Missy: A Novel

by Miriam Coles Harris

"Oh, no; how could you think of such a thing."

"Well," cried Missy, impetuously, "please remember I am outside of all your counsels. Everything is new to me. St. John is going away; is going to make some important step, and yet is not going to a new parish, is not forsaking his vocation. How can you wonder I am puzzled?"

"He isn't forsaking his vocation; he is only following what he is very sure is his vocation in its highest, fullest sense."

"You don't mean," cried Missy, turning a startled face to her mother, "that St. John has got an idea that he is called to the religious life? Mamma, it isn't possible. I can't believe you have encouraged him in this."

"I have had nothing to do with it, alas, my child. One must let that alone forever. We can give up or deny to God, our own souls; but 'the souls of others are as the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; we must not touch them.' I had my own soul to give, and I did not give it."

Missy turned coldly away while her mother pressed her hands before her face. There was a silence, in which a bitter flood of thoughts passed through the mind of the younger one.

"I am a reproach to you, mamma," she said. "Perhaps I ought not to exist. There are moments when I feel the contradictions of my nature to be so great, I wonder if it were not wrong, instead of right, that I was born—a broken law, and not a law fulfilled. I know—you need not tell me—you had always thought of the religious life yourself. We have not talked much of it, but I have had my thoughts. Your first marriage bound you to the world, because it left you with me. I suppose if I had not been born you would have entered a sisterhood. Then, mamma, you need not evade it, you would have missed the real love, the real life of your heart. You have never told me this, but I know enough to know you did not love my father. It cannot be your fault; but it was your fate. Do not contradict me, we never have gone so deep before. Yes, mamma, I bound you to the world. I was the unlovely child who stood between you and heaven. How could I help being unlovely, born of duty, not of love? I don't reproach you, except as my existence reproaches you. St. John is not a contradiction; his nature is full and sweet; he might live a happy life. Why do you sacrifice him? You say you have had no hand in this—mamma—mamma—you moulded him; you bend him now. You do not know how strong your influence upon him is. It is the unconscious feeling of your heart that you are making reparation. You are satisfied to give him up who is all the world to you, that Heaven may be propitiated. It is I who should have been sacrificed; I, who have been always in your way to holiness—a thorn in your side, mamma—a perverse nature, not to be bent to your path of sacrifice and immolation."

"Do not talk of sacrifice, my child, of immolation. It is a height, a glory, to attain to. I cannot make you understand—I will not contradict you."

"No, do not contradict me. I am contradicted enough. I am not in your state of fervor. I see things as they are, I see plain facts. Believe me, this enthusiasm cannot last. You will find, too late, that you have not counted the cost; that you cannot bear the strain of feeling—a living death—a grave that the grass never grows over. Time can't heal a wound that is always kept open. You are mad, mamma, you are mad. We cannot bear this thing. Look at it, as you will when your enthusiasm cools."

"I have looked at it, Missy, for many months, through silent nights and days. It is no new thought to me. My dear, I have many lonely hours; I have much suffering, which abates enthusiasm. Through loneliness and suffering, I have had this thought for my companion. I know what I am doing, and I do it almost gladly. Not quite, for I am very weak, but almost, for God has been very gracious to me."