University of Virginia Library

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

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 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

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 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,

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 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

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 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

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 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

self-esteem and saint-like 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 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

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
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!”