Mliss

-THE END-
Mliss

CHAPTER I

Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in gentler
undulations, and the rivers grow less rapid and yellow, on the side
of a great red mountain, stands "Smith's Pocket." Seen from the
red road at sunset, in the red light and the red dust, its white
houses look like the outcroppings of quartz on the mountainside.
The red stage topped with red-shirted passengers is lost to view
half a dozen times in the tortuous descent, turning up unexpectedly
in out-of-the-way places, and vanishing altogether within a hundred
yards of the town. It is probably owing to this sudden twist in
the road that the advent of a stranger at Smith's Pocket is usually
attended with a peculiar circumstance. Dismounting from the
vehicle at the stage office, the too-confident traveler is apt to
walk straight out of town under the impression that it lies in
quite another direction. It is related that one of the tunnel men,
two miles from town, met one of these self-reliant passengers with
a carpetbag, umbrella, Harper's Magazine, and other evidences of
"Civilization and Refinement," plodding along over the road he had
just ridden, vainly endeavoring to find the settlement of Smith's
Pocket.

An observant traveler might have found some compensation for his
disappointment in the weird aspect of that vicinity. There were
huge fissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil,
resembling more the chaos of some primary elemental upheaval than
the work of man; while halfway down, a long flume straddled its
narrow body and disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an
enormous fossil of some forgotten antediluvian. At every step
smaller ditches crossed the road, hiding in their sallow depths
unlovely streams that crept away to a clandestine union with the
great yellow torrent below, and here and there were the ruins of
some cabin with the chimney alone left intact and the hearthstone
open to the skies.

The settlement of Smith's Pocket owed its origin to the finding of
a "pocket" on its site by a veritable Smith. Five thousand dollars
were taken out of it in one half-hour by Smith. Three thousand
dollars were expended by Smith and others in erecting a flume and
in tunneling. And then Smith's Pocket was found to be only a
pocket, and subject like other pockets to depletion. Although
Smith pierced the bowels of the great red mountain, that five
thousand dollars was the first and last return of his labor. The
mountain grew reticent of its golden secrets, and the flume
steadily ebbed away the remainder of Smith's fortune. Then Smith
went into quartz-mining; then into quartz-milling; then into
hydraulics and ditching, and then by easy degrees into
saloonkeeping. Presently it was whispered that Smith was drinking
a great deal; then it was known that Smith was a habitual drunkard,
and then people began to think, as they are apt to, that he had
never been anything else. But the settlement of Smith's Pocket,
like that of most discoveries, was happily not dependent on the
fortune of its pioneer, and other parties projected tunnels and
found pockets. So Smith's Pocket became a settlement, with its two
fancy stores, its two hotels, its one express office, and its two
first families. Occasionally its one long straggling street was
overawed by the assumption of the latest San Francisco fashions,
imported per express, exclusively to the first families; making
outraged Nature, in the ragged outline of her furrowed surface,
look still more homely, and putting personal insult on that greater
portion of the population to whom the Sabbath, with a change of
linen, brought merely the necessity of cleanliness without the
luxury of adornment. Then there was a Methodist Church, and hard
by a Monte Bank, and a little beyond, on the mountainside, a
graveyard; and then a little schoolhouse.

"The Master," as he was known to his little flock, sat alone one
night in the schoolhouse, with some open copybooks before him,
carefully making those bold and full characters which are supposed
to combine the extremes of chirographical and moral excellence, and
had got as far as "Riches are deceitful," and was elaborating the
noun with an insincerity of flourish that was quite in the spirit
of his text, when he heard a gentle tapping. The woodpeckers had
been busy about the roof during the day, and the noise did not
disturb his work. But the opening of the door, and the tapping
continuing from the inside, caused him to look up. He was slightly
startled by the figure of a young girl, dirty and shabbily clad.
Still, her great black eyes, her coarse, uncombed, lusterless black
hair falling over her sunburned face, her red arms and feet
streaked with the red soil, were all familiar to him. It was
Melissa Smith--Smith's motherless child.

"What can she want here?" thought the master. Everybody knew
"Mliss," as she was called, throughout the length and height of Red
Mountain. Everybody knew her as an incorrigible girl. Her fierce,
ungovernable disposition, her mad freaks and lawless character,
were in their way as proverbial as the story of her father's
weaknesses, and as philosophically accepted by the townsfolk. She
wrangled with and fought the schoolboys with keener invective and
quite as powerful arm. She followed the trails with a woodman's
craft, and the master had met her before, miles away, shoeless,
stockingless, and bareheaded on the mountain road. The miners'
camps along the stream supplied her with subsistence during these
voluntary pilgrimages, in freely offered alms. Not but that a
larger protection had been previously extended to Mliss. The Rev.
Joshua McSnagley, "stated" preacher, had placed her in the hotel as
servant, by way of preliminary refinement, and had introduced her
to his scholars at Sunday school. But she threw plates
occasionally at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheap
witticisms of the guests, and created in the Sabbath school a
sensation that was so inimical to the orthodox dullness and
placidity of that institution that, with a decent regard for the
starched frocks and unblemished morals of the two pink-and-white-
faced children of the first families, the reverend gentleman had
her ignominiously expelled. Such were the antecedents, and such
the character of Mliss as she stood before the master. It was
shown in the ragged dress, the unkempt hair, and bleeding feet, and
asked his pity. It flashed from her black, fearless eyes, and
commanded his respect.

"I come here tonight," she said rapidly and boldly, keeping her
hard glance on his, "because I knew you was alone. I wouldn't come
here when them gals was here. I hate 'em and they hates me.
That's why. You keep school, don't you? I want to be teached!"

If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncomeliness of her tangled
hair and dirty face she had added the humility of tears, the master
would have extended to her the usual moiety of pity, and nothing
more. But with the natural, though illogical, instincts of his
species, her boldness awakened in him something of that respect
which all original natures pay unconsciously to one another in any
grade. And he gazed at her the more fixedly as she went on still
rapidly, her hand on that door latch and her eyes on his:

"My name's Mliss--Mliss Smith! You can bet your life on that. My
father's Old Smith--Old Bummer Smith--that's what's the matter with
him. Mliss Smith--and I'm coming to school!"

"Well?" said the master.

Accustomed to be thwarted and opposed, often wantonly and cruelly,
for no other purpose than to excite the violent impulses of her
nature, the master's phlegm evidently took her by surprise. She
stopped; she began to twist a lock of her hair between her fingers;
and the rigid line of upper lip, drawn over the wicked little
teeth, relaxed and quivered slightly. Then her eyes dropped, and
something like a blush struggled up to her cheek and tried to
assert itself through the splashes of redder soil, and the sunburn
of years. Suddenly she threw herself forward, calling on God to
strike her dead, and fell quite weak and helpless, with her face on
the master's desk, crying and sobbing as if her heart would break.

The master lifted her gently and waited for the paroxysm to pass.
When, with face still averted, she was repeating between her sobs
the MEA CULPA of childish penitence--that "she'd be good, she
didn't mean to," etc., it came to him to ask her why she had left
Sabbath school.

Why had she left the Sabbath school?--why? Oh, yes. What did he
(McSnagley) want to tell her she was wicked for? What did he tell
her that God hated her for? If God hated her, what did she want to
go to Sabbath school for? SHE didn't want to be "beholden" to
anybody who hated her.

Had she told McSnagley this?

Yes, she had.

The master laughed. It was a hearty laugh, and echoed so oddly in
the little schoolhouse, and seemed so inconsistent and discordant
with the sighing of the pines without, that he shortly corrected
himself with a sigh. The sigh was quite as sincere in its way,
however, and after a moment of serious silence he asked about her
father.

Her father? What father? Whose father? What had he ever done for
her? Why did the girls hate her? Come now! what made the folks
say, "Old Bummer Smith's Mliss!" when she passed? Yes; oh yes.
She wished he was dead--she was dead--everybody was dead; and her
sobs broke forth anew.

The master then, leaning over her, told her as well as he could
what you or I might have said after hearing such unnatural theories
from childish lips; only bearing in mind perhaps better than you or
I the unnatural facts of her ragged dress, her bleeding feet, and
the omnipresent shadow of her drunken father. Then, raising her to
her feet, he wrapped his shawl around her, and, bidding her come
early in the morning, he walked with her down the road. There he
bade her "good night." The moon shone brightly on the narrow path
before them. He stood and watched the bent little figure as it
staggered down the road, and waited until it had passed the little
graveyard and reached the curve of the hill, where it turned and
stood for a moment, a mere atom of suffering outlined against the
far-off patient stars. Then he went back to his work. But the
lines of the copybook thereafter faded into long parallels of
never-ending road, over which childish figures seemed to pass
sobbing and crying into the night. Then, the little schoolhouse
seeming lonelier than before, he shut the door and went home.

The next morning Mliss came to school. Her face had been washed,
and her coarse black hair bore evidence of recent struggles with
the comb, in which both had evidently suffered. The old defiant
look shone occasionally in her eyes, but her manner was tamer and
more subdued. Then began a series of little trials and self-
sacrifices, in which master and pupil bore an equal part, and which
increased the confidence and sympathy between them. Although
obedient under the master's eye, at times during recess, if
thwarted or stung by a fancied slight, Mliss would rage in
ungovernable fury, and many a palpitating young savage, finding
himself matched with his own weapons of torment, would seek the
master with torn jacket and scratched face and complaints of the
dreadful Mliss. There was a serious division among the townspeople
on the subject, some threatening to withdraw their children from
such evil companionship, and others as warmly upholding the course
of the master in his work of reclamation. Meanwhile, with a steady
persistence that seemed quite astonishing to him on looking back
afterward, the master drew Mliss gradually out of the shadow of her
past life, as though it were but her natural progress down the
narrow path on which he had set her feet the moonlit night of their
first meeting. Remembering the experience of the evangelical
McSnagley, he carefully avoided that Rock of Ages on which that
unskillful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith. But if, in the
course of her reading, she chanced to stumble upon those few words
which have lifted such as she above the level of the older, the
wiser, and the more prudent--if she learned something of a faith
that is symbolized by suffering, and the old light softened in her
eyes, it did not take the shape of a lesson. A few of the plainer
people had made up a little sum by which the ragged Mliss was
enabled to assume the garments of respect and civilization; and
often a rough shake of the hand, and words of homely commendation
from a red-shirted and burly figure, sent a glow to the cheek of
the young master, and set him to thinking if it was altogether
deserved.

Three months had passed from the time of their first meeting, and
the master was sitting late one evening over the moral and
sententious copies, when there came a tap at the door and again
Mliss stood before him. She was neatly clad and clean-faced, and
there was nothing perhaps but the long black hair and bright black
eyes to remind him of his former apparition. "Are you busy?" she
asked. "Can you come with me?"--and on his signifying his
readiness, in her old willful way she said, "Come, then, quick!"

They passed out of the door together and into the dark road. As
they entered the town the master asked her whither she was going.
She replied, "To see my father."

It was the first time he had heard her call him by that filial
title, or indeed anything more than "Old Smith" or the "Old Man."
It was the first time in three months that she had spoken of him at
all, and the master knew she had kept resolutely aloof from him
since her great change. Satisfied from her manner that it was
fruitless to question her purpose, he passively followed. In out-
of-the-way places, low groggeries, restaurants, and saloons; in
gambling hells and dance houses, the master, preceded by Mliss,
came and went. In the reeking smoke and blasphemous outcries of
low dens, the child, holding the master's hand, stood and anxiously
gazed, seemingly unconscious of all in the one absorbing nature of
her pursuit. Some of the revelers, recognizing Mliss, called to
the child to sing and dance for them, and would have forced liquor
upon her but for the interference of the master. Others,
recognizing him mutely, made way for them to pass. So an hour
slipped by. Then the child whispered in his ear that there was a
cabin on the other side of the creek crossed by the long flume,
where she thought he still might be. Thither they crossed--a
toilsome half-hour's walk--but in vain. They were returning by the
ditch at the abutment of the flume, gazing at the lights of the
town on the opposite bank, when, suddenly, sharply, a quick report
rang out on the clear night air. The echoes caught it, and carried
it round and round Red Mountain, and set the dogs to barking all
along the streams. Lights seemed to dance and move quickly on the
outskirts of the town for a few moments, the stream rippled quite
audibly beside them, a few stones loosened themselves from the
hillside and splashed into the stream, a heavy wind seemed to surge
the branches of the funereal pines, and then the silence seemed to
fall thicker, heavier, and deadlier. The master turned toward
Mliss with an unconscious gesture of protection, but the child had
gone. Oppressed by a strange fear, he ran quickly down the trail
to the river's bed, and, jumping from boulder to boulder, reached
the base of Red Mountain and the outskirts of the village. Midway
of the crossing he looked up and held his breath in awe. For high
above him on the narrow flume he saw the fluttering little figure
of his late companion crossing swiftly in the darkness.

He climbed the bank, and, guided by a few lights moving about a
central point on the mountain, soon found himself breathless among
a crowd of awe-stricken and sorrowful men. Out from among them the
child appeared, and, taking the master's hand, led him silently
before what seemed a ragged hole in the mountain. Her face was
quite white, but her excited manner gone, and her look that of one
to whom some long-expected event had at last happened--an
expression that to the master in his bewilderment seemed almost
like relief. The walls of the cavern were partly propped by
decaying timbers. The child pointed to what appeared to be some
ragged, castoff clothes left in the hole by the late occupant. The
master approached nearer with his flaming dip, and bent over them.
It was Smith, already cold, with a pistol in his hand and a bullet
in his heart, lying beside his empty pocket.

CHAPTER II

The opinion which McSnagley expressed in reference to a "change of
heart" supposed to be experienced by Mliss was more forcibly
described in the gulches and tunnels. It was thought there that
Mliss had "struck a good lead." So when there was a new grave
added to the little enclosure, and at the expense of the master a
little board and inscription put above it, the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER
came out quite handsomely, and did the fair thing to the memory of
one of "our oldest Pioneers," alluding gracefully to that "bane of
noble intellects," and otherwise genteelly shelving our dear
brother with the past. "He leaves an only child to mourn his
loss," says the BANNER, "who is now an exemplary scholar, thanks to
the efforts of the Rev. Mr. McSnagley." The Rev. McSnagley, in
fact, made a strong point of Mliss's conversion, and, indirectly
attributing to the unfortunate child the suicide of her father,
made affecting allusions in Sunday school to the beneficial effects
of the "silent tomb," and in this cheerful contemplation drove most
of the children into speechless horror, and caused the pink-and-
white scions of the first families to howl dismally and refuse to
be comforted.

The long dry summer came. As each fierce day burned itself out in
little whiffs of pearl-gray smoke on the mountain summits, and the
upspringing breeze scattered its red embers over the landscape, the
green wave which in early spring upheaved above Smith's grave grew
sere and dry and hard. In those days the master, strolling in the
little churchyard of a Sabbath afternoon, was sometimes surprised
to find a few wild flowers plucked from the damp pine forests
scattered there, and oftener rude wreaths hung upon the little pine
cross. Most of these wreaths were formed of a sweet-scented grass,
which the children loved to keep in their desks, intertwined with
the plumes of the buckeye, the syringa, and the wood anemone, and
here and there the master noticed the dark-blue cowl of the
monkshood, or deadly aconite. There was something in the odd
association of this noxious plant with these memorials which
occasioned a painful sensation to the master deeper than his
esthetic sense. One day, during a long walk, in crossing a wooded
ridge he came upon Mliss in the heart of the forest, perched upon a
prostrate pine on a fantastic throne formed by the hanging plumes
of lifeless branches, her lap full of grasses and pine burrs, and
crooning to herself one of the Negro melodies of her younger life.
Recognizing him at a distance, she made room for him on her
elevated throne, and with a grave assumption of hospitality and
patronage that would have been ridiculous had it not been so
terribly earnest, she fed him with pine nuts and crab apples. The
master took that opportunity to point out to her the noxious and
deadly qualities of the monkshood, whose dark blossoms he saw in
her lap, and extorted from her a promise not to meddle with it as
long as she remained his pupil. This done--as the master had
tested her integrity before--he rested satisfied, and the strange
feeling which had overcome him on seeing them died away.

Of the homes that were offered Mliss when her conversion became
known, the master preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and
kindhearted specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her
maidenhood as the "Per-rairie Rose." Being one of those who
contend resolutely against their own natures, Mrs. Morpher, by a
long series of self-sacrifices and struggles, had at last
subjugated her naturally careless disposition to principles of
"order," which she considered, in common with Mr. Pope, as
"Heaven's first law." But she could not entirely govern the orbits
of her satellites, however regular her own movements, and even her
own "Jeemes" sometimes collided with her. Again her old nature
asserted itself in her children. Lycurgus dipped into the cupboard
"between meals," and Aristides came home from school without shoes,
leaving those important articles on the threshold, for the delight
of a barefooted walk down the ditches. Octavia and Cassandra were
"keerless" of their clothes. So with but one exception, however
much the "Prairie Rose" might have trimmed and pruned and trained
her own matured luxuriance, the little shoots came up defiantly
wild and straggling. That one exception was Clytemnestra Morpher,
aged fifteen. She was the realization of her mother's immaculate
conception--neat, orderly, and dull.

It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher to imagine that "Clytie"
was a consolation and model for Mliss. Following this fallacy,
Mrs. Morpher threw Clytie at the head of Mliss when she was "bad,"
and set her up before the child for adoration in her penitential
moments. It was not, therefore, surprising to the master to hear
that Clytie was coming to school, obviously as a favor to the
master and as an example for Mliss and others. For "Clytie" was
quite a young lady. Inheriting her mother's physical
peculiarities, and in obedience to the climatic laws of the Red
Mountain region, she was an early bloomer. The youth of Smith's
Pocket, to whom this kind of flower was rare, sighed for her in
April and languished in May. Enamored swains haunted the
schoolhouse at the hour of dismissal. A few were jealous of the
master.

Perhaps it was this latter circumstance that opened the master's
eyes to another. He could not help noticing that Clytie was
romantic; that in school she required a great deal of attention;
that her pens were uniformly bad and wanted fixing; that she
usually accompanied the request with a certain expectation in her
eye that was somewhat disproportionate to the quality of service
she verbally required; that she sometimes allowed the curves of a
round, plump white arm to rest on his when he was writing her
copies; that she always blushed and flung back her blond curls when
she did so. I don't remember whether I have stated that the master
was a young man--it's of little consequence, however; he had been
severely educated in the school in which Clytie was taking her
first lesson, and, on the whole, withstood the flexible curves and
factitious glance like the fine young Spartan that he was. Perhaps
an insufficient quality of food may have tended to this asceticism.
He generally avoided Clytie; but one evening, when she returned to
the schoolhouse after something she had forgotten, and did not find
it until the master walked home with her, I hear that he endeavored
to make himself particularly agreeable --partly from the fact, I
imagine, that his conduct was adding gall and bitterness to the
already overcharged hearts of Clytemnestra's admirers.

The morning after this affecting episode Mliss did not come to
school. Noon came, but not Mliss. Questioning Clytie on the
subject, it appeared that they had left the school together, but
the willful Mliss had taken another road. The afternoon brought
her not. In the evening he called on Mrs. Morpher, whose motherly
heart was really alarmed. Mr. Morpher had spent all day in search
of her, without discovering a trace that might lead to her
discovery. Aristides was summoned as a probable accomplice, but
that equitable infant succeeded in impressing the household with
his innocence. Mrs. Morpher entertained a vivid impression that
the child would yet be found drowned in a ditch, or, what was
almost as terrible, muddied and soiled beyond the redemption of
soap and water. Sick at heart, the master returned to the
schoolhouse. As he lit his lamp and seated himself at his desk, he
found a note lying before him addressed to himself, in Mliss's
handwriting. It seemed to be written on a leaf torn from some old
memorandum book, and, to prevent sacrilegious trifling, had been
sealed with six broken wafers. Opening it almost tenderly, the
master read as follows:

RESPECTED SIR--When you read this, I am run away. Never to come
back. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. You can give my beeds to Mary
Jennings, and my Amerika's Pride [a highly colored lithograph from
a tobacco-box] to Sally Flanders. But don't you give anything to
Clytie Morpher. Don't you dare to. Do you know what my opinion is
of her, it is this, she is perfekly disgustin. That is all and no
more at present from

Yours respectfully,

MELISSA SMITH.

The master sat pondering on this strange epistle till the moon
lifted its bright face above the distant hills, and illuminated the
trail that led to the schoolhouse, beaten quite hard with the
coming and going of little feet. Then, more satisfied in mind, he
tore the missive into fragments and scattered them along the road.

At sunrise the next morning he was picking his way through the
palmlike fern and thick underbrush of the pine forest, starting the
hare from its form, and awakening a querulous protest from a few
dissipated crows, who had evidently been making a night of it, and
so came to the wooded ridge where he had once found Mliss. There
he found the prostrate pine and tasseled branches, but the throne
was vacant. As he drew nearer, what might have been some
frightened animal started through the crackling limbs. It ran up
the tossed arms of the fallen monarch and sheltered itself in some
friendly foliage. The master, reaching the old seat, found the
nest still warm; looking up in the intertwining branches, he met
the black eyes of the errant Mliss. They gazed at each other
without speaking. She was first to break the silence.

"What do you want?" she asked curtly.

The master had decided on a course of action. "I want some crab
apples," he said humbly.

"Sha'n't have 'em! go away. Why don't you get 'em of
Clytemnerestera?" (It seemed to be a relief to Mliss to express
her contempt in additional syllables to that classical young
woman's already long-drawn title.) "O you wicked thing!"

"I am hungry, Lissy. I have eaten nothing since dinner yesterday.
I am famished!" and the young man in a state of remarkable
exhaustion leaned against the tree.

Melissa's heart was touched. In the bitter days of her gypsy life
she had known the sensation he so artfully simulated. Overcome by
his heartbroken tone, but not entirely divested of suspicion, she
said:

"Dig under the tree near the roots, and you'll find lots; but mind
you don't tell," for Mliss had HER hoards as well as the rats and
squirrels.

But the master, of course, was unable to find them; the effects of
hunger probably blinding his senses. Mliss grew uneasy. At length
she peered at him through the leaves in an elfish way, and
questioned:

"If I come down and give you some, you'll promise you won't touch
me?"

The master promised.

"Hope you'll die if you do!"

The master accepted instant dissolution as a forfeit. Mliss slid
down the tree. For a few moments nothing transpired but the
munching of the pine nuts. "Do you feel better?" she asked, with
some solicitude. The master confessed to a recuperated feeling,
and then, gravely thanking her, proceeded to retrace his steps. As
he expected, he had not gone far before she called him. He turned.
She was standing there quite white, with tears in her widely opened
orbs. The master felt that the right moment had come. Going up to
her, he took both her hands, and looking in her tearful eyes, said,
gravely, "Lissy, do you remember the first evening you came to see
me?"

Lissy remembered.

"You asked me if you might come to school, for you wanted to learn
something and be better, and I said--"

"Come," responded the child, promptly.

"What would YOU say if the master now came to you and said that he
was lonely without his little scholar, and that he wanted her to
come and teach him to be better?"

The child hung her head for a few moments in silence. The master
waited patiently. Tempted by the quiet, a hare ran close to the
couple, and raising her bright eyes and velvet forepaws, sat and
gazed at them. A squirrel ran halfway down the furrowed bark of
the fallen tree, and there stopped.

"We are waiting, Lissy," said the master, in a whisper, and the
child smiled. Stirred by a passing breeze, the treetops rocked,
and a long pencil of light stole through their interlaced boughs
full on the doubting face and irresolute little figure. Suddenly
she took the master's hand in her quick way. What she said was
scarcely audible, but the master, putting the black hair back from
her forehead, kissed her; and so, hand in hand, they passed out of
the damp aisles and forest odors into the open sunlit road.

CHAPTER III

Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with other scholars,
Mliss still retained an offensive attitude in regard to
Clytemnestra. Perhaps the jealous element was not entirely lulled
in her passionate little breast. Perhaps it was only that the
round curves and plump outline offered more extended pinching
surface. But while such ebullitions were under the master's
control, her enmity occasionally took a new and irrepressible form.

The master in his first estimate of the child's character could not
conceive that she had ever possessed a doll. But the master, like
many other professed readers of character, was safer in a
posteriori than a priori reasoning. Mliss had a doll, but then it
was emphatically Mliss's doll--a smaller copy of herself. Its
unhappy existence had been a secret discovered accidentally by Mrs.
Morpher. It had been the old-time companion of Mliss's wanderings,
and bore evident marks of suffering. Its original complexion was
long since washed away by the weather and anointed by the slime of
ditches. It looked very much as Mliss had in days past. Its one
gown of faded stuff was dirty and ragged, as hers had been. Mliss
had never been known to apply to it any childish term of
endearment. She never exhibited it in the presence of other
children. It was put severely to bed in a hollow tree near the
schoolhouse, and only allowed exercise during Mliss's rambles.
Fulfilling a stern duty to her doll, as she would to herself, it
knew no luxuries.

Now Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable impulse, bought another
doll and gave it to Mliss. The child received it gravely and
curiously. The master on looking at it one day fancied he saw a
slight resemblance in its round red cheeks and mild blue eyes to
Clytemnestra. It became evident before long that Mliss had also
noticed the same resemblance. Accordingly she hammered its waxen
head on the rocks when she was alone, and sometimes dragged it with
a string round its neck to and from school. At other times,
setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion of its patient and
inoffensive body. Whether this was done in revenge of what she
considered a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie's excellences
upon her, or whether she had an intuitive appreciation of the rites
of certain other heathens, and, indulging in that "fetish"
ceremony, imagined that the original of her wax model would pine
away and finally die, is a metaphysical question I shall not now
consider.

In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could not help
noticing in her different tasks the working of a quick, restless,
and vigorous perception. She knew neither the hesitancy nor the
doubts of childhood. Her answers in class were always slightly
dashed with audacity. Of course she was not infallible. But her
courage and daring in passing beyond her own depth and that of the
floundering little swimmers around her, in their minds outweighed
all errors of judgment. Children are not better than grown people
in this respect, I fancy; and whenever the little red hand flashed
above her desk, there was a wondering silence, and even the master
was sometimes oppressed with a doubt of his own experience and
judgment.

Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused and
entertained his fancy began to afflict him with grave doubts. He
could not but see that Mliss was revengeful, irreverent, and
willful. That there was but one better quality which pertained to
her semisavage disposition--the faculty of physical fortitude and
self-sacrifice, and another, though not always an attribute of the
noble savage--Truth. Mliss was both fearless and sincere; perhaps
in such a character the adjectives were synonymous.

The master had been doing some hard thinking on this subject, and
had arrived at that conclusion quite common to all who think
sincerely, that he was generally the slave of his own prejudices,
when he determined to call on the Rev. McSnagley for advice. This
decision was somewhat humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley
were not friends. But he thought of Mliss, and the evening of
their first meeting; and perhaps with a pardonable superstition
that it was not chance alone that had guided her willful feet to
the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a complacent consciousness of the
rare magnanimity of the act, he choked back his dislike and went to
McSnagley.

The reverend gentleman was glad to see him. Moreover, he observed
that the master was looking "peartish," and hoped he had got over
the "neuralgy" and "rheumatiz." He himself had been troubled with
a dumb "ager" since last conference. But he had learned to "rastle
and pray."

Pausing a moment to enable the master to write his certain method
of curing the dumb "ager" upon the book and volume of his brain,
Mr. McSnagley proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher. "She is
an adornment to ChrisTEWanity, and has a likely growin' young
family," added Mr. McSnagley; "and there's that mannerly young gal-
-so well behaved--Miss Clytie." In fact, Clytie's perfections
seemed to affect him to such an extent that he dwelt for several
minutes upon them. The master was doubly embarrassed. In the
first place, there was an enforced contrast with poor Mliss in all
this praise of Clytie. Secondly, there was something unpleasantly
confidential in his tone of speaking of Mrs. Morpher's earliest
born. So that the master, after a few futile efforts to say
something natural, found it convenient to recall another
engagement, and left without asking the information required, but
in his after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr.
McSnagley the full benefit of having refused it.

Perhaps this rebuff placed the master and pupil once more in the
close communion of old. The child seemed to notice the change in
the master's manner, which had of late been constrained, and in one
of their long postprandial walks she stopped suddenly, and mounting
a stump, looked full in his face with big, searching eyes. "You
ain't mad?" said she, with an interrogative shake of the black
braids. "No." "Nor bothered?" "No." "Nor hungry?" (Hunger was
to Mliss a sickness that might attack a person at any moment.)
"No." "Nor thinking of her?" "Of whom, Lissy?" "That white
girl." (This was the latest epithet invented by Mliss, who was a
very dark brunette, to express Clytemnestra.) "No." "Upon your
word?" (A substitute for "Hope you'll die!" proposed by the
master.) "Yes." "And sacred honor?" "Yes." Then Mliss gave him
a fierce little kiss, and, hopping down, fluttered off. For two or
three days after that she condescended to appear more like other
children, and be, as she expressed it, "good."

Two years had passed since the master's advent at Smith's Pocket,
and as his salary was not large, and the prospects of Smith's
Pocket eventually becoming the capital of the State not entirely
definite, he contemplated a change. He had informed the school
trustees privately of his intentions, but educated young men of
unblemished moral character being scarce at that time, he consented
to continue his school term through the winter to early spring.
None else knew of his intention except his one friend, a Dr.
Duchesne, a young Creole physician known to the people of Wingdam
as "Duchesny." He never mentioned it to Mrs. Morpher, Clytie, or
any of his scholars. His reticence was partly the result of a
constitutional indisposition to fuss, partly a desire to be spared
the questions and surmises of vulgar curiosity, and partly that he
never really believed he was going to do anything before it was
done.

He did not like to think of Mliss. It was a selfish instinct,
perhaps, which made him try to fancy his feeling for the child was
foolish, romantic, and unpractical. He even tried to imagine that
she would do better under the control of an older and sterner
teacher. Then she was nearly eleven, and in a few years, by the
rules of Red Mountain, would be a woman. He had done his duty.
After Smith's death he addressed letters to Smith's relatives, and
received one answer from a sister of Melissa's mother. Thanking
the master, she stated her intention of leaving the Atlantic States
for California with her husband in a few months. This was a slight
superstructure for the airy castle which the master pictured for
Mliss's home, but it was easy to fancy that some loving,
sympathetic woman, with the claims of kindred, might better guide
her wayward nature. Yet, when the master had read the letter,
Mliss listened to it carelessly, received it submissively, and
afterward cut figures out of it with her scissors, supposed to
represent Clytemnestra, labeled "the white girl," to prevent
mistakes, and impaled them upon the outer walls of the schoolhouse.

When the summer was about spent, and the last harvest had been
gathered in the valleys, the master bethought him of gathering in a
few ripened shoots of the young idea, and of having his Harvest
Home, or Examination. So the savants and professionals of Smith's
Pocket were gathered to witness that time-honored custom of placing
timid children in a constrained positions and bullying them as in a
witness box. As usual in such cases, the most audacious and self-
possessed were the lucky recipients of the honors. The reader will
imagine that in the present instance Mliss and Clytie were
preeminent, and divided public attention; Mliss with her clearness
of material perception and self-reliance, Clytie with her placid
self-esteem and saintlike correctness of deportment. The other
little ones were timid and blundering. Mliss's readiness and
brilliancy, of course, captivated the greatest number and provoked
the greatest applause. Mliss's antecedents had unconsciously
awakened the strongest sympathies of a class whose athletic forms
were ranged against the walls, or whose handsome bearded faces
looked in at the windows. But Mliss's popularity was overthrown by
an unexpected circumstance.

McSnagley had invited himself, and had been going through the
pleasing entertainment of frightening the more timid pupils by the
vaguest and most ambiguous questions delivered in an impressive
funereal tone; and Mliss had soared into astronomy, and was
tracking the course of our spotted ball through space, and keeping
time with the music of the spheres, and defining the tethered
orbits of the planets, when McSnagley impressively arose.
"Meelissy! ye were speaking of the revolutions of this yere yearth
and the move-MENTS of the sun, and I think ye said it had been a
doing of it since the creashun, eh?" Mliss nodded a scornful
affirmative. "Well, war that the truth?" said McSnagley, folding
his arms. "Yes," said Mliss, shutting up her little red lips
tightly. The handsome outlines at the windows peered further in
the schoolroom, and a saintly Raphael face, with blond beard and
soft blue eyes, belonging to the biggest scamp in the diggings,
turned toward the child and whispered, "Stick to it, Mliss!" The
reverend gentleman heaved a deep sigh, and cast a compassionate
glance at the master, then at the children, and then rested his
look on Clytie. That young woman softly elevated her round, white
arm. Its seductive curves were enhanced by a gorgeous and massive
specimen bracelet, the gift of one of her humblest worshipers, worn
in honor of the occasion. There was a momentary silence. Clytie's
round cheeks were very pink and soft. Clytie's big eyes were very
bright and blue. Clytie's low-necked white book muslin rested
softly on Clytie's white, plump shoulders. Clytie looked at the
master, and the master nodded. Then Clytie spoke softly:

"Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed him!"
There was a low hum of applause in the schoolroom, a triumphant
expression on McSnagley's face, a grave shadow on the master's, and
a comical look of disappointment reflected from the windows. Mliss
skimmed rapidly over her astronomy, and then shut the book with a
loud snap. A groan burst from McSnagley, an expression of
astonishment from the schoolroom, a yell from the windows, as Mliss
brought her red fist down on the desk, with the emphatic
declaration:

"It's a damn lie. I don't believe it!"

CHAPTER IV

The long wet season had drawn near its close. Signs of spring were
visible in the swelling buds and rushing torrents. The pine
forests exhaled the fresher spicery. The azaleas were already
budding, the ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery for spring.
On the green upland which climbed Red Mountain at its southern
aspect the long spike of the monkshood shot up from its broad-
leaved stool, and once more shook its dark-blue bells. Again the
billow above Smith's grave was soft and green, its crest just
tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups. The little
graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year, and the
mounds were placed two by two by the little paling until they
reached Smith's grave, and there there was but one. General
superstition had shunned it, and the plot beside Smith was vacant.

There had been several placards posted about the town, intimating
that, at a certain period, a celebrated dramatic company would
perform, for a few days, a series of "side-splitting" and
"screaming farces"; that, alternating pleasantly with this, there
would be some melodrama and a grand divertisement which would
include singing, dancing, etc. These announcements occasioned a
great fluttering among the little folk, and were the theme of much
excitement and great speculation among the master's scholars. The
master had promised Mliss, to whom this sort of thing was sacred
and rare, that she should go, and on that momentous evening the
master and Mliss "assisted."

The performance was the prevalent style of heavy mediocrity; the
melodrama was not bad enough to laugh at nor good enough to excite.
But the master, turning wearily to the child, was astonished and
felt something like self-accusation in noticing the peculiar effect
upon her excitable nature. The red blood flushed in her cheeks at
each stroke of her panting little heart. Her small passionate lips
were slightly parted to give vent to her hurried breath. Her
widely opened lids threw up and arched her black eyebrows. She did
not laugh at the dismal comicalities of the funny man, for Mliss
seldom laughed. Nor was she discreetly affected to the delicate
extremes of the corner of a white handkerchief, as was the tender-
hearted "Clytie," who was talking with her "feller" and ogling the
master at the same moment. But when the performance was over, and
the green curtain fell on the little stage, Mliss drew a long deep
breath, and turned to the master's grave face with a half-
apologetic smile and wearied gesture. Then she said, "Now take me
home!" and dropped the lids of her black eyes, as if to dwell once
more in fancy on the mimic stage.

On their way to Mrs. Morpher's the master thought proper to
ridicule the whole performance. Now he shouldn't wonder if Mliss
thought that the young lady who acted so beautifully was really in
earnest, and in love with the gentleman who wore such fine clothes.
Well, if she were in love with him it was a very unfortunate thing!
"Why?" said Mliss, with an upward sweep of the drooping lid. "Oh!
well, he couldn't support his wife at his present salary, and pay
so much a week for his fine clothes, and then they wouldn't receive
as much wages if they were married as if they were merely lovers--
that is," added the master, "if they are not already married to
somebody else; but I think the husband of the pretty young countess
takes the tickets at the door, or pulls up the curtain, or snuffs
the candles, or does something equally refined and elegant. As to
the young man with nice clothes, which are really nice now, and
must cost at least two and a half or three dollars, not to speak of
that mantle of red drugget which I happen to know the price of, for
I bought some of it for my room once--as to this young man, Lissy,
he is a pretty good fellow, and if he does drink occasionally, I
don't think people ought to take advantage of it and give him black
eyes and throw him in the mud. Do you? I am sure he might owe me
two dollars and a half a long time, before I would throw it up in
his face, as the fellow did the other night at Wingdam."

Mliss had taken his hand in both of hers and was trying to look in
his eyes, which the young man kept as resolutely averted. Mliss
had a faint idea of irony, indulging herself sometimes in a species
of sardonic humor, which was equally visible in her actions and her
speech. But the young man continued in this strain until they had
reached Mrs. Morpher's, and he had deposited Mliss in her maternal
charge. Waiving the invitation of Mrs. Morpher to refreshment and
rest, and shading his eyes with his hand to keep out the blue-eyed
Clytemnestra's siren glances, he excused himself, and went home.

For two or three days after the advent of the dramatic company,
Mliss was late at school, and the master's usual Friday afternoon
ramble was for once omitted, owing to the absence of his
trustworthy guide. As he was putting away his books and preparing
to leave the schoolhouse, a small voice piped at his side, "Please,
sir?" The master turned and there stood Aristides Morpher.

"Well, my little man," said the master, impatiently, "what is it?
quick!"

"Please, sir, me and 'Kerg' thinks that Mliss is going to run away
agin."

"What's that, sir?" said the master, with that unjust testiness
with which we always receive disagreeable news.

"Why, sir, she don't stay home any more, and 'Kerg' and me see her
talking with one of those actor fellers, and she's with him now;
and please, sir, yesterday she told 'Kerg' and me she could make a
speech as well as Miss Cellerstina Montmoressy, and she spouted
right off by heart," and the little fellow paused in a collapsed
condition.

"What actor?" asked the master.

"Him as wears the shiny hat. And hair. And gold pin. And gold
chain," said the just Aristides, putting periods for commas to eke
out his breath.

The master put on his gloves and hat, feeling an unpleasant
tightness in his chest and thorax, and walked out in the road.
Aristides trotted along by his side, endeavoring to keep pace with
his short legs to the master's strides, when the master stopped
suddenly, and Aristides bumped up against him. "Where were they
talking?" asked the master, as if continuing the conversation.

"At the Arcade," said Aristides.

When they reached the main street the master paused. "Run down
home," said he to the boy. "If Mliss is there, come to the Arcade
and tell me. If she isn't there, stay home; run!" And off trotted
the short-legged Aristides.

The Arcade was just across the way--a long, rambling building
containing a barroom, billiard room, and restaurant. As the young
man crossed the plaza he noticed that two or three of the passers-
by turned and looked after him. He looked at his clothes, took out
his handkerchief, and wiped his face before he entered the barroom.
It contained the usual number of loungers, who stared at him as he
entered. One of them looked at him so fixedly and with such a
strange expression that the master stopped and looked again, and
then saw it was only his own reflection in a large mirror. This
made the master think that perhaps he was a little excited, and so
he took up a copy of the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER from one of the
tables, and tried to recover his composure by reading the column of
advertisements.

He then walked through the barroom, through the restaurant, and
into the billiard room. The child was not there. In the latter
apartment a person was standing by one of the tables with a broad-
brimmed glazed hat on his head. The master recognized him as the
agent of the dramatic company; he had taken a dislike to him at
their first meeting, from the peculiar fashion of wearing his beard
and hair. Satisfied that the object of his search was not there,
he turned to the man with a glazed hat. He had noticed the master,
but tried that common trick of unconsciousness in which vulgar
natures always fail. Balancing a billiard cue in his hand, he
pretended to play with a ball in the center of the table. The
master stood opposite to him until he raised his eyes; when their
glances met, the master walked up to him.

He had intended to avoid a scene or quarrel, but when he began to
speak, something kept rising in his throat and retarded his
utterance, and his own voice frightened him, it sounded so distant,
low, and resonant. "I understand," he began, "that Melissa Smith,
an orphan, and one of my scholars, has talked with you about
adopting your profession. Is that so?"

The man with the glazed hat leaned over the table and made an
imaginary shot that sent the ball spinning round the cushions.
Then, walking round the table, he recovered the ball and placed it
upon the spot. This duty discharged, getting ready for another
shot, he said:

"S'pose she has?"

The master choked up again, but, squeezing the cushion of the table
in his gloved hand, he went on:

"If you are a gentleman, I have only to tell you that I am her
guardian, and responsible for her career. You know as well as I do
the kind of life you offer her. As you may learn of anyone here, I
have already brought her out of an existence worse than death--out
of the streets and the contamination of vice. I am trying to do so
again. Let us talk like men. She has neither father, mother,
sister, or brother. Are you seeking to give her an equivalent for
these?"

The man with the glazed hat examined the point of his cue, and then
looked around for somebody to enjoy the joke with him.

"I know that she is a strange, willful girl," continued the master,
"but she is better than she was. I believe that I have some
influence over her still. I beg and hope, therefore, that you will
take no further steps in this matter, but as a man, as a gentleman,
leave her to me. I am willing--" But here something rose again in
the master's throat, and the sentence remained unfinished.

The man with the glazed hat, mistaking the master's silence, raised
his head with a coarse, brutal laugh, and said in a loud voice:

"Want her yourself, do you? That cock won't fight here, young
man!"

The insult was more in the tone than in the words, more in the
glance than tone, and more in the man's instinctive nature than all
these. The best appreciable rhetoric to this kind of animal is a
blow. The master felt this, and, with his pent-up, nervous energy
finding expression in the one act, he struck the brute full in his
grinning face. The blow sent the glazed hat one way and the cue
another, and tore the glove and skin from the master's hand from
knuckle to joint. It opened up the corners of the fellow's mouth,
and spoilt the peculiar shape of his beard for some time to come.

There was a shout, an imprecation, a scuffle, and the trampling of
many feet. Then the crowd parted right and left, and two sharp
quick reports followed each other in rapid succession. Then they
closed again about his opponent, and the master was standing alone.
He remembered picking bits of burning wadding from his coat sleeve
with his left hand. Someone was holding his other hand. Looking
at it, he saw it was still bleeding from the blow, but his fingers
were clenched around the handle of a glittering knife. He could
not remember when or how he got it.

The man who was holding his hand was Mr. Morpher. He hurried the
master to the door, but the master held back, and tried to tell him
as well as he could with his parched throat about "Mliss." "It's
all right, my boy," said Mr. Morpher. "She's home!" And they
passed out into the street together. As they walked along Mr.
Morpher said that Mliss had come running into the house a few
moments before, and had dragged him out, saying that somebody was
trying to kill the master at the Arcade. Wishing to be alone, the
master promised Mr. Morpher that he would not seek the agent again
that night, and parted from him, taking the road toward the
schoolhouse. He was surprised in nearing it to find the door open-
-still more surprised to find Mliss sitting there.

The master's nature, as I have hinted before, had, like most
sensitive organizations, a selfish basis. The brutal taunt thrown
out by his late adversary still rankled in his heart. It was
possible, he thought, that such a construction might be put upon
his affection for the child, which at best was foolish and
Quixotic. Besides, had she not voluntarily abnegated his authority
and affection? And what had everybody else said about her? Why
should he alone combat the opinion of all, and be at last obliged
tacitly to confess the truth of all they predicted? And he had
been a participant in a low barroom fight with a common boor, and
risked his life, to prove what? What had he proved? Nothing?
What would the people say? What would his friends say? What would
McSnagley say?

In his self-accusation the last person he should have wished to
meet was Mliss. He entered the door, and going up to his desk,
told the child, in a few cold words, that he was busy, and wished
to be alone. As she rose he took her vacant seat, and, sitting
down, buried his head in his hands. When he looked up again she
was still standing there. She was looking at his face with an
anxious expression.

"Did you kill him?" she asked.

"No!" said the master.

"That's what I gave you the knife for!" said the child, quickly.

"Gave me the knife?" repeated the master, in bewilderment.

"Yes, gave you the knife. I was there under the bar. Saw you hit
him. Saw you both fall. He dropped his old knife. I gave it to
you. Why didn't you stick him?" said Mliss rapidly, with an
expressive twinkle of the black eyes and a gesture of the little
red hand.

The master could only look his astonishment.

"Yes," said Mliss. "If you'd asked me, I'd told you I was off with
the play-actors. Why was I off with the play-actors? Because you
wouldn't tell me you was going away. I knew it. I heard you tell
the Doctor so. I wasn't a goin' to stay here alone with those
Morphers. I'd rather die first."

With a dramatic gesture which was perfectly consistent with her
character, she drew from her bosom a few limp green leaves, and,
holding them out at arm's length, said in her quick vivid way, and
in the queer pronunciation of her old life, which she fell into
when unduly excited:

"That's the poison plant you said would kill me. I'll go with the
play-actors, or I'll eat this and die here. I don't care which. I
won't stay here, where they hate and despise me! Neither would you
let me, if you didn't hate and despise me too!"

The passionate little breast heaved, and two big tears peeped over
the edge of Mliss's eyelids, but she whisked them away with the
corner of her apron as if they had been wasps.

"If you lock me up in jail," said Mliss, fiercely, "to keep me from
the play-actors, I'll poison myself. Father killed himself--why
shouldn't I? You said a mouthful of that root would kill me, and I
always carry it here," and she struck her breast with her clenched
fist.

The master thought of the vacant plot beside Smith's grave, and of
the passionate little figure before him. Seizing her hands in his
and looking full into her truthful eyes, he said:

"Lissy, will you go with ME?"

The child put her arms around his neck, and said joyfully, "Yes."

"But now--tonight?"

"Tonight."

And, hand in hand, they passed into the road--the narrow road that
had once brought her weary feet to the master's door, and which it
seemed she should not tread again alone. The stars glittered
brightly above them. For good or ill the lesson had been learned,
and behind them the school of Red Mountain closed upon them
forever.

-THE END-
Bret Harte's short story: Mliss

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