Missy. Miriam Coles Harris
All this time Missy was listening, with intent ear, for some movement in the parlor, Miss Varian listening no less intently. The tea-table was cleared—the cook could be detained no longer with any show of reason; the waitress waited to know if there was anything she could bring Miss Rothermel. It was so very unusual for any one to sit in the dining-room after tea; there were no books in it, nor any easy chairs, nor anything to do. The waitress, being a creature of habit, was quite disturbed to see them stay, but she knew very well what it meant.
At last! There was a movement across the hall—the parlor door opened, and they heard St. John and his mother come out and go slowly up the stairs. When they were on the first landing, Miss Varian said, sharply,
"Well, I suppose we can be released now."
"Yes, I think it will be as pleasant in the parlor," said Missy, giving her arm to Miss Varian, and going forward with a firm step. She installed her companion in an easy chair, seated herself, and read aloud the evening paper. Politics, fashions, marriages, and deaths, what a senseless jumble they made in her mind. She was often called sharply to account for betraying the jumble in her tone, for Miss Varian had recovered herself enough to feel an interest in the paper, while she felt sure she should have no tidings of St. John's trouble that night. It was easy to see nothing would be told her till it was officially discussed, with Missy in council, and till it was decided how much and what she was to hear. So she resolved to revenge herself by keeping Missy out of it as long as she could. The paper, to the last personal, had to be read. And then she found it necessary to have two or three notes written. Goneril was no scribe, so Missy was always expected to write her notes for her, which she always did, filled with a proud consciousness of being pretty good to do it, for somebody who wasn't her aunt, and who was her enemy. Aunt Harriet had always a good many notes to write; she never could get over the habit of wanting things her own way, and to have your own way, even about the covering of a footstool, requires sometimes the writing of a good many little notes; the looking up of a good many addresses, the putting on of a good many stamps, the sending a good many times to the post-office. All these things Missy generally did with outward precision and perfection. But to-night her hand shook, her mind wandered, she made mighty errors, and blotted and crossed out and misdirected like an ordinary mortal in a state of agitation. It was not lost upon Miss Varian, who heard the pen scratching through a dozen words at a time.
"Anything but an erasure in writing to such a person as Mrs. Olor, and particularly about a matter such as this. If you can't put your mind on it to-night, I'd rather you'd leave it till to-morrow."
"I haven't found any difficulty in putting my mind on it," said Missy. "If you could give me a lucid sentence, I think I could write it out. I believe I have done it before." So she tore up the letter, her cheeks burning, and began a fresh one.
All this time she listened for the sounds overhead. Sometimes it would be silent, of course they could not hear the sound of voices—sometimes for five minutes together there would be the sound of St. John's tread as he walked backward and forward the length of the room. Eleven o'clock came.
"I am going to bed," said Missy, pushing away the writing things. "I will finish your business in the morning. Shall I ring for Goneril?"
While Goneril was coming, Missy put out the lamp, and gathered up her books. When she had gone up and shut herself into her room, she began to cry. The two hours' strain upon her nerves, in keeping up before Miss Varian, had been great; then the suspense and pity for St. John; and not least, the feeling that she was forgotten and outside of all he suffered, and her mother knew. Mamma could have called me, even if St. John had not remembered, she thought bitterly. By and bye she heard her mother's door open and her brother's step cross the hall, and stealing out she looked after him down the stairs. He walked once or twice up and down the lower hall, then taking up his hat, went out, and she heard his step on the gravel walk that led down to the beach gate. Then she felt a great longing to go into her mother's room, and hear all. But an obstinate jealous pride kept her back. She lingered near the open door of her room till Anne the maid went into her mother's room, and after a few moments came out.
"Did mamma ask for me?" she said, as the woman passed her door.
"No, miss. She told me she did not want anything, that I was to leave the light, and that all were to go to bed."
Then Missy shut her door, and dried her tears, or rather they dried away before the hot fire of her hurt feelings. St. John's trouble, whatever it was, began to grow less to her. At least he had his mother, if he had lost his love; and mother to her had always been more than any love. And then, he had had the fulness of life, he had had an experience; he had lived more than she had, though he was but twenty, and she was twenty-seven. She was angry, humbled, wounded. Poor Missy; and then she hated herself for it, and knew that she ought to be crying for St. John, instead of envying him his mother's heart. It is detestable to find yourself falling below the occasion, and Missy knew that was just what she was doing. She was thinking about herself and her own wounds and wants, and she should have been filled with the sorrow of her brother. Well, so she would have been if he had asked her. She was sure she would have given him her whole heart, if he had wanted it. This was destined to be a night of suspenses. Missy undressed herself, and put on a wrapper, and said her very tumultuous and fragmentary evening prayers, and read a chapter in one or two good books, without the least understanding, and then put her light behind a screen in the corner, and went to the window, and began to wonder why St. John did not come back. The night was clear and starlight, but there was no moon, and it looked dark as she gazed out. She could see a light or two twinkling out on the bay, at the mast of some sloop or yacht. An hour passed. She walked about her room, in growing uneasiness, and opened her door softly, wondering if her mother shared her watch, and with what feelings. Another half hour, and it truly seemed to her, unused to such excitements, that she could bear it no longer. Where could he be, what could it mean? All the jealousy was over before this time, and she would have gone quickly enough to her mother, but that the silence in her room, made her fear to disturb her, and to give her a sleepless night. At last, just as the hands of her little watch reached two, she heard a movement of the latch of the beach gate, and her brother's step coming up the path. She flew down to the door of the summer parlor and opened it for him. There was only a faint light coming from the hall. He did not speak, and she followed him across the parlor, into the hall. "Where have you been?" she said humbly, "I have been so worried."
But when she got into the hall under the light, she uttered a little scream, "St. John! You are all wet, look at your feet."
The polished floor was marked with every step.
"It is nothing," he said hoarsely, going towards the stairs.
"Is mamma's light burning?"
"You are not going to mamma's room," said Missy, earnestly, "at this hour of the night? You might make her very ill. I think you are very inconsiderate."
There came into his eyes for a moment a hungry, evil look. He looked at Missy as if he could have killed her.
"Then tell her why I didn't come," he said in an unnatural voice, taking a candle from her hand, and going up the stairs, shut himself into his own room.
Poor Missy was frightened. She wished she had let him go to his mother; as the light of the lamp fell on his face, it was dreadful. His clear blue eyes, with their dark lashes, had always looked at her with feelings that she could interpret. She had seen him angry—a short-lived, sudden anger, that had melted while you looked, but never malicious; but this was malice, despair. The habitual expression of his eye was soft, happy, bright; a good nature looking out. She did not think he had lost his mind; she only thought he might be losing his soul. His eyes were bloodshot, his face of such a dreadful color.
"This is trouble," she said to herself, as with trembling hands she put out the light, and went up the dark staircase. At her mother's door she paused and listened, and a voice within called her. How gladly she heard it! She went in, longing to throw herself into her mother's arms and cry what is it? But she controlled herself, and went softly to the sofa where her mother lay, still undressed, the lamp burning on the table beside her, her eyes shining with an unusual lustre.
"I