University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE.

It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher
to imagine that of all her classical property
Clytemnestra was particularly the model for
Mliss. Following this fallacy, she 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 climate 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 services 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 blonde curis when she did so. I
don't remember whether I have stated that the
master was a young man—it's of little cousequence,
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 quantity of food may have tended to
this ascetic sm. 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 had
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
no Mliss. Questioning Clytie on the subject, it
appeared that they had left the school together
but the willfal 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 finding a trace that
might lead to her discovery. Aristides was sum
moned as a probable accomplice, but that equitable
intant 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 hand-writing. 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 waters. Opening
it almost tenderly, the master read as follows:

The master mused for some time over this
characteristic epistle. As he was mechanically
refolding it his eye caught a sentence written
on the back in pencil, in another handwriting,
somewhat blurred and indistinct from the heavy,
incisive strokes of Mliss's pen on the other side.
It seemed to be a memorandum belonging to the
book from which the leaf was originally torn:

“July 17, 5 hours in drift—dipping west—took out
20 oz., cleaned up 40 oz. Mem.—Saw M. S.”

“July 17,” said the master, opening his desk
and taking a file of the Red Mountain Banner.
“July 17,” he repeated, running over the pages
till he came to a paragraph headed “Distressing
Suicide.” “July 17—why, that's the day Smith
killed himself. That's funny!”

“I wonder where the memorandum came
from?” said the master, as he rose at last and
buttoned up his coat. “Who is M. S.? M. S.
stands for manuscript and Melissa Smith. Why
don't—” but checking an impulsive query as to
why people don't make their private memoranda
generally intelligible—the master put the letter
in his pocket and went home.

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 foand
Mliss. There he found the prostrate pine and
tassellated 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
orther 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.

“Shant have 'em! go away. Why don't you
get 'em of Clytemnestra (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 gipsy 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
ner 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 not to 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. The duties
of hospitality fulfilled, she seated herself at a
little distance and eyed the master with extreme
caution.

“Why did'nt you eat your breakfast, you bad
man?”

“Because I've run away.”

“Where to?” said Mliss, her eyes twinkling.

“Anywhere—anywhere, away from here!”
responded that deceitful wretch with tragic
wildness of demeanor.

“What made you; bad boy!”—said Mliss,
with a sudden respect of conventionalities, and
a rare touch of tenderness in her tones. “You'd
better go back where your vittals are.”

“What are victuals to a wounded spirit,”
asked the young man dramatically. He had
reached the side of Mliss during this dialogue
and had taken her unresisting hand. He was
too wise to notice his victory, however, and drawing
Melissa's note from his pocket opened it before
her.

“Couldn't you find any paper in the school-house
without tearing a leaf out of my memorandum
book, Melissa?” be asked.

“It ain't out of your memorandum book,” responded
Mliss fiercely.

“Indeed,” said the master, turning to the
lines in pencil, “I thought it was my hand-writing.”

Mliss, who had been looking over his shoulder,
suddenly seized the paper and snatched it out of
his hand.

“It's father's writing!” she said, after a
pause, in a softer tone.

“Where did you get it, Mliss?”

“Aristides gave it to me.”

“Where did he get it?”

“Don't know. He had the book in his pocket
when I told him I was going to write to you.
and he tore the leaf out. There, now—don't
bother me any more.”

Mliss had turned her face away, and the black
hair hid her downcast eyes.

Something in her gesture and expression reminded
him of her father. Something, and
more that was characteristic to her at such moments,
made him fancy another resemblance,
and caused him to ask impulsively, and less cautiously
than was his wont.

“Do you remember your mother, Mliss?”

“No.”

“Did you never see her?”

“No—didn't I tell you not to bother, and
you're agoin' an' doin' it!” said Mliss, savagely.

The master was silent a moment.

“Did you ever think you would like to have a
mother, Mliss?” he asked again.

“No-o-o-o!”

The master rose. Mliss looked up.

“Does Aristides come to school to-day!”

“I don't know.”

“Are you going back? You'd better,” she
said.

“Well—Perhaps I may—Good-bye!”

He had proceeded a few steps, when, as he
expected, she called him back. He turned.
She was standing by the tree, with tears glistening
in her eyes. The master felt the right moment
had come. Going up to her, he took both
her hands in his, and looking in her tearful eyes
said gravely:

“Mliss, do you remember the first evening
you came to see me?”

Mliss remembered.

“You asked me if you might come to school,
and I said—”

“Come!” responded the child, promptly.

“If I told you I was lonely without my little
scholar, and that I wanted her to come, what
would you say?”

The child hung her head 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, gazed at them
fearlessly. A squirrel ran half way down the
narrowed 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
slanting sunbeam stole through their interlaced
boughs and fell on the doubting face and irresolute
little figure. But a step in the dry
branches and a rustling in the underbrush broke
the spell.

A man dressed as a miner, carrying a long-handled
shovel, came slowly through the woods.
A red handkerchief t ed around his head under
his hat, with the loose ends hanging from
beneath, did not add much favor to his unprepossessing
face. He did not perceive the master
and Mliss until he was close upon them.
When he did, he stopped suddenly and gazed at
them with an expression of lowering distrust.
Mliss drew nearer to the master.

“Good mornin'—picknickin'—eh?” he asked,
with an attempt at geniality, that was more
repulsive than his natural manner.

“How are you—Prospectin, eh?” said the
master, quietly, after the established colloquial
formula of Red Mountain.

“Yes—a little in that way.”

The stranger still hesitated, apparently waiting
for them to go first, a matter which Mliss
decided by suddenly taking the master's hand
in her quick way. What she said was scarcely
audible, but the master, parting her hair over
her forehead, kissed her, and so, hand in hand,
they passed out of the damp aisles and forest
odors into the open sunlit road. But Mliss,
looking back, saw that her old seat was occupied
by the hopeful prospector, and fancied that
in the shadows of her former throne something
of a gratified leer overspread his face.

“He'll have to dig deep to find the crab
apples,” said the child to the master, asthey
came to the Red Mountain road.

When Aristides came to school that day he
was confronted by Mliss. But neither threats
nor entreaties could extract from the reticent
youth the whereabouts of the memorandum
book nor where he got it. Two or three days
afterward, during recess, he approached Mliss,
and b-ckoned her one side.

“Well,” said Mliss, impatiently.

“Did you ever read the story of `Ali Baba?”'

“Yes.”

“Do you believe it?”

“No.”

“Well,” said that sage infant, wheeling
around on his stout legs, “It's true!”