Missy: A Novel

by Miriam Coles Harris

"Yes, all," said Miss Varian, in a tone that spoke volumes. Goneril indulged in another sniff, and went.

"That insufferable woman," muttered her employer, below her breath.

Missy smiled calmly, but said nothing. It always calmed her to see her step-aunt in a temper with Goneril: it gave her a feeling of superiority. She never would have endured the woman for a day, but she was quite willing her elder should, if she chose. The poor lady's blindness would have given every one a feeling of tenderness, if she had not been too sharp and petulant to permit any one to feel tender long. The position of her attendant was not one to be envied. Goneril was an American farmer's daughter, who had made a bad marriage (and the man who married her had not made altogether a good one). She had had high ambitions, as became an American farmer's daughter, and she had come down to living out at service, and what more cruel statement could be made? No worse fate could have overtaken her she was sure, and she made no secret of her estimate of domestic service for American farmer's daughters. She quarrelled incessantly with the servants of humbler nationality in the house, who did not mind it much, and who laughed a little at her proud parentage. They did not see the difference themselves. She was industrious, and capable, and vigorous, and was indispensable to Miss Varian, out of whom she wrung ever-increasing wages. Her father, the American farmer, had done handsomely by her in the matter of a name; he had called her Regan Goneril. She had grown up in the sanctity of home as Regan, but now that she was cast out into the battle of life, she preferred to be called Goneril. She also hoped to be shielded by this thin disguise from the pursuit of the discarded husband. The belief in the Varian kitchen was, that there was no danger of any such pursuit: in fact, that the husband would go very fast in the opposite direction. But she liked to talk about it, and about her goodness in putting up with Miss Varian's temper; she placed her service rather in the light of missionary work. If she did not feel it to be her duty to stay with the poor blind woman, she said, no money would induce her to remain. (It took more and more money every year, however, to stiffen and hold up her sense of duty.)

Missy took the brawls between Miss Varian and her maid, very calmly. "It gives an interest to her life," she said from a height. On this evening, occupied as she was by her own matters, she heard the story of her aunt's wrongs more indifferently than ever. And even Miss Varian soon forgot that there was anything more absorbing than the waited-for arrival.

"It may be nine o'clock before they get here," she said; "that shows the impropriety of letting a girl go off on journeys with a lover. Such things weren't done in my time. I shouldn't have thought of doing such a thing."

"You don't know; you might have thought of it, if you had ever been engaged," said Missy, with malice.

"Well, my dear, we have neither of us been tempted," retorted her aunt, urbanely. "Let us be charitable. I have no doubt we should, both of us, have been able to take care of ourselves; but it may be different with your sister elect. These very handsome women, you know, are not always wise."

"That is true," said Missy, tapping her foot impatiently as she stood before the fire. "Mamma, you don't think you'd like a cup of tea? You may have to wait a good while."

"No, thank you," said Mrs. Varian meekly.

She always wore a pained expression when her sister-in-law was present; but as the sister-in-law could not see it, it did no harm. She always dreaded the next word. They had always been uncongenial; but it is one thing to have an uncongenial sister-in-law that you can get away from, or go to see only when you are braced up to the business, and another to have her under your own roof, a prisoner, by reason of her misfortune and your sense of duty—able to prey upon you whether you are well or ill; as familiar and everyday as your dressing-gown and slippers; having no respect for your engagements or your indigestions. When this blindness threw Harriet Varian upon her hands, she felt as if her home were invaded, desecrated, spoiled, but she had not a moment's hesitation as to her duty. A frivolous youth and a worldly, pleasure-seeking maturity, had ill prepared the poor woman for her dreary doom. She had fitted herself to it with a bitter philosophy; for do we not all fit ourselves to our lot, in one way or another. "L'homme est en délire s'il ose murmurer," but it is to be hoped Heaven is not always critical in the matter of resignation. Harriet Varian had submitted, but she was in the primer of Christian principle, as it were; attaining with difficulty in middle age the lesson that would have been easy to her, if she had begun in childhood. When you have spent thirty-four years in having your own way, and consulting your own pleasure quite exclusively, it comes a trifle hard to do exactly as you do not wish to do, and to find that pleasure is a term unknown in your vocabulary: when you are old that another should gird you and lead you whither you would not.