Missy: A Novel

by Miriam Coles Harris

It is astonishing how much unnecessary talking is done in a house, how many useless questions asked, how many senseless observations made. Just be very unhappy, overstrained or anxious, and you will find out how many idle words are spoken in an hour, if you happen to be bearing your burden among happy, unstrained, and careless people.

It seemed to Missy, calling out her answers in as brave a voice as she could, going through the house, that never were questions so useless, observations so senseless.

"Where are you going?" was among the last of her mother's.

"To my room; and don't let me be disturbed, please. I want to be quiet for awhile."

"Another headache?" cried Aunt Harriet from the hall below. "Really, this is becoming serious. I never knew you were capable of headaches."

"Thank you," said Missy, shutting her door and sliding the bolt. She sat down in a chair by the window and gazed out; but she did not see the soft velvet of the lawn, nor the blue dimples of the bay against which the great trunks of the trees stood out.

There were some sails flitting about in the fresh wind, but she did not see them. She was trying to collect her thoughts and get over that blow on the ear that she felt as if she had had. It was new to her not to go to her mother and confide her trouble; but this was a sort of humiliation she could not bring herself to talk about. She excused herself by saying it would only distress mamma. It would have distressed mamma's daughter so much to have given words to it that she never even allowed to herself that it might be a duty. It was all a punishment, she said to herself, for having received on terms of kindness a man who had behaved so to his wife; that was a breach of friendship. It was something to bear in silence, to be hushed up, and forgotten, if it could be, even by herself. She wished that she might go away.

She got up and walked across the room—impulsively. Then sat down again, with the bitter reflection that it was only men who could go away. Women have to sit down and bear their disappointments, their mortifications, their defeats; to sit down in the sight of them and forget them if they can. Men can pack their tender sensibilities into their valises, and go off and see that the world is wide, and contains other subjects of thought and interest than the ones they have been brooding over.

Go away! No indeed; she laughed bitterly when she thought of the commotion that would result from the mentioning such a plan. St. John might walk in any day, and say he was going on a journey. No one would question his right to go, or his right to decline giving any reasons for so going. He was seven years younger than she was, but he was free. She must account for all her goings, her doings; even the people in the village would sit in judgment on her, if she did anything that was not clearly explained to them and proved expedient. No—she was tied, bound to Yellowcoats. All their plans were laid to remain at home for the winter.

Since St. John had come to the parish, they had decided it was unnecessary to make their annual change; Missy had not cared for the winter in town, Mrs. Varian had been glad to be let off from it, Aunt Harriet had submitted to give it up. So here she was to stay, and here it was possible the Andrews' would stay, and here she must daily see the children and pass the house, and be reminded that she had been insulted, and had been a fool. It would be the village talk. All her past dignity and her grand disdain of lovers would pass for nothing. She had never entered the lists with other young women; she had prided herself on her determination not to marry. "I am not in commission," she would say loftily to the younger girls, making the most of her age.