Missy: A Novel

by Miriam Coles Harris

St. John followed his sister closely as she entered the house. The servants made way for her, and they went quickly up the stairs. At the door of the sick room they paused. Another woman, wringing her hands, and listening with keen curiosity, stood gazing in. The room was in the most confused state. The coffee-colored Alphonsine moved stolidly about, and occasionally put a piece of furniture in its place, or removed a garment thrown down in the haste and panic of the past night; but standing still, more often, to gaze back at the bed. She crossed herself often, in a mechanical manner, but looked more sullen than sympathetic. There was a bath in the middle of the room, cloths and towels strewn upon the floor beside it, mustard, a night-lamp flickering still in the face of day, a bowl of ice, some brandy. The windows were thrown wide open; the bed stood with its head near one—another one was opposite to it. The light fell full upon the ghastly face of the suffering woman. Beauty! had she ever been beautiful? "Like as a moth fretting a garment," so had her anguish made her beauty to consume away. A ghastly being—suffering, agonized, dying—wrestling with a destroying enemy! Such conflicts cannot last long; the end was near.

As St. John and his sister entered the room, the doctor, who stood at the head of the bed, was wiping the perspiration from his forehead and glancing out of the window. He was troubled and worn out with the night's work, and was watching eagerly for a brother physician who had been summoned to his aid. He knew the new-comer could do no good, but he could share the responsibility with him, and bring back the professional atmosphere out of which he had been carried by the swift and terrible progress of his patient's malady. Above all things, the doctor wished to be professional and cool; and he knew he was neither in the midst of this blundering crowd of servants, and in the sight of this fiercely dying woman. He could have wished it all to be done over again. He had lost his head, in a degree. He did not believe that anything could have arrested the flight of life; all the same he wished he had known a little more about the case; had taken the alarm quicker and sent for other aid. He looked harassed and helpless, and very hot and tired. All this St. John saw as he came in the room.

Missy looked questioningly at him, and then as he gave a gesture of assent, came quickly to the side of the bed. She half knelt beside it, and took the poor sufferer's hand in hers. The touch, perhaps, caused her to open her eyes, and her lips moved. Then her glance, roving and anguished, fell upon St. John. She lifted her hand with a sudden spasm of life.

"A priest?" she said, huskily.

"Yes," said St. John, coming to her quietly.

"Then all of you go away—quick—I want to speak to him."

"There is no time to spare," said the doctor, as he passed St. John. Missy followed him, and the servants followed her. She closed the door and waited outside.

The servants seemed to be consoled by the presence of a priest; things were taking the conventional death-bed turn. Even the doctor felt as if the professional atmosphere were being restored in a degree. St. John, indeed, had looked as if he knew what he was about, and had been calm in the midst of the agitated and uncertain group, occupied himself, perhaps, by but one thought. Young as he was, his sister and the doctor and the servants shut him into the room with a feeling of much relief. The servants nodded, and went their ways with apparent satisfaction. The doctor threw himself into a chair in an adjoining room, and signified to Miss Rothermel that he would rest till he was called. And she herself knelt down beside an open window just outside the door, and waited, and probably devoutly prayed for the passing soul making her tardy count within.

She could not but speculate upon the interview. Now that the awful sense of responsibility was lifted off her and shifted upon her brother's shoulders, she felt more naturally and more humanly. She began to wonder whether it had been to ask her for a priest that the dying woman had struggled when she first saw her that morning. She was almost sure it was, for she had clutched at St. John with such eagerness. It was probable she did not know him and did not associate him with Missy. His marked dress had been his passport. And Missy really did not know what her friend's creed was. It seemed probable she had been a Roman Catholic, but had dropped her form of faith in holiday times of youth and possible wrong doing, and had never had grace to resume that, or any other in the weary days of illness—unprofitable so long as they did not threaten death. But now death was at the door, and she had clutched at the hem of a priest's garment. So, thought Missy, it is real when it comes to facts; for what fact so real as death? Everything else seemed phantom-dim when she thought of that face upon the pillow, with the wide-open window shedding all the gray morning's light upon it.

The moments passed; the still, dull, heavy air crept in at the window upon which Missy bowed her head; the leaves scarcely stirred upon the trees that stood up close beside it; a languid bird or two twittered an occasional smothered note. There were few household sounds. The servants, though released from their futile watching, did not resume their household work. Missy smelt the evil odor of the Frenchman's cigar, and was ashamed to find it vexed her, even at such a moment as this; she braced herself to endure the "Fille de Mme. Angot," if that should follow in a low whistle from under the trees. But it did not. The Frenchman had that much respect for what was going on within.