Well, there were prettier girls in the cla.s.s, and smarter girls-and boys, too; yet she was the one from all that twenty-odd who had been chosen to deliver the Valedictory. Did there ever exist a maid who did not thrill to proof that she was popular with her mates? And when that tribute carries with it all the possibilities of a Valedictory--double, treble the exultation.

The Valedictory! When Missy sat in the cla.s.sroom, exhausted with the la.s.situdinous warmth of spring and with the painful uncertainty of whether she'd be called to translate the Vergil pa.s.sage she hadn't mastered, visions of that coming glory would rise to brighten weary hours; and the last thing at night, in falling asleep, as the moon stole in tenderly to touch her smiling face, she took them to her dreams. She saw a slender girl in white, standing alone on a lighted stage, gazing with luminous eyes out on a darkened auditorium. Sometimes they had poky old lectures in that Opera House. Somebody named Ridgely Holman Dobson was billed to lecture there now--before Commencement; but Missy hated lectures; her vision was of something lifted far above such dismal, useful communications. She saw a house as hushed as when little Eva dies--all the people listening to the girl up there illumined: the lift and fall of her voice, the sentiments fine and n.o.ble and inspiring. They followed the slow grace of her arms and hands--it was, indeed, as if she held them in the hollow of her hand. And then, finally, when she had come to the last undulating cadence, the last vibrantly sustained phrase, as she paused and bowed, there was a moment of hush--and then the applause began. Oh, what applause! And then, slowly, graciously, modestly but with a certain queenly pride, the shining figure in white turned and left the stage.

She could see it all: the way her "waved" hair would fluff out and catch the light like a kind of halo, and each one of the nine organdie ruffles that were going to trim the bottom of her dress; she could even see the glossy, dark green background of potted palms--mother had promised to lend her two biggest ones. Yes, she could see it and hear it to the utmost completeness--save for one slight detail: that was the words of the girlish and queenly speaker. It seemed all wrong that she, who wasn't going to be a dull lecturer, should have to use words, and so many of them! You see, Missy hadn't yet written the Valedictory.

But that didn't spoil her enjoyment of the vision; it would all come to her in time. Missy believed in Inspiration. Mother did not.

Mother had worried all through the four years of her daughter's high school career--over "grades" or "exams" or "themes" or whatnot. She had fretted and urged and made Missy get up early to study; had even punished her. And, now, she was sure Missy would let time slide by and never get the Valedictory written on time. The two had already "had words" over it. Mother was dear and tender and sweet, and Missy would rather have her for mother than any other woman in Cherryvale, but now and then she was to be feared somewhat.

Sometimes she would utter an ugly, upsetting phrase:

"How can you dilly-dally so, Missy? You put everything off!--put off--put off! Now, go and try to get that thesis started!"

There was nothing for Missy to do but go and try to obey. She took tablet and pencil out to the summerhouse, where it was always inspiringly quiet and beautiful; she also took along the big blue-bound Anthology from the living-room table--an oft-tapped fount; but even reading poetry didn't seem able to lift her to the creative mood. And you have to be in the mood before you can create, don't you? Missy felt this necessity vaguely but strongly; but she couldn't get it across to mother.

And even worse than mother's reproaches was when father finally gave her a "talking to"; father was a big, wise, but usually silent man, so that when he did speak his words seemed to carry a double force. Missy's young friends were apt to show a little awe of father, but she knew he was enormously kind and sympathetic. Long ago--oh, years before--when she was a little girl, she used to find it easier to talk to him than to most grown-ups; about all kinds of unusual things--the strange, mysterious, fascinating thoughts that come to one. But lately, for some reason, she had felt more shy with father. There was much she feared he mightn't understand--or, perhaps, she feared he might understand.

So, in this rather unsympathetic domestic environment, the cla.s.s Valedictorian, with the kindling of her soul all laid, so to speak, uneasily awaited the divine spark. It was hard to maintain an easy a.s.sumption that all was well; especially after the affair of the hats got under way.

Late in April Miss Ackerman, the Domestic Science teacher, had organized a special night cla.s.s in millinery which met, in turns, at the homes of the various members. The girls got no "credit" for this work, but they seemed to be more than compensated by the joy of creating, with their own fingers, new spring hats which won them praise and admiration. Kitty Allen's hat was particularly successful. It was a white straw "flat,"

faced and garlanded with blue. Missy looked at its picturesque effect, posed above her "best friend's" piquantly pretty face, with an envy which was augmented by the pardonable note of pride in Kitty's voice as she'd say: "Oh, do you really like it?--I made it myself, you know."

If only she, Missy, might taste of this new kind of joy! She was not a Domestic Science girl; but, finally, she went to Miss Ackermanand--oh,rapture!--obtained permission to enter the millinery cla.s.s.

However, there was still the more difficult matter of winning mother's consent. As Missy feared, Mrs. Merriam at once put on her disapproving look.

"No, Missy. You've already got your hands full. Have you started the thesis yet?"

"Oh, mother!--I'll get the thesis done all right! And this is such a fine chance!--all the girls are learning how to make their own hats. And I thought, maybe, after I'd learned how on my own, that maybe I could make you one. Do you remember that adorable violet straw you used to have when I was a little girl?--poke shape and with the pink rose? I remember father always said it was the most becoming hat you ever had.

And I was thinking, maybe, I could make one something like that!"

"I'm afraid I've outgrown pink roses, dear." But mother was smiling a soft, reminiscent little shadow of a smile.

"But you haven't outgrown the poke shape--and violet! Oh, mother!"

"Well, perhaps--we'll see. But you mustn't let it run away with you. You must get that thesis started."

Not for nothing had Missy been endowed with eyes that could shine and a voice that could quaver; yes, and with an instinct for just the right argument to play upon the heart-strings.

She joined the special night cla.s.s in millinery. She learned to manipulate troublesome coils of wire and pincers, and to evolve a strange, ghostly skeleton--thing called a "frame," but when this was finally covered with crinoline and tedious rows-on-rows of straw braid, drab drudgery was over and the deliciousness began.

Oh, the pure rapture of "tr.i.m.m.i.n.g"! Missy's first venture was a wide, drooping affair, something the shape of Kitty Allen's, only her own had a much subtler, more soul-satisfying colour scheme. The straw was a subtle blue shade--the colour Raymond Bonner, who was a cla.s.smate and almost a "beau," wore so much in neckties--and the facing sh.e.l.l-pink, a delicate harmony; but the supreme ecstasy came with placing the little silken flowers, pink and mauve and deeper subtle-blue, in effective composition upon that heavenly background; and, in just the one place, a glimpse of subtle-blue ribbon, a sheen as gracious as achieved by the great Creator when, with a master's eye, on a landscape he places a climactic stroke of shining blue water. Indeed, He Himself surely can view His handiwork with no more sense o gratification than did Missy, regarding that miracle of colour which was her own creation.

Oh, to create! To feel a blind, vague, ineffable urge within you, stealing out to tangibility in colour and form! Earth--nor Heaven, either--can produce no finer rapture.

Missy's hat was duly admired. Miss Ackerman said she was a "real artist"; when she wore it to Sunday-school everybody looked at her so much she found it hard to hold down a sense of unsabbatical pride; father jocosely said she'd better relinquish her dreams of literary fame else she'd deprive the world of a fine milliner; and even mother admitted that Mrs. Anna Stubbs, the leading milliner, couldn't have done better. However, she amended: "Now, don't forget your school work, dear.

Have you decided on the subject of your thesis yet?"

Missy had not. But, by this time, the hat business was moving so rapidly that she had even less time to worry over anything still remote, like the thesis--plenty of time to think of that; now, she was dreaming of how the rose would look blooming radiantly from this soft bed of violet straw;... and, now, how becoming to Aunt Nettie would be this misty green, with cool-looking leaves and wired silver gauze very pure and bright like angels' wings--dear Aunt Nettie didn't have much "taste,"

and Missy indulged in a certain righteous glow in thus providing her with a really becoming, artistic hat. Then, after Aunt Nettie's, she planned one for Marguerite. Marguerite was the hired girl, mulatto, and had the racial pa.s.sion for strong colour. So Missy conceived for her a creation that would be at once satisfying to wearer and beholder. How wonderful with one's own hands to be able to dispense pleasure! Missy, working, felt a peculiarly blended joy; it is a gratification, indeed, when a pleasing occupation is seasoned with the fine flavour of n.o.ble altruism.

She hadn't yet thought of a theme for the Valedictory, and mother was beginning to make disturbing comments about "this hat mania," when, by the most fortuitous chance, while she was working on Marguerite's very hat--in fact, because she was working on it--she hit upon a brilliantly possible idea for the Valedictory.

She was rummaging in a box of discarded odds and ends for "tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs."

The box was in mother's store-closet, and Missy happened to observe a pile of books up on the shelf. Books always interested her, and even with a hat on her mind she paused a moment to look over the t.i.tles. The top volume was "Ships That Pa.s.s in the Night"--she had read that a year or so ago--a delightful book, though she'd forgotten just what about.

She took it down and opened it, casually, at the t.i.tle page. And there, in fine print beneath the t.i.tle, she read:

Ships that pa.s.s in the night, and speak each other in pa.s.sing, Only a signal shewn, and a distant voice in the darkness; So, on the ocean of life, we pa.s.s and speak one another, Only a look and a voice--then darkness again, and a silence.

Standing there in the closet door, Missy read the stanza a second time--a third. And, back again at her work, fingers dawdled while eyes took on a dreamy, preoccupied expression. For phrases were still flitting through her head: "we pa.s.s and speak one another".. . "then darkness again, and a silence"...

Very far away it took you--very far, right out on the vast, surging, mysterious sea of Life!

The sea of Life!... People, like ships, always meeting one another--only a look and a voice--and then pa.s.sing on into the silence...

Oh, that was an idea! Not just a shallow, sentimental pretense, but a real idea, "deep," stirring and fine. What a glorious Valedictory that would make!

And presently, when she was summoned to supper, she felt no desire to talk; it was so pleasant just to listen to those phrases faintly and suggestively resounding. All the talk around her came dimly and, sometimes, so lost was she in hazy delight that she didn't hear a direct question.

Finally father asked:

"What's the day-dream, Missy?--thinking up a hat for me?"

Missy started, and forgot to note that his enquiry was facetious.

"No," she answered quite seriously, "I haven't finished Marguerite's yet."

"Yes," cut in mother, in the tone of reproach so often heard these days, "she's been frittering away the whole afternoon. And not a glimmer for the thesis yet!"

At that Missy, without thinking, unwarily said:

"Oh, yes, I have, mother."

"Oh," said her mother interestedly. "What is it?"

Missy suddenly remembered and blushed--grown-ups seldom understand unless you're definite.

"Well," she amended diffidently, "I've got the subject."

"What is it?" persisted mother.

Everybody was looking at Missy. She poured the cream over her berries, took a mouthful; but they all kept looking at her, waiting.

"'Ships That Pa.s.s in the Night,'" she had to answer.

"For Heaven's sake!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Aunt Nettie. "What're you going to write about that?"

This was the question Missy had been dreading. She dreaded it because she herself didn't know just what she was going to write about it.

Everything was still in the first vague, delightful state of just feeling it--without any words as yet; and grown-ups don't seem to understand about this. But they were all staring at her, so she must say something.