others, almost instantly she
opened them again.

"Rocky Ford!"

Just like that, out of the blue, a quick, unfaltering, almost
unconscious cry of the inspired. And, with resounding acclaim, her
followers caught it up:

"Rocky Ford! Rocky Ford!"--"That's the ticket!"--"We'll have a
picnic'."--"Rocky Ford! Rocky Ford!"

Rocky Ford, home of nymphs, water-babies and Indian legend, was only
half a mile away. Again it shone in all its old-time romantic
loveliness on Missy's inward eye. And for a fact it was a good
Maytime picnic place.

That day everything about the spot seemed invested with a special
kind of beauty, the kind of beauty you feel so poignantly in stories
and pictures but seldom meet face to face in real life. The Indian
maiden became a memory you must believe in: she had loved someone
and they were parted somehow and she was turned into a swan or
something. Off on either side the creek, the woods stretched dim and
mysterious; but nearby, on the banks, the little new leaves stirred
and sparkled in the sun like green jewels; and the water dribbled
and sparkled over the flat white stones of the ford like a million
swishing diamonds; and off in the distance there were sounds which
may have been birds--or, perhaps, the legendary maiden singing; and,
farther away, somewhere, a faint clanging music which must be cow-
bells, only they had a remote heavenly quality rare in cow-bells.

And, all the while, the sun beaming down on the ford, intensely soft
and bright. Why is it that the sun can seem so much softer and
brighter in some places than in others?

Missy felt that soft brightness penetrating deeper and deeper into
her being. It seemed a sort of limpid, shining tide flowing through
to her very soul; it made her blood tingle, and her soul quiver.
And, in some mysterious way, the presence, of Raymond Bonner,
consciousness of Raymond--Raymond himself--began to seem all mixed
up with this ineffable, surging effulgence. Missy recognized that
she had long experienced a secret, strange, shy kind of feeling
toward Raymond. He was so handsome and so gay. and his dark eyes
told her so plainly that he liked her, and he carried her books home
for her despite the fact that the other boys teased him. The other
girls had teased Missy, too, so that sometimes she didn't know
whether she was more happy or embarrassed over Raymond's admiration.

But, to-day, everyone seemed lifted above such childish rudeness.
When Missy had first led off from the watering-tank toward Rocky
Ford, Raymond had taken his place by her side, and he maintained it
there masterfully though two or three other boys tried to include
themselves in the class president's group--"buttinskys," Raymond
termed them.

Once, as they walked together along the road, Raymond took hold of
her hand. He had done that much before, but this was different.
Those other times did not count. She knew that this was different
and that he, too, knew it was different. They glanced at each other,
and then quickly away.

Then, when they turned off into a field, to avoid meeting people who
might ask questions, Raymond held together the barbed wires of the
fence very carefully, so she could creep under without mishap. And
when they neared the woods, he kicked all the twigs from her path,
and lifted aside the underbrush lest it touch her face. And at each
opportunity for this delicious solicitude they would look at each
other, and then quickly away.

That was in many ways an unforgettable picnic; many were the
unheard-of things carried out as soon as thought of. For example,
the matter of lunch. What need to go hungry when there were eggs in
a farmer's henhouse not a half-mile away, and potatoes in the
farmer's store-house, and sundry other edibles all spread out, as if
waiting, in the farmer's cellar? (Blessings on the farmer's wife for
going avisiting that day!)

The boys made an ingenious oven of stones and a glorious fire of
brush; and the girls made cunning dishes out of big, clean-washed
leaves. Then, when the potatoes and eggs were ready, all was
devoured with a zest that paid its own tribute to the fair young
cooks; and the health of the fair young cooks was drunk in Swan
Creek water, cupped in sturdy masculine hands; and even the girls
tried to drink from those same cups, laughing so they almost
strangled. A mad, merry and supremely delightful feast.

After she had eaten, for some reason Missy felt a craving to wander
off somewhere and sit still a while. She would have loved to stretch
out in the grass, and half-close her eyes, and gaze up at the bits
of shining, infinite blue of the sky, and dream. But there was
Raymond at her elbow--and she wanted, even more than she wanted to
be alone and dream, Raymond to be there at her elbow.

Then, too, there were all the others. Someone shouted:

"What'll we do now? What'll we do, Missy?"

So the class president dutifully set her wits to work. Around the
flat white stones of the ford the water was dribbling, warm, soft,
enticing.

"Let's go wading!" she cried.

Wading!

Usually Missy would have shrunk from appearing before boys in bare
feet. But this was a special kind of day which held no room for
embarrassment; and, more quickly than it takes to tell it, shoes and
stockings were off and the new game was on. Missy stood on a
stepping-stone, suddenly diffident; the water now looked colder and
deeper, the whispering cascadelets seemed to roar like breakers on a
beach. The girls were all letting out little squeals as the water
chilled their ankles, and the boys made feints of chasing them into
deeper water.

Raymond pursued Missy, squealing and skipping from stone to stone
till, unexpectedly, she lost her slippery footing and went sprawling
into the shallow stream.

"Oh, Missy! I'm sorry!" She felt his arms tugging at her. Then she
found herself standing on the bank, red-faced and dripping, feeling
very wretched and very happy at the same time--wretched because
Raymond should see her in such plight; happy because he was making
such a fuss over her notwithstanding.

He didn't seem to mind her appearance, but took his hat and began
energetically to fan her draggled hair.

"I wish my hair was curly like Kitty Allen's," she said.

"I like it this way," said Raymond, unplaiting the long braids so as
to fan them better.

"But hers curls up all the prettier when it's wet. Mine strings."

"Straight hair's the nicest," he said with finality.

He liked straight hair best! A wave of celestial bliss stole over
her. It was wonderful: the big, fleecy clouds so serenely beautiful
up in the enigmatic blue; the sun pouring warmly down and drying her
dress in uneven patches; the whisperings of the green-jewelled
leaves and the swishing of the diamond-bubbles on the stones; the
drowsy, mysterious sounds from far away in the woods, and fragrance
everywhere; and everything seeming delightfully remote; even the
other boys and girls--everything and everybody save Raymond,
standing there so patiently fanning the straight hair he admired.

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