Books: Missy

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Why was grandma pulling at her skirt? Missy twitched away and,
raising her voice to a higher key, went on:

"I said I've been a sinner, but I've repented my sins and want to
lead a blameless life. I repent my sins--O Lord, please forgive me
for being a spy-eye when Cousin Pete kissed Polly Currier, and guide
me to lead a blameless life. Amen."

She sat down.

A great and heavenly stillness came and wrapped itself about her, a
soft and velvety stillness; to shut out gasp or murmur or stifled
titter.

The miracle had happened! It was as if an inner light had been
switched on; a warm white light which tingled through to every fibre
of her being. Surely this was the flame divine! It was her soul
being born anew. . .

CHAPTER II

"Your True Friend, Melissa M."

Missy knew, the moment she opened her eyes, that golden June
morning, that it was going to be a happy day. Missy, with Poppylinda
purring beside her, found this mysterious, irradiant feeling flowing
out of her heart almost as tangible as a third live being in her
quaint little room. It seemed a sort of left-over, still vaguely
attached, from the wonderful dream she had just been having. Trying
to recall the dream, she shut her eyes again; Missy's one regret, in
connection with her magical dreams, was that the sparkling essence
of them was apt to become dim when she awoke. But now, when she
opened her eyes, the suffusion still lingered.

For a long, quiet, blissful moment, she lay smiling at the spot
where the sunlight, streaming level through the lace-curtained
window, fell on the rose-flowered chintz of the valances. Missy
liked those colours very much; then her eyes followed the beam of
light to where it spun a prism of fairy colours on the mirror above
the high-boy, and she liked that ecstatically. She liked, too, by
merely turning her head on the pillow, to glimpse, through the
parting of the curtains, the ocean of blue sky with its flying cloud
ships, so strange; and to hear the morning song of the birds and the
happy hum of insects, the music seeming almost to filter through the
lace curtains in a frescoed pattern which glided, alive, along the
golden roadway of sunshine. She even liked the monotonous metallic
rattle which betold that old Jeff was already at work with the lawn-
mower.

All this in a silent moment crammed to the full with vibrant
ecstasy; then Missy remembered, specifically, the Wedding drawing
every day nearer, and the new Pink Dress, and the glory to be hers
when she should strew flowers from a huge leghorn hat, and her
rapture brimmed over. Physically and spiritually unable to keep
still another second, she suddenly sat up.

"Oh, Poppylinda!" she whispered. "I'm so happy--so happy!"

Everyone knows--that is, everyone who knows kittens--that kittens,
like babies, listen with their eyes. To Missy's whispered
confidence, Poppylinda, without stirring, opened her lids and
blinked her yellow eyes.

"Aren't you happy, too? Say you're happy, Poppy, darling!"

Poppy was stirred to such depths that mere eye-blinking could not
express her emotion. She opened her mouth, so as to expose
completely her tiny red tongue, and then, without lingual endeavour,
began to hum a gentle, crooning rumble down somewhere near her
stomach. Yes; Poppy was happy.

The spirit of thanksgiving glamorously enwrapped these two all the
time Missy was dressing. Like the efficient big girl of twelve that
she was, Missy drew her own bath and, later, braided her own hair
neatly. As she tied the ribbons on those braids, now crossed in a
"coronet" over her head, she gave the ghost of a sigh. This morning
she didn't want to wear her every-day bows; but dutifully she tied
them on, a big brown cabbage above each ear. When she had scrambled
into her checked gingham "sailor suit," all spick and span, Missy
stood eying herself in the mirror for a wistful moment, wishing her
tight braids might metamorphose into lovely, hanging curls like
Kitty Allen's. They come often to a "strange child"--these moments
of vague longing to overhear one's self termed a "pretty child"--
especially on the eve of an important occasion.

But thoughts of that important occasion speedily chased away
consciousness of self. And downstairs in the cheerful dining room,
with the family all gathered round the table, Missy, her cheeks
glowing pink and her big grey eyes ashine, found it difficult to eat
her oatmeal, for very rapture. In the bay window, the geraniums on
the sill nodded their great, biossomy heads at her knowingly.
Beyond, the big maple was stirring its leaves, silver side up, like
music in the breeze. Away across the yard, somewhere, Jeff was
making those busy, restful sounds with the lawn-mower. These
alluring things, and others stretching out to vast mental distances,
quite deadened, for Missy, the family's talk close at hand.

"When I ran over to the Greenleaf's to borrow the sugar," Aunt
Nettie was saying, "May White was there, and she and Helen hurried
out of the dining room when they saw me. I'm sure they'd been
crying, and--"

"S-sh!" warned Mrs. Merriam, with a glance toward Missy. Then, in a
louder tone: "Eat your cereal, Missy. Why are you letting it get
cold?"

Missy brought her eyes back from space with an answering smile. "I
was thinking," she explained.

"What of, Missy?" This, encouragingly, from father.

"Oh, my dream, last night."

"What did you dream about?"

"Oh--mountains," replied Missy, somewhat vaguely.

"For the land's sake!" exclaimed Aunt Nettie. "What ever put such a
thing into her head? She never saw a mountain in her life!" Grown-
ups have a disconcerting way of speaking of children, even when
present, in the third person. But Aunt Nettie finally turned to
Missy with a direct (and dreaded): "What did they look like, Missy?"

"Oh--mountains," returned Missy, still vague.

At a sign from mother, the others did not press her further. When
she had finished her breakfast, Missy approached her mother, and the
latter, reading the question in her eyes, asked:

"Well, what is it, Missy?"

"I feel--like pink to-day," faltered Missy, half-embarrassed.

But her mother did not ask for explanation. She only pondered a
moment.

"You know," reminded the supplicant, "I have to try on the Pink
Dress this morning."

"Very well, then," granted mother. "But only the second-best ones."

Missy's face brightened and she made for the door.

Before she got altogether out of earshot, Aunt Nettie began: "I
don't know that it's wise to humour her in her notions. 'Feel like
pink!'--what in the world does she mean by that?"

Missy was glad the question had not been put to her; for, to have
saved her life, she couldn't have answered it intelligibly. She was
out of hearing too soon to catch her mother's answer:

"She's just worked up over the wedding, and being a flower-girl and
all."

"Well, I don't believe," stated Aunt Nettie with the assurance that
spinsters are wont to show in discussing such matters, "that it's
good for children to let them work themselves up that way. She'll be
as much upset as the bridegroom if Helen does back out."

"Oh, I don't think old Mrs. Greenleaf would ever let her break it
off, now" said Mrs. Merriam, stooping to pick up the papers which
her husband had left strewn over the floor.

"She's hard as rocks," agreed Aunt Nettie.

"Though," Mrs. Merriam went on, "when it's a question of her
daughter's happiness--"

"A little unhappiness would serve Helen Green leaf right," commented
the other tartly. "She's spoiled to death and a flirt. I think it
was a lucky day for young Doc Alison when she jilted him."

"She's just young and vain," championed Mrs. Merriam, carefully
folding the papers and laying them in the rack. "Any pretty girl in
Helen's position couldn't help being spoiled. And you must admit
nothing's ever turned her head--Europe, or her visits to Cleveland,
or anything."

"The Cleveland man is handsome," said Aunt Nettie irrelevantly--the
Cleveland man was the bridegroom-elect.

"Yes, in a stylish, sporty kind of way. But I don't know--" She
hesitated a moment, then concluded: "Missy doesn't like him."

At that Aunt Nettie laughed with genuine mirth. "What on earth do
you think a child would know about it?" she ridiculed.

Meanwhile the child, whose departure had thus loosed free speech,
was leagues distant from the gossip and the unrest which was its
source. Her pink hair bows, even the second-best ones, lifted her to
a state which made it much pleasanter to idle in her window,
sniffing at the honey-suckle, than to hurry down to the piano. She
longed to make up something which, like a tune of water rippling
over pink pebbles, was running through her head. But faithfully, at
last, she toiled through her hour, and then was called on to mind
the Baby.

This last duty was a real pleasure. For she could wheel the
perambulator off to the summerhouse, in a secluded, sweet-smelling
corner of the yard, and there recite poetry aloud. To reinforce
those verses she knew by heart, she carried along the big Anthology
which, in its old-blue binding, contrasted so satisfyingly with the
mahogany table in the sitting-room. The first thing she read was
"Before the Beginning of Years" from "Atalanta in Calydon;" Missy
especially adored Swinburne--so liltingly incomprehensible.

The performance, as ever, was highly successful all around. Baby
really enjoyed it and Poppylinda as well, both of them blinking in
placid appreciation. And as for Missy, the liquid sound of the
metres rolling off her own lips, the phrases so beautiful and so
"deep," seemed to lift a choking something right up into her throat
until she could have wept with the sweet pain of it. She did, as a
matter of fact, happy tears, about which her two auditors asked no
embarrassing question. Baby merely gurgled, and Poppylinda essayed
to climb the declaimer's skirts.

"Sit down, sad Soul!" Missy's mood could no longer even attempt to
mate with prose. She turned through the pages of the Anthology until
she came to another favourite:

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight
like young Lochinvar.

This she read through, with a fine, swinging rhythm. "I think that
last stanza's perfectly exquisite--don't you?" Missy enquired of her
mute audience. And she repeated it, as unctuously as though she were
the poet herself. Then, quite naturally, this romance recalled to
her the romance next door, so deliciously absorbing her waking and
dreaming hours--the romance of her own Miss Princess. Miss Princess-
-Missy's more formal adaptation of Young Doc's soubriquet for Helen
Greenleaf in the days of his romance--was the most beautiful heroine
imaginable. And the Wedding was next week, and Missy was to walk
first of all the six flower-girls, and the Pink Dress was all but
done, and the Pink Stockings--silk!--were upstairs in the third
drawer of the high-boy! Oh, it was a golden world, radiant with joy.
Of course--it's only earth, after all, and not heaven--she'd rather
the bridegroom was going to be young Doc. But Miss Princess had
arranged it this other way--her bridegroom had come out of the East.
And the Wedding was almost here! . . . There never was morning so
fair, nor grass so vivid and shiny, nor air so soft. Above her head
the cherry-buds were swelling, almost ready to burst. From the open
windows of the house, down the street, sounds from a patient piano,
flattered by distance, betokened that Kitty Allen was struggling
with "Perpetual Motion"; Missy, who had finished her struggles with
that abomination-to-beginners a month previously felt her sense of
beatitude deepen.

Presently into this Elysium floated her mother's voice, summoning
her to the house. Rounding the corner of the back walk with the
perambulator, she collided with the grocer-boy. He was a nice-
mannered boy, picking up the Anthology and Baby's doll from the
ground, and handing them to her with a charming smile. Besides, he
had very bright, sparkling eyes. Missy fancied he must be some lost
Prince, and inwardly resolved to make up, as soon as alone, a story
to this effect.

In the house, mother told her it was time to go to Miss Martin's to
try on the Pink Dress.

Down the street, she encountered Mr. Hackett, the rich bridegroom
come out of the East, a striking figure, on that quiet street, in
the natty white flannels suggesting Cleveland, Atlantic City, and
other foreign places.

"Well, if here isn't Sappho!" he greeted her gaily. Missy blushed.
Not for worlds had she suspected he was hearing her, that unlucky
morning in the grape-arbour, when she recited her latest Poem to
Miss Princess. Now she smiled perfunctorily, and started to pass
him.

But Mr. Hackett, swinging his stick, stood with his feet wide apart
and looked down at her.

"How's the priestess of song, this fine morning?" he persisted.

"All-right," stammered Missy.

He laughed, as if actually enjoying her confusion. Missy observed
that his eyes were red-rimmed, and his face a pasty white. She
wondered whether he was sick; but he jauntily waved his stick at her
and went on his way.

Missy, a trifle subdued, continued hers.

But oh, it is a wonderful world! You never know what any moment may
bring you. Adventures fairy-sent surprises, await you at the most
unexpected turns, spring at you from around the first corner.

It was around the very first corner, in truth, that Missy met young
Doc Alison, buzzing leisurely along in his Ford.

"Hello, Missy," he greeted. "Like a lift?"

Missy would. Young Doc jumped out, and, in a deferential manner she
admired very much, assisted her into the little car as though she
were a grown-up and lovely young lady. Young Doc was a nice man. She
knew him well. He had felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, sent her
Valentines, taken her riding, and shown her many other little
courtesies for as far back as she could remember. Then, too, she
greatly admired his looks. He was tall and lean and wiry. His face
was given to quick flashes of smiling; and his eyes could be dreamy
or luminous. He resembled, Missy now decided--and marvelled she
hadn't noticed it before--that other young man, Lochinvar, "so
faithful in love and so dauntless in war."

When young Doc politely enquired whether she could steal enough time
from her errand to turn about for a run up "The Boulevard," Missy
acquiesced. She regretted she hadn't worn her shirred mull hat. But
she decided not to worry about that. After all, her appearance, at
the present moment, didn't so much matter. What did matter was the
way she was going to look next Wednesday--and she excitedly began
telling young Doc about her coming magnificence, "It's silk
organdie," she said in a reverent tone, "and has garlands of
rosebuds." She went on and told him of the big leghorn hat to be
filled with flowers, of the Pink Stockings--best of all, silk!--
waiting, in tissue-paper, in the high-boy drawer.

"Oh, I can hardly wait!" she concluded rapturously.

Young Doc, guiding the car around the street-sprinkling wagon, did
not answer. Beyond the wagon, Mr. Hackett, whom the Ford had
overtaken, was swinging along. Missy turned to young Doc with a
slight grimace.

"'The poor craven bridegroom said never a word,'" she quoted.

Young Doc permitted himself to smile--not too much. "Why don't you
like him, Missy?"

Missy shook her head, without other reply. It would have been
difficult for her to express why she didn't like stylish Mr.
Hackett.

"I wish," she said suddenly, "that you were going to be the
bridegroom, Doc."

He smiled a wry smile at her. "Well, to tell the truth, I wish so,
too, Missy."

"Well, she'll be coming back to visit us often, and maybe you can
take us out riding again."

"Maybe--but after getting used to big imported cars, I'm afraid one
doesn't care much for a Ford."

There was a note of cynicism, of pain, which, because she didn't
know what it was, cut Missy to the heart. It is all very well, in
Romance and Poems, to meet with unhappy, discarded lovers--they
played an essential part in many of the best ballads in the
Anthology; but when that romantic role falls, in real life, on the
shoulders of a nice young Doc, the matter assumes a different
complexion. Missy's own ecstasy over the Wedding suddenly loomed
thoughtless, selfish, wicked. She longed timidly to reach over and
pat that lean brown hand resting on the steering-wheel. Two
sentences she formed in her mind, only to abandon them unspoken,
when, to her relief, the need for delicate diplomacy was temporarily
removed by the car's slowing to a stop before Miss Martin's gate.

Inside the little white cottage, however, in Miss Martin's sitting-
room--so queer and fascinating with its "forms," its samples and
"trimmings" pinned to the curtains, its alluring display of fashion
magazines and "charts," and its eternal litter of varicoloured
scraps over the floor--Missy's momentary dejection could but vanish.
Finally, when in Miss Martin's artfully tilted cheval glass, she
surveyed the pink vision which was herself, gone, for the time, was
everything of sadness in the world. She turned her head this way and
that, craning to get the effect from every angle-the bouffance of
the skirt, the rosebuds wreathing the sides, the butterfly sash in
the back. Adjured by Miss Martin to stand still, she stood vibrantly
poised like a lily-stem waiting the breath of the wind; bade to
"lift up your arms," she obeyed and visioned winged fairies alert
for flight. Even when Miss Martin, carried away by her zeal in
fitting, stuck a pin through the pink tissue clear into the warmer,
softer pink beneath, Missy scarcely felt the prick.

But, at the midday dinner-table, that sympathetic uneasiness
returned. Father, home from the office, was full of indignation over
something "disgraceful" he had heard down town. Though the
conversation was held tantalizingly above Missy's full
comprehension, she could gather that the "disgrace" centred in the
bachelor dinner which Mr. Hackett had given at the Commercial House
the night before. Father evidently held no high opinion of the
introduction of "rotten Cleveland performances" nor of the man who
had introduced them.

"What 'rotten Cleveland performances'?" asked Missy with lively
curiosity.

"Oh, just those late, indigestible suppers," cut in mother quickly.
"Rich food at that hour just kills your stomach. Here, don't you
want another strawberry tart, Missy?"

Missy didn't; but she affected a desire for it, and then a keen
interest in its consumption. By this artifice, she hoped she might
efface herself as a hindrance to continuation of the absorbing talk.
But it is a trick of grown-ups to stop dead at the most thrilling
points; though she consumed the last crumb of the tart, her ears
gained no reward, until mother said:

"As soon as you've finished dinner, Missy, I wish you'd run over to
Greenleafs' and ask to borrow Miss Helen's new kimono pattern."

Missy brightened. The sight of old Mrs. Greenleaf and Miss Princess,
bustling gaily about, would lift this strange cloud gathering so
ominously. She asked permission to carry along a bunch of sweet
peas, and gathered the kind Miss Princess liked best--pinkish
lavender blossoms, a delicious colour like the very fringe of a
rainbow.

The Greenleafs' coloured maid let her in and showed her into the
"den" back of the parlour. "I'll tell Mrs. Greenleaf," she said.
"They're all busy upstairs."

Very busy they must have been, for Missy had restlessly dangled her
feet for what seemed hours, before she heard voices approaching the
parlour.

"Oh, I won't--I won't--" It was Miss Princess's voice, almost
unrecognizably high and quavering.

"Now, just listen a minute, darling--" This unmistakably Mr.
Hackett's languorous, curiously repellent monotone.

"Don't you touch me!"

Missy, stricken by the knowledge she was eavesdropping, peered about
for a means of slipping out. But the only door, portiere-hung, was
the one leading into the parlour. And now this concealed poor
blundering Missy from the speakers while it allowed their talk to
drift through.

That talk, stormy and utterly incomprehensible, filled the child
with a growing sense of terror. Accusations, quick pleadings, angry
retorts, attempts at explanation, all formed a dreadful muttering
background out of which shot, like sharp streaks of lightning,
occasional clearly-caught phrases: "Charlie White came home dead
drunk, I tell you--" "--You know I'm mad about you, Helen, or I
wouldn't--" "--Oh, don't you touch me!"

To Missy, trapped and shaking with panic, the storm seemed to have
raged hours before she detected a third voice, old Mrs. Greenleaf s,
which cut calm and controlled across the area of passion.

"You'd better go out a little while, Porter, and let me talk to
her."

Then another interminable stretch of turmoil, this all the more
terrifying because less violent.

"Oh, mother-I can't--" Anger, spent, had given way to broken
sobbing.

"I understand how you feel, dear. But you'll--"

"I despise him!"

"I understand, dear. All girls get frightened and--"

"But it isn't that, mother. I don't love him. I can't go on. Won't
you, this minute, tell him--tell everybody--?"

"Darling, don't you realize I can't?" Missy had never before heard
old Mrs. Greenleaf's voice tremble.

"The invitation, and the trousseau, and the presents, and
everything. Think of the scandal, dear. We couldn't. Don't you see,
dear, we can't back out, now?"

"O-o-oh."

"I almost wish--but don't you see--?"

"Oh, I can't stand it another hour!"

"You're excited, dear," soothingly. "You'd better go rest a while.
I'll have a good talk with Porter. And you go upstairs and lie down.
The Carrolls' dinner--"

"Oh, dinners, luncheons, clothes. I--"

The despairing sound of Miss Princess's cry, and the throbbing
realization that these were calamities she must not overhear, stung
Missy to renewed reconnoitering. Tiptoeing over to the window, she
fumbled at the fastening of the screen, swung it outward, and,
contemplating a jump to the sward below, thrust one foot over the
sill.

"Hello, there! What are you up to?"

On the side porch, not twenty feet away, Mr. Hackett was regarding
her with amazed and hostile eyes. Missy's heart thumped against her
ribs. Her consternation was not lessened when, tossing away his
cigarette with a vindictive gesture, he added: "Stay where you are!"

Missy slackened her hold and crouched back like a hunted criminal.
And like a hunted criminal he condemned her, a moment later, to old
Mrs. Greenleaf.

"That kid from next door has been snooping in here. I caught her
trying to sneak out."

Missy faltered out her explanation.

"I know it wasn't your fault, dear," said old Mrs. Greenleaf kindly.
"What was it you wanted?"

Her errand forgotten, Missy could only attempt a smile and dumbly
extend the bouquet.

Old Mrs. Greenleaf took the flowers, then spoke over her shoulder:
"I think Helen wants you upstairs, Porter." Missy had always thought
she was like a Roman Matron; now it was upsetting to see the Roman
Matron so upset.

"Miss Helen's got a terrible headache and is lying down," said old
Mrs. Greenleaf, fussing over the flowers.

"Oh," said Missy, desperately tongue-tied and ill-at-ease.

For a long second it endured portentously still in the room and in
the world without; then like a sharp thunder-clap out of a summer
sky, a door slammed upstairs. There was a sound of someone running
down the steps, and Missy glimpsed Mr. Hackett going out the front
door, banging the screen after him.

At the last noise, old Mrs. Greenleaf's shoulders stiffened as if
under a lash. But she turned quietly and said:

"Thank you so much for the flowers, Missy. I'll give them to her
after a while, when she's better. And you can see her to-morrow."

It was the politest of dismissals. Missy, having remembered the
pattern, hurriedly got it and ran home. She had seen a suspicion of
tears in old Mrs. Greenleaf's eyes. It was as upsetting as though
the bronze Winged Victory on the parlour mantel should begin to
weep.

All that afternoon Missy sought solitude. She refused to play
croquet with Kitty Allen when that beautiful and most envied friend
appeared. When Kitty took herself home, offended, Missy went out to
the remote summerhouse, relieved. She looked back, now, on her
morning's careless happiness as an old man looks back on the heyday
of his youth.

Heavy with sympathy, non-comprehension and fear, she brooded over
these dark, mysterious hints about the handsome Cleveland man; over
young Doc's blighted love; over Miss Princess's wanting to "back
out"; over old Mrs. Greenleaf's strange, dominant "pride."

Why did Miss Princess want to "back out"?--Miss Princess with her
beautiful coppery hair, and eager parted lips, and eyes of
mysterious purple (Missy lingered on the reflection "eyes of
mysterious purple" long enough to foreshadow a future poem including
that line). Was it because she still loved Doc? If so, why didn't it
turn out all right, since Doc loved her, too? Surely that would be
better, since there seemed to be something wrong with Mr. Hackett--
even though everybody did talk about what a wonderful match he was.
Then they talked about invitations and things as though old Mrs.
Greenleaf thought those things counted for more than the bridegroom.
Old Mrs. Greenleaf, Missy was sure, loved Miss Princess better than
anything else in the world: then how could she, even if she was
"proud," twist things so foolishly?

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