The opinion which McSnagley expressed in reference to a “change of
heart” supposed to be experienced by Mliss was more forcibly described
in the gulches and tunnels. It was thought there that Mliss had
“struck a good lead.” So when there was a new grave added to the
little enclosure, and at the expense of the master a little board
and inscription put above it, the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER came out quite
handsomely, and did the fair thing to the memory of one of “our oldest
Pioneers,” alluding gracefully to that “bane of noble intellects,” and
otherwise genteelly shelving our dear brother with the past. “He leaves
an only child to mourn his loss,” says the BANNER, “who is now an
exemplary scholar, thanks to the efforts of the Rev. Mr. McSnagley.” The
Rev. McSnagley, in fact, made a strong point of Mliss's conversion,
and, indirectly attributing to the unfortunate child the suicide of
her father, made affecting allusions in Sunday school to the beneficial
effects of the “silent tomb,” and in this cheerful contemplation
drove most of the children into speechless horror, and caused the
pink-and-white scions of the first families to howl dismally and refuse
to be comforted.
The long dry summer came. As each fierce day burned itself out in little
whiffs of pearl-gray smoke on the mountain summits, and the upspringing
breeze scattered its red embers over the landscape, the green wave which
in early spring upheaved above Smith's grave grew sere and dry and
hard. In those days the master, strolling in the little churchyard of
a Sabbath afternoon, was sometimes surprised to find a few wild flowers
plucked from the damp pine forests scattered there, and oftener rude
wreaths hung upon the little pine cross. Most of these wreaths were
formed of a sweet-scented grass, which the children loved to keep in
their desks, intertwined with the plumes of the buckeye, the syringa,
and the wood anemone, and here and there the master noticed the
dark-blue cowl of the monkshood, or deadly aconite. There was something
in the odd association of this noxious plant with these memorials which
occasioned a painful sensation to the master deeper than his esthetic
sense. One day, during a long walk, in crossing a wooded ridge he came
upon Mliss in the heart of the forest, perched upon a prostrate pine on
a fantastic throne formed by the hanging plumes of lifeless branches,
her lap full of grasses and pine burrs, and crooning to herself one of
the Negro melodies of her younger life. Recognizing him at a distance,
she made room for him on her elevated throne, and with a grave
assumption of hospitality and patronage that would have been ridiculous
had it not been so terribly earnest, she fed him with pine nuts and crab
apples. The master took that opportunity to point out to her the noxious
and deadly qualities of the monkshood, whose dark blossoms he saw in her
lap, and extorted from her a promise not to meddle with it as long
as she remained his pupil. This done--as the master had tested her
integrity before--he rested satisfied, and the strange feeling which had
overcome him on seeing them died away.
Of the homes that were offered Mliss when her conversion became known,
the master preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and kindhearted
specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her maidenhood as the
“Per-rairie Rose.” Being one of those who contend resolutely against
their own natures, Mrs. Morpher, by a long series of self-sacrifices and
struggles, had at last subjugated her naturally careless disposition to
principles of “order,” which she considered, in common with Mr. Pope,
as “Heaven's first law.” But she could not entirely govern the orbits
of her satellites, however regular her own movements, and even her own
“Jeemes” sometimes collided with her. Again her old nature asserted
itself in her children. Lycurgus dipped into the cupboard “between
meals,” and Aristides came home from school without shoes, leaving those
important articles on the threshold, for the delight of a barefooted
walk down the ditches. Octavia and Cassandra were “keerless” of their
clothes. So with but one exception, however much the “Prairie Rose”
might have trimmed and pruned and trained her own matured luxuriance,
the little shoots came up defiantly wild and straggling. That
one exception was Clytemnestra Morpher, aged fifteen. She was the
realization of her mother's immaculate conception--neat, orderly, and
dull.
It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher to imagine that “Clytie” was
a consolation and model for Mliss. Following this fallacy, Mrs. Morpher
threw Clytie at the head of Mliss when she was “bad,” and set her up
before the child for adoration in her penitential moments. It was not,
therefore, surprising to the master to hear that Clytie was coming to
school, obviously as a favor to the master and as an example for Mliss
and others. For “Clytie” was quite a young lady. Inheriting her mother's
physical peculiarities, and in obedience to the climatic laws of the Red
Mountain region, she was an early bloomer. The youth of Smith's Pocket,
to whom this kind of flower was rare, sighed for her in April and
languished in May. Enamored swains haunted the schoolhouse at the hour
of dismissal. A few were jealous of the master.
Perhaps it was this latter circumstance that opened the master's eyes
to another. He could not help noticing that Clytie was romantic; that
in school she required a great deal of attention; that her pens were
uniformly bad and wanted fixing; that she usually accompanied the
request with a certain expectation in her eye that was somewhat
disproportionate to the quality of service she verbally required; that
she sometimes allowed the curves of a round, plump white arm to rest on
his when he was writing her copies; that she always blushed and flung
back her blond curls when she did so. I don't remember whether I have
stated that the master was a young man--it's of little consequence,
however; he had been severely educated in the school in which Clytie
was taking her first lesson, and, on the whole, withstood the flexible
curves and factitious glance like the fine young Spartan that he
was. Perhaps an insufficient quality of food may have tended to this
asceticism. He generally avoided Clytie; but one evening, when she
returned to the schoolhouse after something she had forgotten, and
did not find it until the master walked home with her, I hear that he
endeavored to make himself particularly agreeable--partly from the
fact, I imagine, that his conduct was adding gall and bitterness to the
already overcharged hearts of Clytemnestra's admirers.
The morning after this affecting episode Mliss did not come to school.
Noon came, but not Mliss. Questioning Clytie on the subject, it appeared
that they had left the school together, but the willful Mliss had taken
another road. The afternoon brought her not. In the evening he called on
Mrs. Morpher, whose motherly heart was really alarmed. Mr. Morpher had
spent all day in search of her, without discovering a trace that might
lead to her discovery. Aristides was summoned as a probable accomplice,
but that equitable infant succeeded in impressing the household with his
innocence. Mrs. Morpher entertained a vivid impression that the child
would yet be found drowned in a ditch, or, what was almost as terrible,
muddied and soiled beyond the redemption of soap and water. Sick at
heart, the master returned to the schoolhouse. As he lit his lamp and
seated himself at his desk, he found a note lying before him addressed
to himself, in Mliss's handwriting. It seemed to be written on a
leaf torn from some old memorandum book, and, to prevent sacrilegious
trifling, had been sealed with six broken wafers. Opening it almost
tenderly, the master read as follows:
RESPECTED SIR--When you read this, I am run away. Never to come back.
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. You can give my beeds to Mary Jennings, and my
Amerika's Pride [a highly colored lithograph from a tobacco-box] to
Sally Flanders. But don't you give anything to Clytie Morpher. Don't
you dare to. Do you know what my opinion is of her, it is this, she is
perfekly disgustin. That is all and no more at present from
Yours respectfully,
MELISSA SMITH.
The master sat pondering on this strange epistle till the moon lifted
its bright face above the distant hills, and illuminated the trail that
led to the schoolhouse, beaten quite hard with the coming and going
of little feet. Then, more satisfied in mind, he tore the missive into
fragments and scattered them along the road.
At sunrise the next morning he was picking his way through the palmlike
fern and thick underbrush of the pine forest, starting the hare from its
form, and awakening a querulous protest from a few dissipated crows, who
had evidently been making a night of it, and so came to the wooded ridge
where he had once found Mliss. There he found the prostrate pine and
tasseled branches, but the throne was vacant. As he drew nearer, what
might have been some frightened animal started through the crackling
limbs. It ran up the tossed arms of the fallen monarch and sheltered
itself in some friendly foliage. The master, reaching the old seat,
found the nest still warm; looking up in the intertwining branches, he
met the black eyes of the errant Mliss. They gazed at each other without
speaking. She was first to break the silence.
“What do you want?” she asked curtly.
The master had decided on a course of action. “I want some crab apples,”
he said humbly.
“Sha'n't have 'em! go away. Why don't you get 'em of Clytemnerestera?”
(It seemed to be a relief to Mliss to express her contempt in additional
syllables to that classical young woman's already long-drawn title.) “O
you wicked thing!”
“I am hungry, Lissy. I have eaten nothing since dinner yesterday. I am
famished!” and the young man in a state of remarkable exhaustion leaned
against the tree.
Melissa's heart was touched. In the bitter days of her gypsy life
she had known the sensation he so artfully simulated. Overcome by his
heartbroken tone, but not entirely divested of suspicion, she said:
“Dig under the tree near the roots, and you'll find lots; but mind you
don't tell,” for Mliss had HER hoards as well as the rats and squirrels.
But the master, of course, was unable to find them; the effects of
hunger probably blinding his senses. Mliss grew uneasy. At length she
peered at him through the leaves in an elfish way, and questioned:
“If I come down and give you some, you'll promise you won't touch me?”
The master promised.
“Hope you'll die if you do!”
The master accepted instant dissolution as a forfeit. Mliss slid down
the tree. For a few moments nothing transpired but the munching of the
pine nuts. “Do you feel better?” she asked, with some solicitude. The
master confessed to a recuperated feeling, and then, gravely thanking
her, proceeded to retrace his steps. As he expected, he had not gone far
before she called him. He turned. She was standing there quite white,
with tears in her widely opened orbs. The master felt that the right
moment had come. Going up to her, he took both her hands, and looking
in her tearful eyes, said, gravely, “Lissy, do you remember the first
evening you came to see me?”
Lissy remembered.
“You asked me if you might come to school, for you wanted to learn
something and be better, and I said--”
“Come,” responded the child, promptly.
“What would YOU say if the master now came to you and said that he was
lonely without his little scholar, and that he wanted her to come and
teach him to be better?”
The child hung her head for a few moments in silence. The master waited
patiently. Tempted by the quiet, a hare ran close to the couple, and
raising her bright eyes and velvet forepaws, sat and gazed at them.
A squirrel ran halfway down the furrowed bark of the fallen tree, and
there stopped.
“We are waiting, Lissy,” said the master, in a whisper, and the child
smiled. Stirred by a passing breeze, the treetops rocked, and a long
pencil of light stole through their interlaced boughs full on the
doubting face and irresolute little figure. Suddenly she took the
master's hand in her quick way. What she said was scarcely audible, but
the master, putting the black hair back from her forehead, kissed her;
and so, hand in hand, they passed out of the damp aisles and forest
odors into the open sunlit road.