Part 29 (1/2)
As she ran she was wondering whether Arthur had got a really good view of the furs in the moonlight; was resolving to urge him to go to church next Sunday night even if SHE couldn't; was telling herself she mustn't ENTIRELY relinquish her hold on him-for his sake...
So full were her thoughts that she forgot to be much afraid. And the Lord must have been with her, for she reached the kitchen door in safety and regained her own room without detection. In bed once again, a great, soft, holy peace seemed to enfold her. Everything was right with everybody--with father and mother and G.o.d and Arthur--everybody.
At the very time she was going off into smiling slumber--one hand nestling in the white fox furs on her pillow--it happened that her father was making half-apologetic explanations to her mother: everything had seemed to come down on the child in a lump--commands against walking and against boys and against going out nights and everything.
He couldn't help feeling for the youngster. So he thought he'd bring her the white fox furs she seemed to have set her heart on.
And Mrs. Merriam, who could understand a father's indulgent, sympathetic heart even though--as Missy believed--she wasn't capable of ”understanding” a daughter's, didn't have it in her, then, to spoil his pleasure by expounding that wanting furs and wanting beaux were really one and the same evil.
CHAPTER VII. BUSINESS OF BLUs.h.i.+NG
Missy was embroiled in a catastrophe, a tangle of embarra.s.sments and odd complications. Aunt Nettie attributed the blame broadly to ”that O'Neill girl”; she a.s.serted that ever since Tess O'Neill had come to live in Cherryvale Missy had been ”up to” just one craziness after another. But then Aunt Nettie was an old maid--Missy couldn't imagine her as EVER having been fifteen years old. Mother, who could generally be counted on for tenderness even when she failed to ”understand,” rather unfortunately centred on the wasp detail--why had Missy just stood there and let it keep stinging her? And Missy felt shy at trying to explain it was because the wasp was stinging her LEG. Mother would be sure to remark this sudden show of modesty in one she'd just been scolding for the lack of it--for riding the pony astride and showing her--
Oh, legs! Missy was in a terrific confusion, as baffled by certain inconsistencies displayed by her own nature as overwhelmed by her disgraceful predicament. For she was certainly sincere in her craving to be as debonairly ”athletic” as Tess; yet, during that ghastly moment when the wasp was...
No, she could never explain it to mother. Old people don't understand.
Not even to father could she have talked it all out, though he had patted her hand and acted like an angel when he paid for the bucket of candy--that candy which none of them got even a taste of! That Tess and Arthur should eat up the candy which her own father paid for, made one more snarl in the whole inconsistent situation.
It all began with the day Arthur Simpson ”dared” Tess to ride her pony into Picker's grocery store. Before Tess had come to live in the sanitarium at the edge of town where her father was head doctor, she had lived in Macon City and had had superior advantages--city life, to Missy, a Cherryvalian from birth, sounded exotic and intriguing. Then Tess in her nature was far from ordinary. She was characterized by a certain dash and fine flair; was inventive, fearless, and possessed the gift of leaders.h.i.+p. Missy, seeing how eagerly the other girls of ”the crowd” caught up Tess's original ideas, felt enormously flattered when the leader selected such a comparatively stupid girl as herself as a chum.
For Missy thought she must be stupid. She wasn't ”smart” in school like Beulah Crosswhite, nor strikingly pretty like Kitty Allen, nor president of the Iolanthians like Mabel Dowd, nor conspicuously popular with the boys like Genevieve Hicks. No, she possessed no distinctive traits anybody could pick out to label her by--at least that is what she thought. So she felt on her mettle; she wished to prove herself worthy of Tess's high regard.
It was rather strenuous living up to Tess. Sometimes Missy couldn't help wis.h.i.+ng that her chum were not quite so alert. Being all the while on the jump, mentally and physically, left you somewhat breathless and dizzy; then, too, it didn't leave you time to sample certain quieter yet thrilling enjoyments that came right to hand. For example, now and then, Missy secretly longed to spend a leisurely hour or so just talking with Tess's grandmother. Tess's grandmother, though an old lady, seemed to her a highly romantic figure. Her name was Mrs. Shears and she had lived her girlhood in a New England seaport town, and her father had been captain of a vessel which sailed to and from far Eastern sh.o.r.es. He had brought back from those long-ago voyages bales and bales of splendid Oriental fabrics--stiff rustling silks and slinky clinging crepes and indescribably brilliant brocades shot with silver or with gold. For nearly fifty years Mrs. Shears had worn dresses made from these romantic stuffs and she was wearing them yet--in Cherryvale! They were all made after the same pattern, gathered voluminous skirt and fitted bodice and long flowing sleeves; and, with the small lace cap she always wore on her white hair. Missy thought the old lady looked as if she'd just stepped from the yellow-tinged pages of some fascinating old book.
She wished her own grandmother dressed like that; of course she loved Grandma Merriam dearly and really wouldn't have exchanged her for the world, yet, in contrast, she did seem somewhat commonplace.
It was interesting to sit and look at Grandma Shears and to hear her recount the Oriental adventures of her father, the sea captain. But Tess gave Missy little chance to do this. Tess had heard and re-heard the adventures to the point of boredom and custom had caused her to take her grandmother's strange garb as a matter of course; Tess's was a nature which craved--and generally achieved--novelty.
Just now her particular interest veered toward athleticism; she had recently returned from a visit to Macon City and brimmed with colourful tales of its ”Country Club” life--swimming, golf, tennis, horseback riding, and so forth. These pursuits she straightway set out to introduce into drowsy, behind-the-times Cherryvale. But in almost every direction she encountered difficulties: there was in Cherryvale no place to swim except muddy Bull Creek--and the girls' mothers unanimously vetoed that; and there were no links for golf; and the girls themselves didn't enthuse greatly over tennis those broiling afternoons. So Tess centred on horseback riding, deciding it was the ”cla.s.siest” sport, after all. But the old Neds and Nellies of the town, accustomed leisurely to transport their various family surreys, did not metamorphose into hackneys of such spirit and dash as filled Tess's dreams.
Even so, these steeds were formidable enough to Missy. She feared she wasn't very athletic. That was an afternoon of frightful chagrin when she came walking back into Cherryvale, ignominiously following Dr.
O'Neill's Ben. Old Ben, who was lame in his left hind foot, had a curious gait, like a sort of grotesque turkey trot. Missy outwardly attributed her inability to keep her seat to Ben's peculiar rocking motion, but in her heart she knew it was simply because she was afraid.
What she was afraid of she couldn't have specified. Not of old Ben surely, for she knew him to be the gentlest of horses. When she stood on the ground beside him, stroking his s.h.a.ggy, uncurried flanks or feeding him bits of sugar, she felt not the slightest fear. Yet the minute she climbed up into the saddle she sickened under the grip of some increasingly heart-stilling panic. Even before Ben started forward; so it wasn't Ben's rocking, lop-sided gait that was really at the bottom of her fear--it only accentuated it. Why was she afraid of Ben up there in the saddle while not in the least afraid when standing beside him?
Fear was very strange. Did everybody harbour some secret, absurd, unreasonable fear? No, Tess didn't; Tess wasn't afraid of anything. Tess was cantering along on rawboned Nellie in beautiful unconcern. Missy admired and envied her dreadfully.
Her sense of her own shortcomings became all the more poignant when the little cavalcade, with Missy still ignominiously footing it in the rear, had to pa.s.s the group of loafers in front of the Post Office.
The loafers called out rude, bantering comments, and Missy burned with shame.
Then Arthur Simpson appeared in Pieker's doorway next door and grinned.
”h.e.l.lo! Some steed!” he greeted Tess. ”Dare you to ride her in!”
”Not to-day, thanks,” retorted Tess insouciantly--that was another quality Missy envied in her friend, her unfailing insouciance. ”Wait till I get my new pony next week, and then I'll take you up!”
”All right. The dare holds good.” Then Arthur turned his grin to Missy.
”What's the matter with YOU? Charger get out of hand?”
The loafers in front of the Post Office took time from their chewing and spitting to guffaw. Missy could have died of mortification.