Missy: A Novel

by Miriam Coles Harris

"It's my advice to you to stay where you are," said her aunt. "We are a lot of imbeciles, all of us. We are better out of the way. It isn't very pleasant to think of the linen closet emptied upon the lawn, and all Yellowcoats tramping over it, but it's better than being suffocated in the smoke, or crushed to death in the crowd."

Missy gave her mother a reassuring pressure of the hand, and did not move again. They were indeed a company of useless beings. It was a strange experience to her to be sitting still and thinking the destruction of her household goods a light misfortune. That linen closet, from which the unaccounted-for absence of a pillow-case, would have given her hours of annoyance; the book-cases, where order reigned and where dust never was allowed; the precious china on the dining-room shelves, only moved by her own hands—for all these she had not a thought of anxiety, as she felt her mother's hand in hers. The relief from the fears of that quarter of an hour, while she was making her way through the crowd, had had the effect of making these losses quite unfelt. Subdued, and nervously exhausted too, she sat beside her mother, while the noises gradually subsided on the grounds adjoining. The house was but a stone's throw from the road, and from the Varians' gate, and Miss Varian, with keen ear, sitting on the piazza outside, interpreted the sounds to those within.

"Now the women are beginning to go home," she said. "The children are fretting and sleepy; there, that one got a slap. Now the teams, hitched to the trees outside, are unhitched and going away. I wonder how much plunder is being stowed away in the bottom of the wagons. I feel as if my bureau drawers were going off in lots to suit pilferers. There now, the boys and men are beginning to straggle off in pairs. You may be sure there isn't anything to see, if they are going. Talk of the curiosity of women. Men and boys hang on long after their legs give out. Ah! now we're beginning to get toward the end of the entertainment, I should think. I hear Mr. Andrews calling out to the men to clear the grounds, and see that the gates are shut; ah, bang goes the front gate. Well, I should think the poor man might be tired by this time. I should think he might come in and leave things in charge of some of those men who have been working with him."

The clock in the parlor struck ten, and then half-past. Eliza, who had been watching the children, and making up some beds above, now came down and begged Mrs. Varian to come up and go to bed, but she refused. The other servants, who had been over at the fire, possibly helping a little, now came in, bringing a message from Mr. Andrews, that he begged they would all go to bed; and that everything was safe and they must feel no anxiety. It might be some time before he could get away. Missy persuaded her aunt and her mother to go up. Eliza conducted Miss Varian to a small "spare" room. Missy felt a shudder as she put down her candle on the dressing-table of the room where she had seen Mrs. Andrews die. She hoped her mother did not know it.

While she was arranging her for the night, she had time to observe the room. It was very much changed since she had last been in it; the pictures were taken from the walls, the position of the furniture altered, she was not sure but that it was other furniture. Certainly the sofa and footstool and large chair were gone. Mr. Andrews himself occupied the small room on the other side of the house that he had had from the first. This room, the largest and best in the house, had been kept as a sort of day nursery for the children through the winter. Missy had often thought of it as calculated to keep alive the memory of their mother, but now it seemed, as if with purpose, that had been avoided, and as if the whole past of the room was to be wiped out.

It could be no chance that had worked such a change. There were holes still in the wall where a bracket had been taken down. A new clock was on the mantelpiece; there was literally not a thing left the same, not even the carpet on the floor. It gave her a feeling of resentment; but this was not the moment to feel resentment. So she went softly down the stairs, telling her mother to try to sleep, and she would wait up, and see if she could do anything more than thank Mr. Andrews when he came in. This was no more than civil; but strangely, Missy did not feel civil, as she sat counting the minutes in the parlor below. She felt as if it were odious to be there, odious to feel that he was working for them, that she must be grateful to him. All her past prejudices, which had been dying out in the silence of the last few months, and under the knowledge of his steady kindness to his children, came back as she went up into that room, which, to her vivid imagination, must always bring back the most painful scene she had ever witnessed. She had never expected to enter this house again, at least while its present tenants occupied it, and here she was, and certain to stay here for one night and day at least. She had had none of these feelings as she sat during the evening silently thankful beside her mother; all this tumult of resentment had come since she had gone up-stairs. The memory of the beautiful young creature, whose dreadful death she had witnessed, came back to her with strange power; and the thought that she had been banished from her children's minds made her almost vindictive. How can I speak to him? how have I ever spoken to him? she thought, as her eyes wandered around the room, searching for some trace of her. But it was thoroughly a man's apartment, "bachelor quarters" indeed. Not a picture of the woman whose beauty would have graced a palace; not a token that she had ever been under this roof, that she had died here less than a year ago. The nurse had come into the room as Missy sat waiting, and, seeming to divine her thought, said, while she put straight chairs and books:

"Isn't it strange, Miss Rothermel, that there isn't any picture of Mrs. Andrews anywhere about the house? I should think their father would be afraid of the children forgetting all about her. I often talk to them about her, but I don't know much to say, because none of us ever saw her; and Mr. Andrews never talks about her to them, and I am sure Jay doesn't remember her at all. There was once a little box that Jay dragged out of a closet in the attic, and in the evening after he found it, he was playing with it in the parlor by his father, and Gabby caught sight of it, and cried, 'That's my mamma's box; give it to me, Jay.' They had a little quarrel for it, and Gabby got it, and then Jay forgot all about it, and went to play with something else. But," went on Eliza, lowering her voice, "that evening I saw Mr. Andrews, after the children had gone to bed, empty all Gabrielle's things out of the box, and carry it up stairs, and put it away in a locked-up closet in the hall."

"Probably he wanted to punish her for taking it away from Jay," said Missy, insincerely, feeling all the time that it was not the thing for her to be allowing Eliza to tell her this.

"No," said Eliza, "for he brought her home a beautiful new box the next evening, and he wouldn't have done that if he had wished to punish her, I think."

"Eliza, don't you think you'd better see if the fire is good in the kitchen? Mr. Andrews might want a cup of coffee made, or something cooked to eat. He must be very tired."