Miriam Coles Harris

SURRENDER.

Missy found herself at home in the country, very sorry to leave her mother, very glad to breathe pure air again, very humble to think how much she objected to bad smells and street noises. St. John and her mother did not seem to take them into account at all, and the Sisters she was sure enjoyed them. Her housekeeping and Aunt Harriet took up a good deal of her time, but it was pretty dull work, and her heart was heavy. It was something of a strain to have to see people and to answer their curious questions; but to tell the truth, Missy was much less ashamed of her brother and her mother since she came back, and chiefly felt the impossibility of making anybody understand the matter. She understood comparatively little herself, but the comfortable rector, "with fat capon lined," the small-souled doctor, the young brood of Olors, the strait-laced Sombreros, the evangelical Eves, how much less could they comprehend. She knew that the keenest interest existed in the whole community regarding their family matters, and that much indignation was felt at the breaking up of the home. There were a great many people who wore inclined to look upon her as a martyr to the fanaticism of her mother and brother, and she would have been overwhelmed with civilities if she had consented to receive them. As it was, she considered every unusual demonstration of regard, as a disapprobation of her mother, and resented it in her heart, and possibly showed much coldness of manner. So she gradually isolated herself, and became daily less a part of the Yellowcoats community.

How odd it was to be so unimportant! Her small housekeeping required so few dependents, contrasted with their former ways. Now that they did not entertain, and that she was neither young nor old, and that illness had kept her from even the ordinary duties of visiting, she had fallen almost entirely out of sight. A very gay family had taken their house, which was now quite a centre of amusement. The Andrews cottage had been occupied by people whose delight it was to be considered swell. They drove all sorts of carts, and sailed all manner of boats, and owned all varieties of dogs. The village gazed at them, and the residents who were entitled to be considered on a visiting equality, called on them, and all united to gratify their ambition to be talked about. At these two houses, poor Missy felt she would be excused from calling. Indeed, no one seemed to notice the omission; it is so easy to sink down into obscurity, and to become nobody. She sometimes felt as if she had died, and had been permitted to come back and see how small a place she had filled, and how little she was missed, to perfect her in humility. After all, St. John and his mother—were they so very wrong? What was it all worth?

Miss Harriet Varian, about these days, was much easier to get along with than in more prosperous ones. Perhaps she was touched by Missy's changed manner and illness; perhaps the insignificance into which they had fallen, had had for her, too, its lesson. And perhaps the spectacle of her sister's faith, had, against her will, shocked her into a study of her own selfish and unlovely life. She had many silent hours now, in which she did not call for Balzac and diversion; she submitted to hear books which she had always refused to listen to. She was less querulous with those around her, less sharp-tongued about her neighbors. She said nothing about St. John and his mother, only listened silently to the news that came of them weekly to Missy. Missy and she understood each other pretty well now; their trouble had drawn them together. In talking, they knew what to avoid, and each considered the other's feelings as never before. Two lonely women in one house, with the same grief to bear, it would have been strange if they had not come together a little, to carry the load.

Goneril had so much more to do nowadays, she was much improved. She had had her choice of going away, or staying to do three times the work she had had to do in the other house. It is difficult to say why she stayed, whether from a sort of attachment to Missy, and pity for Miss Varian, or from a dislike of rupture and change. She had had enough of it herself to know real trouble when she saw it, and she certainly saw it in the two women whom she elected to serve. Her wrath had boiled over vehemently at first. She had been anything but respectful to her employer's form of faith. But that was completely settled, once for all, and she now made no allusion to the matter, at least above stairs. It is quite possible that below she may have had her fling, occasionally, at "popish 'pression." The Sister who nursed Missy during her illness, she had, with difficulty, brought herself to be respectful to, but there was so much of the real nurse in the peppery Goneril, that during long watches they had come to be almost friends.

The summer passed slowly away; the autumn came, and with it, the flight of the summer birds whose strange gay plumage had made her old home so unnatural to Missy. The dog-carts and the beach-carts and the T-carts had all been trundled away; the boat-houses were locked up, the stables emptied; the six months' leases of the two houses were at an end, and quiet came back to the place.

It was in November, a sunny Indian summer day. After their early dinner, Missy went out to roam, as she loved now to do, over the grounds and along the beach from which for so many months she had been shut out. The evergreens made still a greenness with their faithful foliage, the lawn looked like summer. It was an unusual season. There was a chill in the shut-up rooms, and it made her heart too sore to go often in the house, but outside she could wander for hours, and feel only a gentle pang, a soft patient sorrow for what was gone from her never to return. She had been walking by the narrow path that led through the cedars, wondering, now at the highness of the tide which was washing up against the bank, now at the mildness of the air that made it almost impossible to believe it was November, when the woman who took care of the house came running after her. Out of breath, she told her some one had just come up by the cars, to look at the house; would she give her the bunch of keys which she had put in her pocket instead of giving them back to her, a few minutes before?

Missy felt a thrill of anger as she thought of some one to look at the house. This was indeed her natural enemy, for this time it must be a purchaser, for it was not yet in the market for rent. She gave the woman the keys, and then walked on, a storm of envy and discord in her heart. Yes, the one that should buy this house, she should hate. It was endurable while people only had it on lease, and came and went and left it as they found it. But when it should be bought and paid for, when trees could be cut down and new paths cut and changes made at the will of strangers, it would be more than she could bear. So few had come to look at it with a view to buying, she had unconsciously got into a way of thinking it would not be sold, and that this temporary misery of letting would go on, and she could yet feel her hold safe upon the trees and the shrubs and the familiar rooms and closets. Just as they were now, perhaps, they would remain for years, and she would have the care of them still, and grow old along with them; and some day the dark dream of alienation would dissolve and she would come back and die in her own room.

She had not known how this plan and this hope had taken possession of her, till the woman's out-of-breath story, of a stranger from the train, revealed it to her. Some one coming up from town at this season, meant business. Yes, the place was as good as sold: or, if this man didn't buy it, others would be coming to look at it; some one would buy it. At any rate her peace was gone. She had not known how insensibly she had depended upon escaping what she had declared to herself she was prepared for. People said they were asking more for the place than they would ever get. Perhaps St. John had gone to the agents and put it at a lower figure; perhaps the Order needed the money and couldn't wait. A bitterer feeling than she had known for a long time, came with these reflections. She walked on fast, away from all sight and hearing of the unwelcome intruders. She fancied how they were poking about the plumbing, and throwing open the blinds to see the condition of the paint and plaster, and standing on the lawn, with their backs to the bay, and gazing up at the house, and saying that chimney must come down, and a new window could be thrown out there, and the summer parlor must have something better by way of an entrance. She hated them; she would not put herself in the way of meeting them. She walked on and on, along the bank, till she was tired, and then sat down on an uprooted cedar, and pulled the cape of her coat over her head to keep warm, and waited till she should be sure they had gone back to the train. She sat with her watch in her hand, not able to think of the beauty of the smooth, blue bay, spread below her, nor the calm of the still autumn atmosphere. Nothing was calm to her now; she found she had been quite self-deceived, and was not half as resigned and good as she had thought herself.

"I wish it were all over and done," she said to herself keeping back bitter tears. "I wish the deed were signed, and the place gone. It is this suspense that I can't bear. Every time the train comes in, I shall think some one has come up to look at it. Every time I walk across the grounds, I shall dread that woman running after me, to ask me for the keys. Oh, the talking, and the lawyers, and the agents, and St. John coming up; one day it will be sold, and the next day there will be some hitch, and there will be backing and filling, and worrying, and fretting, that wears my life out to look ahead to."

Poor Missy, she certainly had had some discipline, and not the least painful part was that she did not find herself as good as she had thought she was.

At last she heard the whistle of the cars, faint and far off, to be sure, but distinct through the still autumn air, and she got up, and walked back. She went quickly, feeling a little chilled from sitting still so long, and, full of her painful thoughts, did not look much about her, till, having emerged from the cedars, and standing upon the lawn, she looked up, and suddenly became aware that the intruders had not gone away. A horse and wagon stood before the side entrance, the horse was blanketed and tied. She looked anxiously around, and saw at the beach gate, a gentleman standing, his hands in the pockets of his ulster, and his face towards the bay. He was not at all in the attitude of criticism that she had fancied, but seemed quite unconscious of the chimneys and the entrances. His face she could not see, and she hoped to escape his notice, by hurrying across the lawn before he turned around. But even her light step on the dry leaves broke his revery, which could not have been very deep, and he turned quickly about, and came towards her, as if he had been waiting for her. She uttered a quick cry as she recognized him, and when he stood beside her and offered her his hand, she was so agitated that she could not speak. She struggled hard to overcome this, and managed to say at last:

"I did not know—I wasn't prepared for seeing anybody but a stranger. I thought it was somebody to look at the house—"

"The woman told me you would soon be back—"

"And I—I can't help feeling," stammered poor Missy, feeling her agitation must be accounted for in some way, "that people that come to look at the house are my enemies. I'm—I'm very glad to see you."

"Even if I have come to look at the house?"

"O yes, that wouldn't make any difference in my being glad."

"Well, I have come a great many thousands of miles to look at it. If I hadn't heard it was for sale, I suppose I should be somewhere about the second cataract of the Nile to-day."

"How did you hear about it?" said Missy, not knowing exactly what she said; but there are a great many times when it doesn't make much difference what you say, and this was one of those times. Mr. Andrews would have been a dull man if he hadn't felt pretty confident just then.

"I saw it in a newspaper, Miss Rothermel, and I felt that that announcement must mean some trouble to your family. I hoped it was money trouble, and that I might be able—might be permitted to do something to put things right."

"No," said Missy, with a sudden rush of tears to her eyes, "no, it isn't money trouble. Nobody can help us."

"I know absolutely nothing," said Mr. Andrews, hesitatingly. "I only landed last night from the steamer. I have seen no one to-day. I have only heard from the woman here that everybody was well—that there had been no death to break your home up, and I couldn't understand. Don't tell me if you don't want to. I hadn't any right to ask."

Missy was crying now, in earnest, as they walked up the path, and Mr. Andrews looked dreadfully distressed.

"O no," she said, through her tears, "it's a comfort to find anybody that doesn't know. Everybody here knows so horridly well! I never talk to anybody. I haven't said a word about it to anyone for months and months. It's a comfort to talk to you about it—if I ever can—only I've got crying and I can't stop."

She sat down on the steps of the summer parlor, where it was sheltered and where the afternoon sun was still shining. Mr. Andrews sat down silently beside her, and after a few more struggles with her tears she took her hands away from her face and began to tell him the story of the past year. Her eyes were a trifle red, and her skin mottled with her strong emotion; but I don't think Mr. Andrews minded.

"Mamma has gone away from me," she said, "to be with St. John and help him in his work. She has founded a sort of religious house, of which she isn't to be all the head, or anything like that, I believe; but a Sisterhood are there, of which she is an associate, and she sees St. John every day, and the room in which she lives opens into the church that St. John gave the money to buy—and they do a great and beautiful work among poor people and they are very happy.

"It didn't kill mamma as I thought it would, she is better than she was at home. Everybody here blames her, and that is why I can't talk to any of them. But you mustn't blame her. Hard as it has been to me, I begin to see it was not wrong for her to do it. If I had been good I should have done it too; but I wasn't, and I had to suffer for it. O, if I could only be like her and like St. John! I don't see how I came to be so different. At first I hated St. John, and I blamed her, but now I know in my heart they are all right, and I am all wrong. I can't understand it or explain it. I only know the truth—that people that can do what they've done are—are God's own. If I lived a hundred years, I couldn't be like them, nor be satisfied with what satisfies them. I couldn't ever be anything but very poor and very common-place, but oh, I mean to be better than I used to be—a year ago. O, I can't bear to think of it. But there is no use in talking of what's past. It was right that I should have to go through what I've gone through, but oh, it was very hard. And I have been so ill, and everything is so changed in my life. You can't think how like a dream it all seems to me, when I look back. This place has been let all summer to strangers, and your place too, and we are living in the old Roncevalle house, Aunt Harriet and I. And somehow or another I have got further and further off from all our friends here. I know they blame mamma and they pity me, and I don't like either one or the other thing, and I haven't any friend or any one to talk to, and it has been loneliness such as you can't understand. But I had got used to things in a certain sort as they are, and I had been promising myself that nobody would buy the house, and that I could still have it to myself for a part of the year, and could still think of it as our own, and was quiet and almost contented, when the woman came running after me this afternoon and told me some one had come to look at it, and I was almost as unhappy as at first. I have been crying down on the bank there by myself all the afternoon. So you must excuse me for being so upset. I have gone through so much for the last year, being ill and all—a little thing unnerves me.'"

For Missy was beginning to feel a little frightened at her own emotion, and at the silence of her companion.

"It wasn't a little thing," he said at last, "seeing me and knowing what had brought me back. I don't think you need be ashamed to be showing agitation. For you ought never to have let me go away, Miss Rothermel, don't you see it now? My being here might have saved you, I don't say everything, but a great deal. I cannot understand why you sent me away. For I thought then, and I think now, that you relied on me in a certain way—that you had a certain feeling for me. I should think you would not have repulsed me."

"Those horrid women," said Missy faintly, turning very red.

"I am sure I am very sorry about them. I couldn't help it. I was stupid, I suppose."

"I hope they didn't come back with you?" said Missy, with sudden uneasiness.

"O no, they are safe in Florence."

"And you haven't married them?" she asked, with a look of relief. It made her jealous even to think of their existence.

Mr. Andrews looked at her as if he were beginning to understand her, and, half amused and half sad, he said: "No, neither one nor both. And there is no danger and never was of my wanting to, because for a year and a half, and may be more, I have wanted very much to marry some one else."

"Oh, that reminds me," said Missy, turning rather pale, as if what she was about to say cost her an effort. "That reminds me of something I ought to say to you. I heard, last spring, of a thing about you that I didn't know before. If I had known it I should have felt very differently about—about you generally—Oh!—why do you make it so hard to say things to you—I won't say it."

For Mr. Andrews was quietly, attentively, and perhaps, critically, listening. He certainly did make it hard to say things. He naturally showed so little emotion, and said such tremendous things himself, in such a calm way, Missy found it very difficult to believe them, and very hard to make statements of an agitating nature to him.

"I don't know why you won't say it," he said. "Do you think you shall be sorry?"

"I don't know. I generally am, whatever I do," she cried, with some more tears. "But no matter. I suppose you do feel things, though you have such a cold-blooded way of looking. Well, I didn't know till a few months ago about—about your wife. And I can only say, I had liked you so much in spite of believing you were not kind and generous to her—and—and—if I had known you had been nobler and better than any other man in the world has ever been—"

Mr. Andrews got up and walked a few times up and down the path before the steps, which was the only indication that he gave of not being cold-blooded when that deep wound was touched.

"I trusted to your being just to me when you knew the truth," he said, at last.

"I wonder you didn't hate me," she exclaimed.

"Well, I didn't," he said.

"You have so little egotism," she went on. "I suppose it's that makes you able to bear injustice. You were so patient and overlooked so much, and I was—so horrid."

"I had been so deceived before," he said, "perhaps I was more pleased with your honesty than offended by it. I was conscious of not deserving your contempt, and I felt so certain of your truth. I was a little pleased, too, with your liking me in spite of yourself. You see I knew you liked me, 'horrid' as you were to me."

"Then why did you go away, if you knew I liked you?" cried Missy, looking up at him with fire.

"Because, at last, I got tired of being snubbed," he said. "I believe I had got to the end of that patience you are pleased to give me credit for. I thought I'd go away awhile and let you see how you liked it."

"And you went away and meant to come back?" exclaimed Missy, beginning to cry again, "and left me to this dreadful year of misery. I never will forgive you—I might have died. I only wonder that I didn't."

"I didn't suppose you cared enough to die about it, but I thought you'd see you did care when you thought it was too late. I don't know much about women, but I know that sort of thing occurs. And I didn't mean to come back as soon as this, either. It was only seeing the place advertised frightened me a little and made me think you might be going through some trouble. Do you know, I didn't believe, up to the very last day, that you would let me go? I have never been angry with you, but I own I was very sore and disappointed when I found you had gone out that afternoon, when I sent word by Jay, that I was coming in to say good-bye. And yet it looked so like pique, I half thought you would send me some sort of message in the evening."

Missy hung her head as she remembered that half hour in the darkness at the gate, but she did not tell him, either then or after, how nearly right he was about it.

"Jay did not tell me. Of course you might have known that. And—those horrid women—said you were going to take them for a drive at half past three o'clock."

"They did? Well, I think you're right about them—they are very 'horrid.' There is one thing I don't quite understand; what has possessed the younger one, at least, to entertain this sort of plan. She has had more than one offer since we've been abroad, that I know about. But I believe she has set her heart on being Jay's mamma."

"It seems to me," said Missy, firing up, "that you have gained in self-esteem since you have been away. So many young women want to marry you!"

"Only two, that I can feel absolutely certain of," he said, sitting down beside her again, and giving her a most confident, unembarrassed look.

"I don't like you when you talk that way," she said, flushing, and pulling her cloak around her as if she were going away.

"Why, haven't I eaten humble pie long enough? Sit still, Missy, don't go away yet. I have a great deal more to say to you."

"I don't like to be called Missy; it isn't my name, to begin with, only a disrespectful sobriquet, and I haven't given you any right to speak to me in the way you do," said Missy, palpitating, as she tried to rise.

"Yes, you have, you have said two things that committed you, besides all the emotion you showed when you saw me. You can't require me to misunderstand all that."

"I don't require you to do anything but let me go away. I—the sun is setting. It is chilly. I want to go."

"How do I know that you will let me go with you? It suits me well enough here. I want to talk to you. It is more than a year since I have had that pleasure. You haven't even told me if I can have the house. You used to be a very clever business woman, I remember. Are you going to make a sharp bargain with me?"

"I don't care about the house; but I've told you this doesn't please me in the least."

Then Mr. Andrews laughed a little. "Well, if you push me to it, I shall have to buy the house, and bring Flora here as mistress of it. I know you wouldn't like her as a neighbor, but I can't keep house alone—that was demonstrated long ago."

"Mr. Andrews, I—I wish you would let me go. I am tired and I don't understand why you talk to me in this familiar and uncomfortable way."

"I won't let you go from these steps, where the sun is still shining and where you won't get cold, till you surrender unconditionally; till you tell me that you love me, love,—remember, like is not the word at all,—and that you have loved me for a year or more; and that you will marry me, and make me happy, and pay me for the misery you have made me suffer."

Surrender was not easy to a young woman who had had her own way so long—but once accomplished, she was very well contented with her conqueror, and forgot to resent his confidence in her affection. She forgot that the sun was going down so fast, and that there was danger of getting cold by staying out so late. It was twilight when they went up the steps of the Roncevalle house.

"What shall I say to Aunt Harriet?" she asked, rather uneasily, feeling it was odd that this one of the family should be the first one told of her mighty secret.

"I should say you'd better tell her, and get the credit of it," he returned, "for she certainly will guess."

"Why? I could tell her you had come to buy the house."

"But you look so happy. What would you tell her to explain that?"

It is in this way that some long-suffering men avenge the wrongs of years.