University of Virginia Library

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

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 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,

and the wood-anemone; and here and there the
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

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
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

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 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

beyond the redemption of soap and water. Sick
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:—

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

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 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

so artfully simulated. Overcome by his heart-broken
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.