The first week of September school opened, cla.s.ses enrolled, and the business of learning again got under way. By the second week the various offshoots of educational life began to sprout, and notices were posted of the annual elections of the two "literary societies," Iolanthe and Mount Parna.s.sus. The "programmes" of these bodies were held in the auditorium every other Friday, and each pupil was due for at least one performance a semester. Missy, who was an Iolanthian, generally chose to render a piano solo or an original essay. But everybody in school did that much--they had to--and only a few rose to the estate of being "officers."

The Iolanthians had two tickets up for election: the scholastic, headed by Beulah Crosswhite for president, and an opposition framed by some boys who complained that the honours always went to girls and that it was time men's rights were recognized. The latter faction put up Raymond Bonner as their candidate. Raymond was as handsome and gay as Beulah Crosswhite was learned.

It was a notable fight. When the day of election arrived, the Chemistry room in which the Iolanthians were gathered was electric with restrained excitement. On the first ballot Raymond and Beulah stood even. There was a second ballot--a third--a fourth. And still the deadlock, the atmosphere of tensity growing more vibrant every second. Finally a group of boys put their heads together. Then Raymond Bonner arose.

"In view of the deadlock which it seems impossible to break," he began, in the rather stilted manner which befits such a.s.semblages, "I propose that we put up a subst.i.tute candidate. I propose the name of Miss Melissa Merriam."

Oh, dear heaven! For a second Missy was afraid she was going to cry--she didn't know why. But she caught Raymond's eye on her, smiling encouragement, and she mistily glowed back at him. And on the very first vote she was elected. Yes. Miss Melissa Merriam was president of Iolanthe. She was prominent.

And Raymond? Of course Raymond had been prominent before, though she had never noticed it, and now he had helped her up to this n.o.ble elevation!

He must think she would adorn it. Adorn!--it was a lovely word that Missy had just captured. Though she had achieved her eminence by a fluke.

Missy took fortune at the flood like one born for success. She mazed the whole school world by a meteoric display of unsuspected capacities.

Herself she amazed most of all; she felt as if she were making the acquaintance of a stranger, an increasingly fascinating kind of stranger. How wonderful to find herself perusing over a "meeting"

from the teacher's desk in the Latin room, or over a "programme" in the auditorium, with calm and superior dignity!

Missy, aflame with a new fire, was not content with the old hackneyed variety of "programme." It was she who conceived the idea of giving the first minstrel show ever presented upon the auditorium boards. It is a tribute to Missy's persuasiveness when at white heat that the faculty permitted the show to go beyond its first rehearsal. The rehearsals Missy personally conducted, with Raymond aiding as her first lieutenant-and he would not have played second fiddle like that to another girl in the cla.s.s-he said so. She herself chose the cast, contrived the "scenery"; and she and Raymond together wrote the dialogue and lyrics. It was wonderful how they could do things together! Missy felt she never could get into such a glow and find such lovely rhymes popping right up in her mind if she were working alone. And Raymond said the same. It was very strange. It was as if a mystic bond fired them both with new talents-Missy looked on mixed metaphors as objectionable only to Professor Sutton.

Her reputation-and Raymond's-soared, soared. Her literary talent placed her on a much higher plane than if she were merely "smart"-made her in the most perfect sense "prominent."

After the minstrel triumph it was no surprise when, at cla.s.s elections, Melissa Merriam became president of the Juniors. A few months before Missy would have been overwhelmed at the turn of things, but now she casually mounted her new height, with a.s.surance supreme. It was as though always had the name of Melissa Merriam been a force. Raymond said no one else had a look-in.

At the end of the term prominence brought its reward: Missy failed in Geometry and was conditioned in Latin. Father looked grave over her report card.

"This is pretty bad, isn't it?" he asked.

Missy fidgeted. It gave her a guilty feeling to bring that expression to her indulgent father's face.

"I'm sorry, father. I know I'm not smart, but-" She hesitated.

Father took off his gla.s.ses and thoughtfully regarded her.

"I wasn't complaining of your not being 'smart'--'smart' people are often pests. The trouble's that this is worse than it's ever been.

And today I got a letter from Professor Sutton. He says you evince no interest whatever in your work."

Missy felt a little indignant flare within her.

"He knows what responsibilities I have!"

"Responsibilities?" repeated father.

Here mother, who had been sitting quietly by, also with a disapproving expression, entered the discussion:

"I knew all that Iolanthe and cla.s.s flummery would get her into trouble."

Flummery!

Missy's voice quavered. "That's a very important part of school life, mother! Cla.s.s spirit and all--you don't understand!" "I suppose parents are seldom able to keep up with the understanding of their children,"

replied mother, with unfamiliar sarcasm. "However, right here's where I presume to set my foot down. If you fail again, in the spring examinations, you'll have to study and make it up this summer. You can't go with Aunt Isabel."

Lose the Colorado trip! The wonderful trip she had already lived through, in vivid prospect, a hundred times! Oh, mother couldn't be so cruel! But Missy's face dropped alarmingly.

"Now, mamma," began father, "I wouldn't-"

"I mean every word of it," reaffirmed mother with the voice of doom.

"No grades, no holiday. Missy's got to learn balance and moderation.

She lets any wild enthusiasm carry her off her feet. She's got to learn, before it's too late, to think and control herself."

There was a moment's heavy pause, then mother went on, significantly:

"And I don't know that you ought to buy that car this spring, papa."

The parents exchanged a brief glance, and Missy's heart dropped even lower. For months she had been teasing father to buy a car, as so many of the girls' fathers were doing. He had said, "Wait till spring," and now-the universe was draped in gloom.

However, there was a certain sombre satisfaction in reflecting that her traits of frailty should call forth such enthrallingly sinister comments. "Lets any wild enthusiasm carry her off her feet"--"before, it's too late"--"must learn to control herself--"

Human nature is an interesting study, and especially one's own nature when one stands off and regards it as a problem Allen, mysterious and complicated. Missy stared at the endangered recesses of her soul--and wondered what Raymond thought about these perils-for any girl. He liked her of course, but did he think she was too enthusiastic?

Yet such speculations did not, at the time, tie up with views about the Colorado trip. That was still the guiding star of all her hopes. She must study harder during the spring term and stave off the threatened and unspeakable calamity. It was a hard resolution to put through, especially when she conceived a marvellous idea-a "farce" like one Polly Currier told her about when she was home for her Easter vacation. Missy wrestled with temptation like some Biblical martyr of old, but the thought of Colorado kept her strong. And she couldn't help feeling a little n.o.ble when, mentioning to mother the discarded inspiration-without allusion to Colorado-she was praised for her adherence to duty.

The sense of n.o.bility aided her against various tantalizing chances to prove anew her gifts of leadership, through latter March, through April, through early May--lengthening, balmy, burgeoning days when Spring brings all her brightly languid witchery in a.s.sault upon drab endeavour.

The weather must share the blame for what befell that fateful Friday of the second week in May. Blame? Of course there was plenty of blame from adults that must be laid somewhere; but as for Missy, a floating kind of ecstasy was what that day woke in her first, and after the worst had happened--But let us see what did come to pa.s.s.

It was a day made for poets to sing about. A day for the young man to forget the waiting ledger on his desk and gaze out the window at skies so blue and deep as to invite the building of castles; for even his father to see visions of golf-course or fishing-boat flickering in the translucent air; for old Jeff to get out his lawn-mower and lazily add a metallic song to the hum of the universe. And for him or her who must sit at schoolroom desk, it was a day to follow the processes of blackboard or printed page with the eyes but not the mind, while the encaged spirit beat past the bars of dull routine to wing away in the blue.

Missy, sitting near an open window of the "study room" during the "second period," let dreamy eyes wander from the fatiguing Q. E. D.'s of the afternoon's Geometry lesson; the ugly tan walls, the sober array of national patriots hanging above the encircling blackboard, the sea of heads restlessly swaying over receding rows of desks, all faded hazily away. Her soul flitted out through the window, and suffused itself in the bit of bright, bright blue showing beyond the stand-pipe, in the soft, soft air that stole in to kiss her cheek, in the elusive fragrance of young, green, growing things, in the drowsy, drowsy sound of Mrs.

Clifton's chickens across the way...

Precious minutes were speeding by; she would not have her Geometry lesson. But Missy didn't bring herself back to think of that; would not have cared, anyway. She let her soul stretch out, out, out.

Such is the sweet, subtle, compelling madness a day of Spring can bring one.

Missy had often felt the ecstasy of being swept out on the yearning demand for a new experience. Generally because of something suggestive in "reading" or in heavenly colour combinations or in sad music at twilight; but, now, for no definable reason at all, she felt her soul welling up and up in vague but poignant craving. She asked permission to get a drink of water. But instead of quenching her thirst, she wandered to the entry of the room occupied by Mathematics III A--Missy's own cla.s.s, from which she was now sequestered by the cruel bar termed "failure-to-pa.s.s." Something was afoot in there; Missy put her ear to the keyhole; then she boldly opened the door.

A tempest of paper-wads, badinage and giggles greeted her. The teacher's desk was vacant. Miss Smith was at home sick, and the princ.i.p.al had put Mathematics III A on their honour. For a time Missy joined in their honourable pursuit of giggles and badinage. But Raymond had welcomed her as if the fun must mount to something yet higher when she came; she felt a "secret, deep, interior urge" to show what she could do. The seductive May air stole into her blood, a stealthy, intoxicating elixir, and finally the Inspiration came, with such tumultuous swiftness that she could never have told whence or how. Pa.s.sed on to her fellows, it was caught up with an ardour equally mad and unreckoning. One minute the unpastored flock of Mathematics III A were leaning out the windows, sniffing in the lilac scents wafted over from Mrs. Clifton's yard; the next they were scurrying, tip-toe, flushed, laughing, jostling, breathless, out through the cloak-room, down the stairs, through the side-door, across the stretch of school-yard, toward a haven beyond Mrs.

Clifton's lilac hedge.

Where were they going? They did not know. Why had they started? They did not know. What the next step? They did not know. No thought nor reason in that, onward rush; only one vast, enveloping, incoherent, tumultuous impulse--away! away! Away from dark walls into the open; away from the old into the new; away from the usual into the you-don't-know-what; away from "you must not" into "you may." The wild, free, bright, heedless urge of Spring!

Behind their fragrant rampart they paused, for a second, to spin about in a kind of mental and spiritual whirlpool. Some began breaking off floral sprays to decorate hat-band or shirt-waist. But Missy, feeling her responsibility as a leader, glanced back, through leafy crevices, at those prison-windows open and ominously near.

"We mustn't stay here!" she admonished. "We'll get caught!"

As if an embodiment of warning, just then Mrs. Clifton emerged out on her front porch; she looked as if she might be going to shout at them.

But Raymond waited to break off a lilac cl.u.s.ter for Missy. He was so cool about it; it just showed how much he was like the Black Prince--though of course no one would "understand" if you said such a thing.

The fragrantly beplumed company sped across the green Clifton yard, ruthlessly over the Clifton vegetable garden, to the comparative retreat of Silver Street, beyond. But they were not yet safe--away! away! Missy urged them westward, for no defined reason save that this direction might increase their distance from the danger zone of the High School.