Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with other scholars, Mliss
still retained an offensive attitude in regard to Clytemnestra. Perhaps
the jealous element was not entirely lulled in her passionate little
breast. Perhaps it was only that the round curves and plump outline
offered more extended pinching surface. But while such ebullitions
were under the master's control, her enmity occasionally took a new and
irrepressible form.
The master in his first estimate of the child's character could not
conceive that she had ever possessed a doll. But the master, like many
other professed readers of character, was safer in a posteriori than a
priori reasoning. Mliss had a doll, but then it was emphatically Mliss's
doll--a smaller copy of herself. Its unhappy existence had been a
secret discovered accidentally by Mrs. Morpher. It had been the old-time
companion of Mliss's wanderings, and bore evident marks of suffering.
Its original complexion was long since washed away by the weather and
anointed by the slime of ditches. It looked very much as Mliss had in
days past. Its one gown of faded stuff was dirty and ragged, as hers
had been. Mliss had never been known to apply to it any childish term of
endearment. She never exhibited it in the presence of other children. It
was put severely to bed in a hollow tree near the schoolhouse, and only
allowed exercise during Mliss's rambles. Fulfilling a stern duty to her
doll, as she would to herself, it knew no luxuries.
Now Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable impulse, bought another doll
and gave it to Mliss. The child received it gravely and curiously. The
master on looking at it one day fancied he saw a slight resemblance
in its round red cheeks and mild blue eyes to Clytemnestra. It became
evident before long that Mliss had also noticed the same resemblance.
Accordingly she hammered its waxen head on the rocks when she was
alone, and sometimes dragged it with a string round its neck to and from
school. At other times, setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion
of its patient and inoffensive body. Whether this was done in revenge
of what she considered a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie's
excellences upon her, or whether she had an intuitive appreciation of
the rites of certain other heathens, and, indulging in that “fetish”
ceremony, imagined that the original of her wax model would pine away
and finally die, is a metaphysical question I shall not now consider.
In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could not help noticing
in her different tasks the working of a quick, restless, and vigorous
perception. She knew neither the hesitancy nor the doubts of childhood.
Her answers in class were always slightly dashed with audacity. Of
course she was not infallible. But her courage and daring in passing
beyond her own depth and that of the floundering little swimmers around
her, in their minds outweighed all errors of judgment. Children are
not better than grown people in this respect, I fancy; and whenever the
little red hand flashed above her desk, there was a wondering silence,
and even the master was sometimes oppressed with a doubt of his own
experience and judgment.
Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused and entertained
his fancy began to afflict him with grave doubts. He could not but see
that Mliss was revengeful, irreverent, and willful. That there was but
one better quality which pertained to her semisavage disposition--the
faculty of physical fortitude and self-sacrifice, and another, though
not always an attribute of the noble savage--Truth. Mliss was both
fearless and sincere; perhaps in such a character the adjectives were
synonymous.
The master had been doing some hard thinking on this subject, and had
arrived at that conclusion quite common to all who think sincerely, that
he was generally the slave of his own prejudices, when he determined
to call on the Rev. McSnagley for advice. This decision was somewhat
humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley were not friends. But he
thought of Mliss, and the evening of their first meeting; and perhaps
with a pardonable superstition that it was not chance alone that
had guided her willful feet to the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a
complacent consciousness of the rare magnanimity of the act, he choked
back his dislike and went to McSnagley.
The reverend gentleman was glad to see him. Moreover, he observed
that the master was looking “peartish,” and hoped he had got over the
“neuralgy” and “rheumatiz.” He himself had been troubled with a dumb
“ager” since last conference. But he had learned to “rastle and pray.”
Pausing a moment to enable the master to write his certain method
of curing the dumb “ager” upon the book and volume of his brain,
Mr. McSnagley proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher. “She is an
adornment to ChrisTEWanity, and has a likely growin' young family,”
added Mr. McSnagley; “and there's that mannerly young gal--so well
behaved--Miss Clytie.” In fact, Clytie's perfections seemed to affect
him to such an extent that he dwelt for several minutes upon them. The
master was doubly embarrassed. In the first place, there was an enforced
contrast with poor Mliss in all this praise of Clytie. Secondly, there
was something unpleasantly confidential in his tone of speaking of Mrs.
Morpher's earliest born. So that the master, after a few futile
efforts to say something natural, found it convenient to recall another
engagement, and left without asking the information required, but in his
after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr. McSnagley the
full benefit of having refused it.
Perhaps this rebuff placed the master and pupil once more in the close
communion of old. The child seemed to notice the change in the master's
manner, which had of late been constrained, and in one of their long
postprandial walks she stopped suddenly, and mounting a stump, looked
full in his face with big, searching eyes. “You ain't mad?” said she,
with an interrogative shake of the black braids. “No.” “Nor bothered?”
“No.” “Nor hungry?” (Hunger was to Mliss a sickness that might attack
a person at any moment.) “No.” “Nor thinking of her?” “Of whom, Lissy?”
“That white girl.” (This was the latest epithet invented by Mliss, who
was a very dark brunette, to express Clytemnestra.) “No.” “Upon your
word?” (A substitute for “Hope you'll die!” proposed by the master.)
“Yes.” “And sacred honor?” “Yes.” Then Mliss gave him a fierce little
kiss, and, hopping down, fluttered off. For two or three days after
that she condescended to appear more like other children, and be, as she
expressed it, “good.”
Two years had passed since the master's advent at Smith's Pocket, and as
his salary was not large, and the prospects of Smith's Pocket eventually
becoming the capital of the State not entirely definite, he contemplated
a change. He had informed the school trustees privately of his
intentions, but educated young men of unblemished moral character being
scarce at that time, he consented to continue his school term through
the winter to early spring. None else knew of his intention except his
one friend, a Dr. Duchesne, a young Creole physician known to the people
of Wingdam as “Duchesny.” He never mentioned it to Mrs. Morpher,
Clytie, or any of his scholars. His reticence was partly the result of
a constitutional indisposition to fuss, partly a desire to be spared
the questions and surmises of vulgar curiosity, and partly that he never
really believed he was going to do anything before it was done.
He did not like to think of Mliss. It was a selfish instinct, perhaps,
which made him try to fancy his feeling for the child was foolish,
romantic, and unpractical. He even tried to imagine that she would do
better under the control of an older and sterner teacher. Then she was
nearly eleven, and in a few years, by the rules of Red Mountain, would
be a woman. He had done his duty. After Smith's death he addressed
letters to Smith's relatives, and received one answer from a sister
of Melissa's mother. Thanking the master, she stated her intention of
leaving the Atlantic States for California with her husband in a few
months. This was a slight superstructure for the airy castle which the
master pictured for Mliss's home, but it was easy to fancy that some
loving, sympathetic woman, with the claims of kindred, might better
guide her wayward nature. Yet, when the master had read the letter,
Mliss listened to it carelessly, received it submissively, and
afterward cut figures out of it with her scissors, supposed to represent
Clytemnestra, labeled “the white girl,” to prevent mistakes, and impaled
them upon the outer walls of the schoolhouse.
When the summer was about spent, and the last harvest had been gathered
in the valleys, the master bethought him of gathering in a few
ripened shoots of the young idea, and of having his Harvest Home, or
Examination. So the savants and professionals of Smith's Pocket were
gathered to witness that time-honored custom of placing timid children
in a constrained positions and bullying them as in a witness box. As
usual in such cases, the most audacious and self-possessed were the
lucky recipients of the honors. The reader will imagine that in the
present instance Mliss and Clytie were preeminent, and divided
public attention; Mliss with her clearness of material perception
and self-reliance, Clytie with her placid self-esteem and saintlike
correctness of deportment. The other little ones were timid and
blundering. Mliss's readiness and brilliancy, of course, captivated the
greatest number and provoked the greatest applause. Mliss's antecedents
had unconsciously awakened the strongest sympathies of a class whose
athletic forms were ranged against the walls, or whose handsome bearded
faces looked in at the windows. But Mliss's popularity was overthrown by
an unexpected circumstance.
McSnagley had invited himself, and had been going through the pleasing
entertainment of frightening the more timid pupils by the vaguest and
most ambiguous questions delivered in an impressive funereal tone; and
Mliss had soared into astronomy, and was tracking the course of our
spotted ball through space, and keeping time with the music of the
spheres, and defining the tethered orbits of the planets, when McSnagley
impressively arose. “Meelissy! ye were speaking of the revolutions of
this yere yearth and the move-MENTS of the sun, and I think ye said it
had been a doing of it since the creashun, eh?” Mliss nodded a scornful
affirmative. “Well, war that the truth?” said McSnagley, folding his
arms. “Yes,” said Mliss, shutting up her little red lips tightly. The
handsome outlines at the windows peered further in the schoolroom, and a
saintly Raphael face, with blond beard and soft blue eyes, belonging
to the biggest scamp in the diggings, turned toward the child and
whispered, “Stick to it, Mliss!” The reverend gentleman heaved a
deep sigh, and cast a compassionate glance at the master, then at the
children, and then rested his look on Clytie. That young woman softly
elevated her round, white arm. Its seductive curves were enhanced by a
gorgeous and massive specimen bracelet, the gift of one of her humblest
worshipers, worn in honor of the occasion. There was a momentary
silence. Clytie's round cheeks were very pink and soft. Clytie's big
eyes were very bright and blue. Clytie's low-necked white book muslin
rested softly on Clytie's white, plump shoulders. Clytie looked at the
master, and the master nodded. Then Clytie spoke softly:
“Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed him!” There
was a low hum of applause in the schoolroom, a triumphant expression on
McSnagley's face, a grave shadow on the master's, and a comical look of
disappointment reflected from the windows. Mliss skimmed rapidly over
her astronomy, and then shut the book with a loud snap. A groan burst
from McSnagley, an expression of astonishment from the schoolroom, a
yell from the windows, as Mliss brought her red fist down on the desk,
with the emphatic declaration:
“It's a damn lie. I don't believe it!”