Missy.

by Dana Gatlin.

CHAPTER I. THE FLAME DIVINE

Melissa came home from Sunday-school with a feeling she had never had before. To be sure she was frequently discovering, these days, feelings she had never had before. That was the marvellous reward of having grown to be so old; she was ten, now, an advanced age--almost grown up!

She could look back, across the eons which separated her from seven-years-old, and dimly re-vision, as a stranger, the little girl who cried her first day in the Primary Grade. How absurd seemed that bashful, timid, ignorant little silly! She knew nothing at all. She still thought there was a Santa Claus!--would you believe that? And, even at eight, she had lingering fancies of fairies dancing on the flower-beds by moonlight, and talking in some mysterious language with the flowers!

Now she was much wiser. She knew that fairies lived only in books and pictures; that flowers could not actually converse. Well... she almost knew. Sometimes, when she was all alone--out in the summerhouse on a drowsy afternoon, or in the glimmering twilight when that one very bright and knowing star peered in at her, solitary, on the side porch, or when, later, the moonshine stole through the window and onto her pillow, so thick and white she could almost feel it with her fingers--at such times vague fancies would get tangled up with the facts of reality, and disturb her new, a.s.sured sense of wisdom. Suddenly she'd find herself all mixed up, confused as to what actually was and wasn't.

But she never worried long over that. Life was too complex to permit much time for worry over anything; too full and compelling in every minute of the long, long hours which yet seemed not long enough to hold the new experiences and emotions which ceaselessly flooded in upon her.

The emotion she felt this Sunday was utterly new. It was not contentment nor enjoyment merely, nor just happiness. For, in the morning as mother dressed her in her embroidered white "best" dress, and as she walked through the June sunshine to the Presbyterian church, trying to remember not to skip, she had been quite happy. And she had still felt happy during the Sunday-school lesson, while Miss Simpson explained how our Lord multiplied the loaves and fishes so as to feed the mult.i.tude. How wonderful it must have been to be alive when our Lord walked and talked among men!

Her feeling of peaceful contentment intensified a little when they all stood up to sing,

"Let me be a little sunbeam for Jesus--" and she seemed, then, to feel a subtle sort of glow, as from an actual sunbeam, warming her whole being.

But the marvellous new feeling did not definitely begin till after Sunday-school was over, when she was helping Miss Simpson collect the song-books. Not the big, thick hymn-books used for the church service, but smaller ones, with pasteboard backs and different tunes. Melissa would have preferred the Sunday-school to use the big, cloth-covered hymnals. Somehow they looked more religious; just as their tunes, with slow, long-drawn cadences, somehow sounded more religious than the Sunday-school's cheerful tunes. Why this should be so Melissa didn't know; there were many things she didn't yet understand about religion.

But she asked no questions; experience had taught her that the most serious questions may be strangely turned into food for laughter by grown-ups.

It was when she carried the song-books into the choir-room to stack them on some chairs, that she noticed the choir had come in and was beginning to practise a real hymn. She loitered. It was an especially religious hymn, very slow and mournful. They sang:

"A-a--sle-e-e-ep in Je-e-e--sus--Ble-e-es--ed sle-e-e-ep--From which none e-e-ev--er Wake to we-e-e-ep--"

The choir did not observe Melissa; did not suspect that state of deliciousness which, starting from the skin, slowly crept into her very soul. She stood there, very un.o.btrusive, drinking in the sadly sweet sounds. Up on the stained-gla.s.s window the sunlight filtered through blue-and-red-and-golden angels, sending shafts of heavenly colour across the floor; and the fibres of her soul, enmeshed in music, seemed to stretch out to mingle with that heavenly colour. It was hard to separate herself from that sound and colour which was not herself. Tears came to her eyes; she couldn't tell why, for she wasn't sad. Oh, if she could stand there listening forever!--could feel like this forever!

The choir was practising for a funeral that afternoon, but Melissa didn't know that. She had never attended a funeral. She didn't even know it was a funeral song. She only knew that when, at last, they stopped singing and filed out of the choir-room, she could hardly bear to have them go. She wished she might follow them, might tuck herself away in the auditorium somewhere and stay for the church service. But her mother didn't allow her to do that. Mother insisted that church service and Sunday-school, combined, were too much for a little girl, and would give her headaches.

So there was nothing for Missy to do but go home. The sun shone just as brightly as on her hither journey but now she had no impulse to skip.

She walked along sedately, in rhythm to inner, long-drawn cadences.

The cadences permeated her--were herself. She was sad, yet pleasantly, thrillingly so. It was divine. When she reached home, she went into the empty front-parlour and hunted out the big, cloth-covered hymnal that was there. She found "Asleep in Jesus" and played it over and over on the piano. The ba.s.s was a trifle difficult, but that didn't matter. Then she found other hymns which were in accord with her mood: "Abide with Me"; "Nearer My G.o.d to Thee"; "One Sweetly Solemn Thought." The last was sublimely beautiful; it almost stole her favour away from "Asleep in Jesus." Not quite, though.

She was re-playing her first favourite when the folks all came in from church. There were father and mother, grandpa and grandma Merriam who lived in the south part of town, Aunt Nettie, and Cousin Pete Merriam.

Cousin Pete's mother was dead and his father out in California on a long business trip, so he was spending that summer in Cherryvale with his grandparents.

Melissa admired Cousin Pete very much, for he was big and handsome and wore more stylish-looking clothes than did most of the young men in Cherryvale. Also, he was very old--nineteen, and a soph.o.m.ore at the State University. Very old. Naturally he was much wiser than Missy, for all her acquired wisdom. She stood in awe of him. He had a way of asking her absurd, foolish questions about things that everybody knew; and when, to be polite, she had to answer him seriously in his own foolish vein, he would laugh at her! So, though she admired him, she always had an impulse to run away from him. She would have liked, now, in this heavenly, religious mood, to run away lest he might ask her embarra.s.sing questions about it. But, before she had the chance, grandpa said:

"Why Missy, playing hymns? You'll be church organist before we know it!"

Missy blushed.

"'Asleep in Jesus' is my favourite, I think," commented grandma. "It's the one I'd like sung over me at the last. Play it again, dear."

But Pete had picked up a sheet of music from the top of the piano.

"Let's have this, Missy." He turned to his grandmother. "Ought to hear her do this rag--I've been teaching her double-ba.s.s."

Missy shrank back as he placed the rag-time on the music-rest.

"Oh, I'd rather not--to-day."

Pete smiled down at her--his amiable but condescending smile.

"What's the matter with to-day?" he asked.

Missy blushed again.

"Oh, I don't know--I just don't feel that way, I guess."

"Don't feel that way?" repeated Pete. "You're temperamental, are you?

How do you feel, Missy?"

Missy feared she was letting herself in for embarra.s.sment; but this was a holy subject. So she made herself answer:

"I guess I feel religious."

Pete shouted. "She feels religious! That's a good one! She guesses she--"

"Peter, you should be ashamed of yourself!" reproved his grandmother.

"She's a scream!" he insisted. "Religious! That kid!"

"Well," defended Missy, timid and puzzled, but wounded to unwonted bravery, "isn't it proper to feel like that on the Sabbath?"

Pete shouted again.

"Peter--stop that! You should be ashamed of yourself!" It was his grandfather this time. Grandpa moved over to the piano and removed the rag-time from off the hymnal, pausing to pat Missy on the head.

But Peter was not the age to be easily squelched.

"What does it feel like, Missy--the religious feeling?"

Missy, her eyes bright behind their blur, didn't answer. Indeed, she could not have defined that sweetly sad glow, now so cruelly crushed, even had she wanted to.

Missy didn't enjoy her dinner as much as she usually did the midday Sunday feasts when grandpa and grandma came to eat with them. She felt embarra.s.sed and shy. Of course she had to answer when asked why she wasn't eating her drumstick, and whether the green apples in grandma's orchard had given her an "upset," and other direct questions; but when she could, she kept silent. She was glad Pete didn't talk to her much.

Yet, now and then, she caught his eyes upon her in a look of sardonic enquiry, and quickly averted her own.

Her unhappiness lasted till the visitors had departed. Then, after aimlessly wandering about, she took her Holy Bible out to the summerhouse. She was contemplating a surprise for grandpa and grandma.

Next week mother and Aunt Nettie were going over to Aunt Anna's in Junction City for a few days; during their absence Missy was to stay with her grandparents. And to surprise them, she was learning by heart a whole Psalm.

She planned to spring it upon them the first night at family prayers.

At grandma's they had prayers every night before going to bed. First grandpa read a long chapter out of the Holy Bible, then they all knelt down, grandpa beside his big Morris chair, grandma beside her little willow rocker, and whoever else was present beside whatever chair he'd been sitting in. Grandpa prayed a long prayer; grandma a shorter one; then, if any of the grandchildren were there, they must say a verse by heart. Missy's first verse had been, "Jesus wept." But she was just a tiny thing then. When she grew bigger, she repeated, "Suffer the little children to come unto Me." Later she accomplished the more showy, "In My Father's house are many mansions; I go there to prepare a place for you."

But this would be her first whole Psalm. She pictured every one's delighted and admiring surprise. After much deliberation she had decided upon the Psalm in which David sings his song of faith, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."

How beautiful it was! So deep and so hard to understand, yet, somehow, all the more beautiful for that. She murmured aloud, "I will fear no evil--for Thou art with me--Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me"; and wondered what the rod and staff really were.