Books: Missy

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Mr. Saunders outspread his hands in a helpless gesture.

"Well, you know the hard lot of the knight of the road--here to-day,
gone to-morrow, never able to stay where his heart would wish!"

Missy caught her breath; how incautiously he talked!

After Mr. Saunders was gone, Aunt Isabel sat relapsed in her porch
chair, very quiet. Missy couldn't keep her eyes off of that lovely,
apathetic figure. Once Aunt Isabel put her hand to her head.

"Head hitting it up again?" asked Uncle Charlie solicitously.

Aunt Isabel nodded.

"You'd better get to bed, then," he said. And, despite his wounded
toe, he wouldn't let her attend to the shutting-up "chores," but,
accompanied by Missy, hobbled around to all the screen doors
himself. Poor Uncle Charlie!

It was hard for Missy to get to sleep that night. Her brain was a
dark, seething whirlpool. And the air seemed to grow thicker and
thicker; it rested heavily on her hot eyelids, pressed suffocatingly
against her throat. And when, finally, she escaped her thoughts in
sleep, it was only to encounter them again in troubled dreams.

She was awakened abruptly by a terrific noise. Oh, Lord! what was
it? She sat up. It sounded as if the house were falling down. Then
the room, the whole world, turned suddenly a glaring, ghostly white-
-then a sharp, spiteful, head-splitting crack of sound--then
heavier, staccato volleys--then a baneful rumble, dying away.

A thunder-storm! Oh, Lord! Missy buried her face in her pillow.
Nothing in the world so terrified her as thunder-storms.

She seemed to have lain there ages, scarcely breathing, when, in a
little lull, above the fierce swish of rain she thought she heard
voices. Cautiously she lifted her head; listened. She had left her
door open for air and, now, she was sure she heard Uncle Charlie's
deep voice. She couldn't hear what he was saying. Then she heard
Aunt Isabel's voice, no louder than uncle Charlie's but more
penetrating; it had a queer note in it--almost as if she were
crying. Suddenly she did cry out!--And then Uncle Charlie's deep
grumble again.

Missy's heart nearly stopped beating. Could it be that Uncle Charlie
had found out?--That he was accusing Aunt Isabel and making her cry?
But surely they wouldn't quarrel in a thunder-storm! Lightning might
hit the house, or anything!

The conjunction of terrors was too much for Missy to bear. Finally
she crept out of bed and to the door. An unmistakable moan issued
from Aunt Isabel's room. And then she saw Uncle Charlie, in bath-
robe and pajamas, coming down the hall from the bathroom. He was
carrying a hot-water bottle.

"Why, what's the matter, Missy?" he asked her. "The storm frighten
you?"

Missy nodded; she couldn't voice those other horrible fears which
were tormenting her.

"Well, the worst is over now," he said reassuringly. "Run back to
bed. Your aunt's sick again--I've just been filling the hot-water
bottle for her."

"Is she--very sick?" asked Missy tremulously.

"Pretty sick," answered Uncle Charlie. "But there's nothing you can
do. Jump back into bed."

So Missy crept back, and listened to the gradual steadying down of
the rain. She was almost sorry, now, that the whirlwind of frantic
elements had subsided; that had been a sort of terrible complement
to the whirlwind of anguish within herself.

She lay there tense, strangling a desperate impulse to sob. La Beale
Isoud had died of love--and now Aunt Isabel was already sickening.
She half-realized that people don't die of love nowadays--that
happened only in the Middle Ages; yet, there in the black stormy
night, strange, horrible fancies overruled the sane convictions of
daytime. It was fearfully significant, Aunt Isabel's sickening so
quickly, so mysteriously. And immediately after Mr. Saunders's
departure. That was exactly what La Beale Isoud always did whenever
Sir Tristram was obliged to leave her; Sir Tristram was continually
having to flee away, a kind of knight of the road, too--to this
battle or that tourney or what-not--"here to-day, gone to-morrow,
never able to stay where his heart would wish."

"Oh! oh!"

At last exhaustion had its way with the taut, quivering little body;
the hot eyelids closed; the burning cheek relaxed on the pillow.
Missy slept.

When she awoke, the sun, which is so blithely indifferent to
sufferings of earth, was high up in a clear sky. The new-washed air
was cool and sparkling as a tonic. Missy's physical being felt more
refreshed than she cared to admit; for her turmoil of spirit had
awakened with her, and she felt her body should be in keeping.

By the time she got dressed and downstairs, Uncle Charlie had
breakfasted and was about to go down town. He said Aunt Isabel was
still in bed, but much better.

"She had no business to drink all those sodas," he said. "Her
stomach was already upset from all that ice-cream and cake the night
before--and the hot weather and all--"

Missy was scarcely listening to the last. One phrase had caught her
ear: "Her stomach upset!"--How could Uncle Charlie?

But when she went up to Aunt Isabel's room later, the latter
reiterated that unromantic diagnosis. But perhaps she was
pretending. That would be only natural.

Missy regarded the convalescent; she seemed quite cheerful now,
though wan. And not so lovely as she generally did. Missy couldn't
forbear a leading remark.

"I'm terribly sorry Mr. Saunders had to go away so soon." She strove
for sympathetic tone, but felt inexpert and self-conscious.
"Terribly sorry. I can't--"

And then, suddenly, Aunt Isabel laughed--laughed!--and said a
surprising thing.

"What! You, too, Missy? Oh, that's too funny!"

Missy stared--reproach, astonishment, bewilderment, contending in
her expression.

Aunt Isabel continued that delighted gurgle.

"Mr. Saunders is a notorious heart-breaker--but I didn't realize he
was capturing yours so speedily!"

Striving to keep her dignity, Missy perhaps made her tone more
severe than she intended.

"Well," she accused, "didn't he capture yours, Aunt Isabel?"

Then Aunt Isabel, still laughing a little, but with a serious shade
creeping into her eyes, reached out for one of Missy's hands and
smoothed it gently between her own.

"No, dear; I'm afraid your Uncle Charlie has that too securely
tucked away."

Something in Aunt Isabel's voice, her manner, her eyes, even more
than her words, convinced Missy that she was speaking the real
truth. It was all a kind of wild jumbled day-dream she'd been
having. La Beale Aunt Isabel wasn't in love with Mr. Saunders after
all! She was in love with Uncle Charlie. There had been no romantic
undermeaning in all that harp-ukelele business, in the flasket of
ice-cream soda, in the mysterious sickness. The sickness wasn't even
mysterious any longer. Aunt Isabel had only had an "upset."

Deeply stirred, Missy withdrew her hand.

"I think I forgot to open my bed to air," she said, and hurried away
to her own room. But, oblivious of the bed, she stood for a long
time at the window, staring out at nothing.

Yes; Romance had died out in the Middle Ages. . .

She was still standing there when the maid called her to the
telephone. It was Raleigh Peters on the wire, asking to take her to
the dance that night. She accepted, but without enthusiasm. Where
were the thrills she had expected to experience while receiving the
homage paid a visiting girl? He was just a grocery clerk named
Peters!

Yes; Romance had died out in the Middle Ages. . .

She felt very blase as she hung up the receiver.

CHAPTER V

IN THE MANNER OF THE DUCHESS

It was raining--a gentle, trickling summer rain, when, under a heap
of magazines near a heavenly attic window, Missy and Tess came upon
the paper-backed masterpieces of "The Duchess."

The volume Missy chanced first to select for reading was entitled
"Airy Fairy Lilian." The very first paragraph was arresting:

Down the broad oak staircase--through the silent hall--into the
drawing-room runs Lilian, singing as she goes. The room is deserted;
through the half-closed blinds the glad sunshine is rushing, turning
to gold all on which its soft touch lingers, and rendering the
large, dull, handsome apartment almost comfortable. . .

"Broad oak staircase"--"drawing-room"--"large, dull, handsome
apartment"--oh, wonderful!

Then on to the description of the alluring heroine:

. . . the face is more than pretty, it is lovely--the fair, sweet,
childish face, framed in by its yellow hair; her great velvety eyes,
now misty through vain longing, are blue as the skies above her; her
nose is pure Greek; her forehead low, but broad, is partly shrouded
by little wandering threads of gold that every now and then break
loose from bondage, while her lashes, long and dark, curl upward
from her eyes, as though hating to conceal the beauty of the
exquisite azure within. . . There is a certain haughtiness about her
that contrasts curiously but pleasantly with her youthful expression
and laughing, kissable mouth. She is straight and lissome as a young
ash tree; her hands and feet are small and well-shaped; in a word,
she is chic from the crown of her fair head down to her little
arched instep . . .

Missy sighed; how wonderful it must be to be a creature so endowed
by the gods!

Missy--Melissa--now, at the advanced age of fifteen, had supposed
she knew all the wonders of books. She had learned to read the Book
of Life: its enchantments, so many and so varied in Cherryvale, had
kept her big grey eyes wide with smiles or wonder or, just
occasionally, darkened with the mystery of sorrow. There was the
reiterant magic of greening spring; and the long, leisurely days of
delicious summer; the companionship of a quaint and infinitely
interesting baby brother, and of her own cat--majesty incarnate on
four black legs; and then, just lately, this exciting new "best
friend," Tess O'Neill. Tess had recently moved to Cherryvale, and
was "different"--different even from Kitty Allen, though Missy had
suffered twinges about letting anyone displace Kitty. But--

And, now, here it was in Tess's adorable attic (full of treasures
discarded by departed tenants of the old Smith place) that Missy
turned one of Life's milestones and met "the Duchess."

Missy had loved to read the Bible (good stories there, and beautiful
words that made you tingle solemnly); and fairy tales never old;
and, almost best of all, the Anthology, full of poetry, that made
you feel a strange live spirit back of the wind and a world of
mysteries beyond the curtain of the sky.

But this--

The lure of letters was turned loud and seductive as the Blue Danube
played on a golden flute by a boy king with his crown on!

Tess glanced up from her reading.

"How's your book?" she enquired.

"Oh, it's wonderful," breathed Missy.

"Mine, too. Here's a description that reminds me a little of you."

"Me?" incredulously.

"Yes. It's about the heroine--Phyllis. She's not pretty, but she's
got a strange, underlying charm."

Missy held her breath. She was ashamed to ask Tess to read the
description of the strangely charming heroine, but Tess knew what
friendship demanded, and read:

"'I am something over five-feet-two, with brown hair that hangs in
rich chestnut tresses far below my waist.'"

"Oh," put in Missy modestly, while her heart palpitated, "my hair is
just mouse-coloured."

"No," denied Tess authoritatively, "you've got nut-brown locks. And
your eyes, too, are something like Phyllis's eyes--great grey eyes
with subtle depths. Only yours haven't got saucy hints in them."

Missy wished her eyes included the saucy hints. However, she was
enthralled by Tess's comparison, though incomplete. Was it possible
Tess was right?

Missy wasn't vain, but she'd heard before that she had "beautiful
eyes." Perhaps Tess WAS right. Missy blushed and was silent. Just
then, even had she known the proper reply to make, she couldn't have
voiced it. As "the Duchess" might have phrased it, she was
"naturally covered with confusion."

But already Tess had flitted from the delightfully embarrassing
theme of her friend's looks.

"Wouldn't it be grand," she murmured dreamily, "to live in England?"

"Yes--grand," murmured Missy in response.

"Everything's so--so baronial over there."

Baronial!--as always, Tess had hit upon the exact word. Missy sighed
again. She had always loved Cherryvale, always been loyal to it; but
no one could accuse Cherryvale of being "baronial."

That evening, when Missy went upstairs to smooth her "nut-brown
locks" before supper, she gazed about her room with an expression of
faint dissatisfaction. It was an adequate, even pretty room, with
its flowered wall-paper and lace curtains and bird's-eye maple
"set"; and, by the window, a little drop-front desk where she could
sit and write at the times when feeling welled in her till it
demanded an outlet.

But, now, she had an inner confused vision of "lounging-chairs"
covered with pale-blue satin; of velvet, spindle-legged tables hung
with priceless lace and bearing Dresden baskets smothered in
flowers. Oh, beautiful! If only to her, Missy, such habitation might
ever befall!

However, when she started to "brush up" her hair, she eyed it with a
regard more favourable than usual. "Rich chestnut tresses!" She
lingered to contemplate, in the mirror, the great grey eyes which
looked back at her from their subtle depths. She had a suspicion the
act was silly, but it was satisfying.

That evening at the supper-table marked the beginning of a phase in
Missy's life which was to cause her family bewilderment, secret
surmise, amusement and some anxiety.

During the meal she talked very little. She had learned long ago to
keep her thoughts to herself, because old people seldom understand
you. Often they ask embarrassing questions and, even if they don't
laugh at you, you have the feeling they may be laughing inside. Her
present thoughts were so delectable and engrossing that Missy did
not always hear when she was spoken to. Toward the end of the meal,
just as she caught herself in the nick of time about to pour vinegar
instead of cream over her berries, mother said:

"Well, Missy, what's the day-dream this time?"

Missy felt her cheeks "crimson with confusion." Yesterday, at such a
question, she would have made an evasive answer; but now, so much
was she one with the charming creature of her thoughts, she forgot
to be cautious. She cast her mother a pensive glance from her great
grey eyes.

"I don't know--I just feel sort of triste."

"Tristy?" repeated her astonished parent, using Missy's
pronunciation. "Yes--sad, you know."

"My goodness! What makes you sad?"

But Missy couldn't answer that. Unexpected questions often bring
unexpected answers, and not till after she'd made use of the
effective new word, did Missy pause to ponder whether she was really
sad or not. But, now, she couldn't very well admit her lack of the
emotion, so she repeated the pensive glance.

"Does one ever know why one's sad?" she asked in a bewitchingly
appealing tone. .

"Well, I imagine that sometimes one dees," put in Aunt Nettie,
drily.

Missy ignored Aunt Nettie; often it was best to ignore Aunt Nettie--
she was mother's old-maid sister, and she "understood" even less
than mother did.

Luckily just then, Marguerite, the coloured hired girl, came to
clear off the table. Missy regarded her capable but undistinguished
figure.

"I wish they had butlers in Cherryvale," she observed, incautious
again.

"Butlers!--for mercy's sake!" ejaculated Aunt Nettie.

"What books have you got out from the library now, Missy?" asked
father. It was an abrupt change of topic, but Missy was glad of the
chance to turn from Aunt Nettie's derisive smile.

"Why--let me see. 'David Harum' and 'The History of Ancient Greece'
-that's all I think. And oh, yes--I got a French dictionary on my
way home this afternoon."

"Oh! A French dictionary!" commented father.

"It isn't books, Horace," remarked Aunt Nettie, incomprehensibly.
"It's that O'Neill girl."

"What's that O'Neill girl?" demanded Missy, in a low, suppressed
voice.

"Well, if you ask me, her head's full of--"

But a swift gesture from mother brought Aunt Nettie to a sudden
pause.

But Missy, suspecting an implied criticism of her friend, began with
hauteur:

"I implore you to desist from making any insinuation against Tess
O'Neill. I'm very proud to be epris with her!" (Missy made the
climactic word rhyme with "kiss.")

There was a little hush after this outburst from the usually
reserved Missy. Father and mother stared at her and then at each
other. But Aunt Nettie couldn't refrain from a repetition of the
climactic word;

"E-priss!" And she actually giggled!

At the sound, Missy felt herself growing "deathly mute, even to the
lips", but she managed to maintain a mien of intense composure.

"What does that mean, Missy?" queried father.

He was regarding her kindly, with no hint of hidden amusement.
Father was a tall, quiet and very wise man, and Missy had sometimes
found it possible to talk with him about the unusual things that
rose up to fascinate her. She didn't distrust him so much as most
grown-ups.

So she smiled at him and said informatively:

"It means to be in intense sympathy with."

"Oh, I see. Did you find that in the French dictionary?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, I see we'll all have to be taking up foreign languages if
we're to have such an accomplished young lady in the house."

He smiled at her in a way that made her almost glad, for a moment,
that he was her father instead of a Duke who might surround her with
baronial magnificence. Mother, too, she couldn't help loving,
though, in her neat, practical gingham dress, she was so unlike Lady
Chetwoode, the mother in "Airy Fairy Lilian." Lady Chetwoode wore
dainty caps, all white lace and delicate ribbon bows that matched in
colour her trailing gown. Her small and tapering hands were covered
with rings. She walked with a slow, rather stately step, and there
was a benignity about her that went straight to the heart. . . Well,
there was something about mother, too, that went straight to the
heart. Missy wouldn't trade off her mother for the world.

But when, later, she wandered into the front parlour, she couldn't
help wishing it were a "drawing-room." And when she moved on out to
the side porch, she viewed with a certain discontent the peaceful
scene before her. Usually she had loved the side porch at the sunset
hour: the close fragrance of honeysuckles which screened one end,
the stretch of slick green grass and the nasturtium bed aflame like
an unstirring fire, the trees rustling softly in the evening breeze-
-yes, she loved it all for the very tranquillity, the poignant
tranquillity of it.

But that was before she realized there were in the world vast swards
that swept beyond pleasure-grounds (what WERE "pleasure-grounds"?),
past laughing brooklets and gurgling streams, on to the Park where
roamed herds of many-antlered deer and where mighty oaks flung their
arms far and wide; while mayhap, on a topmost branch, a crow swayed
and swung as the soft wind rushed by, making an inky blot upon the
brilliant green, as if it were a patch upon the alabaster cheek of
some court belle . . .

Oh, enchanting!

But there were no vast swards nor pleasure-grounds nor Parks of
antlered deer in Cherryvale.

Then Poppylinda, the majestic black cat, trod up the steps of the
porch and rubbed herself against her mistress's foot, as if saying,
"Anyhow, I'm here!"

Missy reached down and lifted Poppy to her lap. She adored Poppy;
but she couldn't help reflecting that a Skye terrier (though she had
never seen one) was a more distinguished kind of pet than a black
cat. A black cat was--well, bourgeois (the last rhyming with
"boys"). Airy fairy Lilian's pet was a Skye. It was named Fifine,
and was very frisky. Lilian, as she sat exchanging sprightly
badinage with her many admirers, was wont to sit with her hand perdu
beneath the silky Fifine in her lap.

"No, no, Fifine! Down, sir!" murmured Missy absently.

Poppy, otherwise immobile, blinked upward an inquiring gaze.

"Naughty Fifine! You MUST not kiss my fingers, sir!"

Poppy blinked again. Who might this invisible Fifine be? Her
mistress was conversing in a very strange manner; and the strangest
part of it was that she was looking straight into Poppy's own eyes.

Poppy didn't know it, but her name was no longer Poppylinda. It was
Fifine.

That night Missy went to bed in her own little room in Cherryvale;
but, strange as it may seem to you, she spent the hours till waking
far across the sea, in a manor-house in baronial England.

After that, for a considerable period, only the body, the husk of
her, resided in Cherryvale; the spirit, the pulsing part of her, was
in the land of her dreams. Events came and passed and left her
unmarked. Even the Evans elopement brought no thrill; the affair of
a youth who clerks in a bank and a girl who works in a post office
is tame business to one who has been participating in the panoplied
romances of the high-born.

Missy lived, those days, to dream in solitude or to go to Tess's
where she might read of further enchantments. Then, too, at Tess's,
she had a confidante, a kindred spirit, and could speak out of what
was filling her soul. There is nothing more satisfying than to be
able to speak out of what is filling your soul. The two of them got
to using a special parlance when alone. It was freely punctuated
with phrases so wonderfully camouflaged that no Frenchman would have
guessed that they were French.

"Don't I hear the frou-frou of silken skirts?" inquired Missy one
afternoon when she was in Tess's room, watching her friend comb the
golden tresses which hung in rich profusion about her shoulders.

"It's the mater," answered Tess. "She's dressed to pay some visits
to the gentry. Later she's to dine at the vicarage. She's ordered
out the trap, I believe."

"Oh, not the governess-cart?"

Yes, Tess said it WAS the governess-cart; and her answer was as
solemn as Missy's question.

It was that same "dinner" at the "vicarage"--in Cherryvale one dines
at mid-day, and the Presbyterian minister blindly believed he had
invited the O'Neills for supper--that gave Tess one of her most
brilliant inspirations. It came to her quite suddenly, as all true
inspirations do. The Marble Hearts would give a dinner-party!

The Marble Hearts were Missy's "crowd," thus named after Tess had
joined it. Of course, said Tess, they must have a name. A
fascinating fount of ideas was Tess's. She declared, now, that they
MUST give a dinner-party, a regular six o'clock function. Life for
the younger set in Cherryvale was so bourgeois, so ennuye. It
devolved upon herself and Missy to elevate it. So, at the next
meeting of the crowd, they would broach the idea. Then they'd make
all the plans; decide on the date and decorations and menu, and who
would furnish what, and where the fete should be held. Perhaps
Missy's house might be a good place. Yes. Missy's dining room was
large, with the porch just outside the windows--a fine place for the
orchestra.

Missy listened eagerly to all the earlier features of the scheme--
she knew Tess could carry any point with the crowd; but about the
last suggestion she felt misgivings. Mother had very strange, old-
fashioned notions about some things. She MIGHT be induced to let
Missy help give an evening dinner-party, though she held that
fifteen-year-old girls should have only afternoon parties; but to be
persuaded to lend her own house for the affair--that would be an
achievement even for Tess!

However miracles continue to happen in this cut-and-dried world.
When the subject was broached to Missy's mother with carefully
considered tact, she bore up with puzzling but heavenly equanimity.
She looked thoughtfully at the two girls in turn, and then gazed out
the window.

"A six o'clock dinner-party, you say?" she repeated, her eyes
apparently fixed on the nasturtium bed.

"Yes, Mrs. Merriam." It was Tess who answered. Missy's heart, an
anxious lump in her throat, hindered speech.

"For heaven's sake! What next?" ejaculated Aunt Nettie.

Mrs. Merriam regarded the nasturtiums for a second longer before she
brought her eyes back to the two young faces and broke the tense
hush.

"What made you think you wanted to give a dinner-party?"

Oh, rapture! Missy's heart subsided an inch, and she drew a long
breath. But she wisely let Tess do the replying.

"Oh, everything in Cherryvale's so passe' and ennuye'. We want to do
something novel--something really distingue'--if you know what I
mean."

"I believe I do," replied Mrs. Merriam gravely.

"Dis-tinn-gwy!" repeated Aunt Nettie. "Well, if you ask me--" But
Mrs. Merriam silenced her sister with an unobtrusive gesture. She
turned to the two petitioners.

"You think an evening dinner would be--distinngwy?"

"Oh, yes--the way we've planned it out!" affirmed Tess. She, less
diffident than Missy, was less reserved in her disclosures. She went
on eagerly: "We've got it all planned out. Five courses: oyster
cocktails; Waldorf salad; veal loaf, Saratoga chips, devilled eggs,
dill pickles, mixed pickles, chow-chow and peach pickles: heavenly
hash; and ice-cream with three kinds of cake. And small cups of
demitasse, of course."

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