Miriam Coles Harris

ENTER MISS VARIAN.

The next day about noon Mr. Andrews, with Jay by the hand, walked up the steps of the Varians' house. He had got a few hours of sleep after daylight, and had just swallowed a cup of coffee and called it breakfast, and now, looking haggard and weary, had, as was proper, come over to see about Missy and her hysterics.

She too had just come down-stairs, and was sitting in a great chair by the window in the parlor, with footstool under her feet and an afghan spread over her. The day was cool and brilliant; all the fogs and clouds of the night had been blown away by a strong north wind; the sun was coming in at the window, and Missy was trying to get warm in it, for she felt like Harry Gill in the story-book, as if she should never get warm again. She was pale, and lay with her head back in the chair, looking a disgust with life and its emotions. From this attitude she was roused by the unexpected entrance of Jay and his father, whose approach she had not heard. She changed color and tried to stand up, and then sat down again.

"Don't get up," said Mr. Andrews, lifting Jay to kiss her. "There, Jay, now you'd better go away. Find Goneril and play with the kittens a little while, and then I'll take you home."

He opened the door for Jay, who was very willing to go, not feeling quite at home with Missy yet, since the fainting-fit. He looked askance at her as he went out of the door, as at one who had come back from the dead.

"He wasn't worth all I went through for him yesterday," thought Missy. And then she took it back, and thought, in an instant, he was worth a great deal more—which was a way of hers.

Mr. Andrews sat down on the other side of the window, and said, with a weary laugh, as he leaned back in his chair, "I'm glad it's to-day, instead of yesterday."

"Ah!" said Missy, with a shiver.

"I don't know how much you've heard of our adventures—"

"I haven't heard anything. I have just come down-stairs, and last night I wouldn't let them tell me. I only wish I could forget it all. I cannot bear to think of it."

"I don't wonder. It was bad enough for us, who were doing something all the time, but for you, who couldn't do anything but wait, it must have been—well, there's no use going over it. We've got him, Miss Rothermel, and that's enough to think about. Only let me tell you this, if it hadn't been for you, we should not have him now."

"If it hadn't been for me, you wouldn't have lost him at all," said Missy, bitterly.

"I don't understand—you mean the woman's hostility to you? I really think that had very little to do with it. She is such an evil creature, she would have done the same, or worse, without that for an excuse. You may, rather than reproach yourself for that, congratulate yourself upon having been the means of sending her away, before the child was totally corrupted. When I think what danger he—they—were in from her, and how little I suspected it, I am more than ever convinced that I am not fit to have the care of him. Believe me, you did me, as well as the children, an inestimable favor, when you advised me to send those creatures away; and to you I owe a year of comfort and peace, and Jay owes, I don't know what."

Missy flushed painfully, and her companion saw it, but he went on ruthlessly, "You never will let me allude to this, Miss Rothermel; but I want to say one thing about it, now we are on the subject, and then I will promise not to trouble you again. You are so over-sensitive about this matter you have made yourself uncomfortable, and—well—though it's not of much importance—you've made me uncomfortable too. If you will believe me when I say I shall always consider you did me the greatest favor when you induced me to send those servants away, and if you will bear in mind the benefit you did the children, you will surely be able to be indifferent to the tattle of a set of people whose tongues are always busy about their betters, in one way or another. If they were not talking about this, they would be talking about something else; it was only the accident of your hearing it that was unusual. I have no doubt in our kitchens every day are said things that would enrage us, but luckily we don't hear them. This has been such a barrier between us, Miss Rothermel; won't you be good enough to make way with it to-day, and promise not to think of it again? You have given me a new cause for gratitude in what you did for Jay yesterday. Surely, after what we both went through we can never be exactly like—like strangers—to each other. I hope you'll let me come a little nearer to being a friend than you've ever permitted me before, though if I recollect, you made a very fair promise once about it."

"Why haven't I kept it? I can't remember having—"

"Having snubbed me badly since that night. No, I acknowledge that you have kept your resolution pretty fairly. But then, you know, it was impossible not to see it was an effort all the time. If you could forget all this about the servants, and let us be the sort of friends we might have been if Gabrielle had never meddled, you would lay me under another obligation, and a more binding one than any of the others, great as they have been."

Mr. Andrews was talking very earnestly, and in a manner unusual to him. One could not help seeing that nothing short of the events of yesterday could have made it possible for him to speak so. His heart had been jarred open, as it were, by the great shock, and had not yet closed up again. It wouldn't take many hours more to do it; Missy realized that perhaps he wouldn't speak so again in his life; the moment was precious to her, because, whether she liked him or not, there is a pleasure in looking into reserved people's hearts; one knows it cannot happen every day.

And that was the moment that Miss Varian chose for coming into the parlor, with Goneril and Jay and the kittens. She had heard his voice, and she naturally wished to hear all about the affair of the pursuit. Goneril was nothing loth, and Jay was quite willing to go if the kittens went, so here the party were. Missy involuntarily bit her lips. Mr. Andrews' forehead contracted into a frown as he got up and spoke to Miss Varian, who settled herself comfortably into a chair.

"Now," she said taking her fan from Goneril, and getting her footstool into the right place, "now let us hear all about it."

Mr. Andrews, with a hopelessly shut-up look, said he didn't think there was much to tell.

"Not much to tell!" she echoed. "Why, there's enough to fill a novel. I never came so near to a romance in my life. I positively wouldn't have missed yesterday for a thousand dollars. It gives one such emotions to know so much is going on beside one, Mr. Andrews."

Mr. Andrews didn't deny her statement, nor a great many others that she made, but he seemed to find it very difficult to satisfy her curiosity. In fact, she got very little out without mining for it. She asked the hour when they first sighted the barque, and she got it. Two o'clock. Then the course they took, and the changes of the wind, and the deviations that she made, and the reasons that they did not gain upon her for an hour or more. All this might have been interesting to a sea-faring mind, but not to Miss Varian's. She asked questions and got answers, but she fretted and didn't seem to find herself much ahead. Missy knew Mr. Andrews had come over to tell her all about it—but not Miss Varian. He really did not mean to be obstinate, but he couldn't tell the story with the others present. Missy gathered a few bald facts, to be filled out later from the narrative of others. She didn't feel a consuming curiosity. Jay was here, the woman wasn't. That was enough for the present. She felt a far greater interest in those few words Mr. Andrews had been interrupted in saying. They went over and over in her mind. She only half attended to Miss Varian's catechism.

"Well," cried Goneril, who was hopelessly jolted out of her place by the events of yesterday, "well, one would think you'd had a child stolen every other day this summer, by the way you take it. Captain Symonds, over on the Neck, made twice the fuss about his calf, last autumn. I don't believe yet he talks about much else."

Miss Varian gave her maid a sharp reprimand, and asked Mr. Andrews another question in the same breath.

"How did the French woman act when the warrant was served on her?"

"Oh, well, just as any Frenchwoman would have acted under the circumstances, I suppose. You know they're apt to make a scene whether there's any excuse for it or not."

"But did she cry, or scold, or threaten, or swear, or coax, or what?"

"Why, a little of all, I think; a good deal of all, indeed, I might say. She tired us out, I know."

"But did she seem frightened? How did she take it? What was the first thing she said when she saw the officer?"

"Upon my word, I have forgotten what she said. I heard Jay's voice in the cabin, and I was thinking more about him, I suppose."

"But what excuse did she make for herself? How did she put it?"

"Oh, a woman never has any trouble to find excuses. She seemed to have plenty."

"But what possessed you to be so soft-hearted as to let her go?"

"What did I want of her? I was only too happy that she should go, the further off the better."

"I must say I think you were ridiculously weak."

"That is just possible."

"And she, and the wretch she called her husband, all are on their way to South America?"

"I hope so, I am sure."

"What did the captain say? How could he answer for stopping to take up the party in the night? Did he pretend to be ignorant of what they were about?"

"Yes, he assured us he was ignorant, and I should not wonder if he spoke the truth—French truth, perhaps; but I don't believe he suspected more than a little smuggling venture, or an un-actionable intrigue of some kind. He knew the man somewhat, and made a bargain to lay outside the harbor for a few hours, and pick them up if they came out before daylight. The man told him it was his wife and child, who had been detained in the country by the illness of the child, and that he would pay him fifty dollars, besides the passage money, if he'd wait for them. No doubt the captain suspected something, but, as I say, nothing so serious as the job they'd undertaken."

"The wretch! He ought to have had his ship brought back to port, and have been kept there for a month, at least, and lost his cargo, and been put to no end of loss and law. You were ridiculously weak, Mr. Andrews, to let him go, and worse than weak to let the woman go."

"Maybe so, Miss Varian, maybe so. It wouldn't be the first time, at any rate."

"To think of that horrid creature going off and doing what she chooses!"

"I'd rather think of her in South than in North America. And as to doing what she chooses—she'll do that, whichever continent she's on—for she is a woman."

"You should have shut her up in prison, and made that captain suffer all that the law could put upon him. You wouldn't appear against them because you are too lazy, Mr. Andrews, and that is the English of it. And so other people's children may be stolen, and other vessels go prowling around our shores, and this sort of thing be done with perfect impunity, Mr. Andrews, with perfect impunity."

"I am very sorry, Miss Varian, but I hope it won't be as bad as you anticipate. There are not many women as wicked as Alphonsine, and I don't think she will try it again."

"Try it again! Why, she will try something worse. She will never rest. I shan't sleep easy in my bed. I do not think we are safe from her attempts, any one of us."

Thereupon Goneril laughed, a most disrespectful laugh, though a suppressed one, and her mistress, in a temper, ordered her out of the parlor. She obeyed the order in the letter, but not in the spirit, pausing to talk to Jay about the kittens, and then inviting him to the piazza, where, the windows being open, she could hear the conversation within as well as before. This episode broke the thread of Miss Varian's catechism, and she forgot Alphonsine in her wrath against Goneril. Meanwhile, a carriage drove up with visitors; Mr. Andrews hurried to depart, Missy disappeared into the adjoining room, and Miss Varian, being left to entertain them, soon forgot her maid's offenses. Visitors were a balm for most wounds, with her.