Those intervening stages were none the less agitated by many interior trials; doubts as to the sincerity of her vocation; heart-sinkings as to her courage in bearing on under the cross that she had taken up; misgivings, above all, as to the direction in which that cross lay. While her life-boat was getting ready, filling its sails, and making out of port for the shoreless sea of detachment and universal sacrifice, she sat shivering; her hand on the helm; the deep waters heaving beneath her; the wind blowing bleak and cold; the near waves dashing up their spray into her face, and the breakers further out roaring and howling like angry floods. There were rocks ahead, and all round under those foaming billows; sad havoc had they made of many a brave little boat that had put out to sea from that same port where she was still tossing—home, with its sheltering love and care; piety enough to save any well-intentioned soul; good example to give and to take; good works to do in plenty, and the body not overridden by austerities against nature; not starved to despondency; not exasperated by hunger, and cold, and endless vigils, and prayer as endless. It was a goodly port and safe, this home of hers. See how the deep throws up its prey on every side! Wrecks and spars, the shattered remnants of bold vessels, and the lifeless bodies of the rash crew are everywhere strewn over the waters. "Take heed!" they cry to her as she counts the records one by one. "This is an awful sea, and bold must be the heart, and stout and iron-clad the boat that tempts the stormy bosom. We came, and perished. Would that we had never left the port!"
Mary never argued with the storm. She would fall at the feet of Him who was "sleeping below," and wake him with the loud cry of trembling faith, "Help me, Master, or I perish!" and the storm subsided.
But when the wind and the waves were hushed, there rose up in the calm a voice sweet and low, but more ruthlessly terrible to her courage than the threatening fury of ten thousand storms. She was her father's oldest and darling child; she had a brother, too, and sisters, all tenderly loved, and cousins and friends only less dear; she was a joy and a comfort to many. Must she go from them? Must she leave all this love and all the loveliness of life for ever?
Mary's vocation, notwithstanding its strongly marked supernatural character, was not proof against these cruel alternations of enthusiastic courage, and desolate heart-sinkings, and bewildering doubts. Nay, they were no doubt a necessary part of its perfection. It was needful that she should pass through the dark watch of Gethsemani before setting out to climb the rugged hill of Calvary.
All this history of her interior life she told me viva voce when we met. In her letters, which were at this period very rare and always very uncommunicative, she said nothing whatever of these strifes and victories.
But her adversaries were not all within. A hard battle remained to be fought with her father. His opposition was active and relentless. He had at first tacitly acquiesced in her consecration to God in a religious life of some sort; but he believed, as every one else did, that to let her enter La Trappe would be to consign her to speedy and certain death; and when she announced to him that this was the order she had selected, and the one which drew her with the power of attraction, that she had struggled in vain to resist, he declared that nothing short of a written mandate from God would induce him to consent to such an act of suicide. In vain Mary pleaded that when God called a soul he provided all that was necessary to enable her to answer the call; that her health, formerly so delicate when she was leading a life of self-indulgence, was now completely restored; that she had never been so strong as since she had lived in almost continual abstinence (she did not eat meat on Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday); that the weakness of nature was no obstacle to the power of grace, and there are graces in the conventual life that seculars did not dream of, nor receive because they did not need them.
In answer to these plausible arguments, the incredulous father brought out the laws of nature, and reason and common sense, and the opinion of the medical men who had attended her in Dublin, and under whose care she had been more or less ever since. These men of natural science and human sympathies declared positively that it was neither more nor less than suicide to condemn herself to the rule of St. Bernard in the cloister, where want of animal food and warmth would infallibly kill her before the novitiate was out. They were prepared to risk their reputation on the issue of this certificate.
Mary's exhaustive answer to all this was that grace was always stronger than nature; that the supernatural element would overrule and sustain the human one. But she pleaded in vain. Her father was resolute. He even went so far as to insist on her returning to society and seeing more of the world before she was divorced from it irrevocably. This check was as severe as it was unexpected. Though her disgust to the vanities of her former life continued as strong as ever, while her longing for the perfect life grew every day more intense and more energizing, her humility made her tremble for her own weakness. Might not the strength that had borne her bravely so far break down under the attack of all her old tempters let loose on her at once? Her love of pleasure, that fatal enemy that now seemed dead, might it not rise up again with overmastering power, and, aided by the reaction prepared by her new life, seize her and hold her more successfully than ever? Yes, all this was only too possible. There was nothing for it but to brave her father, to defy his authority, and to save her soul in spite of him. She must run away from home.
Before, however, putting this wise determination into practice, it was necessary to consult Father Paul. His answer was what most of our readers will suspect:
"Obedience is your first duty. No blessing could come from such a violation of filial piety. Your father is a Christian. Do as he bids you; appeal to his love for your soul not to tax its strength unwisely; then trust your soul to God as a little child trusts to its mother. He sought you, and pursued you, and brought you home when you were flying from him. Is it likely he will forsake you now, when you are seeking after him with all your heart and making his will the one object of your life? Mistrust yourself, my child. Never mistrust God." Mary felt the wisdom of the advice, and submitted to it in a spirit of docility, of humble mistrust and brave trust, and made up her mind to go through the trial as an earnest of the sincerity of her desire to seek God's will, and accomplish it in whatever way he appointed.