SANCTUARY.
A few weeks later, when St. John had come up again to see after her,
Missy asked him to take her to her mother, and so, in the summer, when
the country was at its loveliest, and the city at its worst, he came for
her, and took her, still too weak to travel alone, to the new house of
religion in the old haunts of sin. It was not a favorable season
certainly, but the weather fortunately was rather cool for July, and
Missy's longing to see her mother was so great, her distaste for city
streets was overshadowed.
The church which the Order had bought was not a model of architecture,
but it was large and capable of receiving improvement. The house
adjoining it, which was to be the nucleus of a Sisters' house, was roomy
and shabby. It had rather had pretensions to elegance in days very long
past, but it had gone through varied and not improving experiences, and
was a pretty forlorn place when St. John took it in hand. It seemed to
him so renovated and advanced, in comparison, that he could not
understand his sister's slight shudder and look of repugnance as they
entered the bare hall. Of course there were no carpets, as became a
Sisters' house, and the rooms that Missy saw as she passed them were
very plain indeed as to furniture, and very uncheerful as to outlook.
Naturally, you cannot have a house in the midst of the lowest population
of a large city, whose windows would have a pleasing or cheerful
outlook.
But when Missy came to her mother's room, it was different to her from
the others, and not repugnant. It was a large room, of course plainly
furnished; but the color of the walls, the few ornaments, the
bookshelves, all proclaimed that St. John had not been as severe in
arranging his mother's room, as in the treatment of his own. This house
"joined hard to the synagogue," and a door had been cut through on this
second story, and a little gallery built, and there, at all the hours,
Mrs. Varian could go. It was never necessary for her to leave her room.
What a center that room became of helpful sympathy, of tender counsel,
of rest for tired workers! What a sanctuary of peaceful contemplation,
of satisfied longing, of exalted faith! It was the dream of her life
fulfilled; the prayer alike of her innocence and penitence answered.
From the little gallery that overhung the church, she heard her son's
voice in the grey dawn, as he celebrated the earliest Eucharist, and
from that hour, perhaps, she did not hear it again till, at eight
o'clock in the evening, he came to her room for a half-hour's
refreshment after the hard work of his day. The clergy house was on the
other side of the church, about half a block away. It was as yet a very
miserable affair, only advanced by an application of soap and water from
its recent office of mechanics' boarding-house. But St. John seemed to
think that half-hour in his mother's peaceful room made up for all. It
was very self-indulgent, but he always took a cup of tea from her hands,
which she made him out of a little silver tea-pot that she had used
since he was a baby a week old. And the cup out of which he drank it,
was of Sêvres china, a part of the cadeau brought to the pretty young
mother's bedside in that happy week of solicitude. This little service
was almost the only souvenir they had brought of the past life now laid
away by both of them, but it was very sacred and very sweet, and
probably not very sinful. It was a fact, however, that St. John
reproached himself sometimes for the eagerness with which he looked
forward to this little _soulagement_, during the toils of the day. If he
had not felt that it was perhaps as dear and necessary to his mother, I
am afraid he would have given it up.
Missy saw all this, and much more, of their life, and wondered, as she
lay on the lounge that had been brought for her into her mother's room.
She saw and wondered, at the interested happy lives of the women in long
black dresses, who came and went, in their gliding, silent way, in and
out of her mother's room. She could not help seeing, that in the
offices, to which the inevitable bell was always calling them, there was
no monotony, not so much weariness as in the one-day-in-seven service in
a country parish. Their poor, their housekeeping, the interests of their
order, seemed to supply all beside that they needed. There was no
denying it, their faces were satisfied and happy--except one sister who
had dyspepsia, and nobody can look entirely satisfied and happy who has
dyspepsia, in the world, or out of it.
As to her mother, there was no visible failure in health, but a most
visible increase of mental power and energy, and the inexpressible look
that comes from doing work your heart is in, from walking in the path
for which your feet were formed. Patient doing of duty against the grain
may be better than not doing duty at all, but it always writes a weary
mark across the face. That mark which her mother's face had borne, ever
since Missy could remember it, was gone.
Weary no doubt she often was, for her hand and brain were rarely idle
now; but it was the healthy weariness that brings the sleep of the just,
and wipes out toil with rest. Neither did Missy understand--how could
she?--the bliss of those hours spent in the little gallery that
overlooked the empty and silent church. She could have understood the
thrill that it might have given her, to see the crowd that sometimes
filled the church, hanging upon the words of the preacher, if that
preacher had been her son. But, alas for Missy! St. John did only humble
out-of-sight work. He rarely preached, and then only to supply some
one's place, who had been called away or hindered by illness. There were
two or three priests, older than he, who did the work that appeared to
the world, and who were above him in everything, and who were praised,
and who had influence. What was St. John, who had given all his money,
and all his time, and all his heart, to this work? The lowest one of
all, of less authority or influence or consideration than any. Well, if
he was satisfied, no one need complain, and he evidently was.