Books: Missy

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So let these ships, which have such a vast, such an unutterable
influence, use that influence for brightening the encompassing
gloom. . . For, by so doing, the waters of Life will grow smoother,
and the signals will never flicker.

She came to the last undulating cadence, the last vibrantly
sustained phrase; and then, as she paused and bowed, there was a
moment of hush--and then the applause began. Oh, what applause! And
then, slowly, graciously, modestly but with a certain queenly pride,
the shining figure in white turned and left the stage.

Here was a noble triumph, remembered for years even by the teachers.
Down in the audience father and mother and grandpa and grandma and
all the other relatives who, with suspiciously wet eyes, were
assembled in the "reserved section," overheard such murmurs as: "And
she's seventeen!--Where do young folks get those ideas?"--and, "What
an unusual gift of phraseology!" And, after the programme, a
reporter from the Cherryvale Beacon came up to father and asked
permission to quote certain passages from the Valedictory in his
"write-up." That was the proudest moment of Mr. Merriam's entire
life.

Missy had time for only hurried congratulations from her family. For
she must rush off to the annual Alumni banquet. She was going with
Raymond Bonner who, now, was hovering about her more zealously than
ever. She would have preferred to share this triumphant hour with--
with--well, with someone older and more experienced and better able
to understand. But she liked Raymond; once, long ago--a whole year
ago--she'd had absurd dreams about him. Yet he was a nice boy; the
nicest and most sought-after boy in the class. She was not unhappy
at going off with him.

Father and mother walked home alone, communing together in that
pride-tinged-with-sadness that must, at times, come to all parents.

Mother said:

"And to think I was so worried! That hat-making, and then that
special spell of idle mooning over something-or-nothing, nearly
drove me frantic."

Father smiled through the darkness.

"I suppose, after all," mother mused on, surreptitiously wiping
those prideful eyes, "that there is something in Inspiration, and
the dear child just had to wait till she got it, and that she
doesn't know any more than we do where it came from."

"No, I daresay she doesn't." But sometimes father was more like a
friend than a parent, and that faint, unnoted stress was the only
sign he ever gave of what he knew about this Inspiration.

CHAPTER X

MISSY CANS THE COSMOS

As far back as Melissa Merriam could remember, she had lived with
her family in the roomy, rambling, white-painted house on Locust
Avenue. She knew intimately every detail of its being. She had, at
various points in her childhood, personally supervised the addition
of the ell and of the broad porch which ran round three sides of the
house, the transformation of an upstairs bedroom into a regular
bathroom with all the pleasing luxuries of modern plumbing, the
installation of hardwood floors into the "front" and "back"
parlours. She knew every mousehole in the cellar, every spider-web
and cracked window-pane in the fascinating attic. And the yard
without she also knew well: the friendly big elm which, whenever the
wind blew, tapped soft leafy fingers against her own window; the
slick green curves of the lawn; the trees best loved by the birds;
the morning-glories on the porch which resembled fairy church bells
ready for ringing, the mignonette in the flower-beds like fragrant
fairy plumes, and the other flowers--all so clever at growing up
into different shapes and colours when you considered they all came
from little hard brown seeds. And she was familiar with the
summerhouse back in the corner of the yard, so ineffably delicious
in rambler-time, but so bleakly sad in winter; and the chicken-yard
just beyond she knew, too--Missy loved that peculiar air of
placidity which pervades even the most clucky and cackly of chicken-
yards, and she loved the little downy chicks which were so adept at
picking out their own mothers amongst those hens that looked all
alike. When she was a little girl she used to wonder whether the
mothers grieved when their children grew up and got killed and eaten
and, for one whole summer, she wouldn't eat fried chicken though it
was her favourite delectable.

All of which means that Missy, during the seventeen years of her
life, had never found her homely environment dull or unpleasing.
But, this summer, she found herself longing, with a strange, secret
but burning desire, for something "different."

The feeling had started that preceding May, about the time she made
such an impression at Commencement with her Valedictory entitled
"Ships That Pass in the Night." The theme of this oration was the
tremendous influence that can trail after the chancest and briefest
encounter of two strangers. No one but herself (and her father,
though Missy did not know it) connected Missy's eloquent handling of
this subject with the fleeting appearance in Cherryvale of one
Ridgeley Holman Dobson. Dobson had given a "Lyceum Course" lecture
in the Opera House, but Missy remembered him not because of what he
lectured about, nor because he was an outstanding hero of the recent
Spanish-American war, nor even because of the scandalous way his
women auditors, sometimes, rushed up and kissed him. No. She
remembered him because . . . Oh, well, it would have been hard to
explain concretely, even to herself; but that one second, when she
was taking her turn shaking hands with him after the lecture, there
was something in his dark bright eyes as they looked deeply into her
own, something that made her wish--made her wish--

It was all very vague, very indefinite. If only Cherryvale afforded
a chance to know people like Ridgeley Holman Dobson! Unprosaic
people, really interesting people. People who had travelled in far
lands; who had seen unusual sights, plumbed the world's
possibilities, done heroic deeds, laid hands on large affairs.

But what chance for this in poky Cherryvale?

This tranquil June morning, as Missy sat in the summerhouse with the
latest Ladies' Home Messenger in her lap, the dissatisfied feeling
had got deeper hold of her than usual. It was not acute discontent--
the kind that sticks into you like a sharp splinter; it was
something more subtle; a kind of dull hopelessness all over you. The
feeling was not at all in accord with the scene around her. For the
sun was shining gloriously; Locust Avenue lay wonderfully serene
under the sunlight; the iceman's horses were pulling their enormous
wagon as if it were not heavy; the big, perspiring iceman whistled
as if those huge, dripping blocks were featherweight; and, in like
manner, everybody passing along the street seemed contented and
happy. Missy could remember the time when such a morning as this,
such a scene of peaceful beauty, would have made her feel contented,
too.

Now she sighed, and cast a furtive glance through the leafage toward
the house, a glance which reflected an inner uneasiness because she
feared her mother might discover she hadn't dusted the parlours;
mother would accuse her of "dawdling." Sighing again for grown-ups
who seldom understand, Missy turned to the Messenger in her lap.

Here was a double-page of "Women Who Are Achieving"--the reason for
the periodical's presence in Missy's society. There was a half-tone
of a lady who had climbed a high peak in the Canadian Rockies; Missy
didn't much admire her unfeminine attire, yet it was something to
get one's picture printed--in any garb. Then there was a Southern
woman who had built up an industry manufacturing babies' shoes. This
photograph, too, Missy studied without enthusiasm: the shoemaker was
undeniably middle-aged and matronly in appearance; nor did the
metier of her achievement appeal. Making babies' shoes, somehow,
savoured too much of darning stockings. (Oh, bother! there was that
basket of stockings mother had said positively mustn't go another
day.)

Missy's glance hurried to the next picture. It presented the only
lady Sheriff in the state of Colorado. Missy pondered. Politics--
Ridgeley Holman Dobson was interested in politics; his lecture had
been about something-or-other political--she wished, now, she'd paid
more attention to what he'd talked about. Politics, it seemed, was a
promising field in the broadening life of women. And they always had
a Sheriff in Cherryvale. Just what were a Sheriff's duties? And how
old must one be to become a Sheriff? This Colorado woman certainly
didn't look young. She wasn't pretty, either--her nose was too long
and her lips too thin and her hair too tight; perhaps lady Sheriffs
had to look severe so as to enforce the law.

Missy sighed once more. It would have been pleasant to feel she was
working in the same field with Ridgeley Holman Dobson.

Then, suddenly, she let her sigh die half-grown as her eye came to
the portrait of another woman who had achieved. No one could claim
this one wasn't attractive looking. She was young and she was
beautiful, beautiful in a peculiarly perfected and aristocratic way;
her hair lay in meticulously even waves, and her features looked as
though they had been chiselled, and a long ear-ring dangled from
each tiny ear. Missy wasn't surprised to read she was a noblewoman,
her name was Lady Sylvia Southwoode--what an adorable name!

The caption underneath the picture read: "Lady Sylvia Southwoode,
Who Readjusts--and Adorns--the Cosmos."

Missy didn't catch the full editorial intent, perhaps, in that
grouping of Lady Sylvia and the Cosmos; but she was pleased to come
upon the word Cosmos. It was one of her pet words. It had struck her
ear and imagination when she first encountered it, last spring, in
Psychology IV-A. Cosmos--what an infinity of meaning lay behind the
two-syllabled sound! And the sound of it, too, sung itself over in
your mind, rhythmic and fascinating. There was such a difference in
words; some were but poor, bald things, neither suggesting very much
nor very beautiful to hear. Then there were words which were
beautiful to hear, which had a rich sound--words like "mellifluous"
and "brocade" and "Cleopatra." But "Cosmos" was an absolutely
fascinating word--perfectly round, without beginning or end. And it
was the kind to delight in not only for its wealth, so to speak, for
all it held and hinted, but also for itself alone; it was a word of
sheer beauty.

She eagerly perused the paragraph which explained the manner in
which Lady Sylvia was readjusting--and adorning--the Cosmos. Lady
Sylvia made speeches in London's West End--wherever that was--and
had a lot to do with bettering the Housing Problem--whatever that
was--and was noted for the distinguished gatherings at her home.
This alluring creature was evidently in politics, too!

Missy's eyes went dreamily out over the yard, but they didn't see
the homely brick-edged flowerbeds nor the red lawn-swing nor the
well-worn hammock nor the white picket fence in her direct line of
vision. They were contemplating a slight girlish figure who was
addressing a large audience, somewhere, speaking with swift, telling
phrases that called forth continuous ripples of applause. It was all
rather nebulous, save for the dominant girlish figure, which bore a
definite resemblance to Melissa Merriam.

Then, with the sliding ease which obtains when fancy is the stage
director, the scene shifted. Vast, elaborately beautiful grounds
rolled majestically up to a large, ivy-draped house, which had
turrets like a castle--very picturesque. At the entrance was a
flight of wide stone steps, overlaid, now, with red carpet and
canopied with a striped awning. For the mistress was entertaining
some of the nation's notables. In the lofty hall and spacious rooms
glided numberless men-servants in livery, taking the wraps of the
guests, passing refreshments, and so forth. The guests were very
distinguished-looking, all the men in dress suits and appearing just
as much at home in them as Ridgeley Holman Dobson had, that night on
the Opera House stage. Yes, and he was there, in Missy's vision,
handsomer than ever with his easy smile and graceful gestures and
that kind of intimate look in his dark eyes, as he lingered near the
hostess whom he seemed to admire. All the women were in low-cut
evening dresses of softly-tinted silk or satin, with their hair
gleaming in sleek waves and long ear-rings dangling down. The young
hostess wore ear-rings, also; deep-blue gems flashed out from them,
to match her trailing deep blue velvet gown--Raymond Bonnet had once
said Missy should always wear that special shade of deep blue.

Let us peep at the actual Missy as she sits there dreaming: she has
neutral-tinted brown hair, very soft and fine, which encircles her
head in two thick braids to meet at the back under a big black bow;
that bow, whether primly-set or tremulously-askew, is a fair
barometer of the wearer's mood. The hair is undeniably straight, a
fact which has often caused Missy moments of concern. (She used to
envy Kitty Allen her tangling, light-catching curls till Raymond
Bonner chanced to remark he considered curly hair "messy looking";
but Raymond's approval, for some reason, doesn't seem to count for
as much as it used to, and, anyway, he is spending the summer in
Michigan.) However, just below that too-demure parting, the eyes are
such as surely to give her no regret. Twin morning-glories, we would
call them-grey morning-glories!--opening expectant and shining to
the Sun which always shines on enchanted seventeen. And, like other
morning-glories, Missy's eyes are the shyest of flowers, ready to
droop sensitively at the first blight of misunderstanding. That is
the chiefest trouble of seventeen: so few are there, especially
among old people, who seem to "understand." And that is why one must
often retire to the summerhouse or other solitary places where one
can without risk of ridicule let one's dreams out for air.

Presently she shook off her dreams and returned to the scarcely less
thrilling periodical which had evoked them. Here was another
photograph--though not nearly so alluring as that of the Lady
Sylvia; a woman who had become an authoritative expounder of
political and national issues--politics again! Missy proceeded to
read, but her full interest wasn't deflected till her eyes came to
some thought-compelling words:

"It was while yet a girl in her teens, in a little Western town
("Oh!" thought Missy), that Miss Carson mounted the first rung of
the ladder she has climbed to such enviable heights. She had just
graduated from the local high school ("Oh! oh!" thought Missy) and,
already prodded by ambition, persuaded the editor of the weekly
paper to give her a job. . ."

Once again Missy's eyes wandered dreamily out over the yard. . .

Presently a voice was wafted out from the sideporch:

"Missy!--oh, Missy! Where are you?"

There was mother calling--bother! Missy picked up the Ladies' Home
Messenger and trudged back to bondage.

"What in the world do you mean, Missy? You could write your name all
over the parlour furniture for dust! And then those stockings--"

Missy dutifully set about her tasks. Yet, ah! it certainly is hard
to dust and darn while one's soul is seething within one, straining
to fly out on some really high enterprise of life. However one can,
if one's soul strains hard enough, dust and dream; darn and dream.
Especially if one has a helpful lilt, rhythmic to dust-cloth's
stroke or needle's swing, throbbing like a strain of music through
one's head:

Cosmos--Cosmos!--Cosmos--Cosmos!

Missy was absent-eyed at the midday dinner, but no sooner was the
meal over before she feverishly attacked the darning-basket again.
Her energy may have been explained when, as soon as the stockings
were done, she asked her mother if she might go down to the Library.

Mother and Aunt Nettie from their rocking-chairs on the side-porch
watched the slim figure in its stiffly-starched white duck skirt and
shirt-waist disappear down shady Locust Avenue.

"I wonder what Missy's up to, now?" observed Aunt Nettie.

"Up to?" murmured Mrs. Merriam.

"Yes. She hardly touched her chop at dinner and she's crazy about
lamb chops. She's eaten almost nothing for days. And either shirking
her work, else going at it in a perfect frenzy!"

"Growing girls get that way sometimes," commented Missy's mother
gently. (Could Missy have heard and interpreted that tone, she might
have been less hard on grown-ups who "don't understand.") "Missy's
seventeen, you know."

"H'm!" commented Aunt Nettie, as if to say, "What's THAT to do with
it?" Somehow it seems more difficult for spinsters than for mothers
to remember those swift, free flights of madness and sweetness
which, like a troop of birds in the measurable heavens, sweep in
joyous circles across the sky of youth.

Meanwhile Missy, the big ribbon index under her sailor-brim
palpitantly askew, was progressing down Locust Avenue with a
measured, accented gait that might have struck an observer as being
peculiar. The fact was that the refrain vibrating through her soul
had found its way to her feet. She'd hardly been conscious of it at
first. She was just walking along, in time to that inner song:

"Cosmos--cosmos--cosmos--cosmos--"

And then she noticed she was walking with even, regular steps,
stepping on every third crack in the board sidewalk, and that each
of these cracks she stepped on ran, like a long punctuation, right
through the middle of "cosmos." So that she saw in her mind this
picture: |Cos|mos| |cos|mos| |cos|mos| |cos|mos|

It was fascinating, watching the third cracks punctuate her thoughts
that way. Then it came to her that it was a childish sort of game--
she was seventeen, now. So she avoided watching the cracks. But
"Cosmos" went on singing through her head and soul.

She came to Main Street and, ignoring the turn eastward which led to
the Public Library, faced deliberately in the opposite direction.

She was, in fact, bound for the office of the Beacon--the local
weekly. And thoughts of what tremendous possibilities might be
stretching out from this very hour, and of what she would say to Ed
Martin, the editor, made her feet now skim along impatiently, and
now slow down with sudden, self-conscious shyness.

For Missy, even when there was no steadily nearing imminence of
having to reveal her soul, on general principles was a little in awe
of Ed Martin and his genial ironies. Ed Martin was not only a local
celebrity. His articles were published in the big Eastern magazines.
He went "back East" once a year, and it was said that on one
occasion he had dined with the President himself. Of course that was
only a rumour; but Cherryvale had its own eyes for witness that
certain persons had stopped off in town expressly to see Ed Martin--
personages whose names made you take notice!

Missy, her feet terribly reluctant now, her soul's song barely a
whisper, found Ed Martin shirt-sleeved in his littered little
sanctum at the back of the Beacon office.

"Why, hello, Missy!" he greeted, swinging round leisurely in his
revolving-chair. Ed Martin was always so leisurely in his movements
that the marvel was how he got so much accomplished. Local
dignitaries of the most admired kind, perhaps, wear their
distinction as a kind of toga; but Ed was plump and short, with his
scant, fair hair always rumpled, and a manner as friendly as a
child's.

"Haven't got another Valedictory for us to print, have you?" he went
on genially.

Missy blushed. "I just dropped in for a minute," she began uneasily.
"I was just thinking--" She hesitated and paused.

"Yes," said Ed Martin encouragingly.

"I was just thinking--that perhaps--" She clasped her hands tightly
together and fixed her shining eyes on him in mute appeal. Then:

"You see, Mr. Martin, sometimes it comes over you--" She broke off
again.

Ed Martin was regarding her out of friendly blue eyes.

"Maybe I can guess what sometimes comes over you. You want to write-
-is that it?"

His kindly voice and manner emboldened her.

"Yes--it's part that. And a feeling that--Oh, it's so hard to put
into words, Mr. Martin!"

"I know; feelings are often hard to put into words. But they're
usually the most worth while kind of feelings. And that's what words
are for."

"Well, I was just feeling that at my age--that I was letting my life
slip away--accomplishing nothing really worth while. You know--?"

"Yes, we all feel like that sometimes, I guess." Ed Martin nodded
with profound solemnity.

Oh, Ed Martin was wonderful! He DID understand things! She went
ahead less tremulously now.

"And I was feeling I wanted to get started at something. At
something REALLY worth while, you know."

Ed Martin nodded again.

"And I thought, maybe, you could help me get started--or something."
She gazed at him with open-eyed trust, as if she expected him with a
word to solve her undefined problem.

"Get started?--at writing, you mean?"

Oh, how wonderfully Ed Martin understood!

He shuffled some papers on his desk. "Just what do you want to
write, Missy?"

"I don't know, exactly. When I can, I'd like to write something sort
of political--or cosmic."

"Oh," said Ed Martin, nodding. He shuffled the papers some more.
Then: "Well, when that kind of a germ gets into the system, I guess
the best thing to do is to get it out before it causes mischief. If
it coagulates in the system, it can cause a lot of mischief."

Just what did he mean?

"Yes, a devil of a lot of mischief," he went on. "But the trouble
is, Missy, we haven't got any job on politics or--or the cosmos open
just now. But--"

He paused, gazing over her head. Missy felt her heart pause, too.

"Oh, anykind of a writing job," she proffered quaveringly.

"I can't think of anything here that's not taken care of, except"--
his glance fell on the ornate-looking "society page" of the Macon
City Sunday Journal, spread out on his desk--"a society column."

In her swift breath of ecstasy Missy forgot to note the twinkle in
his eye.

"Oh, I'd love to write society things!" Ed Martin sat regarding her
with a strange expression on his face.

"Well," he said at last, as if to himself, "why not?" Then,
addressing her directly: "You may consider yourself appointed
official Society Editor of the Cherryvale Beacon."

The title rolled with surpassing resonance on enchanted ears. She
barely caught his next remark.

"And now about the matter of salary--"

Salary! Missy straightened up.

"What do you say to five dollars a week?" he asked.

Five dollars a week!--Five dollars every week! And earned by
herself! Missy's eyes grew big as suns.

"Is that satisfactory?"

"Oh, YES!"

"Well, then," he said, "I'll give you free rein. Just get your copy
in by Wednesday night--we go to press Thursdays--and I promise to
read every word of it myself."

"Oh," she said.

There were a thousand questions she'd have liked to ask, but Ed
Martin, smiling a queer kind of smile, had turned to his papers as
if anxious to get at them. No; she mustn't begin by bothering him
with questions. He was a busy man, and he'd put this new, big
responsibility on HER--"a free rein," he had said. And she must live
up to that trust; she must find her own way--study up the problem of
society editing, which, even if not her ideal, yet was a wedge to
who-knew-what? And meanwhile perhaps she could set a new standard
for society columns--brilliant and clever . . .

Missy left the Beacon office, suffused with emotions no pen, not
even her own, could ever have described.

Ed Martin, safely alone, allowed himself the luxury of an extensive
grin. Then, even while he smiled, his eyes sobered.

"Poor young one." He sighed and shook his head, then took up the
editorial he was writing on the delinquencies of the local
waterworks administration.

Meanwhile Missy, moving slowly back up Main Street, was walking on
something much softer and springier than the board sidewalk under
her feet.

She didn't notice even the cracks, now. The acquaintances who passed
her, and the people sitting contentedly out on their shady porches,
seemed in a different world from the one she was traversing.

She had never known this kind of happiness before--exploring a dream
country which promised to become real. Now and then a tiny cloud
shadowed the radiance of her emotions: just how would she begin?--
what should she write about and how?--but swiftly her thoughts
flitted back to that soft, warm, undefined deliciousness. . .

Society Editor!--she, Melissa Merriam! Her words would be
immortalized in print! and she would soar up and up. . . Some day,
in the big magazines . . . Everybody would read her name there--all
Cherryvale--and, perhaps, Ridgeley Holman Dobson would chance a
brilliant, authoritative article on some deep, vital subject and
wish to meet the author.

She might even have to go to New York to live--New York! And
associate with the interesting, delightful people there. Maybe he
lived in New York, or, anyway, visited there, associating with
celebrities.

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