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 M’liss” 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. Then 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 to the night. Then, the little schoolhouse seeming lonelier than before, he shut the door and went home.
The next morning M’liss 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, M’liss 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 M’liss. 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 M’liss 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 moonlight 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 M’liss was enabled to assume the garments of respect and civilization, and often a rough shake of the hand and words of 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 M’liss 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 her father.”
It was the first time he had heard her use that filial expression, or, indeed, allude to him in any other way than “Old Smith” or the “Old Man.” It was the first time in many weeks that she had spoken of him at all. He had been missed from the settlement for the past fortnight, and the master had credited the rumors of the townsfolk that Smith had “struck something rich” on the “North Fork,” about ten miles from the village. As they neared the settlement, the master gathered from M’liss that the rumor was untrue, and that she had seen her father that day. As she grew reticent to further questioning, and as the master was satisfied from her manner that she had some definite purpose beyond her usual willfulness, he passively resigned himself and followed her.
Through remote groggeries, restaurants, and saloons; in gambling-hells and dance-houses, the master, preceded by M’liss, passed and repassed. In the reeking smoke and blasphemous outcries of noisome dens, the child, holding the master’s hand, pursued her search with a strange familiarity, perfect self-possession, and implied protection of himself, that even in his anxiety seemed ludicrous. Some of the revelers, recognizing M’liss, called to her to sing and dance for them, and would have forced liquor upon her but for the master’s interference. Others mutely made way for them. So an hour slipped by, and as yet their search was fruitless. The master had yawned once or twice and whistled,—two fatal signs of failing interest,—and finally came to a full stop.
“It’s half past eleven, Melissa,” said he, consulting his watch by a broad pencil of light from an open shutter,—“half past eleven; and it strikes me that our old friends, the woodpeckers, must have gone to bed some hours ago, unless they are waiting up for us. I’m much obliged to you for the evening’s entertainment, but I’m afraid that even the pretext of looking for a parent won’t excuse further dissipation. We’d better put this off till to-morrow. What do you say, Melissa? Why! what ails the child? What’s that noise? Why, a pistol!—You’re not afraid of that?”