"Why cannot you serve Him and love Him here as you have always done, all your good and holy life! Why can't you worship Him in the old way, and be satisfied with doing your duty in your own home, and staying with those who need you, and whom He has given you to love and care for! Oh, mamma, this is some great and terrible mistake. Think before it is too late!"
"Listen, Missy," she said, after a few moments; her brief emotion passed. "Listen, and these are words of truth and soberness. I am useless here. There is a possibility there I might be of some humble service. You are more capable of managing and directing in every day matters than I ever was. You are no longer a young girl. I leave you with conventional propriety, for your Aunt Harriet is all that is requisite before the world. If you make it a question of family duty, St. John is many years younger than you, and may need me more. The home here is expensive, luxurious. The money is wanted for the saving of the souls and bodies of Christ's poor. To me there seems no question. I wish there might not be to you. If it were a matter of the cloister, I might waver, it is possible. I am not permitted to go that length in my oblation. I am now only separating myself from you by the length of time that you choose to stay away from me. In a house such as this is designed to be, you could always have your place, your share of work and interest. We shall win you to it, dear child; when you see what it is, your prejudice will wear away."
"Prejudice!" cried Missy, passionately. "What is not prejudice? Yours and St. John's have cost me dear. Oh, mamma, how could you have had such an alien child? Why must we see everything in such a different light? You and St. John are always of one mind. I am shut out from you by such a wall. I am so lonely, so wretched, and perhaps you can't understand enough to pity me. Oh, mamma, you are all I have in the world! Don't go away and leave me! Don't break up this home, which must be dear to you; don't turn away from what your heart says always. It can't be wrong to love your home, it can't be wrong to be sorry for your child. Oh, what misery is come upon me! Mamma, mamma, you will kill me if you go away! You must not, cannot, shall not go!"
From such scenes as this, it is better, perhaps, to turn away. When men are not of one mind in a house, how sore the strife it brings—how long and bitter the struggle when love is wrestling with love, but when self is mixed up in the war. It was a longer and crueller struggle than she had foreseen. Missy could see no light in the future, and grew no nearer being reconciled. Day after day passed, scene after scene of wretchedness, alternate pleading and reproaching, reasoning and rebellion. From St. John, Missy could not bear a word. She refused to treat with him, but threw herself upon her mother. Those were dark and troubled days. St. John looked a little paler than usual; the mother was worn and tortured, but gave no sign of relenting. A gentle, pliant nature seems sometimes more firm for such an assault as this. At last, all discussion of it was given up; Missy, hardening herself, went about the house cold-eyed, imperious, impatient. St. John was absent much of the time—Miss Varian had not yet been informed what was in store for her; all tacitly put off that very evil day.
Meanwhile the preparations for the change went quietly on. The old Roncevalle house was one that belonged to the Varians; having been bought by Mr. Varian in those lordly days, when laying field to field, and house to house, seems the natural outlet of egotism and youth. Felix Varian, young and used to success, had the aspirations of most young and wealthy men. He proposed in the first flush of satisfaction in his home, to make it a fine estate, worthy of his name and of the yellow-haired baby, who had now grown up to wear a black habit and a girdle round his waist. He bought right and left, and made some rather unprofitable purchases. His early death left matters somewhat involved, but yet, when all was settled up, the Varians were still a wealthy family, and the young heir had a good deal to take with him to his work in that dirty down-town street, of which Missy thought with such loathing and contempt, and he with such fervor of hope. Missy's father had had a comfortable little property, which had been thriftily managed, and this was now to be hers exclusively. It was by no means a princely settlement, but it was quite as much as an unmarried woman needed to live comfortably upon, and she felt that her mother had done quite right in not offering her a cent of the Varian money, which she never would have touched. She had hated her stepfather fervently as a child; now she felt strangely drawn to him, and as if they had a common injury. How he would have scorned this infatuation, and resented this appropriation of his gorgeous and luxurious gold.
The Roncevalle house had always been kept in order, and rented furnished. It was a comfortable looking house, standing close to the street, with a broad piazza, and having a pretty view of the bay. It was very well—but oh! as a home, coming after the one she had grown up in! Poor Missy loathed it. She had made it part of her capable management of things to keep this house furnished from the overflow of their own. It was a family joke that this was the hospital for disabled and repaired furniture, the retreat to which things out of style and undesirable were committed. If a new carpet were coveted at home, it was so good an excuse to say the Roncevalle carpets needed renovating, and it was best to put the new ones on the floors at home. When Missy's dainty taste tired of a lamp or a piece of china, it was ordered over to the Roncevalle. It may be imagined with what feelings she contemplated living over those discarded carpets, eating her dinner off that condemned china, being mistress of that third-rate house.
But to do her justice, this formed a very small part of her trial. She was of a nature averse to change, firm in its attachments. To give up her home would have been heart-breaking, even though she should still have had the companionship of her mother. But when that was broken, and the whole face of her life changed, it seemed to her, indeed, a bitter fate. She could see no righteousness in it, no excuse, no palliation. She felt sure that it was but the beginning of the end, and that her mother could but a short time survive the fanatical sacrifice she had made. She imagined her in the reeking, filthy streets of midsummer, surrounded by detestable noises and sights, without the comforts to which she was accustomed.
"Nothing prevents my coming to you, if I am ill," said her mother. "And, Missy, if I can live through this, I can endure anything, I think."