 | The luck of Roaring Camp, and other sketches |  |
MLISS.
1. CHAPTER I.
JUST where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside
in gentler undulations, and the rivers
grow less rapid and yellow, on the side of a
great red mountain, stands “Smith's Pocket.”
Seen from the red road at sunset, in the red
light and the red dust, its white houses look like
the outcroppings of quartz on the mountain-side.
The red stage topped with red-shirted passengers
is lost to view half a dozen times in the tortuous
descent, turning up unexpectedly in out-of-the-way
places, and vanishing altogether within a
hundred yards of the town. It is probably owing
to this sudden twist in the road that the advent
of a stranger at Smith's Pocket is usually attended
with a peculiar circumstance. Dismounting from
the vehicle at the stage-office, the too confident
traveller is apt to walk straight out of town under
the impression that it lies in quite another direction.
It is related that one of the tunnel-men,
two miles from town, met one of these self-reliant
Harper's Magazine, and other evidences of “Civilization
and Refinement,” plodding along over the
road he had just ridden, vainly endeavoring to
find the settlement of Smith's Pocket.
An observant traveller might have found some
compensation for his disappointment in the weird
aspect of that vicinity. There were huge fissures
on the hillside, and displacements of the red
soil, resembling more the chaos of some primary
elemental upheaval than the work of man; while,
half-way down, a long flume straddled its narrow
body and disproportionate legs over the chasm,
like an enormous fossil of some forgotten antediluvian.
At every step smaller ditches crossed
the road, hiding in their sallow depths unlovely
streams that crept away to a clandestine union
with the great yellow torrent below, and here and
there were the ruins of some cabin with the
chimney alone left intact and the hearthstone open
to the skies.
The settlement of Smith's Pocket owed its
origin to the finding of a “pocket” on its site
by a veritable Smith. Five thousand dollars
were taken out of it in one half-hour by Smith.
Three thousand dollars were expended by Smith
and others in erecting a flume and in tunnelling.
And then Smith's Pocket was found to be only
a pocket, and subject like other pockets to depletion.
the great red mountain, that five thousand dollars
was the first and last return of his labor. The
mountain grew reticent of its golden secrets, and
the flume steadily ebbed away the remainder of
Smith's fortune. Then Smith went into quartzmining;
then into quartz-milling; then into hydraulics
and ditching, and then by easy degrees
into saloon-keeping. Presently it was whispered
that Smith was drinking a great deal; then it
was known that Smith was a habitual drunkard,
and then people began to think, as they are apt
to, that he had never been anything else. But
the settlement of Smith's Pocket, like that of
most discoveries, was happily not dependent on
the fortune of its pioneer, and other parties projected
tunnels and found pockets. So Smith's
Pocket became a settlement with its two fancy
stores, its two hotels, its one express-office, and its
two first families. Occasionally its one long straggling
street was overawed by the assumption of
the latest San Francisco fashions, imported per
express, exclusively to the first families; making
outraged Nature, in the ragged outline of her furrowed
surface, look still more homely, and putting
personal insult on that greater portion of the population
to whom the Sabbath, with a change of
linen, brought merely the necessity of cleanliness,
without the luxury of adornment. Then there
Bank, and a little beyond, on the mountain-side, a
graveyard; and then a little school-house.
“The Master,” as he was known to his little
flock, sat alone one night in the school-house,
with some open copy-books before him, carefully
making those bold and full characters which are
supposed to combine the extremes of chirographical
and moral excellence, and had got as far as
“Riches are deceitful,” and was elaborating the
noun with an insincerity of flourish that was quite
in the spirit of his text, when he heard a gentle
tapping. The woodpeckers had been busy about
the roof during the day, and the noise did not disturb
his work. But the opening of the door, and
the tapping continuing from the inside, caused him
to look up. He was slightly startled by the figure
of a young girl, dirty and shabbily clad. Still, her
great black eyes, her coarse, uncombed, lustreless
black hair falling over her sun-burned face, her red
arms and feet streaked with the red soil, were all
familiar to him. It was Melissa Smith, — Smith's
motherless child.
“What can she want here?” thought the master.
Everybody knew “Mliss,” as she was called,
throughout the length and height of Red Mountain.
Everybody knew her as an incorrigible girl.
Her fierce, ungovernable disposition, her mad freaks
and lawless character, were in their way as proverbial
philosophically accepted by the townsfolk. She
wrangled with and fought the school-boys with
keener invective and quite as powerful arm. She
followed the trails with a woodman's craft, and the
master had met her before, miles away, shoeless,
stockingless, and bareheaded on the mountain
road. The miners' camps along the stream supplied
her with subsistence during these voluntary
pilgrimages, in freely offered alms. Not but that
a larger protection had been previously extended
to Mliss. The Rev. Joshua McSnagley, “stated”
preacher, had placed her in the hotel as servant,
by way of preliminary refinement, and had introduced
her to his scholars at Sunday school.
But she threw plates occasionally at the landlord,
and quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms of the
guests, and created in the Sabbath school a sensation
that was so inimical to the orthodox dulness
and placidity of that institution, that, with a decent
regard for the starched frocks and unblemished
morals of the two pink-and-white-faced children
of the first families, the reverend gentleman
had her ignominiously expelled. Such were the
antecedents, and such the character of Mliss, as she
stood before the master. It was shown in the
ragged dress, the unkempt hair, and bleeding feet,
and asked his pity. It flashed from her black,
fearless eyes, and commanded his respect.
“I come here to-night,” she said rapidly and
boldly, keeping her hard glance on his, “because I
knew you was alone. I would n't come here when
them gals was here. I hate 'em and they hates me.
That 's why. You keep school, don't you? I want
to be teached!”
If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncomeliness
of her tangled hair and dirty face she had
added the humility of tears, the master would have
extended to her the usual moiety of pity, and
nothing more. But with the natural, though illogical
instincts of his species, her boldness awakened
in him something of that respect which
all original natures pay unconsciously to one another
in any grade. And he gazed at her the more
fixedly as she went on still rapidly, her hand on
that door-latch and her eyes on his: —
“My name 's Mliss, — Mliss Smith! You can bet
your life on that. My father 's Old Smith, — Old
Bummer Smith, — that 's what 's the matter with
him. Mliss Smith, — and I 'm coming to school!”
“Well?” said the master.
Accustomed to be thwarted and opposed, often
wantonly and cruelly, for no other purpose than to
excite the violent impulses of her nature, the master's
phlegm evidently took her by surprise. She
stopped; she began to twist a lock of her hair between
her fingers; and the rigid line of upper lip,
drawn over the wicked little teeth, relaxed and
something like a blush struggled up to her cheek,
and tried to assert itself through the splashes of
redder soil, and the sunburn of years. Suddenly
she threw herself forward, calling on God to strike
her dead, and fell quite weak and helpless, with
her face on the master's desk, crying and sobbing
as if her heart would break.
The master lifted her gently and waited for the
paroxysm to pass. When with face still averted,
she was repeating between her sobs the mea culpa
of childish penitence, — that “she 'd be good, she
did n't mean to,” etc., it came to him to ask her
why she had left Sabbath school.
Why had she left the Sabbath school? — why?
O yes. What did he (McSnagley) want to tell
her she was wicked for? What did he tell her
that God hated her for? If God hated her, what
did she want to go to Sabbath school for? She
did n't want to be “beholden” to anybody who
hated her.
Had she told McSnagley this?
Yes, she had.
The master laughed. It was a hearty laugh,
and echoed so oddly in the little school-house, and
seemed so inconsistent and discordant with the
sighing of the pines without, that he shortly
corrected himself with a sigh. The sigh was
quite as sincere in its way, however, and after a
father.
Her father? What father? Whose father?
What had he ever done for her? Why did the
girls hate her? Come now! what made the
folks say, “Old Bummer Smith's Mliss!” when she
passed? Yes; O yes. She wished he was dead,
— she was dead, — everybody was dead; and her
sobs broke forth anew.
The master then, leaning over her, told her as
well as he could what you or I might have said
after hearing such unnatural theories from childish
lips; only bearing in mind perhaps better than
you or I the unnatural facts of her ragged dress,
her bleeding feet, and the omnipresent shadow of
her drunken father. Then, raising her to her feet,
he wrapped his shawl around her, and, bidding her
come early in the morning, he walked with her
down the road. There he bade her “good night.”
The moon shone brightly on the narrow path before
them. He stood and watched the bent little
figure as it staggered down the road, and waited
until it had passed the little graveyard and
reached the curve of the hill, where it turned and
stood for a moment, a mere atom of suffering outlined
against the far-off patient stars. Then he
went back to his work. But the lines of the copy-book
thereafter faded into long parallels of neverending
road, over which childish figures seemed to
little school-house seeming lonelier than before, he
shut the door and went home.
The next morning Mliss came to school. Her
face had been washed, and her coarse black hair
bore evidence of recent struggles with the comb,
in which both had evidently suffered. The old
defiant look shone occasionally in her eyes, but her
manner was tamer and more subdued. Then began
a series of little trials and self-sacrifices, in
which master and pupil bore an equal part, and
which increased the confidence and sympathy between
them. Although obedient under the master's
eye, at times during recess, if thwarted or
stung by a fancied slight, Mliss would rage in ungovernable
fury, and many a palpitating young
savage, finding himself matched with his own
weapons of torment, would seek the master with
torn jacket and scratched face, and complaints of
the dreadful Mliss. There was a serious division
among the townspeople on the subject; some
threatening to withdraw their children from such
evil companionship, and others as warmly upholding
the course of the master in his work of reclamation.
Meanwhile, with a steady persistence
that seemed quite astonishing to him on looking
back afterward, the master drew Mliss gradually
out of the shadow of her past life, as though it
were but her natural progress down the narrow
night of their first meeting. Remembering the
experience of the evangelical McSnagley, he carefully
avoided that Rock of Ages on which that
unskilful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith.
But if, in the course of her reading, she chanced
to stumble upon those few words which have lifted
such as she above the level of the older, the wiser,
and the more prudent, — if she learned something
of a faith that is symbolized by suffering, and the
old light softened in her eyes, it did not take
the shape of a lesson. A few of the plainer people
had made up a little sum by which the ragged
Mliss was enabled to assume the garments of respect
and civilization; and often a rough shake of
the hand, and words of homely commendation from
a red-shirted and burly figure, sent a glow to the
cheek of the young master, and set him to thinking
if it was altogether deserved.
Three months had passed from the time of their
first meeting, and the master was sitting late one
evening over the moral and sententious copies,
when there came a tap at the door, and again Mliss
stood before him. She was neatly clad and clean-faced,
and there was nothing perhaps but the long
black hair and bright black eyes to remind him of
his former apparition. “Are you busy?” she
asked. “Can you come with me?” — and on his
signifying his readiness, in her old wilful way she
said, “Come, then, quick!”
They passed out of the door together and into
the dark road. As they entered the town the
master asked her whither she was going. She replied,
“To see my father.”
It was the first time he had heard her call him
by that filial title, or indeed anything more than
“Old Smith” or the “Old Man.” It was the first
time in three months that she had spoken of him
at all, and the master knew she had kept resolutely
aloof from him since her great change.
Satisfied from her manner that it was fruitless to
question her purpose, he passively followed. In
out-of-the-way places, low groggeries, restaurants,
and saloons; in gambling-hells and dance-houses,
the master, preceded by Mliss, came and went. In
the reeking smoke and blasphemous outcries of
low dens, the child, holding the master's hand,
stood and anxiously gazed, seemingly unconscious
of all in the one absorbing nature of her pursuit.
Some of the revellers, recognizing Mliss, called to
the child to sing and dance for them, and would
have forced liquor upon her but for the interference
of the master. Others, recognizing him mutely,
made way for them to pass. So an hour slipped
by. Then the child whispered in his ear that there
was a cabin on the other side of the creek crossed
by the long flume, where she thought he still might
be. Thither they crossed, — a toilsome half-hour's
walk, — but in vain. They were returning by the
lights of the town on the opposite bank, when,
suddenly, sharply, a quick report rang out on the
clear night air. The echoes caught it, and carried
it round and round Red Mountain, and set the dogs
to barking all along the streams. Lights seemed
to dance and move quickly on the outskirts of the
town for a few moments, the stream rippled quite
audibly beside them, a few stones loosened themselves
from the hillside and splashed into the
stream, a heavy wind seemed to surge the branches
of the funereal pines, and then the silence seemed
to fall thicker, heavier, and deadlier. The master
turned towards Mliss with an unconscious gesture
of protection, but the child had gone. Oppressed
by a strange fear, he ran quickly down the trail to
the river's bed, and, jumping from boulder to boulder,
reached the base of Red Mountain and the
outskirts of the village. Midway of the crossing
he looked up and held his breath in awe. For
high above him on the narrow flume he saw the
fluttering little figure of his late companion crossing
swiftly in the darkness.
He climbed the bank, and, guided by a few lights
moving about a central point on the mountain,
soon found himself breathless among a crowd of
awe-stricken and sorrowful men. Out from among
them the child appeared, and, taking the master's
hand, led him silently before what seemed a ragged
but her excited manner gone, and her look that of
one to whom some long-expected event had at last
happened, — an expression that to the master in
his bewilderment seemed almost like relief. The
walls of the cavern were partly propped by decaying
timbers. The child pointed to what appeared
to be some ragged, cast-off clothes left in the hole
by the late occupant. The master approached
nearer with his flaming dip, and bent over them.
It was Smith, already cold, with a pistol in his
hand and a bullet in his heart, lying beside his
empty pocket.
2. CHAPTER II.
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
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 up-springing
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,
master noticed the dark blue cowl of the monk's-hood,
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 monk's-hood, 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 kind-hearted
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
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
school-house 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
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 school-house
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 wilful
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
at heart, the master returned to the school-house.
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 oppinion is of her, it is this, she is
perfekly disgustin. That is all and no more at present
from
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
school-house, 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 palm-like fern and thick underbrush
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 tasselled 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
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 half-way 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 tree-tops 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.
3. CHAPTER III.
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
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 school-house, 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 pin-cushion 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
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 wilful. That
there was but one better quality which pertained
to her semi-savage 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,
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 wilful feet to the school-house,
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
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 post-prandial 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
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 afterwards
cut figures out of it with her scissors, supposed to
represent Clytemnestra, labelled “the white girl,”
to prevent mistakes, and impaled them upon the
outer walls of the school-house.
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 savans
and professionals of Smith's Pocket were gathered
to witness that time-honored custom of placing
timid children in a constrained position, 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 pre-eminent, and divided public
attention; Mliss with her clearness of material
perception and self-reliance, Clytie with her placid
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 over-thrown
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 school-room,
and a saintly Raphael-face, with blond beard
and soft blue eyes, belonging to the biggest scamp
“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
worshippers, 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 school-room, 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 school-room,
a yell from the windows, as Mliss brought her red
fist down on the desk, with the emphatic declaration,—
“It 's a d—n lie. I don't believe it!”
4. CHAPTER IV.
The long wet season had drawn near its close.
Signs of spring were visible in the swelling buds
and rushing torrents. The pine-forests exhaled
the fresher spicery. The azaleas were already budding,
the Ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery
for spring. On the green upland which climbed
Red Mountain at its southern aspect the long
spike of the monk's-hood shot up from its broad-leaved
stool, and once more shook its dark-blue
bells. Again the billow above Smith's grave was
soft and green, its crest just tossed with the foam
of daisies and buttercups. The little graveyard
had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year,
and the mounds were placed two by two by the
little paling until they reached Smith's grave, and
there there was but one. General superstition
had shunned it, and the plot beside Smith was
vacant.
There had been several placards posted about
the town, intimating that, at a certain period, a
celebrated dramatic company would perform, for
a few days, a series of “side-splitting” and
“screaming farces”; that, alternating pleasantly
with this, there would be some melodrama and a
grand divertisement, which would include singing,
great fluttering among the little folk, and were
the theme of much excitement and great speculation
among the master's scholars. The master
had promised Mliss, to whom this sort of thing
was sacred and rare, that she should go, and on
that momentous evening the master and Mliss
“assisted.”
The performance was the prevalent style of
heavy mediocrity; the melodrama was not bad
enough to laugh at nor good enough to excite.
But the master, turning wearily to the child, was
astonished, and felt something like self-accusation
in noticing the peculiar effect upon her excitable
nature. The red blood flushed in her cheeks at
each stroke of her panting little heart. Her small
passionate lips were slightly parted to give vent
to her hurried breath. Her widely opened lids
threw up and arched her black eyebrows. She did
not laugh at the dismal comicalities of the funny
man, for Mliss seldom laughed. Nor was she discreetly
affected to the delicate extremes of the
corner of a white handkerchief, as was the tender-hearted
“Clytie,” who was talking with her “feller”
and ogling the master at the same moment. But
when the performance was over, and the green
curtain fell on the little stage, Mliss drew a long
deep breath, and turned to the master's grave face
with a half-apologetic smile and wearied gesture.
the lids of her black eyes, as if to dwell once more
in fancy on the mimic stage.
On their way to Mrs. Morpher's the master
thought proper to ridicule the whole performance.
Now he should n't wonder if Mliss thought that
the young lady who acted so beautifully was
really in earnest, and in love with the gentleman
who wore such fine clothes. Well, if she were in
love with him it was a very unfortunate thing!
“Why?” said Mliss, with an upward sweep of the
drooping lid. “Oh! well, he could n't support his
wife at his present salary, and pay so much a week
for his fine clothes, and then they would n't receive
as much wages if they were married as if
they were merely lovers, — that is,” added the
master, “if they are not already married to somebody
else; but I think the husband of the pretty
young countess takes the tickets at the door, or
pulls up the curtain, or snuffs the candles, or does
something equally refined and elegant. As to the
young man with nice clothes, which are really nice
now, and must cost at least two and a half or
three dollars, not to speak of that mantle of
red drugget which I happen to know the price of,
for I bought some of it for my room once, — as to
this young man, Lissy, he is a pretty good fellow,
and if he does drink occasionally, I don't think
people ought to take advantage of it and give him
I am sure he might owe me two dollars and a half
a long time, before I would throw it up in his face,
as the fellow did the other night at Wingdam.”
Mliss had taken his hand in both of hers and
was trying to look in his eyes, which the young
man kept as resolutely averted. Mliss had a
faint idea of irony, indulging herself sometimes in
a species of sardonic humor, which was equally
visible in her actions and her speech. But the
young man continued in this strain until they had
reached Mrs. Morpher's, and he had deposited
Mliss in her maternal charge. Waiving the invitation
of Mrs. Morpher to refreshment and rest, and
shading his eyes with his hand to keep out the
blue-eyed Clytemnestra's siren glances, he excused
himself, and went home.
For two or three days after the advent of the
dramatic company, Mliss was late at school, and
the master's usual Friday afternoon ramble was
for once omitted, owing to the absence of his
trustworthy guide. As he was putting away his
books and preparing to leave the school-house, a
small voice piped at his side, “Please, sir?” The
master turned and there stood Aristides Morpher.
“Well, my little man,” said the master, impatiently,
“what is it? quick!”
“Please, sir, me and `Kerg' thinks that Mliss
is going to run away agin.”
“What 's that, sir?” said the master, with that
unjust testiness with which we always receive disagreeable
news.
“Why, sir, she don't stay home any more, and
`Kerg' and me see her talking with one of those
actor fellers, and she 's with him now; and please,
sir, yesterday she told `Kerg' and me she could
make a speech as well as Miss Cellerstina Montmoressy,
and she spouted right off by heart,” and
the little fellow paused in a collapsed condition.
“What actor?” asked the master.
“Him as wears the shiny hat. And hair. And
gold pin. And gold chain,” said the just Aristides,
putting periods for commas to eke out his breath.
The master put on his gloves and hat, feeling an
unpleasant tightness in his chest and thorax, and
walked out in the road. Aristides trotted along
by his side, endeavoring to keep pace with his
short legs to the master's strides, when the master
stopped suddenly, and Aristides bumped up against
him. “Where were they talking?” asked the master,
as if continuing the conversation.
“At the Arcade,” said Aristides.
When they reached the main street the master
paused. “Run down home,” said he to the boy.
“If Mliss is there, come to the Arcade and tell me.
If she is n't there, stay home; run!” And off
trotted the short-legged Aristides.
The Arcade was just across the way, — a long,
and restaurant. As the young man crossed
the plaza he noticed that two or three of the passers-by
turned and looked after him. He looked at his
clothes, took out his handkerchief and wiped his
face, before he entered the bar-room. It contained
the usual number of loungers, who stared at him as
he entered. One of them looked at him so fixedly
and with such a strange expression that the master
stopped and looked again, and then saw it was only
his own reflection in a large mirror. This made the
master think that perhaps he was a little excited,
and so he took up a copy of the Red Mountain
Banner from one of the tables, and tried to recover
his composure by reading the column of advertisements.
He then walked through the bar-room, through
the restaurant, and into the billiard-room. The
child was not there. In the latter apartment a
person was standing by one of the tables with a
broad-brimmed glazed hat on his head. The master
recognized him as the agent of the dramatic
company; he had taken a dislike to him at their
first meeting, from the peculiar fashion of wearing
his beard and hair. Satisfied that the object of his
search was not there, he turned to the man with a
glazed hat. He had noticed the master, but tried
that common trick of unconsciousness, in which
vulgar natures always fail. Balancing a billiard-cue
in the centre of the table. The master stood opposite
to him until he raised his eyes; when their
glances met, the master walked up to him.
He had intended to avoid a scene or quarrel, but
when he began to speak, something kept rising in
his throat and retarded his utterance, and his own
voice frightened him, it sounded so distant, low,
and resonant. “I understand,” he began, “that
Melissa Smith, an orphan, and one of my scholars,
has talked with you about adopting your profession.
Is that so?”
The man with the glazed hat leaned over the
table, and made an imaginary shot, that sent the
ball spinning round the cushions. Then walking
round the table he recovered the ball and placed
it upon the spot. This duty discharged, getting
ready for another shot, he said, —
“S'pose she has?”
The master choked up again, but, squeezing the
cushion of the table in his gloved hand, he went
on: —
“If you are a gentleman, I have only to tell you
that I am her guardian, and responsible for her career.
You know as well as I do the kind of life
you offer her. As you may learn of any one here,
I have already brought her out of an existence
worse than death, — out of the streets and the contamination
of vice. I am trying to do so again.
mother, sister, or brother. Are you seeking to give
her an equivalent for these?”
The man with the glazed hat examined the point
of his cue, and then looked around for somebody
to enjoy the joke with him.
“I know that she is a strange, wilful girl,” continued
the master, “but she is better than she was.
I believe that I have some influence over her still.
I beg and hope, therefore, that you will take no
further steps in this matter, but as a man, as a gentleman,
leave her to me. I am willing —” But
here something rose again in the master's throat,
and the sentence remained unfinished.
The man with the glazed hat, mistaking the
master's silence, raised his head with a coarse,
brutal laugh, and said in a loud voice, —
“Want her yourself, do you? That cock won't
fight here, young man!”
The insult was more in the tone than the words,
more in the glance than tone, and more in the
man's instinctive nature than all these. The
best appreciable rhetoric to this kind of animal is
a blow. The master felt this, and, with his pent-up,
nervous energy finding expression in the one
act, he struck the brute full in his grinning face.
The blow sent the glazed hat one way and the cue
another, and tore the glove and skin from the
master's hand from knuckle to joint. It opened
the peculiar shape of his beard for some time to
come.
There was a shout, an imprecation, a scuffle, and
the trampling of many feet. Then the crowd
parted right and left, and two sharp quick reports
followed each other in rapid succession. Then
they closed again about his opponent, and the master
was standing alone. He remembered picking
bits of burning wadding from his coat-sleeve with
his left hand. Some one was holding his other
hand. Looking at it, he saw it was still bleeding
from the blow, but his fingers were clenched
around the handle of a glittering knife. He could
not remember when or how he got it.
The man who was holding his hand was Mr.
Morpher. He hurried the master to the door, but
the master held back, and tried to tell him as well
as he could with his parched throat about “Mliss.”
“It 's all right, my boy,” said Mr. Morpher. “She 's
home!” And they passed out into the street together.
As they walked along Mr. Morpher said
that Mliss had come running into the house a few
moments before, and had dragged him out, saying
that somebody was trying to kill the master at the
Arcade. Wishing to be alone, the master promised
Mr. Morpher that he would not seek the Agent
again that night, and parted from him, taking the
road toward the school-house. He was surprised
surprised to find Mliss sitting there.
The master's nature, as I have hinted before,
had, like most sensitive organizations, a selfish
basis. The brutal taunt thrown out by his late
adversary still rankled in his heart. It was possible,
he thought, that such a construction might
be put upon his affection for the child, which
at best was foolish and Quixotic. Besides, had
she not voluntarily abnegated his authority and
affection? And what had everybody else said
about her? Why should he alone combat the
opinion of all, and be at last obliged tacitly to
confess the truth of all they had predicted? And
he had been a participant in a low bar-room fight
with a common boor, and risked his life, to prove
what? What had he proved? Nothing? What
would the people say? What would his friends
say? What would McSnagley say?
In his self-accusation the last person he should
have wished to meet was Mliss. He entered the
door, and, going up to his desk, told the child, in a
few cold words, that he was busy, and wished to
be alone. As she rose he took her vacant seat, and,
sitting down, buried his head in his hands. When
he looked up again she was still standing there.
She was looking at his face with an anxious expression.
“Did you kill him?” she asked.
“No!” said the master.
“That 's what I gave you the knife for!” said
the child, quickly.
“Gave me the knife?” repeated the master, in
bewilderment.
“Yes, gave you the knife. I was there under the
bar. Saw you hit him. Saw you both fall. He
dropped his old knife. I gave it to you. Why
did n't you stick him?” said Mliss rapidly, with an
expressive twinkle of the black eyes and a gesture
of the little red hand.
The master could only look his astonishment.
“Yes,” said Mliss. “If you 'd asked me, I 'd
told you I was off with the play-actors. Why
was I off with the play-actors? Because you
would n't tell me you was going away. I knew
it. I heard you tell the Doctor so. I was n't
a goin' to stay here alone with those Morphers.
I 'd rather die first.”
With a dramatic gesture which was perfectly
consistent with her character, she drew from her
bosom a few limp green leaves, and, holding them
out at arm's-length, said in her quick vivid way,
and in the queer pronunciation of her old life,
which she fell into when unduly excited, —
“That 's the poison plant you said would kill
me. I 'll go with the play-actors, or I 'll eat this
and die here. I don't care which. I won't stay
here, where they hate and despise me! Neither
me too!”
The passionate little breast heaved, and two big
tears peeped over the edge of Mliss's eyelids, but
she whisked them away with the corner of her
apron as if they had been wasps.
“If you lock me up in jail,” said Mliss, fiercely,
“to keep me from the play-actors, I 'll poison
myself. Father killed himself, — why should n't
I? You said a mouthful of that root would kill
me, and I always carry it here,” and she struck
her breast with her elenched fist.
The master thought of the vacant plot beside
Smith's grave, and of the passionate little figure
before him. Seizing her hands in his and looking
full into her truthful eyes, he said, —
“Lissy, will you go with me?”
The child put her arms around his neck, and
said joyfully, “Yes.”
“But now — to-night?”
“To-night.”
And, hand in hand, they passed into the road,
— the narrow road that had once brought her
weary feet to the master's door, and which it
seemed she should not tread again alone. The
stars glittered brightly above them. For good or
ill the lesson had been learned, and behind them
the school of Red Mountain closed upon them forever.
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