She started to leave the room.

"Oh, mother!"

"Well?" Rather impatiently Mrs. Merriam turned in the doorway.

"Would you mind handing me my tablet and pencil?"

"What, there in the bath?"

"I just thought"--Missy paused to sneeze--"maybe I might get an inspiration or something, and couldn't get out to write it down."

"You're an absurd child." But when she brought the tablet and pencil, Mrs. Merriam lingered to pull the shawl round Missy's shoulders a little closer; Missy always loved mother to do things like this it was at such times she felt most keenly that her mother loved her.

Yet she was glad to be left alone.

For a time her eyes were on her bare, scarlet feet in the yellow mustard water. But that unbeautiful colour combination did not disturb her. She did not even see her feet. She was seeing a pair of bright dark eyes smiling intimately into her own. Presently, with a dreamy, abstracted smile, she opened the tablet, poised the pencil, and began to write. But she was scarcely conscious of any of this, of directing her pencil even; it was almost as if the pencil, miraculously, guided itself. And it wrote.

"Are you ready to take your feet out now, Missy?"

Missy raised her head impatiently. It was Aunt Nettie in the door. What was she talking about--feet?--feet? How could Aunt Nettie?

...... "Oh! go away, won't you, please?" she cried vehemently.

"Well, did you ever?" gasped Aunt Nettie. She stood in the doorway a minute; then tiptoed away. But Missy was oblivious; the inspired pencil was speeding back and forth again--"Then each craft pa.s.ses on into the unutterable darkness--" and the pencil, too, went on and on.

There was a sound of tiptoeing again at the door, of whispering; but the author took no notice. Then someone entered, bearing a pitcher of hot water; but the author gave no sign. Someone poured hot water into the foot-tub; the author wriggled her feet.

"Too hot, dear?" said mother's voice. The author shook her head abstractedly. Words were singing in her ears to drown all else. They flowed through her whole being, down her arms, out through her hand and pencil, wrote themselves immortally. Oh, this was Inspiration! Feeling at last immeshed in tangibility, swimming out on a tide of words that rushed along so fast pencil could hardly keep up with them. Oh, Inspiration! The real thing! Divine, ecstatic, but fleeting; it must be caught at the flood.

The pencil raced.

And sad, indeed, is that life which sails on its own way, wrapped in its own gloom, giving out no signal and heeding none, hailing not its fellow and heeding no hail. For the gloom will grow greater and greater; there will be no sympathy to tide it over the rocks; no momentary gleams of love to help it through its struggle; and the storms will rage fiercer and the sails will hang lower until, at last, it will go down, alone and unwept, never knowing the joy of living and never reaching the goal.

So let these ships, which have such a vast, such an unutterable influence, use that influence for brightening the encompa.s.sing gloom.

Let them not be wrapped in their own selfishness or sorrow, but let their voice be filled with hope and love. For, by so doing, the waters of Life will grow smoother, and the signals will never flicker.

The inspired instrument lapsed from nerveless fingers; the author relaxed in her chair and sighed a deep sigh. All of a sudden she felt tired, tired; but it is a blessed weariness that comes after a divine frenzy has had its way with you.

Almost at once mother was there, rubbing her feet with towels, hustling her into bed.

"Now, you must keep covered up a while," she said.

Missy was too happily listless to object. But, from under the hot blankets, she murmured:

"You can read the Valedictory if you want to. It's all done."

Commencement night arrived. Twenty-odd young, pulsing ent.i.ties were lifting and lilting to a brand-new, individual experience, each one of them, doubtless, as firmly convinced as the cla.s.s Valedictorian that he--or she--was the unique centre round which buzzed this rushing, bewitchingly upsetting occasion.

Yet everyone had to admit that the Valedictorian made a tremendous impression: a slender girl in white standing alone on a lighted stage--only one person in all that a.s.semblage was conscious that it was the identical spot where once stood the renowned Dobson--gazing with luminous eyes out on the darkened auditorium. It was crowded out there but intensely quiet, for all the people were listening to the girl up there illumined: the lift and fall of her voice, the sentiments fine, 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.

She told all about the darkness our souls sail through under their sealed orders, knowing neither course nor port--and, though you may be calloused to these trite figures, are they not solemnly true enough, and moving enough, if you take them to heart? And with that slim child alone up there speaking these things so feelingly, it was easy for Cherryvale in the hushed and darkened auditorium to feel with her...

Sometimes they pa.s.s oblivious of one another in the gloom; sometimes a signal flashes from out the darkness; a signal which is understood as though an intense ray pierced the enveloping pall and laid bare both souls. That signal is the light from a pair of human eyes, which are the windows of the soul, and by means of which alone soul can stand revealed to soul...

The emotional impression of this was tremendous on all these dear Souls who had sailed alongside of Missy since she was launched.

So let these ships, which have such a vast, such an unutterable influence, use that influence for brightening the encompa.s.sing gloom...

For, by so doing, the waters of Life will grow smoother, and the signals will never flicker.

She came to the last undulating cadence, the last vibrantly sustained phrase; and then, 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.

Here was a n.o.ble triumph, remembered for years even by the teachers.

Down in the audience father and mother and grandpa and grandma and all the other relatives who, with suspiciously wet eyes, were a.s.sembled in the "reserved section," overheard such murmurs as: "And she's seventeen!--Where do young folks get those ideas?"--and, "What an unusual gift of phraseology!" And, after the programme, a reporter from the Cherryvale Beacon came up to father and asked permission to quote certain pa.s.sages from the Valedictory in his "write-up." That was the proudest moment of Mr. Merriam's entire life.

Missy had time for only hurried congratulations from her family. For she must rush off to the annual Alumni banquet. She was going with Raymond Bonner who, now, was hovering about her more zealously than ever. She would have preferred to share this triumphant hour with--with--well, with someone older and more experienced and better able to understand.

But she liked Raymond; once, long ago--a whole year ago--she'd had absurd dreams about him. Yet he was a nice boy; the nicest and most sought-after boy in the cla.s.s. She was not unhappy at going off with him.

Father and mother walked home alone, communing together in that pride-tinged-with-sadness that must, at times, come to all parents.

Mother said:

"And to think I was so worried! That hat-making, and then that special spell of idle mooning over something-or-nothing, nearly drove me frantic."

Father smiled through the darkness.

"I suppose, after all," mother mused on, surrept.i.tiously wiping those prideful eyes, "that there is something in Inspiration, and the dear child just had to wait till she got it, and that she doesn't know any more than we do where it came from."

"No, I daresay she doesn't." But sometimes father was more like a friend than a parent, and that faint, unnoted stress was the only sign he ever gave of what he knew about this Inspiration.

CHAPTER X. MISSY CANS THE COSMOS

As far back as Melissa Merriam could remember, she had lived with her family in the roomy, rambling, white-painted house on Locust Avenue. She knew intimately every detail of its being. She had, at various points in her childhood, personally supervised the addition of the ell and of the broad porch which ran round three sides of the house, the transformation of an upstairs bedroom into a regular bathroom with all the pleasing luxuries of modern plumbing, the installation of hardwood floors into the "front" and "back" parlours. She knew every mousehole in the cellar, every spider-web and cracked window-pane in the fascinating attic.

And the yard without she also knew well: the friendly big elm which, whenever the wind blew, tapped soft leafy fingers against her own window; the slick green curves of the lawn; the trees best loved by the birds; the morning-glories on the porch which resembled fairy church bells ready for ringing, the mignonette in the flower-beds like fragrant fairy plumes, and the other flowers--all so clever at growing up into different shapes and colours when you considered they all came from little hard brown seeds. And she was familiar with the summerhouse back in the corner of the yard, so ineffably delicious in rambler-time, but so bleakly sad in winter; and the chicken-yard just beyond she knew, too--Missy loved that peculiar air of placidity which pervades even the most clucky and cackly of chicken-yards, and she loved the little downy chicks which were so adept at picking out their own mothers amongst those hens that looked all alike. When she was a little girl she used to wonder whether the mothers grieved when their children grew up and got killed and eaten and, for one whole summer, she wouldn't eat fried chicken though it was her favourite delectable.

All of which means that Missy, during the seventeen years of her life, had never found her homely environment dull or unpleasing. But, this summer, she found herself longing, with a strange, secret but burning desire, for something "different."

The feeling had started that preceding May, about the time she made such an impression at Commencement with her Valedictory ent.i.tled "Ships That Pa.s.s in the Night." The theme of this oration was the tremendous influence that can trail after the chancest and briefest encounter of two strangers. No one but herself (and her father, though Missy did not know it) connected Missy's eloquent handling of this subject with the fleeting appearance in Cherryvale of one Ridgeley Holman Dobson. Dobson had given a "Lyceum Course" lecture in the Opera House, but Missy remembered him not because of what he lectured about, nor because he was an outstanding hero of the recent Spanish-American war, nor even because of the scandalous way his women auditors, sometimes, rushed up and kissed him. No. She remembered him because... Oh, well, it would have been hard to explain concretely, even to herself; but that one second, when she was taking her turn shaking hands with him after the lecture, there was something in his dark bright eyes as they looked deeply into her own, something that made her wish--made her wish--

It was all very vague, very indefinite. If only Cherryvale afforded a chance to know people like Ridgeley Holman Dobson! Unprosaic people, really interesting people. People who had travelled in far lands; who had seen unusual sights, plumbed the world's possibilities, done heroic deeds, laid hands on large affairs.

But what chance for this in poky Cherryvale?

This tranquil June morning, as Missy sat in the summerhouse with the latest Ladies' Home Messenger in her lap, the dissatisfied feeling had got deeper hold of her than usual. It was not acute discontent--the kind that sticks into you like a sharp splinter; it was something more subtle; a kind of dull hopelessness all over you. The feeling was not at all in accord with the scene around her. For the sun was shining gloriously; Locust Avenue lay wonderfully serene under the sunlight; the iceman's horses were pulling their enormous wagon as if it were not heavy; the big, perspiring iceman whistled as if those huge, dripping blocks were featherweight; and, in like manner, everybody pa.s.sing along the street seemed contented and happy. Missy could remember the time when such a morning as this, such a scene of peaceful beauty, would have made her feel contented, too.