Missy Part 42

Now she sighed, and cast a furtive glance through the leaf.a.ge toward the house, a glance which reflected an inner uneasiness because she feared her mother might discover she hadn't dusted the parlours; mother would accuse her of "dawdling." Sighing again for grown-ups who seldom understand, Missy turned to the Messenger in her lap.

Here was a double-page of "Women Who Are Achieving"--the reason for the periodical's presence in Missy's society. There was a half-tone of a lady who had climbed a high peak in the Canadian Rockies; Missy didn't much admire her unfeminine attire, yet it was something to get one's picture printed--in any garb. Then there was a Southern woman who had built up an industry manufacturing babies' shoes. This photograph, too, Missy studied without enthusiasm: the shoemaker was undeniably middle-aged and matronly in appearance; nor did the metier of her achievement appeal. Making babies' shoes, somehow, savoured too much of darning stockings. (Oh, bother! there was that basket of stockings mother had said positively mustn't go another day.)

Missy's glance hurried to the next picture. It presented the only lady Sheriff in the state of Colorado. Missy pondered. Politics--Ridgeley Holman Dobson was interested in politics; his lecture had been about something-or-other political--she wished, now, she'd paid more attention to what he'd talked about. Politics, it seemed, was a promising field in the broadening life of women. And they always had a Sheriff in Cherryvale. Just what were a Sheriff's duties? And how old must one be to become a Sheriff? This Colorado woman certainly didn't look young.

She wasn't pretty, either--her nose was too long and her lips too thin and her hair too tight; perhaps lady Sheriffs had to look severe so as to enforce the law.

Missy sighed once more. It would have been pleasant to feel she was working in the same field with Ridgeley Holman Dobson.

Then, suddenly, she let her sigh die half-grown as her eye came to the portrait of another woman who had achieved. No one could claim this one wasn't attractive looking. She was young and she was beautiful, beautiful in a peculiarly perfected and aristocratic way; her hair lay in meticulously even waves, and her features looked as though they had been chiselled, and a long ear-ring dangled from each tiny ear. Missy wasn't surprised to read she was a n.o.blewoman, her name was Lady Sylvia Southwoode--what an adorable name!

The caption underneath the picture read: "Lady Sylvia Southwoode, Who Readjusts--and Adorns--the Cosmos."

Missy didn't catch the full editorial intent, perhaps, in that grouping of Lady Sylvia and the Cosmos; but she was pleased to come upon the word Cosmos. It was one of her pet words. It had struck her ear and imagination when she first encountered it, last spring, in Psychology IV-A. Cosmos--what an infinity of meaning lay behind the two-syllabled sound! And the sound of it, too, sung itself over in your mind, rhythmic and fascinating. There was such a difference in words; some were but poor, bald things, neither suggesting very much nor very beautiful to hear. Then there were words which were beautiful to hear, which had a rich sound--words like "mellifluous" and "brocade" and "Cleopatra." But "Cosmos" was an absolutely fascinating word--perfectly round, without beginning or end. And it was the kind to delight in not only for its wealth, so to speak, for all it held and hinted, but also for itself alone; it was a word of sheer beauty.

She eagerly perused the paragraph which explained the manner in which Lady Sylvia was readjusting--and adorning--the Cosmos. Lady Sylvia made speeches in London's West End--wherever that was--and had a lot to do with bettering the Housing Problem--whatever that was--and was noted for the distinguished gatherings at her home. This alluring creature was evidently in politics, too!

Missy's eyes went dreamily out over the yard, but they didn't see the homely brick-edged flowerbeds nor the red lawn-swing nor the well-worn hammock nor the white picket fence in her direct line of vision. They were contemplating a slight girlish figure who was addressing a large audience, somewhere, speaking with swift, telling phrases that called forth continuous ripples of applause. It was all rather nebulous, save for the dominant girlish figure, which bore a definite resemblance to Melissa Merriam.

Then, with the sliding ease which obtains when fancy is the stage director, the scene s.h.i.+fted. Vast, elaborately beautiful grounds rolled majestically up to a large, ivy-draped house, which had turrets like a castle--very picturesque. At the entrance was a flight of wide stone steps, overlaid, now, with red carpet and canopied with a striped awning. For the mistress was entertaining some of the nation's notables.

In the lofty hall and s.p.a.cious rooms glided numberless men-servants in livery, taking the wraps of the guests, pa.s.sing refreshments, and so forth. The guests were very distinguished-looking, all the men in dress suits and appearing just as much at home in them as Ridgeley Holman Dobson had, that night on the Opera House stage. Yes, and he was there, in Missy's vision, handsomer than ever with his easy smile and graceful gestures and that kind of intimate look in his dark eyes, as he lingered near the hostess whom he seemed to admire. All the women were in low-cut evening dresses of softly-tinted silk or satin, with their hair gleaming in sleek waves and long ear-rings dangling down. The young hostess wore ear-rings, also; deep-blue gems flashed out from them, to match her trailing deep blue velvet gown--Raymond Bonnet had once said Missy should always wear that special shade of deep blue.

Let us peep at the actual Missy as she sits there dreaming: she has neutral-tinted brown hair, very soft and fine, which encircles her head in two thick braids to meet at the back under a big black bow; that bow, whether primly-set or tremulously-askew, is a fair barometer of the wearer's mood. The hair is undeniably straight, a fact which has often caused Missy moments of concern. (She used to envy Kitty Allen her tangling, light-catching curls till Raymond Bonner chanced to remark he considered curly hair "messy looking"; but Raymond's approval, for some reason, doesn't seem to count for as much as it used to, and, anyway, he is spending the summer in Michigan.) However, just below that too-demure parting, the eyes are such as surely to give her no regret. Twin morning-glories, we would call them-grey morning-glories!--opening expectant and s.h.i.+ning to the Sun which always s.h.i.+nes on enchanted seventeen. And, like other morning-glories, Missy's eyes are the shyest of flowers, ready to droop sensitively at the first blight of misunderstanding. That is the chiefest trouble of seventeen: so few are there, especially among old people, who seem to "understand." And that is why one must often retire to the summerhouse or other solitary places where one can without risk of ridicule let one's dreams out for air.

Presently she shook off her dreams and returned to the scarcely less thrilling periodical which had evoked them. Here was another photograph--though not nearly so alluring as that of the Lady Sylvia; a woman who had become an authoritative expounder of political and national issues--politics again! Missy proceeded to read, but her full interest wasn't deflected till her eyes came to some thought-compelling words:

"It was while yet a girl in her teens, in a little Western town ("Oh!"

thought Missy), that Miss Carson mounted the first rung of the ladder she has climbed to such enviable heights. She had just graduated from the local high school ("Oh! oh!" thought Missy) and, already prodded by ambition, persuaded the editor of the weekly paper to give her a job..."

Once again Missy's eyes wandered dreamily out over the yard...

Presently a voice was wafted out from the sideporch:

"Missy!--oh, Missy! Where are you?"

There was mother calling--bother! Missy picked up the Ladies' Home Messenger and trudged back to bondage.

"What in the world do you mean, Missy? You could write your name all over the parlour furniture for dust! And then those stockings--"

Missy dutifully set about her tasks. Yet, ah! it certainly is hard to dust and darn while one's soul is seething within one, straining to fly out on some really high enterprise of life. However one can, if one's soul strains hard enough, dust and dream; darn and dream. Especially if one has a helpful lilt, rhythmic to dust-cloth's stroke or needle's swing, throbbing like a strain of music through one's head:

Cosmos--Cosmos!--Cosmos--Cosmos!

Missy was absent-eyed at the midday dinner, but no sooner was the meal over before she feverishly attacked the darning-basket again. Her energy may have been explained when, as soon as the stockings were done, she asked her mother if she might go down to the Library.

Mother and Aunt Nettie from their rocking-chairs on the side-porch watched the slim figure in its stiffly-starched white duck skirt and s.h.i.+rt-waist disappear down shady Locust Avenue.

"I wonder what Missy's up to, now?" observed Aunt Nettie.

"Up to?" murmured Mrs. Merriam.

"Yes. She hardly touched her chop at dinner and she's crazy about lamb chops. She's eaten almost nothing for days. And either s.h.i.+rking her work, else going at it in a perfect frenzy!"

"Growing girls get that way sometimes," commented Missy's mother gently.

(Could Missy have heard and interpreted that tone, she might have been less hard on grown-ups who "don't understand.") "Missy's seventeen, you know."

"H'm!" commented Aunt Nettie, as if to say, "What's THAT to do with it?" Somehow it seems more difficult for spinsters than for mothers to remember those swift, free flights of madness and sweetness which, like a troop of birds in the measurable heavens, sweep in joyous circles across the sky of youth.

Meanwhile Missy, the big ribbon index under her sailor-brim palpitantly askew, was progressing down Locust Avenue with a measured, accented gait that might have struck an observer as being peculiar. The fact was that the refrain vibrating through her soul had found its way to her feet.

She'd hardly been conscious of it at first. She was just walking along, in time to that inner song:

"Cosmos--cosmos--cosmos--cosmos--"

And then she noticed she was walking with even, regular steps, stepping on every third crack in the board sidewalk, and that each of these cracks she stepped on ran, like a long punctuation, right through the middle of "cosmos." So that she saw in her mind this picture: |Cos|mos| |cos|mos| |cos|mos| |cos|mos|

It was fascinating, watching the third cracks punctuate her thoughts that way. Then it came to her that it was a childish sort of game--she was seventeen, now. So she avoided watching the cracks. But "Cosmos"

went on singing through her head and soul.

She came to Main Street and, ignoring the turn eastward which led to the Public Library, faced deliberately in the opposite direction.

She was, in fact, bound for the office of the Beacon--the local weekly.

And thoughts of what tremendous possibilities might be stretching out from this very hour, and of what she would say to Ed Martin, the editor, made her feet now skim along impatiently, and now slow down with sudden, self-conscious shyness.

For Missy, even when there was no steadily nearing imminence of having to reveal her soul, on general principles was a little in awe of Ed Martin and his genial ironies. Ed Martin was not only a local celebrity.

His articles were published in the big Eastern magazines. He went "back East" once a year, and it was said that on one occasion he had dined with the President himself. Of course that was only a rumour; but Cherryvale had its own eyes for witness that certain persons had stopped off in town expressly to see Ed Martin--personages whose names made you take notice!

Missy, her feet terribly reluctant now, her soul's song barely a whisper, found Ed Martin s.h.i.+rt-sleeved in his littered little sanctum at the back of the Beacon office.

"Why, h.e.l.lo, Missy!" he greeted, swinging round leisurely in his revolving-chair. Ed Martin was always so leisurely in his movements that the marvel was how he got so much accomplished. Local dignitaries of the most admired kind, perhaps, wear their distinction as a kind of toga; but Ed was plump and short, with his scant, fair hair always rumpled, and a manner as friendly as a child's.

"Haven't got another Valedictory for us to print, have you?" he went on genially.

Missy blushed. "I just dropped in for a minute," she began uneasily. "I was just thinking--" She hesitated and paused.

"Yes," said Ed Martin encouragingly.

"I was just thinking--that perhaps--" She clasped her hands tightly together and fixed her s.h.i.+ning eyes on him in mute appeal. Then:

"You see, Mr. Martin, sometimes it comes over you--" She broke off again.

Ed Martin was regarding her out of friendly blue eyes.

"Maybe I can guess what sometimes comes over you. You want to write--is that it?"

His kindly voice and manner emboldened her.

"Yes--it's part that. And a feeling that--Oh, it's so hard to put into words, Mr. Martin!"

"I know; feelings are often hard to put into words. But they're usually the most worth while kind of feelings. And that's what words are for."