IIt was, indeed, the hardest part, that first step, to all, but it was accomplished, somehow. The early spring found Mrs. Varian in her new home, St. John established in his work, Missy and Miss Varian settled in the Roncevalle house, and the dear home shut up. It was in the market, to be sold if any one would buy, to be rented if nobody would. They had gone out of it, taking little, and it was in perfect order.
It was, indeed, the hardest part, that first step, to all, but it was accomplished, somehow. The early spring found Mrs. Varian in her new home, St. John established in his work, Missy and Miss Varian settled in the Roncevalle house, and the dear home shut up. It was in the market, to be sold if any one would buy, to be rented if nobody would. They had gone out of it, taking little, and it was in perfect order.
About this time Missy broke down, and had the first illness of her life. St. John came up to her, and brought one of the newly-imported Sisters to nurse her. She would have rebelled against this, if she had been in condition to rebel. She was not, however, and could only submit.
What is the use of going through her illness? We have most of us been ill, and know the dark rooms we are led through, and the hopelessness, and helplessness, and weariness; the foreign land we seem to be in,with well people stealing on tip-toe out of our sight to eat their comfortable dinners, with kind attendants reading the morning paper behind the window curtains, with faithful affection smothering yawns through our tossing, sleepless nights. Yes, everybody is well and we are sick. Everybody is in life, and we are in some strange, half-way place, that is not life nor death. We may be so near eternity, and yet we cannot think of it; so wretched, so wretched, the fretted body cannot turn its thoughts away from itself. We are alone as far as earth goes, and alone, as far as any nearness to Heaven feels. What is the good of it all? What have we gained (if we ever get back) by this journey into a strange land, that didn't seem to be joyous but grievous? Well, a great many things, perhaps, but one thing almost certainly: Detachment. It is scarcely possible to love life and see good days with the same zest after this sorrowful journey. It abates one's relish for enjoyment, it tempers one's thirst for present pleasures; it loosens one's hold upon things mundane. That is the certain good it does, and the uncertain, how infinite!
Poor Missy felt like a penitent child, after that illness of hers. She did not feel any better, nor any surer that she should be any stronger or wiser; but she felt the certainty that she had put a very wrong value upon things, and that life was a very different matter from what she had been considering it. She felt so ashamed of her self-will, so humbled about her own judgment. She still did not like long black dresses on men or women, but she felt very much obliged to St. John and the good Sister for all the weeks they had spent in taking care of her. And although stainedglass windows, and swinging lamps, and church embroidery did not appeal to her in the least; she began to understand how they might appeal to people of a different temperament. Let it not be imagined that Missy came out of this a lamb of meekness. On the contrary, she was very exacting about her broth, and once cried because the nurse would not keep Miss Varian out of the room. But then she was more sorry for it than she had been in the habit of being, and made Miss Varian a handsome apology the first time she was well enough to see her.
She looked out of the window, across the road, upon the trees just budding into loveliness on the lawn of her dearest home, and wondered that she should have thought it mattered so very much whether she lived in this house or in that, considering it was not going to be forever, either here or there.
St. John came and sat down by her one afternoon, as she lay in a great easy chair, looking out at the spring verdure and the soft declining sunshine. She had never got to talking of very deep things to St. John, since her unhappy controversy with him, but she felt so sure that he would not talk of anything that she objected to, that she was at her ease with him. They talked about the great tulip tree on the lawn, that they could just see from the window, and the aspens by the gate, just large-leaved enough to shiver in the softly-moving breeze. Then Missy forced herself to ask if a tenant had been found for the house, and he answered her, yes, and also, that he had heard that the Andrews' place was rented too.
"I'm sorry," he said, "that Mr. Andrews has gone away from here. I felt as if it were the sort of placehe might have been happy in, and much respected. Did you ever get to know him well? I remember that you took a fancy to the children."
"I saw a good deal of them last summer," said Missy, wearily. How far off last summer seemed!
"What a terrible life!" said St. John, musingly. "Not one man in a thousand could have borne what he did; it was almost heroic, and yet I think my first impression was that he was common-place."
"I don't understand," said Missy, "tell me."
"It isn't possible you don't know about his wife?"
So St. John told her something that she certainly hadn't known before about his wife. St. John had learned it from others; the story had been pretty well known in an English town where he had been the year before, and had come to him in ways that put it beyond any doubt. Mr. Andrews had married a young woman, of French extraction, of whom nobody seemed to know anything, but that she was distractingly pretty. After three or four years she had proved to be the very worst woman that could be imagined. She had a lover, who was the father of Gabrielle; she had married just in time to conceal her shame from the world and from her husband. They went to Europe after the little girl's birth, and in about two years Jay was born. When he was a few months old, the suspicions of the husband were aroused by some accidental circumstance. The lover had followed them, and had renewed his correspondence with her. Some violent scenes occurred. She professed penitence and promised amendment. Her next move was a bungling conspiracy with her lover to poison her husband. A horrid exposé of the whole thing threatened. It was withdifficulty suppressed, the man fled, leaving her to bear all. In her rage and despair she took poison, and barely escaped dying. It was managed that the thing never came to trial. Mr. Andrews, out of pity for the miserable creature, whose health was permanently destroyed by her mad act, resolved not to abandon her to destruction. His love for his little son, and his compassion for the poor little bastard girl, induced him still to shelter her, and to keep up the fiction of a home for their sakes.
"I don't think," said St. John, "one could fancy a finer action. Protecting the woman who had attempted his life, adopting the child who had been palmed off upon him, establishing a home which must have been full of bitterness all the time. There are not many men who could have done this. It seems to me utter self-renunciation. Doesn't it seem so to you?"
"How long have you known this?" cried Missy, bursting into tears. "Oh! St. John, if you had only told me! You might have saved me from being—so unjust."
SANCTUARY.
AA few weeks later, when St. John had come up again to see after her, Missy asked him to take her to her mother, and so, in the summer, when the country was at its loveliest, and the city at its worst, he came for her, and took her, still too weak to travel alone, to the new houseof religion in the old haunts of sin. It was not a favorable season certainly, but the weather fortunately was rather cool for July, and Missy's longing to see her mother was so great, her distaste for city streets was overshadowed.
A few weeks later, when St. John had come up again to see after her, Missy asked him to take her to her mother, and so, in the summer, when the country was at its loveliest, and the city at its worst, he came for her, and took her, still too weak to travel alone, to the new houseof religion in the old haunts of sin. It was not a favorable season certainly, but the weather fortunately was rather cool for July, and Missy's longing to see her mother was so great, her distaste for city streets was overshadowed.
The church which the Order had bought was not a model of architecture, but it was large and capable of receiving improvement. The house adjoining it, which was to be the nucleus of a Sisters' house, was roomy and shabby. It had rather had pretensions to elegance in days very long past, but it had gone through varied and not improving experiences, and was a pretty forlorn place when St. John took it in hand. It seemed to him so renovated and advanced, in comparison, that he could not understand his sister's slight shudder and look of repugnance as they entered the bare hall. Of course there were no carpets, as became a Sisters' house, and the rooms that Missy saw as she passed them were very plain indeed as to furniture, and very uncheerful as to outlook. Naturally, you cannot have a house in the midst of the lowest population of a large city, whose windows would have a pleasing or cheerful outlook.
But when Missy came to her mother's room, it was different to her from the others, and not repugnant. It was a large room, of course plainly furnished; but the color of the walls, the few ornaments, the bookshelves, all proclaimed that St. John had not been as severe in arranging his mother's room, as in the treatment of his own. This house "joined hard to the synagogue," and a door had been cut through on this second story, and a little gallery built, and there, at all the hours, Mrs. Varian could go. It was nevernecessary for her to leave her room. What a center that room became of helpful sympathy, of tender counsel, of rest for tired workers! What a sanctuary of peaceful contemplation, of satisfied longing, of exalted faith! It was the dream of her life fulfilled; the prayer alike of her innocence and penitence answered.
From the little gallery that overhung the church, she heard her son's voice in the grey dawn, as he celebrated the earliest Eucharist, and from that hour, perhaps, she did not hear it again till, at eight o'clock in the evening, he came to her room for a half-hour's refreshment after the hard work of his day. The clergy house was on the other side of the church, about half a block away. It was as yet a very miserable affair, only advanced by an application of soap and water from its recent office of mechanics' boarding-house. But St. John seemed to think that half-hour in his mother's peaceful room made up for all. It was very self-indulgent, but he always took a cup of tea from her hands, which she made him out of a little silver tea-pot that she had used since he was a baby a week old. And the cup out of which he drank it, was of Sêvres china, a part of the cadeau brought to the pretty young mother's bedside in that happy week of solicitude. This little service was almost the only souvenir they had brought of the past life now laid away by both of them, but it was very sacred and very sweet, and probably not very sinful. It was a fact, however, that St. John reproached himself sometimes for the eagerness with which he looked forward to this littlesoulagement, during the toils of the day. If he had not felt that it was perhaps as dear and necessary to his mother, I am afraid he would have given it up.
Missy saw all this, and much more, of their life, and wondered, as she lay on the lounge that had been brought for her into her mother's room. She saw and wondered, at the interested happy lives of the women in long black dresses, who came and went, in their gliding, silent way, in and out of her mother's room. She could not help seeing, that in the offices, to which the inevitable bell was always calling them, there was no monotony, not so much weariness as in the one-day-in-seven service in a country parish. Their poor, their housekeeping, the interests of their order, seemed to supply all beside that they needed. There was no denying it, their faces were satisfied and happy—except one sister who had dyspepsia, and nobody can look entirely satisfied and happy who has dyspepsia, in the world, or out of it.
As to her mother, there was no visible failure in health, but a most visible increase of mental power and energy, and the inexpressible look that comes from doing work your heart is in, from walking in the path for which your feet were formed. Patient doing of duty against the grain may be better than not doing duty at all, but it always writes a weary mark across the face. That mark which her mother's face had borne, ever since Missy could remember it, was gone.
Weary no doubt she often was, for her hand and brain were rarely idle now; but it was the healthy weariness that brings the sleep of the just, and wipes out toil with rest. Neither did Missy understand—how could she?—the bliss of those hours spent in the little gallery that overlooked the empty and silent church. She could have understood the thrill that it might have given her, to see the crowd that sometimesfilled the church, hanging upon the words of the preacher, if that preacher had been her son. But, alas for Missy! St. John did only humble out-of-sight work. He rarely preached, and then only to supply some one's place, who had been called away or hindered by illness. There were two or three priests, older than he, who did the work that appeared to the world, and who were above him in everything, and who were praised, and who had influence. What was St. John, who had given all his money, and all his time, and all his heart, to this work? The lowest one of all, of less authority or influence or consideration than any. Well, if he was satisfied, no one need complain, and he evidently was.
VESPERS.
LLate one afternoon, during this visit of hers, Missy stole into the little gallery by herself, and closed the door. The plaintive and persistent bell had shaken out its summons in the house. Her mother slept through it, overcome by the heat and by some unusual exertion in the morning. Missy did not consider herself bound to assist at all the offices, but she rather liked it, and crept in very often when no one was noticing, and when she happened to feel well enough. A few poor people came in this afternoon, and two or three Sisters.St. John said the prayers. When the prayers were over, and he had gone into the sacristy, Missy still lingered, leaning her head on the rail, and gazing down into the church. St. John came out, after a moment, and the poor people came up, two or three of them, and preferred petitions for pecuniary or spiritual aid, principally pecuniary.
Late one afternoon, during this visit of hers, Missy stole into the little gallery by herself, and closed the door. The plaintive and persistent bell had shaken out its summons in the house. Her mother slept through it, overcome by the heat and by some unusual exertion in the morning. Missy did not consider herself bound to assist at all the offices, but she rather liked it, and crept in very often when no one was noticing, and when she happened to feel well enough. A few poor people came in this afternoon, and two or three Sisters.St. John said the prayers. When the prayers were over, and he had gone into the sacristy, Missy still lingered, leaning her head on the rail, and gazing down into the church. St. John came out, after a moment, and the poor people came up, two or three of them, and preferred petitions for pecuniary or spiritual aid, principally pecuniary.
After their audiences were ended, they shambled away; the Sisters had disappeared, and the church was empty but for one figure, standing near the door. St. John gave an inquiring look, and made a step forward. The lady, for it was a lady, seemed to hesitate, and her attitude and movements betrayed great agitation. Some late rays of the afternoon sun came piercing down through a high-up, colored window. Missy looked down with keen interest upon the two; it was another scene in her brother's life.
"You are too young for the care of penitents like that, my dear St. John," she said to herself, sententiously. For the lady was pretty, more than pretty, and young and graceful.
She came forward rapidly, her resolution once made, and stood before St. John, half way down the aisle. He did not look very young, thanks to its being "always fast and vigil, always watch and prayer," with him; his peculiar dress made him seem taller than he really was, almost gaunt. His face had a sobered, worn look, but an expression of great sweetness. He carried his head a little forward, and his eyes, which were almost always on the ground, he raised with a sort of gentle inquiry, an appealing, wondering interest, to the face before him. Because, to St. John, people were "souls," and he was always thinking of their eternal state. As to a lawyer, those he meets are possible clients, and to a doctor, patients, so to this other professional mind all were included in his hopes of penitence or progress. He raised his eyes to the new-comer's face, and Missy saw the start he gave, and the great change that took place in his expression. It was as if he were, for a moment, sharply assaulted with some strong pain. He put out his hand, and laid hold of the wooden railing of a prayer desk near him, as if to steady himself.
The lady, meanwhile, had not been too agitated to notice his emotion. She eagerly scanned his face, stretched out her hand to him timidly, then drew it back and clasped it in the other, and said something pleadingly to him, looking up to him with tears. Seeing she did not make him look at her again, and that he was rapidly gaining self-control, she flushed, drew back, with a manner almost angry. But in a moment, some humiliating recollection seemed to sweep over her mind and blot out her involuntary pride. Her face darkened, and her mouth quivered as she said, quite loud enough for Missy, in her loft, to hear:
"The only right I have to come to you, is that the wretched man whom you have befriended, and whom you are preparing for the gallows, is the man—to whom I am married."
St. John started again, and said—? The name Missy did not catch. The stranger assented, and went on speaking bitterly, and with a voice broken by agitation. "He tells me he has confessed to you. I do not believe it—I do not believe he would tell the truth, even upon the gallows. His perfidy to my poor sister, ruining her, breaking her heart, destroying herchance of being happy in a good marriage—to me enticing me away from you—and then dragging me through shame and suffering that I cannot even bear to think of—his low vices—his heartless frauds—has he told you all these?—You used to be young. I should think you would soon be old enough if you have to hear many such stories. I should think you would be tired of living in a world that had such things done in it."
St. John did not answer. His eyes never now left the ground.
"I am tired of it," she cried, with tears. "I am tired and sick of life. I want to die, and only I don't dare. Sometimes I come here to the church and the music and the preaching seem to make me ashamed of my wicked thoughts; but it doesn't stay, and I go back to all my miseries and I am no better. I don't know what has kept me from the worst kind of a life. I don't know what keeps me from the worst kind of a death. I have sometimes wondered if it wasn't that you pray for me—among your enemies, I suppose, if you do."
There was a pause, and then she went on: "Last Sunday night I heard you preach; I had only heard your voice reading the prayers before that. Ever since, I have wanted to speak to you to ask you about something that you said."
Then St. John lifted his head and said, in a voice that was notably calm, "I hope you will come here often, and, if you will let me, I will ask Father Ellis to talk with you and to give you counsel. He has had great experience, and he will help you."
Missy listened breathless for the words that cameat last, after a succession of emotions had passed over her face. "You have not forgiven me!" she said. "Is that being good and holy, as you teach? You will not talk to me and help me yourself, but send me to some one I don't know and who won't understand. Why won't you forgive me? Heaven knows I have been sorry enough and repented enough!"
A lovely smile passed over St. John's face, one would almost have said there was a shade of amusement in it, but it was all gone in a moment, and the habitual seriousness returned.
"I had never thought of any question of forgiveness," he said. "Be assured of it in any case."
"Then why," she hurried on, keenly searching his face, "why will you not let me speak to you? Why will you not teach me, and help me, as you say Father Ellis would do?"
"Because it is not my part of the work. He has more experience."
"But you teach Armand. You spend hours in the prison. You have the direction of souls there."
"That is a different work," he said, simply.
"Then," she exclaimed, passionately, "since you refuse me I will go away. I have been hoping all this time for help from you. If you won't give it, God knows, that is the end. I will not speak to strangers and lay open my miserable past. I shall not listen to my conscience any more. I will get out of my wretchedness any way I can. I might have known that churches and priests would not do me any good."
"I should be sorry," he said, calmly, "to think you had come to such a resolution. No one person is likely to do you more good than another. If the intentionof your heart is right, God can help you through one person as well as through another."
"You distrust me," she said. "I suppose I ought not to wonder at it, but I did not think men as good as you could be so hard. Why do you doubt that the intention of my heart is right?"
"I have not said that I doubted it. I have only thought that if it were, you would be glad to accept any means laid before you, of getting the assistance that you feel you need."
The girl, for she looked only that, buried her face in her hands, and a faint sob echoed through the empty church. "It would be so much easier to speak to you; it's so hard," she murmured, "to tell a stranger all you've done wrong, and all the miserable things that have happened to you."
"You don't have to tell him all that has happened to you," he said. "You have only to tell him of your sins. Let me add, that the priest to whom I advise you to go, has great sympathy with suffering, and is very gentle."
Missy hardly breathed, such was her interest in the scene before her. She took in all the complication, the shock that seeing the woman for whom he had had such strong feeling, had given St. John, the sorrow of finding her bound to the miserable criminal, whose last hours he was trying to purify, the fear of repulsing her, and the danger of ministering to her. At first she had been overwhelmed with alarm for him, the grace and beauty of the young creature was so unusual, her desire to re-establish relations of intimacy so unmistakable. But something, she did not know what, reassured her. Perhaps it was the faint gleam of a smileon his face, when she asked him to forgive her; as if he had said, "You ask me to forgive you for doing me the greatest favor you could possibly have done." Perhaps it was that she felt intuitively the inferiority of the woman's nature, that she knew St. John had been growing away from her, leaving her behind with such strides that she could not touch him. He was beyond danger from silken hair or peach-bloom cheeks. If danger came to him, it would be in a subtler form. She wondered at herself, feeling so confident; she felt very sorry for the girl, not afraid of her. She looked back at the past, and said to herself, "This pink-faced, long-lashed young thing has held a great deal in her hands, but she holds it no more." Her sin and folly turned more than one life into a new channel. St. John's, his mother's, Missy's own, what marks they bore of her flippant treachery! She tried to picture to herself how they would have been living, if, on that October night, so long ago, St. John had brought her home, instead of coming alone, with his ashy, dreadful face. If he had married her, and come to live at Yellowcoats, perhaps, or near them. Ah! perhaps they would all have been in the dear home. Would it have been better? Looking at St. John, and looking at her, with the appreciation that she had of her character from those few moments—would it have been better? No, it would not have been better. Bitter as this change had been to her, Missy knew in her heart it would not have been better. She knew St. John might well smile at the idea of forgiving her, and she herself, though she did not smile, could thank her, as she had said she thanked her, when she stood by the mother's sleepless bed that night and heard the story.
There are some things that we cannot find words for, even in our thoughts. She could not tell why, but she knew as well as if she had spelled it out of Worcester and Webster that it was better for them all to be living this life and not the old. She would have fain not thought so, but she was convicted. The scene passing in the aisle below her, a year ago, would have filled her with alarm, and have given her assurance that her predictions were to be fulfilled. Now, in these bare walls, in this dim house, "this life of pleasure's death," she felt how powerless were such temptations, how different the plane on which they stood. It was all to be felt, not explained. The young creature below her, turning with a late devotion to the man who had outgrown her, still "blindly with her blessedness at strife," could not see or feel it. Missy could pity her, even as she watched her alternate art and artlessness, in trying to arouse in him some of the old feeling. It was all in vain.
When the interview ended, and she went away, Missy watched her brother, as he stood for a while, with his eyes fastened on the ground. Then, with a long sigh, he walked through the church, adjusting a bench here, picking up a prayer book there, and then went and kneeled down before the altar. Missy felt he was not praying for himself, and for power to resist a temptation, but for the soul of the poor undisciplined girl, and the sinful man to whom she was bound.
The end of the story she did not hear at once. Her visit ended about this time, and she only learned later from her mother, that St. John had moved Heaven and earth to get the man pardoned. Duringthe time of suspense, the poor girl had been in a destitute and deplorable state, but with enough good in her to listen to the teaching of Father Ellis and the Sisters. In their house she had found shelter; and during several weeks, Mrs. Varian had had her constantly with her. She never saw St. John again, except in church. The pardon was despaired of, the sickening days that were now growing fewer and fewer, were spent by St. John, mainly with this man, and in the cells of the prison where he lay. The wretched criminal was a coward, and broken down and abject, at the approach of death. His late compunction softened his wife towards him; with one of the Sisters she came often to the prison.
It was hailed with joy, in the still house, when word came, that at the last hour he was pardoned, and that his wife was to meet him on board the vessel that was to take them both to the new life, to which they had pledged themselves. Poor Gabrielle was half reluctant, but she was trying to be good, and was in earnest, in a childish sort of way. St. John looked rather pale and worn after that, and came to Yellowcoats to recruit for a day or two, or perhaps to see after Missy. His work had lain principally among "wicked people," as he had proposed to himself in early days. For some reason he made himself acceptable to prisoners and outcasts. It is possible his great humility had as much to do with it, as his sympathetic nature. At all events, he had had plenty to do, and was quite familiar in prison cells, and at work-house deathbeds. When this man (Armand) had come under his care, he was under sentence of death, and was probably the wickedest of all his wicked people.He was a foreigner, with a hideous past—how hideous, it was likely none but St. John knew. He was condemned to suffer the penalty of the law, for a murder committed in a bar-room fray, possibly one of the lightest of the sins of his life. It was he who had ruined the life of poor little Jay's mother, and plotted the death of her husband. He was a desperado, a dramatic villain, the sort of man respectable people rarely meet, except on the stage or in police courts.
St. John had not suspected the identity of his penitent with the man to whom he owed it, that he wore a girdle round his waist, till the day that Gabrielle came into the church. Poor Gabrielle! It was hard lines for her to be sent off with the cowardly villain, but there seemed no other way to settle the fate of both of them, considering that they were married to each other. A lingering pity filled St. John's heart when he thought of her, and of the terrible fate to which she had bound herself. All this sort of thing is exhausting to the nerves, and no one could begrudge St. John his day and a half of rest by Yellowcoats bay. He and his fellow-workers took very few such days. Their hands were quite full of work, not of a sentimental kind. It takes money to send criminals and their families away to lead new lives in new lands, and money does not always come for the wishing. It takes time and the expenditure of thought to prepare men for the gallows, to get their pardons for them if may be, to smoothe their paths, whichever way they lead; it is good hard work to do these things, and many like them, and takes the flesh off men's bones, and wears out nerves and brains almost as effectually as stocks and speculationsBut there are men who choose to work in obscurity in a service for which the world offers them no wages—only a very stiff contempt.
SURRENDER.
MMissy found herself at home in the country, very sorry to leave her mother, very glad to breathe pure air again, very humble to think how much she objected to bad smells and street noises. St. John and her mother did not seem to take them into account at all, and the Sisters she was sure enjoyed them. Her housekeeping and Aunt Harriet took up a good deal of her time, but it was pretty dull work, and her heart was heavy. It was something of a strain to have to see people and to answer their curious questions; but to tell the truth, Missy was much less ashamed of her brother and her mother since she came back, and chiefly felt the impossibility of making anybody understand the matter. She understood comparatively little herself, but the comfortable rector, "with fat capon lined," the small-souled doctor, the young brood of Olors, the strait-laced Sombreros, the evangelical Eves, how much less could they comprehend. She knew that the keenest interest existed in the whole community regarding their family matters, and that much indignation was felt at the breaking up of the home. There were agreat many people who wore inclined to look upon her as a martyr to the fanaticism of her mother and brother, and she would have been overwhelmed with civilities if she had consented to receive them. As it was, she considered every unusual demonstration of regard, as a disapprobation of her mother, and resented it in her heart, and possibly showed much coldness of manner. So she gradually isolated herself, and became daily less a part of the Yellowcoats community.
Missy found herself at home in the country, very sorry to leave her mother, very glad to breathe pure air again, very humble to think how much she objected to bad smells and street noises. St. John and her mother did not seem to take them into account at all, and the Sisters she was sure enjoyed them. Her housekeeping and Aunt Harriet took up a good deal of her time, but it was pretty dull work, and her heart was heavy. It was something of a strain to have to see people and to answer their curious questions; but to tell the truth, Missy was much less ashamed of her brother and her mother since she came back, and chiefly felt the impossibility of making anybody understand the matter. She understood comparatively little herself, but the comfortable rector, "with fat capon lined," the small-souled doctor, the young brood of Olors, the strait-laced Sombreros, the evangelical Eves, how much less could they comprehend. She knew that the keenest interest existed in the whole community regarding their family matters, and that much indignation was felt at the breaking up of the home. There were agreat many people who wore inclined to look upon her as a martyr to the fanaticism of her mother and brother, and she would have been overwhelmed with civilities if she had consented to receive them. As it was, she considered every unusual demonstration of regard, as a disapprobation of her mother, and resented it in her heart, and possibly showed much coldness of manner. So she gradually isolated herself, and became daily less a part of the Yellowcoats community.
How odd it was to be so unimportant! Her small housekeeping required so few dependents, contrasted with their former ways. Now that they did not entertain, and that she was neither young nor old, and that illness had kept her from even the ordinary duties of visiting, she had fallen almost entirely out of sight. A very gay family had taken their house, which was now quite a centre of amusement. The Andrews cottage had been occupied by people whose delight it was to be considered swell. They drove all sorts of carts, and sailed all manner of boats, and owned all varieties of dogs. The village gazed at them, and the residents who were entitled to be considered on a visiting equality, called on them, and all united to gratify their ambition to be talked about. At these two houses, poor Missy felt she would be excused from calling. Indeed, no one seemed to notice the omission; it is so easy to sink down into obscurity, and to become nobody. She sometimes felt as if she had died, and had been permitted to come back and see how small a place she had filled, and how little she was missed, to perfect her in humility. After all, St. John and his mother—were they so very wrong? What was it all worth?
Miss Harriet Varian, about these days, was much easier to get along with than in more prosperous ones. Perhaps she was touched by Missy's changed manner and illness; perhaps the insignificance into which they had fallen, had had for her, too, its lesson. And perhaps the spectacle of her sister's faith, had, against her will, shocked her into a study of her own selfish and unlovely life. She had many silent hours now, in which she did not call for Balzac and diversion; she submitted to hear books which she had always refused to listen to. She was less querulous with those around her, less sharp-tongued about her neighbors. She said nothing about St. John and his mother, only listened silently to the news that came of them weekly to Missy. Missy and she understood each other pretty well now; their trouble had drawn them together. In talking, they knew what to avoid, and each considered the other's feelings as never before. Two lonely women in one house, with the same grief to bear, it would have been strange if they had not come together a little, to carry the load.
Goneril had so much more to do nowadays, she was much improved. She had had her choice of going away, or staying to do three times the work she had had to do in the other house. It is difficult to say why she stayed, whether from a sort of attachment to Missy, and pity for Miss Varian, or from a dislike of rupture and change. She had had enough of it herself to know real trouble when she saw it, and she certainly saw it in the two women whom she elected to serve. Her wrath had boiled over vehemently at first. She had been anything but respectful to her employer's form of faith. But that was completelysettled, once for all, and she now made no allusion to the matter, at least above stairs. It is quite possible that below she may have had her fling, occasionally, at "popish 'pression." The Sister who nursed Missy during her illness, she had, with difficulty, brought herself to be respectful to, but there was so much of the real nurse in the peppery Goneril, that during long watches they had come to be almost friends.
The summer passed slowly away; the autumn came, and with it, the flight of the summer birds whose strange gay plumage had made her old home so unnatural to Missy. The dog-carts and the beach-carts and the T-carts had all been trundled away; the boat-houses were locked up, the stables emptied; the six months' leases of the two houses were at an end, and quiet came back to the place.
It was in November, a sunny Indian summer day. After their early dinner, Missy went out to roam, as she loved now to do, over the grounds and along the beach from which for so many months she had been shut out. The evergreens made still a greenness with their faithful foliage, the lawn looked like summer. It was an unusual season. There was a chill in the shut-up rooms, and it made her heart too sore to go often in the house, but outside she could wander for hours, and feel only a gentle pang, a soft patient sorrow for what was gone from her never to return. She had been walking by the narrow path that led through the cedars, wondering, now at the highness of the tide which was washing up against the bank, now at the mildness of the air that made it almost impossible to believe it was November, when the woman who took care of the house came running after her. Out ofbreath, she told her some one had just come up by the cars, to look at the house; would she give her the bunch of keys which she had put in her pocket instead of giving them back to her, a few minutes before?
Missy felt a thrill of anger as she thought of some one to look at the house. This was indeed her natural enemy, for this time it must be a purchaser, for it was not yet in the market for rent. She gave the woman the keys, and then walked on, a storm of envy and discord in her heart. Yes, the one that should buy this house, she should hate. It was endurable while people only had it on lease, and came and went and left it as they found it. But when it should be bought and paid for, when trees could be cut down and new paths cut and changes made at the will of strangers, it would be more than she could bear. So few had come to look at it with a view to buying, she had unconsciously got into a way of thinking it would not be sold, and that this temporary misery of letting would go on, and she could yet feel her hold safe upon the trees and the shrubs and the familiar rooms and closets. Just as they were now, perhaps, they would remain for years, and she would have the care of them still, and grow old along with them; and some day the dark dream of alienation would dissolve and she would come back and die in her own room.
She had not known how this plan and this hope had taken possession of her, till the woman's out-of-breath story, of a stranger from the train, revealed it to her. Some one coming up from town at this season, meant business. Yes, the place was as good as sold: or, if this man didn't buy it, others would be coming to look at it; some one would buy it. At anyrate her peace was gone. She had not known how insensibly she had depended upon escaping what she had declared to herself she was prepared for. People said they were asking more for the place than they would ever get. Perhaps St. John had gone to the agents and put it at a lower figure; perhaps the Order needed the money and couldn't wait. A bitterer feeling than she had known for a long time, came with these reflections. She walked on fast, away from all sight and hearing of the unwelcome intruders. She fancied how they were poking about the plumbing, and throwing open the blinds to see the condition of the paint and plaster, and standing on the lawn, with their backs to the bay, and gazing up at the house, and saying that chimney must come down, and a new window could be thrown out there, and the summer parlor must have something better by way of an entrance. She hated them; she would not put herself in the way of meeting them. She walked on and on, along the bank, till she was tired, and then sat down on an uprooted cedar, and pulled the cape of her coat over her head to keep warm, and waited till she should be sure they had gone back to the train. She sat with her watch in her hand, not able to think of the beauty of the smooth, blue bay, spread below her, nor the calm of the still autumn atmosphere. Nothing was calm to her now; she found she had been quite self-deceived, and was not half as resigned and good as she had thought herself.
"I wish it were all over and done," she said to herself keeping back bitter tears. "I wish the deed were signed, and the place gone. It is this suspense that I can't bear. Every time the train comes in, Ishall think some one has come up to look at it. Every time I walk across the grounds, I shall dread that woman running after me, to ask me for the keys. Oh, the talking, and the lawyers, and the agents, and St. John coming up; one day it will be sold, and the next day there will be some hitch, and there will be backing and filling, and worrying, and fretting, that wears my life out to look ahead to."
Poor Missy, she certainly had had some discipline, and not the least painful part was that she did not find herself as good as she had thought she was.
At last she heard the whistle of the cars, faint and far off, to be sure, but distinct through the still autumn air, and she got up, and walked back. She went quickly, feeling a little chilled from sitting still so long, and, full of her painful thoughts, did not look much about her, till, having emerged from the cedars, and standing upon the lawn, she looked up, and suddenly became aware that the intruders had not gone away. A horse and wagon stood before the side entrance, the horse was blanketed and tied. She looked anxiously around, and saw at the beach gate, a gentleman standing, his hands in the pockets of his ulster, and his face towards the bay. He was not at all in the attitude of criticism that she had fancied, but seemed quite unconscious of the chimneys and the entrances. His face she could not see, and she hoped to escape his notice, by hurrying across the lawn before he turned around. But even her light step on the dry leaves broke his revery, which could not have been very deep, and he turned quickly about, and came towards her, as if he had been waiting for her. She uttered a quick cry as she recognized him, and when he stoodbeside her and offered her his hand, she was so agitated that she could not speak. She struggled hard to overcome this, and managed to say at last:
"I did not know—I wasn't prepared for seeing anybody but a stranger. I thought it was somebody to look at the house—"
"The woman told me you would soon be back—"
"And I—I can't help feeling," stammered poor Missy, feeling her agitation must be accounted for in some way, "that people that come to look at the house are my enemies. I'm—I'm very glad to see you."
"Even if I have come to look at the house?"
"O yes, that wouldn't make any difference in my being glad."
"Well, I have come a great many thousands of miles to look at it. If I hadn't heard it was for sale, I suppose I should be somewhere about the second cataract of the Nile to-day."
"How did you hear about it?" said Missy, not knowing exactly what she said; but there are a great many times when it doesn't make much difference what you say, and this was one of those times. Mr. Andrews would have been a dull man if he hadn't felt pretty confident just then.
"I saw it in a newspaper, Miss Rothermel, and I felt that that announcement must mean some trouble to your family. I hoped it was money trouble, and that I might be able—might be permitted to do something to put things right."
"No," said Missy, with a sudden rush of tears to her eyes, "no, it isn't money trouble. Nobody can help us."
"I know absolutely nothing," said Mr. Andrews,hesitatingly. "I only landed last night from the steamer. I have seen no one to-day. I have only heard from the woman here that everybody was well—that there had been no death to break your home up, and I couldn't understand. Don't tell me if you don't want to. I hadn't any right to ask."
Missy was crying now, in earnest, as they walked up the path, and Mr. Andrews looked dreadfully distressed.
"O no," she said, through her tears, "it's a comfort to find anybody that doesn't know. Everybody here knows so horridly well! I never talk to anybody. I haven't said a word about it to anyone for months and months. It's a comfort to talk to you about it—if I ever can—only I've got crying and I can't stop."
She sat down on the steps of the summer parlor, where it was sheltered and where the afternoon sun was still shining. Mr. Andrews sat down silently beside her, and after a few more struggles with her tears she took her hands away from her face and began to tell him the story of the past year. Her eyes were a trifle red, and her skin mottled with her strong emotion; but I don't think Mr. Andrews minded.
"Mamma has gone away from me," she said, "to be with St. John and help him in his work. She has founded a sort of religious house, of which she isn't to be all the head, or anything like that, I believe; but a Sisterhood are there, of which she is an associate, and she sees St. John every day, and the room in which she lives opens into the church that St. John gave the money to buy—and they do a great and beautiful work among poor people and they are very happy.
"It didn't kill mamma as I thought it would, she is better than she was at home. Everybody here blames her, and that is why I can't talk to any of them. But you mustn't blame her. Hard as it has been to me, I begin to see it was not wrong for her to do it. If I had been good I should have done it too; but I wasn't, and I had to suffer for it. O, if I could only be like her and like St. John! I don't see how I came to be so different. At first I hated St. John, and I blamed her, but now I know in my heart they are all right, and I am all wrong. I can't understand it or explain it. I only know the truth—that people that can do what they've done are—are God's own. If I lived a hundred years, I couldn't be like them, nor be satisfied with what satisfies them. I couldn't ever be anything but very poor and very common-place, but oh, I mean to be better than I used to be—a year ago. O, I can't bear to think of it. But there is no use in talking of what's past. It was right that I should have to go through what I've gone through, but oh, it was very hard. And I have been so ill, and everything is so changed in my life. You can't think how like a dream it all seems to me, when I look back. This place has been let all summer to strangers, and your place too, and we are living in the old Roncevalle house, Aunt Harriet and I. And somehow or another I have got further and further off from all our friends here. I know they blame mamma and they pity me, and I don't like either one or the other thing, and I haven't any friend or any one to talk to, and it has been loneliness such as you can't understand. But I had got used to things in a certain sort as they are, and I had been promising myself that nobody would buy the house, andthat I could still have it to myself for a part of the year, and could still think of it as our own, and was quiet and almost contented, when the woman came running after me this afternoon and told me some one had come to look at it, and I was almost as unhappy as at first. I have been crying down on the bank there by myself all the afternoon. So you must excuse me for being so upset. I have gone through so much for the last year, being ill and all—a little thing unnerves me.'"
For Missy was beginning to feel a little frightened at her own emotion, and at the silence of her companion.
"It wasn't a little thing," he said at last, "seeing me and knowing what had brought me back. I don't think you need be ashamed to be showing agitation. For you ought never to have let me go away, Miss Rothermel, don't you see it now? My being here might have saved you, I don't say everything, but a great deal. I cannot understand why you sent me away. For I thought then, and I think now, that you relied on me in a certain way—that you had a certain feeling for me. I should think you would not have repulsed me."
"Those horrid women," said Missy faintly, turning very red.
"I am sure I am very sorry about them. I couldn't help it. I was stupid, I suppose."
"I hope they didn't come back with you?" said Missy, with sudden uneasiness.
"O no, they are safe in Florence."
"And you haven't married them?" she asked, with a look of relief. It made her jealous even to think of their existence.
Mr. Andrews looked at her as if he were beginningto understand her, and, half amused and half sad, he said: "No, neither one nor both. And there is no danger and never was of my wanting to, because for a year and a half, and may be more, I have wanted very much to marry some one else."
"Oh, that reminds me," said Missy, turning rather pale, as if what she was about to say cost her an effort. "That reminds me of something I ought to say to you. I heard, last spring, of a thing about you that I didn't know before. If I had known it I should have felt very differently about—about you generally—Oh!—whydoyou make it so hard to say things to you—Iwon'tsay it."
For Mr. Andrews was quietly, attentively, and perhaps, critically, listening. He certainly did make it hard to say things. He naturally showed so little emotion, and said such tremendous things himself, in such a calm way, Missy found it very difficult to believe them, and very hard to make statements of an agitating nature to him.
"I don't know why you won't say it," he said. "Do you think you shall be sorry?"
"I don't know. I generally am, whatever I do," she cried, with some more tears. "But no matter. I suppose youdofeel things, though you have such a cold-blooded way of looking. Well, I didn't know till a few months ago about—about your wife. And I can only say, I had liked you so much in spite of believing you were not kind and generous to her—and—and—if I had known you had been nobler and better than any other man in the world has ever been—"
Mr. Andrews got up and walked a few times up and down the path before the steps, which was the only indication that he gave of not being cold-blooded when that deep wound was touched.
"I trusted to your being just to me when you knew the truth," he said, at last.
"I wonder you didn't hate me," she exclaimed.
"Well, I didn't," he said.
"You have so little egotism," she went on. "I suppose it's that makes you able to bear injustice. You were so patient and overlooked so much, and I was—so horrid."
"I had been so deceived before," he said, "perhaps I was more pleased with your honesty than offended by it. I was conscious of not deserving your contempt, and I felt so certain of your truth. I was a little pleased, too, with your liking me in spite of yourself. You see I knew you liked me, 'horrid' as you were to me."
"Then why did you go away, if you knew I liked you?" cried Missy, looking up at him with fire.
"Because, at last, I got tired of being snubbed," he said. "I believe I had got to the end of that patience you are pleased to give me credit for. I thought I'd go away awhile and let you see how you liked it."
"And you went away and meant to come back?" exclaimed Missy, beginning to cry again, "and left me to this dreadful year of misery. I never will forgive you—I might have died. I only wonder that I didn't."
"I didn't suppose you cared enough to die about it, but I thought you'd see you did care when you thought it was too late. I don't know much about women, but I know that sort of thing occurs. And I didn't mean to come back as soon as this, either. It was only seeing the place advertised frightened me alittle and made me think you might be going through some trouble. Do you know, I didn't believe, up to the very last day, that you would let me go? I have never been angry with you, but I own I was very sore and disappointed when I found you had gone out that afternoon, when I sent word by Jay, that I was coming in to say good-bye. And yet it looked so like pique, I half thought you would send me some sort of message in the evening."
Missy hung her head as she remembered that half hour in the darkness at the gate, but she did not tell him, either then or after, how nearly right he was about it.
"Jay did not tell me. Of course you might have known that. And—those horrid women—said you were going to take them for a drive at half past three o'clock."
"They did? Well, I think you're right about them—they are very 'horrid.' There is one thing I don't quite understand; what has possessed the younger one, at least, to entertain this sort of plan. She has had more than one offer since we've been abroad, that I know about. But I believe she has set her heart on being Jay's mamma."
"It seems to me," said Missy, firing up, "that you have gained in self-esteem since you have been away. So many young women want to marry you!"
"Only two, that I can feel absolutely certain of," he said, sitting down beside her again, and giving her a most confident, unembarrassed look.
"I don't like you when you talk that way," she said, flushing, and pulling her cloak around her as if she were going away.
"Why, haven't I eaten humble pie long enough? Sit still, Missy, don't go away yet. I have a great deal more to say to you."
"I don't like to be called Missy; it isn't my name, to begin with, only a disrespectful sobriquet, and I haven't given you any right to speak to me in the way you do," said Missy, palpitating, as she tried to rise.
"Yes, you have, you have said two things that committed you, besides all the emotion you showed when you saw me. You can't require me to misunderstand all that."
"I don't require you to do anything but let me go away. I—the sun is setting. It is chilly. I want to go."
"How do I know that you will let me go with you? It suits me well enough here. I want to talk to you. It is more than a year since I have had that pleasure. You haven't even told me if I can have the house. You used to be a very clever business woman, I remember. Are you going to make a sharp bargain with me?"
"I don't care about the house; but I've told you this doesn't please me in the least."
Then Mr. Andrews laughed a little. "Well, if you push me to it, I shall have to buy the house, and bring Flora here as mistress of it. I know you wouldn't like her as a neighbor, but I can't keep house alone—that was demonstrated long ago."
"Mr. Andrews, I—I wish you would let me go. I am tired and I don't understand why you talk to me in this familiar and uncomfortable way."
"I won't let you go from these steps, where the sun is still shining and where you won't get cold, till you surrender unconditionally; till you tell me thatyou love me, love,—remember, like is not the word at all,—and that you have loved me for a year or more; and that you will marry me, and make me happy, and pay me for the misery you have made me suffer."
Surrender was not easy to a young woman who had had her own way so long—but once accomplished, she was very well contented with her conqueror, and forgot to resent his confidence in her affection. She forgot that the sun was going down so fast, and that there was danger of getting cold by staying out so late. It was twilight when they went up the steps of the Roncevalle house.
"What shall I say to Aunt Harriet?" she asked, rather uneasily, feeling it was odd that this one of the family should be the first one told of her mighty secret.
"I should say you'd better tell her, and get the credit of it," he returned, "for she certainly will guess."
"Why? I could tell her you had come to buy the house."
"But you look so happy. What would you tell her to explain that?"
It is in this way that some long-suffering men avenge the wrongs of years.