Part 14 (1/2)
”That will do,” cut in mother severely. ”You've taken advantage of me, Missy. And don't let me hear evening party from you again this summer!”
The import of this dreadful dictum did not penetrate fully to Missy's consciousness. She was too confused in her emotions, just then, to think clearly of anything.
”Go up to bed,” said mother.
”May I put my flowers in water first?”
”Yes, but be quick about it.”
Missy would have liked to carry the flowers up to her own room, to sleep there beside her while she slept, but mother wouldn't understand and there would be questions which she didn't know how to answer.
Mother was offended with her. Dimly she felt unhappy about that, but she was too happy to be definitely unhappy. Anyway, mother followed to unfasten her dress, to help take down her hair, to plait the mouse-coloured braids. She wanted to be alone, yet she liked the touch of mother's hands, unusually gentle and tender. Why was mother gentle and tender with her when she was offended?
At last mother kissed her good night, and she was alone in her little bed. It was hard to get to sleep. What an eventful party it had been!
Since supper time she seemed to have lived years and years. She had been a success even though Raymond Bonner had said--that. Anyway, Jim was a better dancer than Raymond, and handsomer and nicer--besides the uniform. He was more poetical too--much more. What was it he had said about liking her?... better dancer than any other... Funny she should feel so happy after Raymond... Maybe she was just a vain, inconstant, coquettish...
She strove to focus on the possibility of her frailty. She turned her face to the window. Through the lace curtains shone the moonlight, the gleaming path along which she had so often flown out to be a fairy. But to-night she didn't wish to be a fairy; just to be herself...
The moonlight flowed in and engulfed her, a great, eternal, golden-white mystery. And its mystery became her mystery. She was the mystery of the moon, of the universe, of Life. And the tune in her heart, which could take on so many bewildering variations, became the Chant of Mystery.
How interesting, how tremendously, ineffably interesting was Life! She slept.
CHAPTER IV. MISSY TACKLES ROMANCE
Melissa was out in the summerhouse, reading; now and then lifting her eyes from the big book on her lap to watch the baby at play. With a pail of sand, a broken lead-pencil and several bits of twig, the baby had concocted an engrossing game. Melissa smiled indulgently at his absurd absorption; while the baby, looking up, smiled back as one who would say: ”What a stupid game reading is to waste your time with!”
For the standpoint of three-years-old is quite different from that of fourteen-going-on-fifteen. Missy now felt almost grown-up; it had been eons since SHE was a baby, and three; even thirteen lay back across a chasm so wide her thoughts rarely tried to bridge it. Besides, her thoughts were kept too busy with the present. Every day the world was presenting itself as a more bewitching place. Cherryvale had always been a thrilling place to live in; but this was the summer which, surely, would ever stand out in italics in her mind. For, this summer, she had come really to know Romance.
Her more intimate acquaintance with this enchanting phenomenon had begun in May, the last month of school, when she learned that Miss Smith, her Algebra teacher, received a letter every day from an army officer. An army officer!--and a letter every day! And she knew Miss Smith very well, indeed! Ecstasy! Miss Smith, who looked too pretty to know so much about Algebra, made an adorable heroine of Romance.
But she was not more adorable-looking than Aunt Isabel. Aunt Isabel was Uncle Charlie's wife, and lived in Pleasanton; Missy was going to Pleasanton in just three days, now, and every time she thought of the visit, she felt delicious little tremors of antic.i.p.ation. What an experience that would be! For father and mother and grandpa and grandma and all the other family grown-ups admitted that Uncle Charlie's marriage to Aunt Isabel was romantic. Uncle Charlie had been forty-three--very, very old, even older than father--and a ”confirmed bachelor” when, a year ago last summer, he had married Aunt Isabel. Aunt Isabel was much younger, only twenty; that was what made the marriage romantic.
Like Miss Smith, Aunt Isabel had big violet eyes and curly golden hair.
Most heroines seemed to be like that. The reflection saddened Missy.
Her own eyes were grey instead of violet, her hair straight and mouse-coloured instead of wavy and golden.
Even La Beale Isoud was a blonde, and La Beale Isoud, as she had recently discovered, was one of the Romantic Queens of all time. She knew this fact on the authority of grandpa, who was enormously wise.
Grandpa said that the beauteous lady was a heroine in all languages, and her name was spelled Iseult, and Yseult, and Isolde, and other queer ways; but in ”The Romance of King Arthur” it was spelled La Beale Isoud.
”The Romance of King Arthur” was a fascinating book, and Missy was amazed that, up to this very summer, she had pa.s.sed by the rather ponderous volume, which was kept on the top shelf of the ”secretary,” as uninteresting-looking. Uninteresting!
It was ”The Romance of King Arthur” that, this July afternoon, lay open on Missy's lap while she minded the baby in the summerhouse. Already she knew by heart its ”deep” and complicated story, and, now, she was re-reading the part which told of Sir Tristram de Liones and his ill-fated love for La Beale Isoud. It was all very sad, yet very beautiful.
Sir Tristram was a ”wors.h.i.+pful knight” and a ”harper pa.s.sing all other.”
He got wounded, and his uncle, King Mark, ”let purvey a fair vessel, well victualled,” and sent him to Ireland to be healed. There the Irish King's daughter, La Beale Isoud, ”the fairest maid and lady in the world,” nursed him back to health, while Sir Tristram ”learned her to harp.”
That last was an odd expression. In Cherryvale it would be considered bad grammar; but, evidently, grammar rules were different in olden times. The unusual phraseology of the whole narrative fascinated Missy; even when you could hardly understand it, it was--inspiring. Yes, that was the word. In inspiring! That was because it was the true language of Romance. The language of Love... Missy's thoughts drifted off to ponder the kind of language the army officer used to Miss Smith; Uncle Charlie to Aunt Isabel...