Missy: A Novel

by Miriam Coles Harris

"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, and that 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 beginning to 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!—why do you make it so hard to say things to you—I won't say it."