THE BROOK IN THE WAY.
It was, indeed, the hardest part, that first step, to all, but it was
accomplished, somehow. The early spring found Mrs. Varian in her new
home, St. John established in his work, Missy and Miss Varian settled in
the Roncevalle house, and the dear home shut up. It was in the market,
to be sold if any one would buy, to be rented if nobody would. They had
gone out of it, taking little, and it was in perfect order.
About this time Missy broke down, and had the first illness of her life.
St. John came up to her, and brought one of the newly-imported Sisters
to nurse her. She would have rebelled against this, if she had been in
condition to rebel. She was not, however, and could only submit.
What is the use of going through her illness? We have most of us been
ill, and know the dark rooms we are led through, and the hopelessness,
and helplessness, and weariness; the foreign land we seem to be in,
with well people stealing on tip-toe out of our sight to eat their
comfortable dinners, with kind attendants reading the morning paper
behind the window curtains, with faithful affection smothering yawns
through our tossing, sleepless nights. Yes, everybody is well and we are
sick. Everybody is in life, and we are in some strange, half-way place,
that is not life nor death. We may be so near eternity, and yet we
cannot think of it; so wretched, so wretched, the fretted body cannot
turn its thoughts away from itself. We are alone as far as earth goes,
and alone, as far as any nearness to Heaven feels. What is the good of
it all? What have we gained (if we ever get back) by this journey into a
strange land, that didn't seem to be joyous but grievous? Well, a great
many things, perhaps, but one thing almost certainly: Detachment. It is
scarcely possible to love life and see good days with the same zest
after this sorrowful journey. It abates one's relish for enjoyment, it
tempers one's thirst for present pleasures; it loosens one's hold upon
things mundane. That is the certain good it does, and the uncertain, how
infinite!
Poor Missy felt like a penitent child, after that illness of hers. She
did not feel any better, nor any surer that she should be any stronger
or wiser; but she felt the certainty that she had put a very wrong value
upon things, and that life was a very different matter from what she had
been considering it. She felt so ashamed of her self-will, so humbled
about her own judgment. She still did not like long black dresses on men
or women, but she felt very much obliged to St. John and the good Sister
for all the weeks they had spent in taking care of her. And although
stained glass windows, and swinging lamps, and church embroidery did
not appeal to her in the least; she began to understand how they might
appeal to people of a different temperament. Let it not be imagined that
Missy came out of this a lamb of meekness. On the contrary, she was very
exacting about her broth, and once cried because the nurse would not
keep Miss Varian out of the room. But then she was more sorry for it
than she had been in the habit of being, and made Miss Varian a handsome
apology the first time she was well enough to see her.
She looked out of the window, across the road, upon the trees just
budding into loveliness on the lawn of her dearest home, and wondered
that she should have thought it mattered so very much whether she lived
in this house or in that, considering it was not going to be forever,
either here or there.
St. John came and sat down by her one afternoon, as she lay in a great
easy chair, looking out at the spring verdure and the soft declining
sunshine. She had never got to talking of very deep things to St. John,
since her unhappy controversy with him, but she felt so sure that he
would not talk of anything that she objected to, that she was at her
ease with him. They talked about the great tulip tree on the lawn, that
they could just see from the window, and the aspens by the gate, just
large-leaved enough to shiver in the softly-moving breeze. Then Missy
forced herself to ask if a tenant had been found for the house, and he
answered her, yes, and also, that he had heard that the Andrews' place
was rented too.
"I'm sorry," he said, "that Mr. Andrews has gone away from here. I felt
as if it were the sort of place he might have been happy in, and much
respected. Did you ever get to know him well? I remember that you took a
fancy to the children."
"I saw a good deal of them last summer," said Missy, wearily. How far
off last summer seemed!
"What a terrible life!" said St. John, musingly. "Not one man in a
thousand could have borne what he did; it was almost heroic, and yet I
think my first impression was that he was common-place."
"I don't understand," said Missy, "tell me."
"It isn't possible you don't know about his wife?"
So St. John told her something that she certainly hadn't known before
about his wife. St. John had learned it from others; the story had been
pretty well known in an English town where he had been the year before,
and had come to him in ways that put it beyond any doubt. Mr. Andrews
had married a young woman, of French extraction, of whom nobody seemed
to know anything, but that she was distractingly pretty. After three or
four years she had proved to be the very worst woman that could be
imagined. She had a lover, who was the father of Gabrielle; she had
married just in time to conceal her shame from the world and from her
husband. They went to Europe after the little girl's birth, and in about
two years Jay was born. When he was a few months old, the suspicions of
the husband were aroused by some accidental circumstance. The lover had
followed them, and had renewed his correspondence with her. Some violent
scenes occurred. She professed penitence and promised amendment. Her
next move was a bungling conspiracy with her lover to poison her
husband. A horrid exposé of the whole thing threatened. It was with
difficulty suppressed, the man fled, leaving her to bear all. In her
rage and despair she took poison, and barely escaped dying. It was
managed that the thing never came to trial. Mr. Andrews, out of pity for
the miserable creature, whose health was permanently destroyed by her
mad act, resolved not to abandon her to destruction. His love for his
little son, and his compassion for the poor little bastard girl, induced
him still to shelter her, and to keep up the fiction of a home for their
sakes.
"I don't think," said St. John, "one could fancy a finer action.
Protecting the woman who had attempted his life, adopting the child who
had been palmed off upon him, establishing a home which must have been
full of bitterness all the time. There are not many men who could have
done this. It seems to me utter self-renunciation. Doesn't it seem so to
you?"
"How long have you known this?" cried Missy, bursting into tears. "Oh!
St. John, if you had only told me! You might have saved me from
being--so unjust."