Missy: A Novel

by Miriam Coles Harris

"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 intention of 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 smile on 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. During the 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.