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<a href="#startoftext">An Ambitious Man, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox</a>
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<h1>AN AMBITIOUS MAN</h1>
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<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
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<p>Preston Cheney turned as he ran down the steps of a handsome house
on “The Boulevard,” waving a second adieu to a young woman
framed between the lace curtains of the window. Then he hurried
down the street and out of view. The young woman watched him with
a gleam of satisfaction in her pale blue eyes. A fine-looking
young fellow, whose Roman nose and strong jaw belied the softly curved
mouth with its sensitive darts at the corners; it was strange that something
warmer than satisfaction did not shine upon the face of the woman whom
he had just asked to be his wife.</p>
<p>But Mabel Lawrence was one of those women who are never swayed by
any passion stronger than worldly ambition, never burned by any fires
other than those of jealousy or anger. Her meagre nature was truly
depicted in her meagre face. Nature is ofttimes a great lair and
a cruel jester, giving to the cold and vapid woman the face and form
of a sensuous siren, and concealing a heart of volcanic fires, or the
soul of a Phryne, under the exterior of a spinster. But the old
dame had been wholly frank in forming Miss Lawrence. The thin,
flat chest and narrow shoulders, the angular elbows and prominent shoulder-blades,
the sallow skin and sharp features, the deeply set, pale blue eyes,
and the lustreless, ashen hair, were all truthful exponents of the unfurnished
rooms in her vacant heart and soul places.</p>
<p>Miss Lawrence turned from the window, and trailed her long silken
train across the rich carpet, seating herself before the open fireplace.
It was an appropriate time and situation for a maiden’s tender
dreams; only a few hours had passed since the handsomest and most brilliant
young man in that thriving eastern town had asked her to be his wife,
and placed the kiss of betrothal upon her virgin lips. Yet it
was with a sense of triumph and relief, rather than with tenderness
and rapture, that the young woman meditated upon the situation—triumph
over other women who had shown a decided interest in Mr Cheney, since
his arrival in the place more than eighteen months ago, and relief that
the dreaded rôle of spinster was not to be her part in life’s
drama.</p>
<p>Miss Lawrence was twenty-six—one year older than her fiancé;
and she had never received a proposal of marriage or listened to a word
of love in her life before. Let me transpose that phrase—she
had never before received a proposal of marriage, and had never in her
life listened to a word of love; for Preston had not spoken of love.
She knew that he did not love her. She knew that he had sought
her hand wholly from ambitious motives. She was the daughter of
the Hon. Sylvester Lawrence, lawyer, judge, state senator, and proposed
candidate for lieutenant-governor in the coming campaign. She
was the only heir to his large fortune.</p>
<p>Preston Cheney was a penniless young man from the West. A self-made
youth, with an unusual brain and an overwhelming ambition, he had risen
from chore boy on a western farm to printer’s apprentice in a
small town, thence to reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent,
and after two or three years of travel gained in this manner he had
come to Beryngford and bought out a struggling morning paper, which
was making a mad effort to keep alive, changed its political tendencies,
infused it with western activity and filled it with cosmopolitan news,
and now, after eighteen months, the young man found himself coming abreast
of his two long established rivals in the editorial field. This
success was but an incentive to his overwhelming ambition for place,
power and riches. He had seen just enough of life and of the world
to estimate these things at double their value; and he was, beside,
looking at life through the magnifying glass of youth. The Creator
intended us to gaze on worldly possessions and selfish ambitions through
the small end of the lorgnette, but youth invariably inverts the glass.</p>
<p>To the young editor, the brief years behind him seemed like a long
hard pull up a steep and rocky cliff. From the point to which
he had attained, the summit of his desires looked very far away, much
farther than the level from which he had arisen. To rise to that
summit single-handed and alone would require unremitting effort through
the very best years of his manhood. His brain, his strength, his
ability, his ambitions, what were they all in the strife after place
and power, compared to the money of some commonplace adversary?
Preston Cheney, the native-born American directly descended from a Revolutionary
soldier, would be handicapped in the race with some Michael Murphy whose
father had made a fortune in the saloon business, or who had himself
acquired a competency as a police officer.</p>
<p>America was not the same country which gave men like Benjamin Franklin,
Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley a chance to rise from the lower ranks
to the highest places before they reached middle life. It was
no longer a land where merit strove with merit, and the prize fell to
the most earnest and the most gifted. The tremendous influx of
foreign population since the war of the Rebellion and the right of franchise
given unreservedly to the illiterate and the vicious rendered the ambitious
American youth now a toy in the hands of aliens, and position a thing
to be bought at the price set by un-American masses.</p>
<p>Thoughts like these had more and more with each year filled the mind
of Preston Cheney, until, like the falling of stones and earth into
a river bed, they changed the naturally direct current of his impulses
into another channel. Why not further his life purpose by an ambitious
marriage? The first time the thought entered his mind he had cast
it out as something unclean and unworthy of his manhood. Marriage
was a holy estate, he said to himself, a sacrament to be entered into
with reverence, and sanctified by love. He must love the woman
who was to be the companion of his life, the mother of his children.</p>
<p>Then he looked about among his early friends who had married, as
nearly all the young men of the middle classes in America do marry,
for love, or what they believed to be love. There was Tom Somers—a
splendid lad, full of life, hope and ambition when he married Carrie
Towne, the prettiest girl in Vandalia. Well, what was he now,
after seven years? A broken-spirited man, with a sickly, complaining
wife and a brood of ill-clad children. Harry Walters, the most
infatuated lover he had ever seen, was divorced after five years of
discordant marriage.</p>
<p>Charlie St Clair was flagrantly unfaithful to the girl he had pursued
three years with his ardent wooings before she yielded to his suit.
Certainly none of these love marriages were examples for him to follow.
And in the midst of these reveries and reflections, Preston Cheney came
to Beryngford, and met Sylvester Lawrence and his daughter Mabel.
He met also Berene Dumont. Had he not met the latter woman he
would not have succumbed—so soon at least—to the temptation
held out by the former to advance his ambitious aims.</p>
<p>He would have hesitated, considered, and reconsidered, and without
doubt his better nature and his good taste would have prevailed.
But when fate threw Berene Dumont in his way, and circumstances brought
about his close associations with her for many months, there seemed
but one way of escape from the Scylla of his desires, and that was to
the Charybdis of a marriage with Miss Lawrence.</p>
<p>Miss Lawrence was not aware of the part Berene Dumont had played
in her engagement, but she knew perfectly the part her father’s
influence and wealth had played; but she was quite content with affairs
as they were, and it mattered little to her what had brought them about.
To be married, rather than to be loved, had been her ambition since
she left school; being incapable of loving, she was incapable of appreciating
the passion in any of its phases. It had always seemed to her
that a great deal of nonsense was written and talked about love.
She thought demonstrative people very vulgar, and believed kissing a
means of conveying germs of disease.</p>
<p>But to be a married woman, with an establishment of her own, and
a husband to exhibit to her friends, was necessary to the maintenance
of her pride.</p>
<p>When Miss Lawrence’s mother, a nervous invalid, was informed
of her daughter’s engagement, she burst into tears, as over a
lamb offered on the altar of sacrifice; and Judge Lawrence pressed a
kiss on the lobe of Mabel’s left ear which she offered him, and
told her she had won a prize in the market. But as he sat alone
over his cigar that night, he sighed heavily, and said to himself, “Poor
fellow, I wish Mabel were not so much like her mother.”</p>
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<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
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<p>“Baroness Brown” was a distinctive figure in Beryngford.
She came to the place from foreign parts some three years before the
arrival of Preston Cheney, and brought servants, carriages and horses,
and established herself in a very handsome house which she rented for
a term of years. Her arrival in this quiet village town was of
course the sensation of the hour, or rather of the year. She was
known as Baroness Le Fevre—an American widow of a French baron.
Large, voluptuous, blonde, and handsome according to the popular idea
of beauty, distinctly amiable, affable and very charitable, she became
at once the fashion.</p>
<p>Invitations to her house were eagerly sought after, and her entertainments
were described in column articles by the press.</p>
<p>This state of things continued only six months, however. Then
it began to be whispered about that the Baroness was in arrears for
her rent. Several of her servants had gone away in a high state
of temper at the titled mistress who had failed to pay them a cent of
wages since they came to the country with her; and one day the neighbours
saw her fine carriage horses led away by the sheriff.</p>
<p>A week later society was electrified by the announcement of the marriage
of Baroness Le Fevre to Mr Brown, a wealthy widower who owned the best
shoe store in Beryngford.</p>
<p>Mr Brown owned ten children also, but the youngest was a boy of sixteen,
absent in college. The other nine were married and settled in
comfortable homes.</p>
<p>Mr Brown died at the expiration of a year. This one year had
taught him more of womankind than he had learned in all his sixty and
nine years before; and, feeling that it is never too late to profit
by learning, Mr Brown discreetly made his will, leaving all his property
save the widow’s “thirds” equally divided among his
ten children.</p>
<p>The Baroness made a futile effort to break the will, on the ground
that he was not of sound mind when it was drawn up; but the effort cost
her several hundred of her few thousand dollars and the increased enmity
of the ten Brown children, and availed her nothing. An important
part of the widow’s third was the Brown mansion, a large, commodious
house built many years before, when the village was but a country town.
Everybody supposed the Baroness, as she was still called, half in derision
and half from the American love of mouthing a title, would offer this
house for sale, and depart for fresh fields and pastures new.
But the Baroness never did what she was expected to do.</p>
<p>Instead of offering her house for sale, she offered “Rooms
to Let,” and turned the family mansion into a fashionable lodging-house.</p>
<p>Its central location, and its adjacence to several restaurants and
boarding houses, rendered it a convenient place for business people
to lodge, and the handsome widow found no trouble in filling her rooms
with desirable and well-paying patrons. In a spirit of fun, people
began to speak of the old Brown mansion as “The Palace,”
and in a short time the lodging-house was known by that name, just as
its mistress was known as “Baroness Brown.”</p>
<p>The Palace yielded the Baroness something like two hundred dollars
a month, and cost her only the wages and keeping of three servants;
or rather the wages of two and the keeping of three; for to Berene Dumont,
her maid and personal attendant, she paid no wages.</p>
<p>The Baroness did not rise till noon, and she always breakfasted in
bed. Sometimes she remained in her room till mid-afternoon.
Berene served her breakfast and lunch, and looked after the servants
to see that the lodgers’ rooms were all in order. These
were the services for which she was given a home. But in truth
the young woman did much more than this; she acted also as seamstress
and milliner for her mistress, and attended to the marketing and ran
errands for her. If ever a girl paid full price for her keeping,
it was Berene, and yet the Baroness spoke frequently of “giving
the poor thing a home.”</p>
<p>It had all come about in this way. Pierre Dumont kept a second-hand
book store in Beryngford. He was French, and the national characteristic
of frugality had assumed the shape of avarice in his nature. He
was, too, a petty tyrant and a cruel husband and father when under the
influence of absinthe, a state in which he was usually to be found.</p>
<p>Berene was an only child, and her mother, whom she worshipped, said,
when dying, “Take care of your poor father, Berene. Do everything
you can to make him happy. Never desert him.”</p>
<p>Berene was fourteen at that time. She had never been at school,
but she had been taught to read and write both French and English, for
her mother was an American girl who had been disinherited by her grandparents,
with whom she lived, for eloping with her French teacher—Pierre
Dumont. Rheumatism and absinthe turned the French professor into
a shopkeeper before Berene was born. The grandparents had died
without forgiving their granddaughter, and, much as the unhappy woman
regretted her foolish marriage, she remained a patient and devoted wife
to the end of her life, and imposed the same patience and devotion when
dying on her daughter.</p>
<p>At sixteen, Berene was asked to sacrifice herself on the altar of
marriage to a man three times her age; one Jacques Letellier, who offered
generously to take the young girl as payment for a debt owed by his
convivial comrade, M. Dumont. Berene wept and begged piteously
to be spared this horrible sacrifice of her young life, whereupon Pierre
Dumont seized his razor and threatened suicide as the other alternative
from the dishonour of debt, and Berene in terror yielded her word and
herself the next day to the debasing mockery of marriage with a depraved
old gambler and <i>roué.</i></p>
<p>Six months later Jacques Letellier died in a fit of apoplexy and
Berene was freed from her chains; but freed only to keep on in a life
of martyrdom as servant and slave to the caprices of her father, until
his death. When he was finally well buried under six feet of earth,
Berene found herself twenty years of age, alone in the world with just
one thousand dollars in money, the price brought by her father’s
effects.</p>
<p>Without education or accomplishments, she was the possessor of youth,
health, charm, and a voice of wonderful beauty and power; a voice which
it was her dream to cultivate, and use as a means of support.
But how could she ever cultivate it? The thousand dollars in her
possession was, she knew, but a drop in the ocean of expense a musical
education would entail. And she must keep that money until she
found some way by which to support herself.</p>
<p>Baroness Brown had attended the sale of old Dumont’s effects.
She had often noticed the young girl in the shop, and in the street,
and had been struck with the peculiar elegance and refinement of her
appearance. Her simple lawn or print gowns were made and worn
in a manner befitting a princess. Her nails were carefully kept,
despite all the household drudgery which devolved upon her.</p>
<p>The Baroness was a shrewd woman and a clever reasoner. She
needed a thrifty, prudent person in her house to look after things,
and to attend to her personal needs. Since she had opened the
Palace as a lodging-house, this need had stared her in the face.
Servants did very well in their places, but the person she required
was of another and superior order, and only to be obtained by accident
or by advertising and the paying of a large salary. Now the Baroness
had been in the habit of thinking that her beauty and amiability were
quite equivalent to any favours she received from humanity at large.
Ever since she was a plump girl in short dresses, she had learned that
smiles and compliments from her lips would purchase her friends of both
sexes, who would do disagreeable duties for her. She had never
made it a custom to pay out money for any service she could obtain otherwise.
So now as she looked on this young woman who, though a widow, seemed
still a mere child, it occurred to her that Fate had with its usual
kindness thrown in her path the very person she needed.</p>
<p>She offered Berene “a home” at the Palace in return for
a few small services. The lonely girl, whose strangely solitary
life with her old father had excluded her from all social relations
outside, grasped at this offer from the handsome lady whom she had long
admired from a distance, and went to make her home at the Palace.</p>
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<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
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<p>Berene had been several months in her new home when Preston Cheney
came to lodge at the Palace.</p>
<p>He met her on the stairway the first morning after his arrival, as
he was descending to the street door.</p>
<p>Bringing up a tray covered with a snowy napkin, she stepped to one
side and paused, to make room for him to pass.</p>
<p>Preston was not one of those young men who find pastime in flirtations
with nursery maids or kitchen girls. The very thought of it offended
his good taste. Once, in listening to the boastful tales of a
modern Don Juan, who was relating his gallant adventures with a handsome
waiter girl at a hotel, Preston had remarked, “I would as soon
think of using my dinner napkin for a necktie, as finding romance with
a servant girl.”</p>
<p>Yet he appreciated a snowy, well-laundried napkin in its place, and
he was most considerate and thoughtful in his treatment of servants.</p>
<p>He supposed Berene to be an upper servant of the house, and yet,
as he glanced at her, a strange and unaccountable feeling of interest
seized upon him. The creamy pallor of her skin, colourless save
for the full red lips, the dark eyes full of unutterable longing, the
aristocratic poise of the head, the softly rounded figure, elegant in
its simple gown and apron, all impressed him as he had never before
been impressed by any woman.</p>
<p>It was several days before he chanced to see her again, and then
only for a moment as she passed through the hall; but he heard a trill
of song from her lips, which added to his interest and curiosity.
“That girl is no common servant,” he said to himself, and
he resolved to learn more about her.</p>
<p>It had been the custom of the Baroness to keep herself quite hidden
from her lodgers. They seldom saw her, after the first business
interview. Therefore it was a matter of surprise to the young
editor when he came home from his office one night, just after twelve
o’clock, and found the mistress of the mansion standing in the
hall by the register, in charming evening attire.</p>
<p>She smiled upon him radiantly. “I have just come in from
a benefit concert,” she said, “and I am as hungry as a bear.
Now I cannot endure eating alone at night. I knew it was near
your hour to return, so I waited for you. Will you go down to
the dining-room with me and have a Welsh rarebit? I am going to
make one in my chafing dish.”</p>
<p>The young man hid his surprise under a gallant smile, and offering
the Baroness his arm descended to the basement dining-room with her.
He had heard much about the complicated life of this woman, and he felt
a certain amount of natural curiosity in regard to her. He had
met her but once, and that was on the day when he had called to engage
his room, a little more than two weeks past.</p>
<p>He had thought her an excellent type of the successful American adventuress
on that occasion, and her quiet and dull life in this ordinary town
puzzled him. He could not imagine a woman of that order existing
a whole year without an adventure; as a rule he knew that those blonde
women with large hips and busts, and small waists and feet, are as unable
to live without excitement as a fish without water.</p>
<p>Yet, since the death of Mr Brown, more than a year past, the Baroness
had lived the life of a recluse. It puzzled him, as a student
of human nature.</p>
<p>But, in fact, the Baroness was a skilled general in planning her
campaigns. She seldom plunged into action unprepared.</p>
<p>She knew from experience that she could not live in a large city
and not use an enormous amount of money.</p>
<p>She was tired of taking great risks, and she knew that without the
aid of money and a fine wardrobe she was not able to attract men as
she had done ten years before.</p>
<p>As long as she remained in Beryngford she would be adding to her
income every month, and saving the few thousands she possessed.
She would be saving her beauty, too, by keeping early hours and living
a temperate life; and if she carefully avoided any new scandal, her
past adventures would be dim in the minds of people when, after a year
or two more of retirement and retrenchment, she sallied forth to new
fields, under a new name, if need be, and with a comfortably filled
purse.</p>
<p>It was in this manner that the Baroness had reasoned; but from the
hour she first saw Preston Cheney, her resolutions wavered. He
impressed her most agreeably; and after learning about him from the
daily papers, and hearing him spoken of as a valuable acquisition to
Beryngford’s intellectual society, the Baroness decided to come
out of her retirement and enter the lists in advance of other women
who would seek to attract this newcomer.</p>
<p>To the fading beauty in her late thirties, a man in the early twenties
possesses a peculiar fascination; and to the Baroness, clothed in weeds
for a husband who died on the eve of his seventieth birthday, the possibility
of winning a young man like Preston Cheney overbalanced all other considerations
in her mind. She had never been a vulgar coquette to whom all
men were prey. She had always been more or less discriminating.
A man must be either very attractive or very rich to win her regard.
Mr Brown had been very rich, and Preston Cheney was very attractive.</p>
<p>“He is more than attractive, he is positively <i>fascinating</i>,”
she said to herself in the solitude of her room after the tête-à-tête
over the Welsh rarebit that evening. “I don’t know
when I have felt such a pleasure in a man’s presence. Not
since—” But the Baroness did not allow herself to
go back so far. “If there is any fruit I <i>detest</i>,
it is <i>dates</i>,” she often said laughingly. “Some
people delight in a good memory—I delight in a good forgettory
of the past, with its telltale milestones of birthdays and anniversaries
of marriages, deaths and divorces.”</p>
<p>“Mr Cheney said I looked very young to have been twice married.
Twice!” and she laughed aloud before her mirror, revealing the
pink arch of her mouth, and two perfect sets of yellow-white teeth,
with only one blemishing spot of gold visible. “I wonder
if he meant it, though?” she mused. “And the fact
that I <i>do</i> wonder is the sure proof that I am really interested
in this man. As a rule, I never believe a word men say, though
I delight in their flattery all the same. It makes me feel comfortable
even when I know they are lying. But I should really feel hurt
if I thought Mr Cheney had not meant what he said. I don’t
believe he knows much about women, or about himself lower than his brain.
He has never studied his heart. He is all ambition. If an
ambitious and unsophisticated youth of twenty-five or twenty-eight does
get infatuated with a woman of my age—he is a perfect toy in her
hands. Ah, well, we shall see what we shall see.”
And the Baroness finished her massage in cold cream, and put her blonde
head on the pillow and went sound asleep.</p>
<p>After that first tête-à-tête supper the fair widow
managed to see Preston at least once or twice a week. She sent
for him to ask his advice on business matters, she asked him to aid
her in changing the position of the furniture in a room when the servants
were all busy, and she invited him to her private parlour for lunch
every Sunday afternoon. It was during one of these chats over
cake and wine that the young man spoke of Berene. The Baroness
had dropped some remarks about her servants, and Preston said, in a
casual tone of voice which hid the real interest he felt in the subject,
“By the way, one of your servants has quite an unusual voice.
I have heard her singing about the halls a few times, and it seems to
me she has real talent.”</p>
<p>“Oh, that is Miss Dumont—Berene Dumont—she is not
an absolute servant,” the Baroness replied; “she is a most
unfortunate young woman to whom my heart went out in pity, and I have
given her a home. She is really a widow, though she refuses to
use her dead husband’s name.”</p>
<p>“A widow?” repeated Preston with surprise and a queer
sensation of annoyance at his heart; “why, from the glimpse I
had of her I thought her a young girl.”</p>
<p>“So she is, not over twenty-one at most, and woefully ignorant
for that age,” the Baroness said, and then she proceeded to outline
Berene’s history, laying a good deal of stress upon her own charitable
act in giving the girl a home.</p>
<p>“She is so ignorant of life, despite the fact that she has
been married, and she is so uneducated and helpless, I could not bear
to see her cast into the path of designing people,” the Baroness
said. “She has a strong craving for an education, and I
give her good books to read, and good advice to ponder over, and I hope
in time to come she will marry some honest fellow and settle down to
a quiet, happy home life. The man who brings us butter and eggs
from the country is quite fascinated with her, but she does not deign
him a glance.” And then the Baroness talked of other things.</p>
<p>But the history he had heard remained in Preston Cheney’s mind
and he could not drive the thought of this girl away. No wonder
her eyes were sad! Better blood ran in her veins than coursed
under the pink flesh of the Baroness, he would wager; she was the unfortunate
victim of a combination of circumstances, which had defrauded her of
the advantages of youth.</p>
<p>He spoke with her in the hall one morning not long after that; and
then it grew to be a daily occurrence that he talked with her a few
moments, and before many weeks had passed the young man approached the
Baroness with a request.</p>
<p>“I have become interested in your protégée Miss
Dumont,” he said. “You have done so much for her that
you have stirred my better nature and made me anxious to emulate your
example. In talking with her in the hall one day I learned her
great desire for a better education, and her anxiety to earn money.
Now it has occurred to me that I might aid her in both ways. We
need two or three more girls in our office. We need one more in
the type-setting department. As <i>The Clarion</i> is a morning
paper, and you never need Miss Dumont’s services after five o’clock,
she could work a few hours in the office, earn a small salary, and gain
something in the way of an education also, if she were ambitious enough
to do so. Nearly all my early education was gained as a printer.
She tells me she is faulty in the matter of spelling, and this would
be excellent training for her. You have, dear madam, inspired
the girl with a desire for more knowledge, and I hope you will let me
carry on the good work you have begun.”</p>
<p>Preston had approached the matter in a way that could not fail to
bring success—by flattering the vanity and pride of the Baroness.
So elated was she with the agreeable references to herself, that she
never suspected the young man’s deep personal interest in the
girl. She believed in the beginning that he was showing Berene
this kind attention solely to please the mistress.</p>
<p>Berene entered the office as type-setter, and made such astonishing
progress that she was promoted to the position of proof-reader ere six
months had passed. And hour by hour, day by day, week by week,
the strange influence which she had exerted on her employer, from the
first moment of their meeting, grew and strengthened, until he realised
with a sudden terror that his whole being was becoming absorbed by an
intense passion for the girl.</p>
<p>Meantime the Baroness was growing embarrassing in her attentions.
The young man was not conceited, nor prone to regard himself as an object
of worship to the fair sex. He had during the first few months
believed the Baroness to be amusing herself with his society.
He had not flattered himself that a woman of her age, who had seen so
much of the world, and whose ambitions were so unmistakable, could regard
him otherwise than as a diversion.</p>
<p>But of late the truth had forced itself upon him that the woman wished
to entangle him in a serious affair. He could not afford to jeopardise
his reputation at the very outset of his career by any such entanglement,
or by the appearance of one. He cast about for some excuse to
leave the Palace, yet this would separate him in a measure from his
association with Berene, beside incurring the enmity of the Baroness,
and possibly causing Berene to suffer from her anger as well.</p>
<p>He seemed to be caught like a fly in a net. And again the thought
of his future and his ambitions confronted him, and he felt abashed
in his own eyes, as he realised how far away these ambitions had seemed
of late, since he had allowed his emotions to overrule his brain.</p>
<p>What was this ignorant daughter of a French professor, that she should
stand between him and glory, riches and power? Desperate diseases
needed desperate remedies. He had been an occasional caller at
the Lawrence homestead ever since he came to Beryngford. Without
being conceited on the subject, he realised that Mabel Lawrence would
not reject him as a suitor.</p>
<p>The masculine party is very dull, or the feminine very deceptive,
when a man makes a mistake in his impressions on this subject.</p>
<p>That afternoon the young editor left his office at five o’clock
and asked Miss Lawrence to be his wife.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Preston Cheney walked briskly down the street after he left his fiancée,
his steps directed toward the Palace. It was seven o’clock,
and he knew the Baroness would be at home.</p>
<p>He had determined upon heroic treatment for his own mental disease
(as he regarded his peculiar sentiments toward Berene Dumont), and he
had decided upon a similar course of treatment for the Baroness.</p>
<p>He would confide his engagement to her at once, and thus put an end
to his embarrassing position in the Palace, as well as to establish
his betrothal as a fact—and to force himself to so regard it.
It was strange reasoning for a young man in the very first hour of his
new rôle of bridegroom elect, but this particular groom elect
had deliberately placed himself in a peculiar position, and his reasoning
was not, of course, that of an ardent and happy lover.</p>
<p>Already he was galled by his new fetters; already he was feeling
a sense of repulsion toward the woman he had asked to be his wife: and
because of these feelings he was more eager to nail himself hand and
foot to the cross he had builded.</p>
<p>He was obliged to wait some time before the Baroness came into the
reception-room; and when she came he observed that she had made an elaborate
toilet in his honour. Her sumptuous shoulders billowed over the
low-cut blue corsage like apple-dumplings over a china dish. Her
waist was drawn in to an hourglass taper, while her ample hips spread
out beneath like the heavy mason work which supports a slender column.
Tiny feet encased in pretty slippers peeping from beneath her silken
skirts looked oddly out of proportion with the rest of her generous
personality, and reminded Preston of the grotesque cuts in the humorous
weeklies, where well-known politicians were represented with large heads
and small extremities. Artistic by nature, and with an eye to
form, he had never admired the Baroness’s type of beauty, which
was the theme of admiration for nearly every other man in Beryngford.
Her face, with its infantine colouring, its large, innocent azure eyes,
and its short retroussé features, he conceded to be captivatingly
pretty, however, and it seemed unusually so this evening. Perhaps
because he had so recently looked upon the sharp, sallow face of his
fiancée.</p>
<p>Preston frequently came to his room about this hour, after having
dined and before going to the office for his final duties; but he seldom
saw the Baroness on these occasions, unless through her own design.</p>
<p>“You were surprised to receive my message, no doubt, saying
I wished to see you,” he began. “But I have something
I feel I ought to tell you, as it may make some changes in my habits,
and will of course eventually take me away from these pleasant associations.”
He paused for a second, and the Baroness, who had seated herself on
the divan at his side, leaned forward and looked inquiringly in his
face.</p>
<p>“You are going away?” she asked, with a tremor in her
voice. “Is it not very sudden?”</p>
<p>“No, I am not going away,” he replied, “not from
Beryngford—but I shall doubtless leave your house ere many months.
I am engaged to be married to Miss Mabel Lawrence. You are the
first person to whom I have imparted the news, but you have been so
kind, and I feel that you ought to know it in time to secure a desirable
tenant for my room.”</p>
<p>Again there was a pause. The rosy face of the Baroness had
grown quite pale, and an unpleasant expression had settled about the
corners of her small mouth. She waved a feather fan to and fro
languidly. Then she gave a slight laugh and said:</p>
<p>“Well, I must confess that I am surprised. Miss Lawrence
is the last woman in the world whom I would have imagined you to select
as a wife. Yet I congratulate you on your good sense. You
are very ambitious, and you can rise to great distinction if you have
the right influence to aid you. Judge Lawrence, with his wealth
and position, is of all men the one who can advance your interests,
and what more natural than that he should advance the interests of his
son-in-law? You are a very wise youth and I again congratulate
you. No romantic folly will ever ruin your life.”</p>
<p>There was irony and ridicule in her voice and face, and the young
man felt his cheek tingle with anger and humiliation. The Baroness
had read him like an open book—as everyone else doubtless would
do. It was bitterly galling to his pride, but there was nothing
to do, save to keep a bold front, and carry out his rôle with
as much dignity as possible.</p>
<p>He rose, spoke a few formal words of thanks to the Baroness for her
kindness to him, and bowed himself from her presence, carrying with
him down the street the memory of her mocking eyes.</p>
<p>As he entered his private office, he was amazed to see Berene Dumont
sitting in his chair fast asleep, her head framed by her folded arms,
which rested on his desk. Against the dark maroon of her sleeve,
her classic face was outlined like a marble statuette. Her long
lashes swept her cheek, and in the attitude in which she sat, her graceful,
perfectly-proportioned figure displayed each beautiful curve to the
best advantage.</p>
<p>To a noble nature, the sight of even an enemy asleep, awakes softening
emotions, while the sight of a loved being in the unconsciousness of
slumber stirs the fountain of affection to its very depths.</p>
<p>As the young editor looked upon the girl before him, a passion of
yearning love took possession of him. A wild desire to seize her
in his arms and cover her pale face with kisses, made his heart throb
to suffocation and brought cold beads to his brow; and just as these
feelings gained an almost uncontrollable dominion over his reason, will
and judgment, the girl awoke and started to her feet in confusion.</p>
<p>“Oh, Mr Cheney, pray forgive me!” she cried, looking
more beautiful than ever with the flush which overspread her face.
“I came in to ask about a word in your editorial which I could
not decipher. I waited for you, as I felt sure you would be in
shortly—and I was so <i>tired</i> I sat down for just a second
to rest—and that is all I knew about it. You must forgive
me, sir!—I did not mean to intrude.”</p>
<p>Her confusion, her appealing eyes, her magnetic voice were all fuel
to the fire raging in the young man’s heart. Now that she
was for ever lost to him through his own deliberate action, she seemed
tenfold more dear and to be desired. Brain, soul, and body all
seemed to crave her; he took a step forward, and drew in a quick breath
as if to speak; and then a sudden sense of his own danger, and an overwhelming
disgust for his weakness swept over him, and the intense passion the
girl had aroused in his heart changed to unreasonable anger.</p>
<p>“Miss Dumont,” he said coldly, “I think we will
have to dispense with your services after to-night. Your duties
are evidently too hard for you. You can leave the office at any
time you wish. Good-night.”</p>
<p>The girl shrank as if he had struck her, looked up at him with wide,
wondering eyes, waited for a moment as if expecting to be recalled,
then, as Mr Cheney wheeled his chair about and turned his back upon
her, she suddenly sped away without a word.</p>
<p>She left the office a few moments later; but it was not until after
eleven o’clock that she dragged herself up two flights of stairs
toward her room on the attic floor at the Palace. She had been
walking the streets like a mad creature all that intervening time, trying
to still the agonising pain in her heart. Preston Cheney had long
been her ideal of all that was noble, grand and good, she worshipped
him as devout pagans worshipped their sacred idols; and, without knowing
it, she gave him the absorbing passion which an intense woman gives
to her lover.</p>
<p>It was only now that he had treated her with such rough brutality,
and discharged her from his employ for so slight a cause, that the knowledge
burst upon her tortured heart of all he was to her.</p>
<p>She paused at the foot of the third and last flight of stairs with
a strange dizziness in her head and a sinking sensation at her heart.</p>
<p>A little less than half-an-hour afterwards Preston Cheney unlocked
the street door and came in for the night. He had done double
his usual amount of work and had finished his duties earlier than usual.
To avoid thinking after he sent Berene away, he had turned to his desk
and plunged into his labour with feverish intensity. He wrote
a particularly savage editorial on the matter of over-immigration, and
his leaders on political questions of the day were all tinctured with
a bitterness and sarcasm quite new to his pen. At midnight that
pen dropped from his nerveless hand, and he made his way toward the
Palace in a most unenviable state of mind and body.</p>
<p>Yet he believed he had done the right thing both in engaging himself
to Miss Lawrence and in discharging Berene. Her constant presence
about the office was of all things the most undesirable in his new position.</p>
<p>“But I might have done it in a decent manner if I had not lost
all control of myself,” he said as he walked home. “It
was brutal the way I spoke to her; poor child, she looked as if I had
beat her with a bludgeon. Well, it is just as well perhaps that
I gave her good reason to despise me.”</p>
<p>Since Berene had gone into the young man’s office as an employé
her good taste and another reason had caused her to avoid him as much
as possible in the house. He seldom saw more than a passing glimpse
of her in the halls, and frequently whole days elapsed that he met her
only in the office. The young man never suspected that this fact
was due in great part to the suggestion of jealousy in the manner of
the Baroness toward the young girl ever after he had shown so much interest
in her welfare. Sensitive to the mental atmosphere about her,
as a wind harp to the lightest breeze, Berene felt this unexpressed
sentiment in the breast of her “benefactress” and strove
to avoid anything which could aggravate it.</p>
<p>With a lagging step and a listless air, Preston made his way up the
first of two flights of stairs which intervened between the street door
and his room. The first floor was in darkness; but in the upper
hall a dim light was always left burning until his return. As
he reached the landing, he was startled to see a woman’s form
lying at the foot of the attic stairs, but a few feet from the door
of his room. Stooping down, he uttered a sudden exclamation of
pained surprise, for it was upon the pallid, unconscious face of Berene
Dumont that his eyes fell. He lifted the lithe figure in his sinewy
arms, and with light, rapid steps bore her up the stairs and in through
the open door of her room.</p>
<p>“If she is dead, I am her murderer,” he thought.
But at that moment she opened her eyes and looked full into his, with
a gaze which made his impetuous, uncontrolled heart forget that any
one or anything existed on earth but this girl and his love for her.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>One of the greatest factors in the preservation of the Baroness’s
beauty had been her ability to sleep under all conditions. The
woman who can and does sleep eight or nine hours out of each twenty-four
is well armed against the onslaught of time and trouble.</p>
<p>To say that such women do not possess heart enough or feeling enough
to suffer is ofttimes most untrue.</p>
<p>Insomnia is a disease of the nerves or of the stomach, rather than
the result of extreme emotion. Sometimes the people who sleep
the most profoundly at night in times of sorrow, suffer the more intensely
during their waking hours. Disguised as a friend, deceitful Slumber
comes to them only to strengthen their powers of suffering, and to lend
a new edge to pain.</p>
<p>The Baroness was not without feeling. Her temperament was far
from phlegmatic. She had experienced great cyclones of grief and
loss in her varied career, though many years had elapsed since she had
known what the French call a “white night.”</p>
<p>But the night following her interview with Preston Cheney she never
closed her eyes in sleep. It was in vain that she tried all known
recipes for producing slumber. She said the alphabet backward
ten times; she counted one thousand; she conjured up visions of sheep
jumping the time-honoured fence in battalions, yet the sleep god never
once drew near.</p>
<p>“I am certainly a brilliant illustration of the saying that
there is no fool like an old fool,” she said to herself as the
night wore on, and the strange sensation of pain and loss which Preston
Cheney’s unexpected announcement had caused her gnawed at her
breast like a rat in a wainscot.</p>
<p>That she had been unusually interested in the young editor she knew
from the first; that she had been mortally wounded by Cupid’s
shaft she only now discovered. She had passed through a divorce,
two “affairs” and a legitimate widowhood, without feeling
any of the keen emotions which now drove sleep from her eyes.
A long time ago, longer than she cared to remember, she had experienced
such emotions, but she had supposed such folly only possible in the
high tide of early youth. It was absurd, nay more, it was ridiculous
to lie awake at her time of life thinking about a penniless country
youth whose mother she might almost have been. In this bitterly
frank fashion the Baroness reasoned with herself as she lay quite still
in her luxurious bed, and tried to sleep.</p>
<p>Yet despite her frankness, her philosophy and her reasoning, the
rasping hurt at her heart remained—a hurt so cruel it seemed to
her the end of all peace or pleasure in life.</p>
<p>It is harder to bear the suffocating heat of a late September day
which the year sometimes brings, than all the burning June suns.</p>
<p>The Baroness heard the click of Preston’s key in the street
door, and she listened to his slow step as he ascended the stairs.
She heard him pause, too, and waited for the sound of the opening of
his room door, which was situated exactly above her own. But she
listened in vain, her ears, brain and heart on the alert with surprise,
curiosity, and at last suspicion. The Baroness was as full of
curiosity as a cat.</p>
<p>It was not until just before dawn that she heard his step in the
hall, and his door open and close.</p>
<p>An hour later a sharp ring came at the street door bell. A
message for Mr Preston, the servant said, in answer to her mistress’s
question as she descended from the room above.</p>
<p>“Was Mr Preston awake when you rapped on his door?” asked
the Baroness.</p>
<p>“Yes, madame, awake and dressed.”</p>
<p>Mr Preston ran hurriedly through the halls and out to the street
a moment later; and the Baroness, clothed in a dressing-gown and silken
slippers, tiptoed lightly to his room. The bed had not been occupied
the whole night. On the table lay a note which the young man had
begun when interrupted by the message which he had thrown down beside
it.</p>
<p>The Baroness glanced at the note, on which the ink was still moist,
and read, “My dear Miss Lawrence, I want you to release me from
the ties formed only yesterday—I am basely unworthy—”
here the note ended. She now turned her attention to the message
which had prevented the completion of the letter. It was signed
by Judge Lawrence and ran as follows:-</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>“My Dear Boy,—My wife was taken mortally ill this morning
just before daybreak. She cannot live many hours, our physician
says. Mabel is in a state of complete nervous prostration caused
by the shock of this calamity. I wish you would come to us at
once. I fear for my dear child’s reason unless you prove
able to calm and quiet her through this ordeal. Hasten then, my
dear son; every moment before you arrive will seem an age of sorrow
and anxiety to me. “S. LAWRENCE.”</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>A strange smile curved the corners of the Baroness’s lips as
she finished reading this note and tiptoed down the stairs to her own
room again.</p>
<p>Meantime the hour for her hot water arrived, and Berene did not appear.
The Baroness drank a quart of hot water every morning as a tonic for
her system, and another quart after breakfast to reduce her flesh.
Her excellent digestive powers and the clear condition of her blood
she attributed largely to this habit.</p>
<p>After a few moments she rang the bell vigorously. Maggie, the
chambermaid, came in answer to the call.</p>
<p>“Please ask Miss Dumont” (Berene was always known to
the other servants as Miss Dumont) “to hurry with the hot water,”
the Baroness said.</p>
<p>“Miss Dumont has not yet come downstairs, madame.”</p>
<p>“Not come down? Then will you please call her, Maggie?”</p>
<p>The Baroness was always polite to her servants. She had observed
that a graciousness of speech toward her servants often made up for
a deficiency in wages. Maggie ascended to Miss Dumont’s
room, and returned with the information that Miss Dumont had a severe
headache, and begged the indulgence of madame this morning.</p>
<p>Again that strange smile curved the corners of the Baroness’s
lips.</p>
<p>Maggie was requested to bring up hot water and coffee, and great
was her surprise to find the Baroness moving about the room when she
appeared with the tray.</p>
<p>Half-an-hour later Berene Dumont, standing by an open window with
her hands clasped behind her head, heard a light tap on her door.
In answer to a mechanical “Come,” the Baroness appeared.</p>
<p>The rustle of her silken morning gown caused Berene to turn suddenly
and face her; and as she met the eyes of her visitor the young woman’s
pallor gave place to a wave of deep crimson, which dyed her face and
neck like the shadow of a red flag falling on a camellia blossom.</p>
<p>“Maggie tells me you are ill this morning,” the Baroness
remarked after a moment’s silence. “I am surprised
to find you up and dressed. I came to see if I could do anything
for you.”</p>
<p>“You are very kind,” Berene answered, while in her heart
she thought how cruel was the expression in the face of the woman before
her, and how faded she appeared in the morning light. “But
I think I shall be quite well in a little while, I only need to keep
quiet for a few hours.”</p>
<p>“I fear you passed a sleepless night,” the Baroness remarked
with a solicitous tone, but with the same cruel smile upon her lips.
“I see you never opened your bed. Something must have been
in the air to keep us all awake. I did not sleep an hour, and
Mr Cheney never entered his room till near morning. Yet I can
understand his wakefulness—he announced his engagement to Miss
Mabel Lawrence to me last evening, and a young man is not expected to
woo sleep easily after taking such an important step as that.
Judge Lawrence sent for him a few hours ago to come and support Miss
Mabel during the trial that the day is to bring them in the death of
Mrs Lawrence. The physician has predicted the poor invalid’s
near end. Sorrow follows close on joy in this life.”</p>
<p>There was a moment’s silence; then Miss Dumont said: “I
think I will try to get a little sleep now, madame. I thank you
for your kind interest in me.”</p>
<p>The Baroness descended to her room humming an air from an old opera,
and settled to the task of removing as much as possible all evidences
of fatigue and sleeplessness from her countenance.</p>
<p>It has been said very prettily of the spruce-tree, that it keeps
the secret of its greenness well; so well that we hardly know when it
sheds its leaves. There are women who resemble the spruce in their
perennial youth, and the vigilance with which they guard the secret
of it. The Baroness was one of these. Only her mirror shared
this secret.</p>
<p>She was an adept at the art of preservation, and greatly as she disliked
physical exertion, she toiled laboriously over her own person an hour
at least every day, and never employed a maid to assist her. One’s
rival might buy one’s maid, she reasoned, and it was well to have
no confidant in these matters.</p>
<p>She slipped off her dressing-gown and corset and set herself to the
task of pinching and mauling her throat, arms and shoulders, to remove
superfluous flesh, and strengthen muscles and fibres to resist the flabby
tendencies which time produces. Then she used the dumb-bells vigorously
for fifteen minutes, and that was followed by five minutes of relaxation.
Next she lay on the floor flat upon her face, her arms across her back,
and lifted her head and chest twenty-five times. This exercise
was to replace flesh with muscle across the abdomen. Then she
rose to her feet, set her small heels together, turned her toes out
squarely, and, keeping her body upright bent her knees out in a line
with her hips, sinking and rising rapidly fifteen times. This
produced pliancy of the body, and induced a healthy condition of the
loins and adjacent organs.</p>
<p>To further fight against the deadly enemy of obesity, she lifted
her arms above her head slowly until she touched her finger tips, at
the same time rising upon her tiptoes, while she inhaled a long breath,
and as slowly dropped to her heels, and lowered her arms while she exhaled
her breath. While these exercises had been taking place, a tin
cup of water had been coming to the boiling point over an alcohol lamp.
This was now poured into a china bowl containing a small quantity of
sweet milk, which was always brought on her breakfast tray.</p>
<p>The Baroness seated herself before her mirror, in a glare of cruel
light which revealed every blemish in her complexion, every line about
the mouth and eyes.</p>
<p>“You are really hideously passée, mon amie,” she
observed as she peered at herself searchingly; “but we will remedy
all that.”</p>
<p>Dipping a soft linen handkerchief in the bowl of steaming milk and
water, she applied it to her face, holding it closely over the brow
and eyes and about the mouth, until every pore was saturated and every
weary drawn tissue fed and strengthened by the tonic. After this
she dashed ice-cold water over her face. Still there were little
folds at the corners of the eyelids, and an ugly line across the brow,
and these were manipulated with painstaking care, and treated with mysterious
oils and fragrant astringents and finally washed in cool toilet water
and lightly brushed with powder, until at the end of an hour’s
labour, the face of the Baroness had resumed its roseleaf bloom and
transparent smoothness for which she was so famous. And when by
the closest inspection at the mirror, in the broadest light, she saw
no flaw in skin, hair, or teeth, the Baroness proceeded to dress for
a drive. Even the most jealous rival would have been obliged to
concede that she looked like a woman of twenty-eight, that most fascinating
of all ages, as she took her seat in the carriage.</p>
<p>In the early days of her life in Beryngford, when as the Baroness
Le Fevre she had led society in the little town, Mrs Lawrence had been
one of her most devoted friends; Judge Lawrence one of her most earnest,
if silent admirers. As “Baroness Brown” and as the
landlady of “The Palace” she had still maintained her position
as friend of the family, and the Lawrences, secure in their wealth and
power, had allowed her to do so, where some of the lower social lights
had dropped her from their visiting lists.</p>
<p>The Baroness seemed to exercise a sort of hypnotic power over the
fretful, nervous invalid who shared Judge Lawrence’s name, and
this influence was not wholly lost upon the Judge himself, who never
looked upon the Baroness’s abundant charms, glowing with health,
without giving vent to a profound sigh like some hungry child standing
before a confectioner’s window.</p>
<p>The news of Mrs Lawrence’s dangerous illness was voiced about
the town by noon, and therefore the Baroness felt safe in calling at
the door to make inquiries, and to offer any assistance which she might
be able to render. Knowing her intimate relations with the mistress
of the house, the servant admitted her to the parlour and announced
her presence to Judge Lawrence, who left the bedside of the invalid
to tell the caller in person that Mrs Lawrence had fallen into a peaceful
slumber, and that slight hopes were entertained of her possible recovery.
Scarcely had the words passed his lips, however, when the nurse in attendance
hurriedly called him. “Mrs Lawrence is dead!” she
cried. “She breathed only twice after you left the room.”</p>
<p>The Baroness, shocked and startled, rose to go, feeling that her
presence longer would be an intrusion.</p>
<p>“Do not go,” cried the Judge in tones of distress.
“Mabel is nearly distracted, and this news will excite her still
further. We thought this morning that she was on the verge of
serious mental disorder. I sent for her fiancé, Mr Cheney,
and he has calmed her somewhat. You always exerted a soothing
and restful influence over my wife, and you may have the same power
with Mabel. Stay with us, I beg of you, through the afternoon
at least.”</p>
<p>The Baroness sent her carriage home and remained in the Lawrence
mansion until the following morning. The condition of Miss Lawrence
was indeed serious. She passed from one attack of hysteria to
another, and it required the constant attention of her fiancé
and her mother’s friend to keep her from acts of violence.</p>
<p>It was after midnight when she at last fell asleep, and Preston Cheney
in a state of complete exhaustion was shown to a room, while the Baroness
remained at the bedside of Miss Lawrence.</p>
<p>When the Baroness and Mr Cheney returned to the Palace they were
struck with consternation to learn that Miss Dumont had packed her trunk
and departed from Beryngford on the three o’clock train the previous
day.</p>
<p>A brief note thanking the Baroness for her kindness, and stating
that she had imposed upon that kindness quite too long, was her only
farewell. There was no allusion to her plans or her destination,
and all inquiry and secret search failed to find one trace of her.
She seemed to vanish like a phantom from the face of the earth.</p>
<p>No one had seen her leave the Palace, save the laundress, Mrs Connor;
and little this humble personage dreamed that Fate was reserving for
her an important rôle in the drama of a life as yet unborn.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Whatever hope of escape from his self-imposed bondage Preston Cheney
had entertained when he began the note to his fiancée which the
Baroness had read, completely vanished during the weeks which followed
the death of Mrs Lawrence.</p>
<p>Mabel’s nervous condition was alarming, and her father seemed
to rely wholly upon his future son-in-law for courage and moral support
during the trying ordeal. Like most large men of strong physique,
Judge Lawrence was as helpless as an infant in the presence of an ailing
woman; and his experience as the husband of a wife whose nerves were
the only notable thing about her, had given him an absolute terror of
feminine invalids.</p>
<p>Mabel had never been very fond of her mother; she had not been a
loving or a dutiful daughter. A petulant child and an irritable,
fault-finding young woman, who had often been devoid of sympathy for
her parents, she now exhibited such an excess of grief over the death
of her mother that her reason seemed to be threatened.</p>
<p>It was, in fact, quite as much anger as grief which caused her nervous
paroxysms. Mabel Lawrence had never since her infancy known what
it was to be thwarted in a wish. Both parents had been slaves
to her slightest caprice and she had ruled the household with a look
or a word. Death had suddenly deprived her of a mother who was
necessary to her comfort and to whose presence she was accustomed, and
her heart was full of angry resentment at the fate which had dared to
take away a member of her household. It had never entered her
thoughts that death could devastate <i>her</i> home.</p>
<p>Other people lost fathers and mothers, of course; but that Mabel
Lawrence could be deprived of a parent seemed incredible. Anger
is a strong ingredient in the excessive grief of every selfish nature.</p>
<p>Preston Cheney became more and more disheartened with the prospect
of his future, as he studied the character and temperament of his fiancée
during her first weeks of loss.</p>
<p>But the net which he had woven was closing closer and closer about
him, and every day he became more hopelessly entangled in its meshes.</p>
<p>At the end of one month, the family physician decided that travel
and change of air and scene was an imperative necessity for Miss Lawrence.
Judge Lawrence was engaged in some important legal matters which rendered
an extended journey impossible for him. To trust Mabel in the
hands of hired nurses alone, was not advisable. It was her father
who suggested an early marriage and a European trip for bride and groom,
as the wisest expedient under the circumstances.</p>
<p>Like the prisoner in the iron room, who saw the walls slowly but
surely closing in to crush out his life, Preston Cheney saw his wedding
day approaching, and knew that his doom was sealed.</p>
<p>There were many desperate hours, when, had he possessed the slightest
clue to the hiding-place of Berene Dumont, he would have flown to her,
even knowing that he left disgrace and death behind him. He realised
that he now owed a duty to the girl he loved, higher and more imperative
by far than any he owed to his fiancée. But he had not
the means to employ a detective to find Berene; and he was not sure
that, if found, she might not spurn him. He had heard and read
of cases where a woman’s love had turned to bitter loathing and
hatred for the man who had not protected her in a moment of weakness.
He could think of no other cause which would lead Berene to disappear
in such a mysterious manner at such a time, and so the days passed and
he married Mabel Lawrence two months after the death of her mother,
and the young couple set forth immediately on extended foreign travels.
Fifteen months later they returned to Beryngford with their infant daughter
Alice. Mrs Cheney was much improved in health, though still a
great sufferer from nervous disorders, a misfortune which the child
seemed to inherit. She would lie and scream for hours at a time,
clenching her small fists and growing purple in the face, and all efforts
of parents, nurses or physicians to soothe her, served only to further
increase her frenzy. She screamed and beat the air with her thin
arms and legs until nature exhausted itself, then she fell into a heavy
slumber and awoke in good spirits.</p>
<p>These attacks came on frequently in the night, and as they rendered
Mrs Cheney very “nervous,” and caused a panic among the
nurses, it devolved upon the unhappy father to endeavour to soothe the
violent child. And while he walked the floor with her or leaned
over her crib, using all his strong mental powers to control these unfortunate
paroxysms, no vision came to him of another child lying cuddled in her
mother’s arms in a distant town, a child of wonderful beauty and
angelic nature, born of love, and inheriting love’s divine qualities.</p>
<p>A few months before the young couple returned to their native soil,
they received a letter which caused Preston the greatest astonishment,
and Mabel some hours of hysterical weeping. This letter was written
by Judge Lawrence, and announced his marriage to Baroness Brown.
Judge Lawrence had been a widower more than a year when the Baroness
took the book of his heart, in which he supposed the hand of romance
had long ago written “finis,” and turning it to his astonished
eyes revealed a whole volume of love’s love.</p>
<p>It is in the second reading of their hearts that the majority of
men find the most interesting literature.</p>
<p>Before the Baroness had been three months his wife, the long years
of martyrdom he had endured as the husband of Mabel’s mother seemed
like a nightmare dream to Judge Lawrence; and all of life, hope and
happiness was embodied in the woman who ruled his destiny with a hypnotic
sway no one could dispute, yet a woman whose heart still throbbed with
a stubborn and lawless passion for the man who called her husband father.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>More than two decades had passed since Preston Cheney followed the
dictates of his ambition and married Mabel Lawrence.</p>
<p>Many of his early hopes and desires had been realised during these
years. He had attained to high political positions; and honour
and wealth were his to enjoy. Yet Senator Cheney, as he was now
known, was far from a happy man. Disappointment was written in
every lineament of his face, restlessness and discontent spoke in his
every movement, and at times the spirit of despair seemed to look from
the depths of his eyes.</p>
<p>To a man of any nobility of nature, there can be small satisfaction
in honours which he knows are bought with money and bribes; and to the
proud young American there was the additional sting of knowing that
even the money by which his honours were purchased was not his own.</p>
<p>It was the second Mrs Lawrence (still designated as the “Baroness”
by her stepdaughter and by old acquaintances) to whom Preston owed the
constant reminder of his dependence upon the purse of his father-in-law.
In those subtle, occult ways known only to a jealous and designing nature,
the Baroness found it possible to make Preston’s life a torture,
without revealing her weapons of warfare to her husband; indeed, without
allowing him to even smell the powder, while she still kept up a constant
small fire upon the helpless enemy.</p>
<p>Owing to the fact that Mabel had come as completely under the hypnotic
influence of the Baroness as the first Mrs Lawrence had been during
her lifetime, Preston was subjected to a great deal more of her persecutions
than would otherwise have been possible. Mabel was never happier
than when enjoying the companionship of her new mother; a condition
of things which pleased the Judge as much as it made his son-in-law
miserable.</p>
<p>With a malicious adroitness possible only to such a woman as the
second Mrs Lawrence, she endeared herself to Mrs Cheney, by a thousand
flattering and caressing ways, and by a constant exhibition of sympathy,
which to a weak and selfish nature is as pleasing as it is distasteful
to the proud and strong. And by this inexhaustible flow of sympathetic
feeling, she caused the wife to drift farther and farther away from
her husband’s influence, and to accuse him of all manner of shortcomings
and faults which had not suggested themselves to her own mind.</p>
<p>Mabel had not given or demanded a devoted love when she married Preston
Cheney. She was quite satisfied to bear his name, and do the honours
of his house, and to be let alone as much as possible. It was
the name, not the estate, of wifehood she desired; and motherhood she
had accepted with reluctance and distaste.</p>
<p>Never was a more undesired or unwelcome child born than her daughter
Alice, and the helpless infant shared with its father the resentful
anger which dominated her unwilling mother the wretched months before
its advent into earth life.</p>
<p>To be let alone and allowed to follow her own whims and desires,
and never to be crossed in any wish, was all Mrs Cheney asked of her
husband.</p>
<p>This rôle was one he had very willingly permitted her to pursue,
since with every passing week and month he found less and less to win
or bind him to his wife. Wretched as this condition of life was,
it might at least have settled into a monotonous calm, undisturbed by
strife, but for the molesting “sympathy” of the Baroness.</p>
<p>“Poor thing, here you are alone again,” she would say
on entering the house where Mabel lounged or lolled, quite content with
her situation until the tone and words of her stepmother aroused a resentful
consciousness of being neglected. Again the Baroness would say:</p>
<p>“I do think you are such a brave little darling to carry so
smiling a face about with all you have to endure.” Or, “Very
few wives would bear what you bear and hide every vestige of unhappiness
from the world. You are a wonderful and admirable character in
my eyes.” Or, “It seems so strange that your husband
does not adore you—but men are blind to the best qualities in
women like you. I never hear Mr Cheney praising other women without
a sad and almost resentful feeling in my heart, realising how superior
you are to all of his favourites.” It was the insidious
effect of poisoned flattery like this, which made the Baroness a ruling
power in the Cheney household, and at the same time turned an already
cold and unloving wife into a jealous and nagging tyrant who rendered
the young statesman’s home the most dreaded place on earth to
him, and caused him to live away from it as much as possible.</p>
<p>His only child, Alice, a frail, hysterical girl, devoid of beauty
or grace, gave him but little comfort or satisfaction. Indeed
she was but an added disappointment and pain in his life. Indulged
in every selfish thought by her mother and the Baroness, peevish and
petulant, always ailing, complaining and discontented, and still a victim
to the nervous disorders inherited from her mother, it was small wonder
that Senator Cheney took no more delight in the rôle of father
than he had found in the rôle of husband.</p>
<p>Alice was given every advantage which money could purchase.
But her delicate health had rendered systematic study of any kind impossible,
and her twentieth birthday found her with no education, with no use
of her reasoning or will powers, but with a complete and beautiful wardrobe
in which to masquerade and air her poor little attempts at music, art,
or conversation.</p>
<p>Judge Lawrence died when Alice was fifteen years of age, leaving
both his widow and his daughter handsomely provided for.</p>
<p>The Baroness not only possessed the Beryngford homestead, but a house
in Washington as well; and both of these were occupied by tenants, for
Mabel insisted upon having her stepmother dwell under her own roof.
Senator Cheney had purchased a house in New York to gratify his wife
and daughter, and it was here the family resided, when not in Washington
or at the seaside resorts. Both women wished to forget, and to
make others forget, that they had ever lived in Beryngford. They
never visited the place and never referred to it. They desired
to be considered “New Yorkers” and always spoke of themselves
as such.</p>
<p>The Baroness was now hopelessly passée. Yet it was the
revealing of the inner woman, rather than the withering of the exterior,
which betrayed her years. The woman who understands the art of
bodily preservation can, with constant toil and care, retain an appearance
of youth and charm into middle life; but she who would pass that dreaded
meridian, and still remain a goodly sight for the eyes of men, must
possess, in addition to all the secrets of the toilet, those divine
elixirs, unselfishness and love for humanity. Faith in divine
powers, too, and resignation to earthly ills, must do their part to
lend the fading eye lustre and to give a softening glow to the paling
cheek. Before middle life, it is the outer woman who is seen;
after middle life, skilled as she may be by art and however endowed
my nature, yet the inner woman becomes visible to the least discerning
eye, and the thoughts and feelings which have dominated her during all
the past, are shown upon her face and form like printed words upon the
open leaves of a book. That is why so many young beauties become
ugly old ladies, and why plain faces sometimes are beautiful in age.</p>
<p>The Baroness had been unremitting in the care of her person, and
she had by this toil saved her figure from becoming gross, retaining
the upright carriage and the tapering waist of youth, though she was
upon the verge of her sixtieth birthday. Her complexion, too,
owing to her careful diet, her hours of repose, and her knowledge of
skin foods and lotions, remained smooth, fair and unfurrowed.
But the long-guarded expression in her blue eyes of childlike innocence
had given place to the hard look of a selfish and unhappy nature, and
the lines about the small mouth accented the expression of the eyes.</p>
<p>It was, despite its preservation of Nature’s gifts, and despite
its forced smiles, the face of a selfish, cruel pessimist, disappointed
in her past and with no uplifting faith to brighten the future.</p>
<p>The Baroness had been the wife of Judge Lawrence a number of years,
before she relinquished her hopes of one day making Preston Cheney respond
to the passion which burned unquenched in her breast. It had been
with the idea of augmenting the interests of the man whom she believed
to be her future lover, that she aided and urged on her husband in his
efforts to procure place and honour for his son-in-law.</p>
<p>It was this idea which caused her to widen the breach between wife
and husband by every subtle means in her power; and it was when this
idea began to lose colour and substance and drop away among the wreckage
of past hopes, that the Baroness ceased to compliment and began to taunt
Preston Cheney with his dependence upon his father-in-law, and to otherwise
goad and torment the unhappy man. And Preston Cheney grew into
the habit of staying anywhere longer than at home.</p>
<p>During the last ten years the Baroness had seemed to abandon all
thoughts of gallant adventure. When the woman who has found life
and pleasures only in coquetry and conquest is forced to relinquish
these delights, she becomes either very devout or very malicious.</p>
<p>The Baroness was devoid of religious feelings, and she became, therefore,
the most bitter and caustic of cynical critics at heart, though she
guarded her expression of these sentiments from policy.</p>
<p>Yet to Mabel she expressed herself freely, knowing that her listener
enjoyed no conversation so much as that of gossip and criticism.
A beautiful or attractive woman was the target for her most cruel shafts
of sarcasm, and indeed no woman was safe from her secret malice save
Mabel and Alice, over whom she found it a greater pleasure to exercise
her hypnotic control. For Alice, indeed, the Baroness entertained
a peculiar affection. The fact that she was the child of the man
to whom she had given the strongest passion of her life, and the girl’s
lack of personal beauty, and her unfortunate physical condition, awoke
a medley of love, pity and protection in the heart of this strange woman.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>The Baroness had always been a churchgoing woman, yet she had never
united with any church, or subscribed to any creed.</p>
<p>Religious observance was only an implement of social warfare with
her. Wherever her lot was cast, she made it her business to discover
which church the fashionable people of the town frequented, and to become
a familiar and liberal-handed personage in that edifice.</p>
<p>Judge Lawrence and his family were High Church Episcopalians, and
the second Mrs Lawrence slipped gracefully into the pew vacated by the
first, and became a much more important feature in the congregation,
owing to her good health and extreme desire for popularity. Mabel
and Alice were devout believers in the orthodox dogmas which have taken
the place of the simple teachings of Christ in so many of our churches
to-day. They believed that people who did not go to church would
stand a very poor chance of heaven; and that a strict observance of
a Sunday religion would ensure them a passport into God’s favour.
When they returned from divine service and mangled the character and
attire of their neighbours over the Sunday dinner-table, no idea entered
their heads or hearts that they had sinned against the Holy Ghost.
The pastor of their church knew them to be selfish, worldly-minded women;
yet he administered the holy sacrament to them without compunction of
conscience, and never by question or remark implied a doubt of their
true sincerity in things religious. They believed in the creed
of his church, and they paid liberally for the support of that church.
What more could he ask?</p>
<p>This had been true of the pastor in Beryngford, and it proved equally
true of their spiritual adviser in Washington and in New York.</p>
<p>Just across the aisle from the Lawrences sat a rich financier, in
his sumptuously cushioned pew. During six days of each week he
was engaged in crushing life and hope out of the hearts of the poor,
under his juggernaut wheels of monopoly. His name was known far
and near, as that of a powerful and cruel speculator, who did not hesitate
to pauperise his nearest friends if they placed themselves in his reach.
That he was a thief and a robber, no one ever denied; yet so colossal
were his thefts, so bold and successful his robberies, the public gazed
upon him with a sort of stupefied awe, and allowed him to proceed, while
miserable tramps, who stole overcoats or robbed money drawers, were
incarcerated for a term of years, and then sternly refused assistance
afterward by good people, who place no confidence in jail birds.</p>
<p>But each Sunday this successful robber occupied his high-priced church
pew, devoutly listening to the divine word.</p>
<p>He never failed to partake of the holy communion, nor was his right
to do so ever questioned.</p>
<p>The rector of the church knew his record perfectly; knew that his
gains were ill-gotten blood money, ground from the suffering poor by
the power of monopoly, and from confiding fools by smart lures and scheming
tricks. But this young clergyman, having recently been called
to preside over the fashionable church, had no idea of being so impolite
as to refuse to administer the bread and wine to one of its most liberal
supporters!</p>
<p>There were constant demands upon the treasury of the church; it required
a vast outlay of money to maintain the splendour and elegance of the
temple which held its head so high above many others; and there were
large charities to be sustained, not to mention its rector’s princely
salary. The millionaire pewholder was a liberal giver. It
rarely occurs to the fashionable dispensers of spiritual knowledge to
ask whether the devil’s money should be used to gild the Lord’s
temple; nor to question if it be a wise religion which allows a man
to rob his neighbours on weekdays, to give to the cause of charity on
Sundays.</p>
<p>And yet if every clergyman and priest in the land were to make and
maintain these standards for their followers, there might be an astonishing
decrease in the needs of the poor and unfortunate.</p>
<p>Were every church member obliged to open his month’s ledgers
to a competent jury of inspectors, before he was allowed to take the
holy sacrament and avow himself a humble follower of Christ, what a
revolution might ensue! How church spires would crumble for lack
of support, and poorhouses lessen in number for lack of inmates!</p>
<p>But the leniency of clergymen toward the shortcomings of their wealthy
parishioners is often a touching lesson in charity to the thoughtful
observer who stands outside the fold.</p>
<p>For how could they obtain money to convert the heathen, unless this
sweet cloak of charity were cast over the sins of the liberal rich?
Christ is crucified by the fashionable clergymen to-day more cruelly
than he was by the Jews of old.</p>
<p>Senator Cheney was not a church member, and he seldom attended service.
This was a matter of great solicitude to his wife and daughter.
The Baroness felt it to be a mistake on the part of Senator Cheney,
and even Judge Lawrence, who adored his son-in-law, regretted the young
man’s indifference to things spiritual. But with all Preston
Cheney’s worldly ambitions and weaknesses, there was a vein of
sincerity in his nature which forbade his feigning a faith he did not
feel; and the daily lives of the three feminine members of his family
were so in disaccord with his views of religion that he felt no incentive
to follow in their footsteps. Judge Lawrence he knew to be an
honest, loyal-hearted, God and humanity loving man. “A true
Christian by nature and education,” he said of his father-in-law,
“but I am not born with his tendency to religious observance,
and I see less and less in the churches to lead me into the fold.
It seems to me that these religious institutions are getting to be vast
monopolistic corporations like the railroads and oil trusts, and the
like. I see very little of the spirit of Christ in orthodox people
to-day.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile Senator Cheney’s purse was always open to any demand
the church made; he believed in churches as benevolent if not soul-saving
institutions, and cheerfully aided their charitable work.</p>
<p>The rector of St Blank’s, the fashionable edifice where the
ladies of the Cheney household obtained spiritual manna in New York,
died when Alice was sixteen years old. He was a good old man,
and a sincere Episcopalian, and whatever originality of thought or expression
he may have lacked, his strict observance of the High Church code of
ethics maintained the tone of his church and rendered him an object
of reverence to his congregation. His successor was Reverend Arthur
Emerson Stuart, a young man barely thirty years of age, heir to a comfortable
fortune, gifted with strong intellectual powers and dowered with physical
attractions.</p>
<p>It was not a case of natural selection which caused Arthur Stuart
to adopt the church as a profession. It was the result of his
middle name. Mrs Stuart had been an Emerson—in some remote
way her family claimed relationship with Ralph Waldo. Her father
and grandfather and several uncles had been clergymen. She married
a broker, who left her a rich widow with one child, a son. From
the hour this son was born his mother designed him for the clergy, and
brought him up with the idea firmly while gently fixed in his mind.</p>
<p>Whatever seed a mother plants in a young child’s mind, carefully
watches over, prunes and waters, and exposes to sun and shade, is quite
certain to grow, if the soil is not wholly stony ground.</p>
<p>Arthur Stuart adored his mother, and stifling some commercial instincts
inherited from the parental side, he turned his attention to the ministry
and entered upon his chosen work when only twenty-five years of age.
Eloquent, dramatic in speech, handsome, and magnetic in person, independent
in fortune, and of excellent lineage on the mother’s side, it
was not surprising that he was called to take charge of the spiritual
welfare of fashionable St Blank’s Church on the death of the old
pastor; or that, having taken the charge, he became immensely popular,
especially with the ladies of his congregation. And from the first
Sabbath day when they looked up from their expensive pew into the handsome
face of their new rector, there was but one man in the world for Mabel
Cheney and her daughter Alice, and that was the Reverend Arthur Emerson
Stuart.</p>
<p>It has been said by a great and wise teacher, that we may worship
the god in the human being, but never the human being as God.
This distinction is rarely drawn by women, I fear, when their spiritual
teacher is a young and handsome man. The ladies of the Rev. Arthur
Stuart’s congregation went home to dream, not of the Creator and
Maker of all things, nor of the divine Man, but of the handsome face,
stalwart form and magnetic voice of the young rector. They feasted
their eyes upon his agreeable person, rather than their souls upon his
words of salvation. Disappointed wives, lonely spinsters and romantic
girls believed they were coming nearer to spiritual truths in their
increased desire to attend service, while in fact they were merely drawn
nearer to a very attractive male personality.</p>
<p>There was not the holy flame in the young clergyman’s own heart
to ignite other souls; but his strong magnetism was perceptible to all,
and they did not realise the difference. And meantime the church
grew and prospered amazingly.</p>
<p>It was observed by the congregation of St Blank’s Church, shortly
after the advent of the new rector, that a new organist also occupied
the organ loft; and inquiry elicited the fact that the old man who had
officiated in that capacity during many years, had been retired on a
pension, while a young lady who needed the position and the salary had
been chosen to fill the vacancy.</p>
<p>That the change was for the better could not be questioned.
Never before had such music pealed forth under the tall spires of St
Blank’s. The new organist seemed inspired; and many people
in the fashionable congregation, hearing that this wonderful musician
was a young woman, lingered near the church door after service to catch
a glimpse of her as she descended from the loft.</p>
<p>A goodly sight she was, indeed, for human eyes to gaze upon.
Young, of medium height and perfectly symmetry of shape, her blonde
hair and satin skin and eyes of velvet darkness were but her lesser
charms. That which riveted the gaze of every beholder, and drew
all eyes to her whereever she passed, was her air of radiant health
and happiness, which emanated from her like the perfume from a flower.</p>
<p>A sad countenance may render a heroine of romance attractive in a
book, but in real life there is no charm at once so rare and so fascinating
as happiness. Did you ever think how few faces of the grown up,
however young, are really happy in expression? Discontent, restlessness,
longing, unsatisfied ambition or ill health mar ninety and nine of every
hundred faces we meet in the daily walks of life. When we look
upon a countenance which sparkles with health and absolute joy in life,
we turn and look again and yet again, charmed and fascinated, though
we do not know why.</p>
<p>It was such a face that Joy Irving, the new organist of St Blank’s
Church, flashed upon the people who had lingered near the door to see
her pass out. Among those who lingered was the Baroness; and all
day she carried about with her the memory of that sparkling countenance;
and strive as she would, she could not drive away a vague, strange uneasiness
which the sight of that face had caused her.</p>
<p>Yet a vision of youth and beauty always made the Baroness unhappy,
now that both blessings were irrevocably lost to her.</p>
<p>This particular young face, however, stirred her with those half-painful,
half-pleasurable emotions which certain perfumes awake in us—vague
reminders of joys lost or unattained, of dreams broken or unrealised.
Added to this, it reminded her of someone she had known, yet she could
not place the resemblance.</p>
<p>“Oh, to be young and beautiful like that!” she sighed
as she buried her face in her pillow that night. “And since
I cannot be, if only Alice had that girl’s face.”</p>
<p>And because Alice did not have it, the Baroness went to sleep with
a feeling of bitter resentment against its possessor, the beautiful
young organist of St Blank’s.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Up in the loft of St Blank’s Church the young organist had
been practising the whole morning. People paused on the street
to listen to the glorious sounds, and were thrilled by them, as one
is only thrilled when the strong personality of the player enters into
the execution.</p>
<p>Down into the committee-room, where several deacons and the young
rector were seated discussing some question pertaining to the well-being
of the church, the music penetrated too, causing the business which
had brought them together, to be suspended temporarily.</p>
<p>“It is a sin to talk while music like that can be heard,”
remarked one man. “You have found a genius in this new organist,
Rector.”</p>
<p>The young man nodded silently, his eyes half closed with an expression
of somewhat sensuous enjoyment of the throbbing chords which vibrated
in perfect unison with the beating of his strong pulses.</p>
<p>“Where does she come from?” asked the deacon, as a pause
in the music occurred.</p>
<p>“Her father was an earnest and prominent member of the little
church down-town of which I had charge during several years,”
replied the young man. “Miss Irving was scarcely more than
a child when she volunteered her services as organist. The position
brought her no remuneration, and at that time she did not need it.
Young as she was, the girl was one of the most active workers among
the poor, and I often met her in my visits to the sick and unfortunate.
She had been a musical prodigy from the cradle, and Mr Irving had given
her every advantage to study and perfect her art.</p>
<p>“I was naturally much interested in her. Mr Irving’s
long illness left his wife and daughter without means of support, at
his death, and when I was called to take charge of St Blank’s,
I at once realised the benefit to the family as well as to my church
could I secure the young lady the position here as organist. I
am glad that my congregation seem so well satisfied with my choice.”</p>
<p>Again the organ pealed forth, this time in that passionate music
originally written for the Garden Scene in <i>Faust</i>, and which the
church has boldly taken and arranged as a quartette to the words, “Come
unto me.”</p>
<p>It may be that to some who listen, it is the divine spirit which
makes its appeal through those stirring strains; but to the rector of
St Blank’s, at least on that morning, it was human heart, calling
unto human heart. Mr Stuart and the deacons sat silently drinking
in the music. At length the rector rose. “I think
perhaps we had better drop the matter under discussion for to-day,”
he said. “We can meet here Monday evening at five o’clock
if agreeable to you all, and finish the details. There are other
and more important affairs waiting for me now.”</p>
<p>The deacons departed, and the young rector sank back in his chair,
and gave himself up to the enjoyment of the sounds which flooded not
only the room, but his brain, heart and soul.</p>
<p>“Queer,” he said to himself as the door closed behind
the human pillars of his church. “Queer, but I felt as if
the presence of those men was an intrusion upon something belonging
personally to me. I wonder why I am so peculiarly affected by
this girl’s music? It arouses my brain to action, it awakens
ambition and gives me courage and hope, and yet—”
He paused before allowing his feeling to shape itself into thoughts.
Then closing his eyes and clasping his hands behind his head while the
music surged about him, he lay back in his easy-chair as a bather might
lie back and float upon the water, and his unfinished sentence took
shape thus: “And yet stronger than all other feelings which her
music arouses in me, is the desire to possess the musician for my very
own for ever; ah, well! the Roman Catholics are wise in not allowing
their priests and their nuns to listen to all even so-called sacred
music.”</p>
<p>It was perhaps ten minutes later that Joy Irving became conscious
that she was not alone in the organ loft. She had neither heard
nor seen his entrance, but she felt the presence of her rector, and
turned to find him silently watching her. She played her phrase
to the end, before she greeted him with other than a smile. Then
she apologised, saying: “Even one’s rector must wait for
a musical phrase to reach its period. Angels may interrupt the
rendition of a great work, but not man. That were sacrilege.
You see, I was really praying, when you entered, though my heart spoke
through my fingers instead of my lips.”</p>
<p>“You need not apologise,” the young man answered.
“One who receives your smile would be ungrateful indeed if he
asked for more. That alone would render the darkest spot radiant
with light and welcome to me.”</p>
<p>The girl’s pink cheek flushed crimson, like a rose bathed in
the sunset colours of the sky.</p>
<p>“I did not think you were a man to coin pretty speeches,”
she said.</p>
<p>“Your estimate of me was a wise one. You read human nature
correctly. But come and walk in the park with me. You will
overtax yourself if you practise any longer. The sunlight and
the air are vying with each other to-day to see which can be the most
intoxicating. Come and enjoy their sparring match with me; I want
to talk to you about one of my unfortunate parishioners. It is
a peculiarly pathetic case. I think you can help and advise me
in the matter.”</p>
<p>It was a superb morning in early October. New York was like
a beautiful woman arrayed in her fresh autumn costume, disporting herself
before admiring eyes.</p>
<p>Absorbed in each other’s society, their pulses beating high
with youth, love and health; the young couple walked through the crowded
avenues of the great city, as happily and as naturally as Adam and Eve
might have walked in the Garden of Eden the morning after Creation.</p>
<p>Both were city born and city bred, yet both were as unfashionable
and untrammelled by custom as two children of the plains.</p>
<p>In the very heart of the greatest metropolis in America, there are
people who live and retain all the primitive simplicity of village life
and thought. Mr Irving had been one of these. Coming to
New York from an interior village when a young man, he had, through
simple and quiet tastes and religious convictions, kept himself wholly
free from the social life of the city in which he lived. After
his marriage his entire happiness lay in his home, and Joy was reared
by parents who made her world. Mrs Irving sympathised fully with
her husband in his distaste for society, and her delicate health rendered
her almost a recluse from the world.</p>
<p>A few pleasant acquaintances, no intimates, music, books, and a large
share of her time given to charitable work, composed the life of Joy
Irving.</p>
<p>She had never been in a fashionable assemblage; she had never attended
a theatre, as Mr Irving did not approve of them.</p>
<p>Extremely fond of outdoor life, she walked, unattended, wherever
her mood led her. As she had no acquaintances among society people,
she knew nothing and cared less for the rules which govern the promenading
habits of young women in New York. Her sweet face and graceful
figure were well known among the poorer quarters of the city, and it
was through her work in such places that Arthur Stuart’s attention
had first been called to her.</p>
<p>As for him, he was filled with that high, but not always wise, disdain
for society and its customs, which we so often find in town-bred young
men of intellectual pursuits. He was clean-minded, independent,
sure of his own purposes, and wholly indifferent to the opinions of
inferiors regarding his habits.</p>
<p>He loved the park, and he asked Joy to walk with him there, as freely
as he would have asked her to sit with him in a conservatory.
It was a great delight to the young girl to go.</p>
<p>“It seems such a pity that the women of New York get so little
benefit from this beautiful park,” she said as they strolled along
through the winding paths together. “The wealthy people
enjoy it in a way from their carriages, and the poor people no doubt
derive new life from their Sunday promenades here. But there are
thousands like myself who are almost wholly debarred from its pleasures.
I have always wanted to walk here, but once I came and a rude man in
a carriage spoke to me. Mother told me never to come alone again.
It seems strange to me that men who are so proud of their strength,
and who should be the natural protectors of woman, can belittle themselves
by annoying or frightening her when alone. I am sure that same
man would never think of speaking to me now that I am with you.
How cowardly he seems when you think of it! Yet I am told there
are many like him, though that was my only experience of the kind.”</p>
<p>“Yes, there are many like him,” the rector answered.
“But you must remember how short a time man has been evolving
from a lower animal condition to his present state, and how much higher
he is to-day than he was a hundred years ago even, when occasional drunkenness
was considered an attribute of a gentleman. Now it is a vice of
which he is ashamed.”</p>
<p>“Then you believe in evolution?” Joy asked with a note
of surprise in her voice.</p>
<p>“Yes, I surely do; nor does the belief conflict with my religious
faith. I believe in many things I could not preach from my pulpit.
My congregation is not ready for broad truths. I am like an eclectic
physician—I suit my treatment to my patient—I administer
the old school or the new school medicaments as the case demands.”</p>
<p>“It seems to me there can be but one school in spiritual matters,”
Joy said gravely—“the right one. And I think one should
preach and teach what he believes to be true and right, no matter what
his congregation demands. Oh, forgive me. I am very rude
to speak like that to you!” And she blushed and paled with
fright at her boldness.</p>
<p>They were seated on a rustic bench now, under the shadow of a great
tree.</p>
<p>The rector smiled, his eyes fixed with pleased satisfaction on the
girl’s beautiful face, with its changing colour and expression.
He felt he could well afford to be criticised or rebuked by her, if
the result was so gratifying to his sight. The young rector of
St Blank’s lived very much more in his senses than in his ideals.</p>
<p>“Perhaps you are right,” he said. “I sometimes
wish I had greater courage of my convictions. I think I could
have, were you to stimulate me with such words often. But my mother
is so afraid that I will wander from the old dogmas, that I am constantly
checking myself. However, in regard to the case I mentioned to
you—it is a delicate subject, but you are not like ordinary young
women, and you and I have stood beside so many sick-beds and death-beds
together that we can speak as man to man, or woman to woman, with no
false modesty to bar our speech.</p>
<p>“A very sad case has come to my knowledge of late. Miss
Adams, a woman who for some years has been a devout member of St Blank’s
Church, has several times mentioned her niece to me, a young girl who
was away at boarding school. A few months ago the young girl graduated
and came to live with this aunt. I remember her as a bright, buoyant
and very intelligent girl. I have not seen her now during two
months; and last week I asked Miss Adams what had become of her niece.
Then the poor woman broke into sobs and told me the sad state of affairs.
It seems that the girl Marah is her daughter. The poor mother
had believed she could guard the truth from her child, and had educated
her as her niece, and was now prepared to enjoy her companionship, when
some mischief-making gossip dug up the old scandal and imparted the
facts to Marah.</p>
<p>“The girl came to Miss Adams and demanded the truth, and the
mother confessed. Then the daughter settled into a profound melancholy,
from which nothing seemed to rouse her. She will not go out, remains
in the house, and broods constantly over her disgrace.</p>
<p>“It occurred to me that if Marah Adams could be brought out
of herself and interested in some work, or study, it would be the salvation
of her reason. Her mother told me she is an accomplished musician,
but that she refuses to touch her piano now. I thought you might
take her as an understudy on the organ, and by your influence and association
lead her out of herself. You could make her acquaintance through
approaching the mother who is a milliner, on business, and your tact
would do the rest. In all my large and wealthy congregation I
know of no other woman to whom I could appeal for aid in this delicate
matter, so I am sure you will pardon me. In fact, I fear were
the matter to be known in the congregation at all, it would lead to
renewed pain and added hurts for both Miss Adams and her daughter.
You know women can be so cruel to each other in subtle ways, and I have
seen almost death-blows dealt in church aisles by one church member
to another.”</p>
<p>“Oh, that is a terrible reflection on Christians,” cried
Joy, who, a born Christ-woman, believed that all professed church members
must feel the same divine spirit of sympathy and charity which burned
in her own sweet soul.</p>
<p>“No, it is a simple truth—an unfortunate fact,”
the young man replied. “I preach sermons at such members
of my church, but they seldom take them home. They think I mean
somebody else. These are the people who follow the letter and
not the spirit of the church. But one such member as you, recompenses
me for a score of the others. I felt I must come to you with the
Marah Adams affair.”</p>
<p>Joy was still thinking of the reflection the rector had cast upon
his congregation. It hurt her, and she protested.</p>
<p>“Oh, surely,” she said, “you cannot mean that I
am the only one of the professed Christians in your church who would
show mercy and sympathy to poor Miss Adams. Surely few, very few,
would forget Christ’s words to Mary Magdalene, ‘Go and sin
no more,’ or fail to forgive as He forgave. She has led
such a good life all these years.”</p>
<p>The rector smiled sadly.</p>
<p>“You judge others by your own true heart,” he said.
“But I know the world as it is. Yes, the members of my church
would forgive Miss Adams for her sin—and cut her dead. They
would daily crucify her and her innocent child by their cold scorn or
utter ignoring of them. They would not allow their daughters to
associate with this blameless girl, because of her mother’s misstep.</p>
<p>“It is the same in and out of the churches. Twenty people
will repeat Christ’s words to a repentant sinner, but nineteen
of that twenty interpolate a few words of their own, through tone, gesture
or manner, until ‘Go and sin no more’ sounds to the poor
unfortunate more like ‘Go just as far away from me and mine as
you can get—and sin no more!’ Only one in that score
puts Christ’s merciful and tender meaning into the phrase and
tries by sympathetic association to make it possible for the sinner
to sin no more. I felt you were that one, and so I appealed to
you in this matter about Marah Adams.”</p>
<p>Joy’s eyes were full of tears. “You must know more
of human nature than I do,” she said, “but I hate terribly
to think you are right in this estimate of the people of your congregation.
I will go and see what I can do for this girl to-morrow. Poor
child, poor mother, to pass through a second Gethsemane for her sin.
I think any girl or boy whose home life is shadowed, is to be pitied.
I have always had such a happy home, and such dear parents, the world
would seem insupportable, I am sure, were I to face it without that
background. Dear papa’s death was a great blow, and mother’s
ill health has been a sorrow, but we have always been so happy and harmonious,
and that, I think, is worth more than a fortune to a child. Poor,
poor Marah—unable to respect her mother, what a terrible thing
it all is!”</p>
<p>“Yes, it is a sad affair. I cannot help thinking it would
have been a pardonable lie if Miss Adams had denied the truth when the
girl confronted her with the story. It is the one situation in
life where a lie is excusable, I think. It would have saved this
poor girl no end of sorrow, and it could not have added much to the
mother’s burden. I think lying must have originated with
an erring woman.”</p>
<p>Joy looked at her rector with startled eyes. “A lie is
never excusable,” she said, “and I do not believe it ever
saves sorrow. But I see you do not mean what you say, you only
feel very sorry for the girl; and you surely do not forget that the
lie originated with Satan, who told a falsehood to Eve.”</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Ever since early girlhood Joy Irving had formed a habit of jotting
down in black and white her own ideas regarding any book, painting,
concert, conversation or sermon, which interested her, and epitomising
the train of thought to which they led.</p>
<p>The evening after her walk and talk with the rector of St Blank’s,
she took out her note-book, which bore a date four years old under its
title “My Impressions,” and read over the last page of entries.
They had evidently been written at the close of some Sabbath day and
ran as follows:-</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>Many a kneeling woman is more occupied with how her skirts hang than
how her prayers ascend. I am inclined to think we all ought to
wear a uniform to church if we would really worship there. God
must grow weary looking down on so many new bonnets.</p>
<p>I wore a smart hat to church to-day, and I found myself criticising
every other woman’s bonnet during service, so that I failed in
some of my responses.</p>
<p>If we could all be compelled by some mysterious power to <i>think
aloud</i> on Sunday, what a veritable holy day we would make of it!
Though we are taught from childhood that God hears our thoughts, the
best of us would be afraid to have our nearest friends know them.</p>
<p>I sometimes think it is a presumption on the part of any man to rise
in the pulpit and undertake to tell me about a Creator with whom I feel
every whit as well acquainted as he. I suppose such thoughts are
wicked, however, and should be suppressed.</p>
<p>It is a curious fact, that the most aggressively sensitive persons
are at heart the most conceited.</p>
<p>I wish people smiled more in church aisles. In fact, I think
we all laugh at one another too much and smile at one another too seldom.</p>
<p>After the devil had made all the trouble for woman he could with
the fig leaf, he introduced the French heel.</p>
<p>It is well to see the ridiculous side of things, but not of people.</p>
<p>Most of us would rather be popular than right.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>To these impressions Joy added the following:-</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>It is not the interior of one’s house, but the interior of
one’s mind which makes home.</p>
<p>It seems to me that to be, is to love. I can conceive of no
state of existence which is not permeated with this feeling toward something,
somebody or the illimitable “nothing” which is mother to
everything.</p>
<p>I wish we had more religion in the world and fewer churches.</p>
<p>People who believe in no God, invariably exalt themselves into His
position, and worship with the very idolatry they decry in others.</p>
<p>Music is the echo of the rhythm of God’s respirations.</p>
<p>Poetry is the effort of the divine part of man to formulate a worthy
language in which to converse with angels.</p>
<p>Painting and sculpture seem to me the most presumptuous of the arts.
They are an effort of man to outdo God in creation. He never made
a perfect form or face—the artist alone makes them.</p>
<p>I am sure I do not play the organ as well at St Blank’s as
I played it in the little church where I gave my services and was unknown.
People are praising me too much here, and this mars all spontaneity.</p>
<p>The very first hour of positive success is often the last hour of
great achievement. So soon as we are conscious of the admiring
and expectant gaze of men, we cease to commune with God. It is
when we are unknown to or neglected by mortals, that we reach up to
the Infinite and are inspired.</p>
<p>I have seen Marah Adams to-day, and I felt strangely drawn to her.
Her face would express all goodness if it were not so unhappy.
Unhappiness is a species of evil, since it is a discourtesy to God to
be unhappy.</p>
<p>I am going to do all I can for the girl to bring her into a better
frame of mind. No blame can be attached to her, and yet now that
I am face to face with the situation, and realise how the world regards
such a person, I myself find it a little hard to think of braving public
opinion and identifying myself with her. But I am going to overcome
such feelings, as they are cowardly and unworthy of me, and purely the
result of education. I am amazed, too, to discover this weakness
in myself.</p>
<p>How sympathetic dear mamma is! I told her about Marah, and
she wept bitterly, and has carried her eyes full of tears ever since.
I must be careful and tell her nothing sad while she is in such a weak
state physically.</p>
<p>I told mamma what the rector said about lying. She coincided
with him that Mrs Adams would have been justified in denying the truth
if she had realised how her daughter was to be affected by this knowledge.
A woman’s past belongs only to herself and her God, she says,
unless she wishes to make a confidant. But I cannot agree with
her or the rector. I would want the truth from my parents, however
much it hurt. Many sins which men regard as serious only obstruct
the bridge between our souls and truth. A lie burns the bridge.</p>
<p>I hope I am not uncharitable, yet I cannot conceive of committing
an act through love of any man, which would lower me in his esteem,
once committed. Yet of course I have had little experience in
life, with men, or with temptation. But it seems to me I could
not continue to love a man who did not seek to lead me higher.
The moment he stood before me and asked me to descend, I should realise
he was to be pitied—not adored.</p>
<p>I told mother this, and she said I was too young and inexperienced
to form decided opinions on such subjects, and she warned me that I
must not become uncharitable. She wept bitterly as she thought
of my becoming narrow or bigoted in my ideas, dear, tender-hearted mamma.</p>
<p>Death should be called the Great Revealer instead of the Great Destroyer.</p>
<p>Some people think the way into heaven is through embroidered altar
cloths.</p>
<p>The soul that has any conception of its own possibilities does not
fear solitude.</p>
<p>A girl told me to-day that a rude man annoyed her by staring at her
in a public conveyance. It never occurred to her that it takes
four eyes to make a stare annoying.</p>
<p>Astronomers know more about the character of the stars than the average
American mother knows about the temperament of her daughters.</p>
<p>To some women the most terrible thought connected with death is the
dates in the obituary notice.</p>
<p>As a rule, when a woman opens the door of an artistic career with
one hand, she shuts the door on domestic happiness with the other.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>The rector of St Blank’s Church dined at the Cheney table or
drove in the Cheney establishment every week, beside which there were
always one or two confidential chats with the feminine Cheneys in the
parsonage on matters pertaining to the welfare of the church, and occasionally
to the welfare of humanity.</p>
<p>That Alice Cheney had conceived a sudden and consuming passion for
the handsome and brilliant rector of St Blank’s, both her mother
and the Baroness knew, and both were doing all in their power to further
the girl’s hopes.</p>
<p>While Alice resembled her mother in appearance and disposition, propensities
and impulses occasionally exhibited themselves which spoke of paternal
inheritance. She had her father’s strongly emotional nature,
with her mother’s stubbornness; and Preston Cheney’s romantic
tendencies were repeated in his daughter, without his reasoning powers.
Added to her father’s lack of self-control in any strife with
his passions, Alice possessed her mother’s hysterical nerves.
In fact, the unfortunate child inherited the weaknesses and faults of
both parents, without any of their redeeming virtues.</p>
<p>The passion which had sprung to life in her breast for the young
rector, was as strong and unreasoning as the infatuation which her father
had once experienced for Berene Dumont; but instead of struggling against
the feeling as her father had at least attempted to do, she dwelt upon
it with all the mulish persistency which her mother exhibited in small
matters, and luxuriated in romantic dreams of the future.</p>
<p>Mabel was wholly unable to comprehend the depth or violence of her
daughter’s feelings, but she realised the fact that Alice had
set her mind on winning Arthur Stuart for a husband, and she quite approved
of the idea, and saw no reason why it should not succeed. She
herself had won Preston Cheney away from all rivals for his favour,
and Alice ought to be able to do the same with Arthur, after all the
money which had been expended upon her wardrobe. Senator Cheney’s
daughter and Judge Lawrence’s granddaughter, surely was a prize
for any man to win as a wife.</p>
<p>The Baroness, however, reviewed the situation with more concern of
mind. She realised that Alice was destitute of beauty and charm,
and that Arthur Emerson Stuart (it would have been considered a case
of high treason to speak of the rector of St Blank’s without using
his three names) was independent in the matter of fortune, and so dowered
with nature’s best gifts that he could have almost any woman for
the asking whom he should desire. But the Baroness believed much
in propinquity; and she brought the rector and Alice together as often
as possible, and coached the girl in coquettish arts when alone with
her, and credited her with witticisms and bon-mots which she had never
uttered, when talking of her to the young rector.</p>
<p>“If only I could give Alice the benefit of my past career,”
the Baroness would say to herself at times. “I know so well
how to manage men; but what use is my knowledge to me now that I am
old? Alice is young, and even without beauty she could do so much,
if she only understood the art of masculine seduction. But then
it is a gift, not an acquired art, and Alice was not born with the gift.”</p>
<p>While Mabel and Alice had been centring their thoughts and attentions
on the rector, the Baroness had not forgotten the rector’s mother.
She knew the very strong affection which existed between the two, and
she had discovered that the leading desire of the young man’s
heart was to make his mother happy. With her wide knowledge of
human nature, she had not been long in discerning the fact that it was
not because of his own religious convictions that the rector had chosen
his calling, but to carry out the lifelong wishes of his beloved mother.</p>
<p>Therefore she reasoned wisely that Arthur would be greatly influenced
by his mother in his choice of a wife; and the Baroness brought all
her vast battery of fascination to bear on Mrs Stuart, and succeeded
in making that lady her devoted friend.</p>
<p>The widow of Judge Lawrence was still an imposing and impressive
figure wherever she went. Though no longer a woman who appealed
to the desires of men, she exhaled that peculiar mental aroma which
hangs ever about a woman who has dealt deeply and widely in affairs
of the heart. It is to the spiritual senses what musk is to the
physical; and while it may often repulse, it sometimes attracts, and
never fails to be noticed. About the Baroness’s mouth were
hard lines, and the expression of her eyes was not kind or tender; yet
she was everywhere conceded to be a universally handsome and attractive
woman. Quiet and tasteful in her dressing, she did not accentuate
the ravages of time by any mistaken frivolities of toilet, as so many
faded coquettes have done, but wisely suited her vestments to her appearance,
as the withering branch clothes itself in russet leaves, when the fresh
sap ceases to course through its veins. New York City is a vast
sepulchre of “past careers,” and the adventurous life of
the Baroness was quietly buried there with that of many another woman.
In the mad whirl of life there is small danger that any of these skeletons
will rise to view, unless the woman permits herself to strive for eminence
either socially or in the world of art.</p>
<p>While the Cheneys were known to be wealthy, and the Senator had achieved
political position, there was nothing in their situation to challenge
the jealousy of their associates. They moved in one of the many
circles of cultured and agreeable people, which, despite the mandate
of a M‘Allister, formed a varied and delightful society in the
metropolis; they entertained in an unostentatious manner, and there
was nothing in their personality to incite envy or jealousy. Therefore
the career of the Baroness had not been unearthed. That the widow
of Judge Lawrence, the stepmother of Mrs Cheney, was known as “The
Baroness” caused some questions, to be sure, but the simple answer
that she had been the widow of a French baron in early life served to
allay curiosity, while it rendered the lady herself an object of greater
interest to the majority of people.</p>
<p>Mrs Stuart, the rector’s mother, was one of those who were
most impressed by this incident in the life of Mrs Lawrence. “Family
pride” was her greatest weakness, and she dearly loved a title.
She thought Mrs Lawrence a typical “Baroness,” and though
she knew the title had only been obtained through marriage, it still
rendered its possessor peculiarly interesting in her eyes.</p>
<p>In her prime, the Baroness had been equally successful in cajoling
women and men. Though her day for ruling men was now over, she
still possessed the power to fascinate women when she chose to exert
herself. She did exert herself with Mrs Stuart, and succeeded
admirably in her design.</p>
<p>And one day Mrs Stuart confided her secret anxiety to the ear of
the Baroness; and that secret caused the cheek of the listener to grow
pale and the look of an animal at bay to come into her eyes.</p>
<p>“There is just one thing that gives me a constant pain at my
heart,” Mrs Stuart had said. “You have never been
a mother, yet I think your sympathetic nature causes you to understand
much which you have not experienced, and knowing as you do the great
pride I feel in my son’s career, and the ambition I have for him
to rise to the very highest pinnacle of success and usefulness, I am
sure you will comprehend my anxiety when I see him exhibiting an undue
interest in a girl who is in every way his inferior, and wholly unsuited
to fill the position his wife should occupy.”</p>
<p>The Baroness listened with a cold, sinking sensation at her heart</p>
<p>“I am sure your son would never make a choice which was not
agreeable to you,” she ventured.</p>
<p>“He might not marry anyone I objected to,” Mrs Stuart
replied, “but I dread to think his heart may be already gone from
his keeping. Young men are so susceptible to a pretty face and
figure, and I confess that Joy Irving has both. She is a good
girl, too, and a fine musician; but she has no family, and her alliance
with my son would be a great drawback to his career. Her father
was a grocer, I believe, or something of that sort; quite a common man,
who married a third-class actress, Joy’s mother. Mr Irving
was in very comfortable circumstances at one time, but a stroke of paralysis
rendered him helpless some four years ago. He died last year and
left his widow and child in straitened circumstances. Mrs Irving
is an invalid now, and Joy supports her with her music. Mr Irving
and Joy were members of Arthur Emerson’s former church (Mrs Stuart
always spoke of her son in that manner), and that is how my son became
interested in the daughter—an interest I supposed to be purely
that of a rector in his parishioner, until of late, when I began to
fear it took root in deeper soil. But I am sure, dear Baroness,
you can understand my anxiety.”</p>
<p>And then the Baroness, with drawn lips and anguished eyes, took both
of Mrs Stuart’s hands in hers, and cried out:</p>
<p>“Your pain, dear madam, is second to mine. I have no
child, to be sure, but as few mothers love I love Alice Cheney, my dear
husband’s granddaughter. My very life is bound up in her,
and she—God help us, she loves your son with her whole soul.
If he marries another it will kill her or drive her insane.”</p>
<p>The two women fell weeping into each other’s arms.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Preston Cheney conceived such a strong, earnest liking for the young
clergyman whom he met under his own roof during one of his visits home,
that he fell into the habit of attending church for the first time in
his life.</p>
<p>Mabel and Alice were deeply gratified with this intimacy between
the two men, which brought the rector to the house far oftener than
they could have tastefully done without the co-operation of the husband
and father. Besides, it looked well to have the head of the household
represented in the church. To the Baroness, also, there was added
satisfaction in attending divine service, now that Preston Cheney sat
in the pew. All hope of winning the love she had so longed to
possess, died many years before; and she had been cruel and unkind in
numerous ways to the object of her hopeless passion, yet like the smell
of dead rose leaves long shut in a drawer, there clung about this man
the faint, suggestive fragrance of a perished dream.</p>
<p>She knew that he did not love his wife, and that he was disappointed
in his daughter; and she did not at least have to suffer the pain of
seeing him lavish the affection she had missed, on others.</p>
<p>Mr Cheney had been called away from home on business the day before
the new organist took her place in St Blank’s Church. Nearly
a month had passed when he again occupied his pew.</p>
<p>Before the organist had finished her introduction, he turned to Alice,
saying:</p>
<p>“There has been a change here in the choir, since I went away,
and for the better. That is a very unusual musician. Do
you know who it is?”</p>
<p>“Some lady, I believe; I do not remember her name,” Alice
answered indifferently. Like her mother, Alice never enjoyed hearing
anyone praised. It mattered little who it was, or how entirely
out of her own line the achievements or accomplishments on which the
praise was bestowed, she still felt that petty resentment of small creatures
who believe that praise to others detracts from their own value.</p>
<p>A fortune had been expended on Alice’s musical education, yet
she could do no more than rattle through some mediocre composition,
with neither taste nor skill.</p>
<p>The money which has been wasted in trying to teach music to unmusical
people would pay our national debt twice over, and leave a competency
for every orphan in the land.</p>
<p>When the organist had finished her second selection, Mr Cheney addressed
the same question to his wife which he had addressed to Alice.</p>
<p>“Who is the new organist?” he queried. Mabel only
shook her head and placed her finger on her lip as a signal for silence
during service.</p>
<p>The third time it was the Baroness, sitting just beyond Mabel, to
whom Mr Cheney spoke. “That’s a very remarkable musician,
very remarkable,” he said. “Do you know anything about
her?”</p>
<p>“Yes, wait until we get home, and I will tell you all about
her,” the Baroness replied.</p>
<p>When the service was over, Mr Cheney did not pass out at once, as
was his custom. Instead he walked toward the pulpit, after requesting
his family to wait a moment.</p>
<p>The rector saw him and came down into the aisle to speak to him.</p>
<p>“I want to congratulate you on the new organist,” Mr
Cheney said, “and I want to meet her. Alice tells me it
is a lady. She must have devoted a lifetime to hard study to become
such a marvellous mistress of that difficult instrument.”</p>
<p>Arthur Stuart smiled. “Wait a moment,” he said,
“and I will send for her. I would like you to meet her,
and like her to meet your wife and family. She has few, if any,
acquaintances in my congregation.”</p>
<p>Mr Cheney went down the aisle, and joined the three ladies who were
waiting for him in the pew. All were smiling, for all three believed
that he had been asking the rector to accompany them home to dinner.
His first word dispelled the illusion.</p>
<p>“Wait here a moment,” he said. “Mr Stuart
is going to bring the organist to meet us. I want to know the
woman who can move me so deeply by her music.”</p>
<p>Over the faces of his three listeners there fell a cloud. Mabel
looked annoyed, Alice sulky, and a flush of the old jealous fury darkened
the brow of the Baroness. But all were smiling deceitfully when
Joy Irving approached.</p>
<p>Her radiant young beauty, and the expressions of admiration with
which Preston Cheney greeted her as a woman and an artist, filled life
with gall and wormwood for the three feminine listeners.</p>
<p>“What! this beautiful young miss, scarcely out of short frocks,
is not the musician who gave us that wonderful harmony of sounds.
My child, how did you learn to play like that in the brief life you
have passed on earth? Surely you must have been taught by the
angels before you came.”</p>
<p>A deep blush of pleasure at the words which, though so extravagant,
Joy felt to be sincere, increased her beauty as she looked up into Preston
Cheney’s admiring eyes.</p>
<p>And as he held her hands in both of his and gazed down upon her it
seemed to the Baroness she could strike them dead at her feet and rejoice
in the act.</p>
<p>Beside this radiant vision of loveliness and genius, Alice looked
plainer and more meagre than ever before. She was like a wayside
weed beside an American Beauty rose.</p>
<p>“I hope you and Alice will become good friends,” Mr Cheney
said warmly. “We should like to see you at the house any
time you can make it convenient to come, would we not Mabel?”</p>
<p>Mrs Cheney gave a formal assent to her husband’s words as they
turned away, leaving Joy with the rector. And a scene in one of
life’s strangest dramas had been enacted, unknown to them all.</p>
<p>“I would like you to be very friendly with that girl, Alice,”
Mr Cheney repeated as they seated themselves in the carriage.
“She has a rare face, a rare face, and she is highly gifted.
She reminds me of someone I have known, yet I can’t think who
it is. What do you know about her, Baroness?”</p>
<p>The Baroness gave an expressive shrug. “Since you admire
her so much,” she said, “I rather hesitate telling you.
But the girl is of common origin—a grocer’s daughter, and
her mother quite an inferior person. I hardly think it a suitable
companionship for Alice.”</p>
<p>“I am sure I don’t care to know her,” chimed in
Alice. “I thought her quite bold and forward in her manner.”</p>
<p>“Decidedly so! She seemed to hang on to your father’s
hand as if she would never let go,” added Mabel, in her most acid
tone. “I must say, I should have been horrified to see you
act in such a familiar manner toward any stranger.” A quick
colour shot into Preston Cheney’s cheek and a spark into his eye.</p>
<p>“The girl was perfectly modest in her deportment to me,”
he said. “She is a lady through and through, however humble
her birth may be. But I ought to have known better than to ask
my wife and daughter to like anyone whom I chanced to admire.
I learned long ago how futile such an idea was.”</p>
<p>“Oh, well, I don’t see why you need get so angry over
a perfect stranger whom you never laid eyes on until to-day,”
pouted Alice. “I am sure she’s nothing to any of us
that we need quarrel over her.”</p>
<p>“A man never gets so old that he is not likely to make a fool
of himself over a pretty face,” supplemented Mabel, “and
there is no fool like an old fool.”</p>
<p>The uncomfortable drive home came to an end at this juncture, and
Preston Cheney retired to his own room, with the disagreeable words
of his wife and daughter ringing in his ears, and the beautiful face
of the young organist floating before his eyes.</p>
<p>“I wish she were my daughter,” he said to himself; “what
a comfort and delight a girl like that would be to me!”</p>
<p>And while these thoughts filled the man’s heart the Baroness
paced her room with all the jealous passions of her still ungoverned
nature roused into new life and violence at the remembrance of Joy Irving’s
fresh young beauty and Preston Cheney’s admiring looks and words.</p>
<p>“I could throttle her,” she cried, “I could throttle
her. Oh, why is she sent across my life at every turn? Why
should the only two men in the world who interest me to-day, be so infatuated
over that girl? But if I cannot remove so humble an obstacle as
she from my pathway, I shall feel that my day of power is indeed over,
and that I do not believe to be true.”</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Two weeks later the organ loft of St Blank’s Church was occupied
by a stranger. For a few hours the Baroness felt a wild hope in
her heart that Miss Irving had been sent away.</p>
<p>But inquiry elicited the information that the young musician had
merely employed a substitute because her mother was lying seriously
ill at home.</p>
<p>It was then that the Baroness put into execution a desire she had
to make the personal acquaintance of Joy Irving.</p>
<p>The desire had sprung into life with the knowledge of the rector’s
interest in the girl. No one knew better than the Baroness how
to sow the seeds of doubt, distrust and discord between two people whom
she wished to alienate. Many a sweetheart, many a wife, had she
separated from lover and husband, scarcely leaving a sign by which the
trouble could be traced to her, so adroit and subtle were her methods.</p>
<p>She felt that she could insert an invisible wedge between these two
hearts, which would eventually separate them, if only she might make
the acquaintance of Miss Irving. And now chance had opened the
way for her.</p>
<p>She made her resolve known to the rector.</p>
<p>“I am deeply interested in the young organist whom I had the
pleasure of meeting some weeks ago,” she said, and she noted with
a sinking heart the light which flashed into the man’s face at
the mere mention of the girl. “I understand her mother is
seriously ill, and I think I will go around and call. Perhaps
I can be of use. I understand Mrs Irving is not a churchwoman,
and she may be in real need, as the family is in straitened circumstances.
May I mention your name when I call, in order that Miss Irving may not
think I intrude?”</p>
<p>“Why, certainly,” the rector replied with warmth.
“Indeed, I will give you a card of introduction. That will
open the way for you, and at the same time I know you will use your
delicate tact to avoid wounding Miss Irving’s pride in any way.
She is very sensitive about their straitened circumstances; you may
have heard that they were quite well-to-do until the stroke of paralysis
rendered her father helpless. All their means were exhausted in
efforts to restore his health, and in the employment of nurses and physicians.
I think they have found life a difficult problem since his death, as
Mrs Irving has been under medical care constantly, and the whole burden
falls on Miss Joy’s young shoulders, and she is but twenty-one.”</p>
<p>“Just the age of Alice,” mused the Baroness. “How
differently people’s lives are ordered in this world! But
then we must have the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, and we
must have the delicate human flowers. Our Alice is one of the
latter, a frail blossom to look upon, but she is one of the kind which
will bloom out in great splendour under the sunshine of love and happiness.
Very few people realise what wonderful reserve force that delicate child
possesses. And such a tender heart! She was determined to
come with me when she heard of Miss Irving’s trouble, but I thought
it unwise to take her until I had seen the place. She is so sensitive
to her surroundings, and it might be too painful for her. I am
for ever holding her back from overtaxing herself for others.
No one dreams of the amount of good that girl does in a secret, quiet
way; and at the same time she assumes an indifferent air and talks as
if she were quite heartless, just to hinder people from suspecting her
charitable work. She is such a strange, complicated character.”</p>
<p>Armed with her card of introduction, the Baroness set forth on her
“errand of mercy.” She had not mentioned Miss Irving’s
name to Mabel or Alice. The secret of the rector’s interest
in the girl was locked in her own breast. She knew that Mabel
was wholly incapable of coping with such a situation, and she dreaded
the effect of the news on Alice, who was absorbed in her love dream.
The girl had never been denied a wish in her life, and no thought came
to her that she could be thwarted in this, her most cherished hope of
all.</p>
<p>The Baroness was determined to use every gun in her battery of defence
before she allowed Mabel or Alice to know that defence was needed.</p>
<p>The rector’s card admitted her to the parlour of a small flat.
The portières of an adjoining room were thrown open presently,
and a vision of radiant beauty entered the room.</p>
<p>The Baroness could not explain it, but as the girl emerged from the
curtains, a strange, confused memory of something and somebody she had
known in the past came over her. But when the girl spoke, a more
inexplicable sensation took possession of the listener, for her voice
was the feminine of Preston Cheney’s masculine tones, and then
as she looked at the girl again the haunting memories of the first glance
were explained, for she was very like Preston Cheney as the Baroness
remembered him when he came to the Palace to engage rooms more than
a score of years ago. “What a strange thing these resemblances
are!” she thought. “This girl is more like Senator
Cheney, far more like him, than Alice is. Ah, if Alice only had
her face and form!”</p>
<p>Miss Irving gave a slight start, and took a step back as her eyes
fell upon the Baroness. The rector’s card had read, “Introducing
Mrs Sylvester Lawrence.” She had known this lad by sight
ever since her first Sunday as organist at St Blank’s, and for
some unaccountable reason she had conceived a most intense dislike for
her. Joy was drawn toward humanity in general, as naturally as
the sunlight falls on the earth’s foliage. Her heart radiated
love and sympathy toward the whole world. But when she did feel
a sentiment of distrust or repulsion she had learned to respect it.</p>
<p>Our guardian angels sometimes send these feelings as danger signals
to our souls.</p>
<p>It therefore required a strong effort of her will to go forward and
extend a hand in greeting to the lady whom her rector and friend had
introduced.</p>
<p>“I must beg pardon for this intrusion,” the Baroness
said with her sweetest smile; “but our rector urged me to come
and so I felt emboldened to carry out the wish I have long entertained
to make your acquaintance. Your wonderful music inspires all who
hear you to know you personally; the service lacked half its charm on
Sunday because you were absent. When I learnt that your absence
was occasioned by your mother’s illness, I asked the rector if
he thought a call from me would be an intrusion, and he assured me to
the contrary. I used to be considered an excellent nurse; I am
very strong, and full of vitality, and if you would permit me to sit
by your mother some Sunday when you are needed at church, I should be
most happy to do so. I should like to make the acquaintance of
your mother, and compliment her on the happiness of possessing such
a gifted and dutiful daughter.”</p>
<p>Like all who sat for any time under the spell of the second Mrs Lawrence,
Joy felt the charm of her voice, words and manner, and it began to seem
as if she had been very unreasonable in entertaining unfounded prejudices.</p>
<p>That the rector had introduced her was alone proof of her worthiness;
and the gracious offer of the distinguished-looking lady to watch by
the bedside of a stranger was certainly evidence of her good heart.
The frost disappeared from her smile, and she warmed toward the Baroness.
The call lengthened into a visit, and as the Baroness finally rose to
go, Joy said:</p>
<p>“I will take you in and introduce you to mamma now. I
think it will do her good to meet you,” and the Baroness followed
the graceful girl through a narrow hall, and into a room which had evidently
been intended for a dining-room, but which, owing to its size and its
windows opening to the south, had been utilised as a sick chamber.</p>
<p>The invalid lay with her face turned away from the door. But
by the movement of the delicate hand on the counterpane, Joy knew that
her mother was awake.</p>
<p>“Mamma, I have brought a lady, a friend of Dr Stuart’s,
to see you,” Joy said gently. The invalid turned her head
upon the pillow, and the Baroness looked upon the face of—Berene
Dumont.</p>
<p>“Berene!”</p>
<p>“Madam!”</p>
<p>The two spoke simultaneously, and the invalid had started upright
in bed.</p>
<p>“Mamma, what is the matter? Oh, please lie down, or you
will bring on another hæmorrhage,” cried the startled girl;
but her mother lifted her hand.</p>
<p>“Joy,” she said in a firm, clear voice, “this lady
is an old acquaintance of mine. Please go out, dear, and shut
the door. I wish to see her alone.”</p>
<p>Joy passed out with drooping head and a sinking heart. As the
door closed behind her the Baroness spoke.</p>
<p>“So that is Preston Cheney’s daughter,” she said.
“I always had my suspicions of the cause which led you to leave
my house so suddenly. Does the girl know who her father is?
And does Senator Cheney know of her existence, may I ask?”</p>
<p>A crimson flush suffused the invalid’s face. Then a flame
of fire shot into the dark eyes, and a small red spot only glowed on
either pale cheek.</p>
<p>“I do not know by what right you ask these questions, Baroness
Brown,” she answered slowly; and her listener cringed under the
old appellation which recalled the miserable days when she had kept
a lodging-house—days she had almost forgotten during the last
decade of life.</p>
<p>“But I can assure you, madam,” continued the speaker,
“that my daughter knows no father save the good man, my husband,
who is dead. I have never by word or line made my existence known
to anyone I ever knew since I left Beryngford. I do not know why
you should come here to insult me, madam; I have never harmed you or
yours, and you have no proof of the accusation you just made, save your
own evil suspicions.”</p>
<p>The Baroness gave an unpleasant laugh.</p>
<p>“It is an easy matter for me to find proof of my suspicions
if I choose to take the trouble,” she said. “There
are detectives enough to hunt up your trail, and I have money enough
to pay them for their trouble. But Joy is the living evidence
of the assertion. She is the image of Preston Cheney, as he was
twenty-three years ago. I am ready, however, to let the matter
drop on one condition; and that condition is, that you extract a promise
from your daughter that she will not encourage the attentions of Arthur
Emerson Stuart, the rector of St Blank’s; that she will never
under any circumstances be his wife.”</p>
<p>The red spots faded to a sickly yellow in the invalid’s cheeks.
“Why should you ask this of me?” she cried. “Why
should you wish to destroy the happiness of my child’s life?
She loves Arthur Stuart, and I know that he loves her! It is the
one thought which resigns me to death; the thought that I may leave
her the beloved wife of this good man.”</p>
<p>The Baroness leaned lower over the pillow of the invalid as she answered:
“I will tell you why I ask this sacrifice of you.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps you do not know that I married Judge Lawrence after
the death of his first wife. Perhaps you do not know that Preston
Cheney’s legitimate daughter is as precious to me as his illegitimate
child is to you. Alice is only six months younger than Joy; she
is frail, delicate, sensitive. A severe disappointment would kill
her. She, too, loves Arthur Stuart. If your daughter will
let him alone, he will marry Alice. Surely the illegitimate child
should give way to the legitimate.</p>
<p>“If you are selfish in this matter, I shall be obliged to tell
your daughter the true story of her life, and let her be the judge of
what is right and what is wrong. I fancy she might have a finer
perception of duty than you have—she is so much like her father.”</p>
<p>The tortured invalid fell back panting on her pillow. She put
out her hands with a distracted, imploring gesture.</p>
<p>“Leave me to think,” she gasped. “I never
knew that Preston Cheney had a daughter; I did not know he lived here.
My life has been so quiet, so secluded these many years. Leave
me to think. I will give you my answer in a few days; I will write
you after I reflect and pray.”</p>
<p>The Baroness passed out, and Joy, hastening into the room, found
her mother in a wild paroxysm of tears. Late that night Mrs Irving
called for writing materials; and for many hours she sat propped up
in bed writing rapidly.</p>
<p>When she had completed her task she called Joy to her side.</p>
<p>“Darling,” she said, placing a sealed manuscript in her
hands, “I want you to keep this seal unbroken so long as you are
happy. I know in spite of your deep sorrow at my death, which
must come ere long, you will find much happiness in life. You
came smiling into existence, and no common sorrow can deprive you of
the joy which is your birthright. But there are numerous people
in the world who may strive to wound you after I am gone. If slanderous
tales or cruel reports reach your ears, and render you unhappy, break
this seal, and read the story I have written here. There are some
things which will deeply pain you, I know. Do not force yourself
to read them until a necessity arises. I leave you this manuscript
as I might leave you a weapon for self-defence. Use it only when
you are in need of that defence.”</p>
<p>The next morning Mrs Irving was weakened by another and most serious
hæmorrhage of the lungs. Her physician was grave, and urged
the daughter to be prepared for the worst.</p>
<p>“I fear your mother’s life is a matter of days only,”
he said.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>The Baroness went directly from the home which she had entered only
to blight, and sent her card marked “urgent” to Mrs Stuart.</p>
<p>“I have come to tell you an unpleasant story,” she said—“a
painful and revolting story, the early chapters of which were written
years ago, but the sequel has only just been made known to me.
It concerns you and yours vitally; it also concerns me and mine.
I am sure, when you have heard the story to the end, you will say that
truth is stranger than fiction, indeed: and you will more than ever
realise the necessity of preventing your son from marrying Joy Irving—a
child who was born before her mother ever met Mr Irving; and whose mother,
I daresay, was no more the actual wife of Mr Irving in the name of law
and decency than she had been the wife of his many predecessors.”</p>
<p>Startled and horrified at this beginning of the story, Mrs Stuart
was in a state of excited indignation at the end. The Baroness
had magnified facts and distorted truths until she represented Berene
Dumont as a monster of depravity; a vicious being who had been for a
short time the recipient of the Baroness’s mistaken charity, and
who had repaid kindness by base ingratitude, and immorality. The
man implicated in the scandal which she claimed was the cause of Berene’s
flight was not named in this recital.</p>
<p>Indeed the Baroness claimed that he was more sinned against than
sinning, and that it was a case of mesmeric influence, or evil eye,
on the part of the depraved woman.</p>
<p>Mrs Lawrence took pains to avoid any reference to Beryngford also;
speaking of these occurrences having taken place while she spent a summer
in a distant interior town, where, “after the death of the Baron,
she had rented a villa, feeling that she wanted to retire from the world.”</p>
<p>“My heart is always running away with my head,” she remarked,
“and I thought this poor creature, who was shunned and neglected
by all, worth saving. I tried to befriend her, and hoped to waken
the better nature which every woman possesses, I think, but she was
too far gone in iniquity.</p>
<p>“You cannot imagine, my dear Mrs Stuart, what a shock it was
to me on entering that sickroom to-day, my heart full of kindly sympathy,
to encounter in the invalid the ungrateful recipient of my past favours;
and to realise that her daughter was no other than the shameful offspring
of her immoral past. In spite of the girl’s beauty, there
is an expression about her face which I never liked; and I fully understand
now why I did not like it. Of course, Mrs Stuart, this story is
told to you in strict confidence. I would not for the world have
dear Mrs Cheney know of it, nor would I pollute sweet Alice with such
a tale. Indeed, Alice would not understand it if she were told,
for she is as ignorant and innocent as a child in arms of such matters.
We have kept her absolutely unspotted from the world. But I knew
it was my duty to tell you the whole shameful story. If worst
comes to worst, you will be obliged to tell your son perhaps, and if
he doubts the story send him to me for its verification.”</p>
<p>Worst came to the worst before twenty-four hours had passed.
The rector received word that Mrs Irving was rapidly failing, and went
to act the part of spiritual counsellor to the invalid, and sympathetic
friend to the suffering girl.</p>
<p>When he returned his mother watched his face with eager, anxious
eyes. He looked haggard and ill, as if he had passed through a
severe ordeal. He could talk of nothing but the beautiful and
brave girl, who was about to lose her one worshipped companion, and
who ere many hours passed would stand utterly alone in the world.</p>
<p>“I never saw you so affected before by the troubles and sorrows
of your parishioners,” Mrs Stuart said. “I wonder,
Arthur, why you take the sorrows of this family so keenly to heart.”</p>
<p>The young rector looked his mother full in the face with calm, sad
eyes. Then he said slowly:</p>
<p>“I suppose, mother, it is because I love Joy Irving with all
my heart. You must have suspected this for some time. I
know that you have, and that the thought has pained you. You have
had other and more ambitious aims for me. Earnest Christian and
good woman that you are, you have a worldly and conventional vein in
your nature, which makes you reverence position, wealth and family to
a marked degree. You would, I know, like to see me unite myself
with some royal family, were that possible; failing in that, you would
choose the daughter of some great and aristocratic house to be my bride.
Ah, well, dear mother, you will, I know, concede that marriage without
love is unholy. I am not able to force myself to love some great
lady, even supposing I could win her if I did love her.”</p>
<p>“But you might keep yourself from forming a foolish and unworthy
attachment,” Mrs Stuart interrupted. “With your will-power,
your brain, your reasoning faculties, I see no necessity for your allowing
a pretty face to run away with your heart. Nothing could be more
unsuitable, more shocking, more dreadful, than to have you make that
girl your wife, Arthur.”</p>
<p>Mrs Stuart’s voice rose as she spoke, from a quiet reasoning
tone to a high, excited wail. She had not meant to say so much.
She had intended merely to appeal to her son’s affection for her,
without making any unpleasant disclosures regarding Joy’s mother;
she thought merely to win a promise from him that he would not compromise
himself at present with the girl, through an excess of sympathy.
But already she had said enough to arouse the young man into a defender
of the girl he loved.</p>
<p>“I think your language quite too strong, mother,” he
said, with a reproving tone in his voice. “Miss Irving is
good, gifted, amiable, beautiful, beside being young and full of health.
I am sure there could be nothing shocking or dreadful in any man’s
uniting his destiny with such a being, in case he was fortunate enough
to win her. The fact that she is poor, and not of illustrious
lineage, is but a very worldly consideration. Mr Irving was a
most intelligent and excellent man, even if he was a grocer. The
American idea of aristocracy is grotesquely absurd at the best.
A man may spend his time and strength in buying and selling things wherewith
to clothe the body, and, if he succeeds, his children are admitted to
the intimacy of princes; but no success can open that door to the children
of a man who trades in food, wherewith to sustain the body. We
can none of us afford to put on airs here in America, with butchers
and Dutch peasant traders only three or four generations back of our
‘best families.’ As for me, mother, remember my loved
father was a broker. That would damn him in the eyes of some people,
you know, cultured gentleman as he was.”</p>
<p>Mrs Stuart sat very still, breathing hard and trying to gain control
of herself for some moments after her son ceased speaking. He,
too, had said more than he intended, and he was sorry that he had hurt
his mother’s feelings as he saw her evident agitation. But
as he rose to go forward and beg her pardon, she spoke.</p>
<p>“The person of whom we were speaking has nothing whatever to
do with Mr Irving,” she said. “Joy Irving was born
before her mother was married. Mrs Irving has a most infamous
past, and I would rather see you dead than the husband of her child.
You certainly would not want your children to inherit the propensities
of such a grandmother? And remember the curse descends to the
third and fourth generations. If you doubt my words, go to the
Baroness. She knows the whole story, but has revealed it to no
one but me.”</p>
<p>Mrs Stuart left the room, closing the door behind her as she went.
She did not want to be obliged to go over the details of the story which
she had heard; she had made her statement, one which she knew must startle
and horrify her son, with his high ideals of womanly purity, and she
left him to review the situation in silence. It was several hours
before the rector left his room.</p>
<p>When he did, he went, not to the Baroness, but directly to Mrs Irving.
They were alone for more than an hour. When he emerged from the
room, his face was as white as death, and he did not look at Joy as
she accompanied him to the door.</p>
<p>Two days later Mrs Irving died.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>The congregation of St Blank’s Church was rendered sad and
solicitous by learning that its rector was on the eve of nervous prostration,
and that his physician had ordered a change of air. He went away
in company with his mother for a vacation of three months. The
day after his departure Joy Irving received a letter from him which
read as follows:-</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>“My Dear Miss Irving,—You may not in your deep grief
have given me a thought. If such a thought has been granted one
so unworthy, it must have taken the form of surprise that your rector
and friend has made no call of condolence since death entered your household.
I want to write one little word to you, asking you to be lenient in
your judgment of me. I am ill in body and mind. I feel that
I am on the eve of some distressing malady. I am not able to reason
clearly, or to judge what is right and what is wrong. I am as
one tossed between the laws of God and the laws made by men, and bruised
in heart and in soul. I dare not see you or speak to you while
I am in this state of mind. I fear for what I may say or do.
I have not slept since I last saw you. I must go away and gain
strength and equilibrium. When I return I shall hope to be master
of myself. Until then, adieu. “ARTHUR EMERSON STUART.”</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>These wild and incoherent phrases stirred the young girl’s
heart with intense pain and anxiety. She had known for almost
a year that she loved the young rector; she had believed that he cared
for her, and without allowing herself to form any definite thoughts
of the future, she had lived in a blissful consciousness of loving and
being loved, which is to the fulfilment of a love dream, like inhaling
the perfume of a rose, compared to the gathered flower and its attending
thorns.</p>
<p>The young clergyman’s absence at the time of her greatest need
had caused her both wonder and pain. His letter but increased
both sentiments without explaining the cause.</p>
<p>It increased, too, her love for him, for whenever over-anxiety is
aroused for one dear to us, our love is augmented.</p>
<p>She felt that the young man was in some great trouble, unknown to
her, and she longed to be able to comfort him. Into the maiden’s
tender and ardent affection stole the wifely wish to console and the
motherly impulse to protect her dear one from pain, which are strong
elements in every real woman’s love.</p>
<p>Mrs Irving had died without writing one word to the Baroness; and
that personage was in a state of constant excitement until she heard
of the rector’s plans for rest and travel. Mrs Stuart informed
her of the conversation which had taken place between herself and her
son; and of his evident distress of mind, which had reacted on his body
and made it necessary for him to give up mental work for a season.</p>
<p>“I feel that I owe you a debt of gratitude, dear Baroness,”
Mrs Stuart had said. “Sad as this condition of things is,
imagine how much worse it would be, had my son, through an excess of
sympathy for that girl at this time, compromised himself with her before
we learned the terrible truth regarding her birth. I feel sure
my son will regain his health after a few months’ absence, and
that he will not jeopardise my happiness and his future by any further
thoughts of this unfortunate girl, who in the meantime may not be here
when we return.”</p>
<p>The Baroness made a mental resolve that the girl should not be there.</p>
<p>While the rector’s illness and proposed absence was sufficient
evidence that he had resolved upon sacrificing his love for Joy on the
altar of duty to his mother and his calling, yet the Baroness felt that
danger lurked in the air while Miss Irving occupied her present position.
No sooner had Mrs Stuart and her son left the city, than the Baroness
sent an anonymous letter to the young organist. It read:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>“I do not know whether your mother imparted the secret of her
past life to you before she died, but as that secret is known to several
people, it seems cruelly unjust that you are kept in ignorance of it.
You are not Mr Irving’s child. You were born before your
mother married. While it is not your fault, only your misfortune,
it would be wise for you to go where the facts are not so well known
as in the congregation of St Blank’s. There are people in
that congregation who consider you guilty of a wilful deception in wearing
the name you do, and of an affront to good taste in accepting the position
you occupy. Many people talk of leaving the church on your account.
Your gifts as a musician would win you a position elsewhere, and as
I learn that your mother’s life was insured for a considerable
sum, I am sure you are able to seek new fields where you can bide your
disgrace.</p>
<p>“A WELL-WISHER.”</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>Quivering with pain and terror, the young girl cast the letter into
the fire, thinking that it was the work of one of those half-crazed
beings whose mania takes the form of anonymous letters to unoffending
people. Only recently such a person had been brought into the
courts for this offence. It occurred to her also that it might
be the work of someone who wished to obtain her position as organist
of St Blank’s. Musicians, she knew, were said to be the
most jealous of all people, and while she had never suffered from them
before, it might be that her time had now come to experience the misfortunes
of her profession.</p>
<p>Tender-hearted and kindly in feeling to all humanity, she felt a
sickening sense of sorrow and fear at the thought that there existed
such a secret enemy for her anywhere in the world.</p>
<p>She went out upon the street, and for the first time in her life
she experienced a sense of suspicion and distrust toward the people
she met; for the first time in her life, she realised that the world
was not all kind and ready to give her back the honest friendship and
the sweet good-will which filled her heart for all her kind. Strive
as she would, she could not cast off the depression caused by this vile
letter. It was her first experience of this cowardly and despicable
phase of human malice, and she felt wounded in soul as by a poisoned
arrow shot in the dark. And then, suddenly, there came to her
the memory of her mother’s words—“If unhappiness ever
comes to you, read this letter.”</p>
<p>Surely this was the time she needed to read that letter. That
it contained some secret of her mother’s life she felt sure, and
she was equally sure that it contained nothing that would cause her
to blush for that beloved mother.</p>
<p>“Whatever the manuscript may have to reveal to me,” she
said, “it is time that I should know.” She took the
package from the hiding place, and broke the seal. Slowly she
read it to the end, as if anxious to make no error in understanding
every phase of the long story it related. Beginning with the marriage
of her mother to the French professor, Berene gave a detailed account
of her own sad and troubled life, and the shadow which the father’s
appetite for drugs cast over her whole youth. “They say,”
she wrote, “that there is no personal devil in existence.
I think this is true; he has taken the form of drugs and spirituous
liquors, and so his work of devastation goes on.” Then followed
the story of the sacrilegious marriage to save her father from suicide,
of her early widowhood; and the proffer of the Baroness to give her
a home. Of her life of servitude there, her yearning for an education,
and her meeting with “Apollo,” as she designated Preston
Cheney. “For truly he was like the glory of the rising day
to me, the first to give me hope, courage and unselfish aid. I
loved him, I worshipped him. He loved me, but he strove to crush
and kill this love because he had worked out an ambitious career for
himself. To extricate himself from many difficulties and embarrassments,
and to further his ambitious dreams, he betrothed himself to the daughter
of a rich and powerful man. He made no profession of love, and
she asked none. She was incapable of giving or inspiring that
holy passion. She only asked to be married.</p>
<p>“I only asked to be loved. Knowing nothing of the terrible
conflict in his breast, knowing nothing of his new-made ties, I was
wounded to the soul by his speaking unkindly to me—words he forced
himself to speak to hide his real feelings. And then it was that
a strange fate caused him to find me fainting, suffering, and praying
for death. The love in both hearts could no longer be restrained.
Augmented by its long control, sharpened by the agony we had both suffered,
overwhelmed by the surprise of the meeting, we lost reason and prudence.
Everything was forgotten save our love. When it was too late I
foresaw the anguish and sorrow I must bring into this man’s life.
I fear it was this thought rather than repentance for sin which troubled
me. Well may you ask why I did not think of all this before instead
of after the error was committed. Why did not Eve realise the
consequences of the fall until she had eaten of the apple? Only
afterward did I learn of the unholy ties which my lover had formed that
very day—ties which he swore to me should be broken ere another
day passed, to render him free to make me his wife in the eyes of men,
as I already was in the sight of God.</p>
<p>“Yet a strange and sudden resolve came to me as I listened
to him. Far beyond the thought of my own ruin, rose the consciousness
of the ruin I should bring upon his life by allowing him to carry out
his design. To be his wife, his helpmate, chosen from the whole
world as one he deemed most worthy and most able to cheer and aid him
in life’s battle—that seemed heaven to me; but to know that
by one rash, impetuous act of folly, I had placed him in a position
where he felt that honour compelled him to marry me—why, this
thought was more bitter than death. I knew that he loved me; yet
I knew, too, that by a union with me under the circumstances he would
antagonise those who were now his best and most influential friends,
and that his entire career would be ruined. I resolved to go away;
to disappear from his life and leave no trace. If his love was
as sincere as mine, he would find me; and time would show him some wiser
way for breaking his new-made fetters than the rash and sudden method
he now contemplated. He had forgotten to protect me with his love,
but I could not forget to protect him. In every true woman’s
love there is the maternal element which renders sacrifice natural.</p>
<p>“Fate hastened and furthered my plans for departure.
Made aware that the Baroness was suspicious of my fault, and learning
that my lover was suddenly called to the bedside of his fiancée,
I made my escape from the town and left no trace behind. I went
to that vast haystack of lost needles—New York, and effaced Berene
Dumont in Mrs Lamont. The money left from my father’s belongings
I resolved to use in cultivating my voice. I advertised for embroidery
and fine sewing also, and as I was an expert with the needle, I was
able to support myself and lay aside a little sum each week. I
trimmed hats at a small price, and added to my income in various manners,
owing to my French taste and my deft fingers.</p>
<p>“I was desolate, sad, lonely, but not despairing. What
woman can despair when she knows herself loved? To me that consciousness
was a far greater source of happiness than would have been the knowledge
that I was an empress, or the wife of a millionaire, envied by the whole
world. I believed my lover would find me in time, that we should
be reunited. I believed this until I saw the announcement of his
marriage in the press, and read that he and his bride had sailed for
an extended foreign tour; but with this stunning news, there came to
me the strange, sweet, startling consciousness that you, my darling
child, were coming to console me.</p>
<p>“I know that under the circumstances I ought to have been borne
down to the earth with a guilty shame; I ought to have considered you
as a punishment for my sin—and walked in the valley of humiliation
and despair.</p>
<p>“But I did not. I lived in a state of mental exaltation;
every thought was a prayer, every emotion was linked with religious
fervour. I was no longer alone or friendless, for I had you.
I sang as I had never sung, and one theatrical manager, who happened
to call upon my teacher during my lesson hour, offered me a position
at a good salary at once if I would accept.</p>
<p>“I could not accept, of course, knowing what the coming months
were to bring to me, but I took his card and promised to write him when
I was ready to take a position. You came into life in the depressing
atmosphere of a city hospital, my dear child, yet even there I was not
depressed, and your face wore a smile of joy the first time I gazed
upon it. So I named you Joy—and well have you worn the name.
My first sorrow was in being obliged to leave you; for I had to leave
you with those human angels, the sweet sisters of charity, while I went
forth to make a home for you. My voice, as is sometimes the case,
was richer, stronger and of greater compass after I had passed through
maternity. I accepted a position with a travelling theatrical
company, where I was to sing a solo in one act. My success was
not phenomenal, but it <i>was</i> success nevertheless. I followed
this life for three years, seeing you only at intervals. Then
the consciousness came to me that without long and profound study I
could never achieve more than a third-rate success in my profession.</p>
<p>“I had dreamed of becoming a great singer; but I learned that
a voice alone does not make a great singer. I needed years of
study, and this would necessitate the expenditure of large sums of money.
I had grown heart-sick and disgusted with the annoyances and vulgarity
I was subjected to in my position. When you were four years old
a good man offered me a good home as his wife. It was the first
honest love I had encountered, while scores of men had made a pretence
of loving me during these years.</p>
<p>“I was hungering for a home where I could claim you and have
the joy of your daily companionship instead of brief glimpses of you
at the intervals of months. My voice, never properly trained,
was beginning to break. I resolved to put Mr Irving to a test;
I would tell him the true story of your birth, and if he still wished
me to be his wife, I would marry him.</p>
<p>“I carried out my resolve, and we were married the day after
he had heard my story. I lived a peaceful and even happy life
with Mr Irving. He was devoted to you, and never by look, word
or act, seemed to remember my past. I, too, at times almost forgot
it, so strange a thing is the human heart under the influence of time.
Imagine, then, the shock of remembrance and the tidal wave of memories
which swept over me when in the lady you brought to call upon me I recognised—the
Baroness.</p>
<p>“It is because she threatened to tell you that you were not
born in wedlock that I leave this manuscript for you. It is but
a few weeks since you told me the story of Marah Adams, and assured
me that you thought her mother did right in confessing the truth to
her daughter. Little did you dream with what painful interest
I listened to your views on that subject. Little did I dream that
I should so soon be called upon to act upon them.</p>
<p>“But the time is now come, and I want no strange hand to deal
you a blow in the dark; if any part of the story comes to you, I want
you to know the whole truth. You will wonder why I have not told
you the name of your father. It is strange, but from the hour
I knew of his marriage, and of your dawning life, I have felt a jealous
fear lest he should ever take you from me; even after I am gone, I would
not have him know of your existence and be unable to claim you openly.
Any acquaintance between you could only result in sorrow.</p>
<p>“I have never blamed him for my past weakness, however I have
blamed him for his unholy marriage. Our fault was mutual.
I was no ignorant child; while young in years, I had sufficient knowledge
of human nature to protect myself had I used my will-power and my reason.
Like many another woman, I used neither; unlike the majority, I did
not repent my sin or its consequences. I have ever believed you
to be a more divinely born being than any children who may have resulted
from my lover’s unholy marriage. I die strong in the belief.
God bless you, my dear child, and farewell.”</p>
<p>Joy sat silent and pale like one in a trance for a long time after
she had finished reading. Then she said aloud, “So I am
another like Marah Adams; it was this knowledge which caused the rector
to write me that strange letter. It was this knowledge which sent
him away without coming to say one word of adieu. The woman who
sent me the message, sent it to him also. Well, I can be as brave
as my mother was. I, too, can disappear.”</p>
<p>She arose and began silently and rapidly to make preparations for
a journey. She felt a nervous haste to get away from something—from
all things. Everything stable in the world seemed to have slipped
from her hold in the last few days. Home, mother, love, and now
hope and pride were gone too. She worked for more than two hours
without giving vent to even a sigh. Then suddenly she buried her
face in her hands and sobbed aloud: “Oh, mother, mother, you were
not ashamed, but I am ashamed for you! Why was I ever born?
God forgive me for the sinful thought, but I wish you had lied to me
in place of telling me the truth.”</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Just as Mrs Irving had written her story for her daughter to read,
she told it, in the main, to the rector a few days before her death.</p>
<p>Only once before had the tale passed her lips; then her listener
was Horace Irving; and his only comment was to take her in his arms
and place the kiss of betrothal on her lips. Never again was the
painful subject referred to between them. So imbued had Berene
Dumont become with her belief in the legitimacy of her child, and in
her own purity, that she felt but little surprise at the calm manner
in which Mr Irving received her story, and now when the rector of St
Blank’s Church was her listener, she expected the same broad judgment
to be given her. But it was the calmness of a great and all-forgiving
love which actuated Mr Irving, and overcame all other feelings.</p>
<p>Wholly unconventional in nature, caring nothing and knowing little
of the extreme ideas of orthodox society on these subjects, the girl
Berene and the woman Mrs Irving had lived a life so wholly secluded
from the world at large, so absolutely devoid of intimate friendships,
so absorbed in her own ideals, that she was incapable of understanding
the conventional opinion regarding a woman with a history like hers.</p>
<p>In all those years she had never once felt a sensation of shame.
Mr Irving had requested her to rear Joy in the belief that she was his
child. As the matter could in no way concern anyone else, Mrs
Irving’s lips had remained sealed on the subject; but not with
any idea of concealing a disgrace. She could not associate disgrace
with her love for Preston Cheney. She believed herself to be his
spiritual widow, as it were. His mortal clay and legal name only
belonged to his wife.</p>
<p>Mr Irving had met Berene on a railroad train, and had conceived one
of those sudden and intense passions with which a woman with a past
often inspires an innocent and unworldly young man. He was sincerely
and truly religious by nature, and as spotless as a maiden in mind and
body.</p>
<p>When he had dreamed of a wife, it was always of some shy, innocent
girl whom he should woo almost from her mother’s arms; some gentle,
pious maid, carefully reared, who would help him to establish the Christian
household of his imagination. He had thought that love would first
come to him as admiring respect, then tender friendship, then love for
some such maiden; instead it had swooped down upon him in the form of
an intense passion for an absolute stranger—a woman travelling
with a theatrical company. He was like a sleeper who awakens suddenly
and finds a scorching midday sun beating upon his eyes. A wrecked
freight train upon the track detained for several hours the car in which
they travelled. The passengers waived ceremony and conversed to
pass the time, and Mr Irving learnt Berene’s name, occupation
and destination. He followed her for a week, and at the end of
that time asked her hand in marriage.</p>
<p>Even after he had heard the story of her life, he was not deterred
from his resolve to make her his wife. All the Christian charity
of his nature, all its chivalry was aroused, and he believed he was
plucking a brand from the burning. He never repented his act.
He lived wholly for his wife and child, and for the good he could do
with them as his faithful allies. He drew more and more away from
all the allurements of the world, and strove to rear Joy in what he
believed to be a purely Christian life, and to make his wife forget,
if possible, that she had ever known a sorrow. All of sincere
gratitude, tenderness, and gentle affection possible for her to feel,
Berene bestowed upon her husband during his life, and gave to his memory
after he was gone.</p>
<p>Joy had been excessively fond of Mr Irving, and it was the dread
of causing her a deep sorrow in the knowledge that she was not his child,
and the fear that Preston Cheney would in any way interfere with her
possession of Joy, which had distressed the mother during the visit
of the Baroness, rather than unwillingness to have her sin revealed
to her daughter. Added to this, the intrusion of the Baroness
into this long hidden and sacred experience seemed a sacrilege from
which she shrank with horror. But she now told the tale to Arthur
Stuart frankly and fearlessly.</p>
<p>He had asked her to confide to him whatever secret existed regarding
Joy’s birth.</p>
<p>“There is a rumour afloat,” he said, “that Joy
is not Mr Irving’s child. I love your daughter, Mrs Irving,
and I feel it is my right to know all the circumstances of her life.
I believe the story which was told my mother to be the invention of
some enemy who is jealous of Joy’s beauty and talents, and I would
like to be in a position to silence these slanders.”</p>
<p>So Mrs Irving told the story to the end; and having told it, she
felt relieved and happy in the thought that it was imparted to the only
two people whom it could concern in the future.</p>
<p>No disturbing fear came to her that the rector would hesitate to
make Joy his wife. To Berene Dumont, love was the law. If
love existed between two souls she could not understand why any convention
of society should stand in the way of its fulfilment.</p>
<p>Arthur Stuart in his role of spiritual confessor and consoler had
never before encountered such a phase of human nature. He had
listened to many a tale of sin and folly from women’s lips, but
always had the sinner bemoaned her sin, and bitterly repented her weakness.
Here instead was what the world would consider a fallen woman, who on
her deathbed regarded her weakness as her strength, her shame as her
glory, and who seemed to expect him to take the same view of the matter.
When he attempted to urge her to repent, the words stuck in his throat.
He left the deathbed of the unfortunate sinner without having expressed
one of the conflicting emotions which filled his heart. But he
left it with such a weight on his soul, such distress on his mind that
death seemed to him the only way of escape from a life of torment.</p>
<p>His love for Joy Irving was not killed by the story he had heard.
But it had received a terrible shock, and the thought of making her
his wife with the probability that the Baroness would spread the scandal
broadcast, and that his marriage would break his mother’s heart,
tortured him. Added to this were his theories on heredity, and
the fear that there might, nay, must be, some dangerous tendency hidden
in the daughter of a mother who had so erred, and who in dying showed
no comprehension of the enormity of her sin. Had Mrs Irving bewailed
her fall, and represented herself as the victim of a wily villain, the
rector would not have felt so great a fear of the daughter’s inheritance.
A frail, repentant woman he could pity and forgive, but it seemed to
him that Mrs Irving was utterly lacking in moral nature. She was
spiritually blind. The thought tortured him. To leave Joy
at this time without calling to see her seemed base and cowardly; yet
he dared not trust himself in her presence. So he sent her the
strangely worded letter, and went away hoping to be shown the path of
duty before he returned.</p>
<p>At the end of three months he came home stronger in body and mind.
He had resolved to compromise with fate; to continue his calls upon
Joy Irving; to be her friend and rector only, until by the passage of
time, and the changes which occur so rapidly in every society, the scandal
in regard to her birth had been forgotten. And until by patience
and tenderness, he won his mother’s consent to the union.
He felt that all this must come about as he desired, if he did not aggravate
his mother’s feeling or defy public opinion by too precipitate
methods.</p>
<p>He could not wholly give up all thoughts of Joy Irving. She
had grown to be a part of his hopes and dreams of the future, as she
was a part of the reality of his present. But she was very young;
he could afford to wait, and while he waited to study the girl’s
character, and if he saw any budding shoot which bespoke the maternal
tree, to prune and train it to his own liking. For the sake of
his unborn children he felt it his duty to carefully study any woman
he thought to make his wife.</p>
<p>But when he reached home, the surprising intelligence awaited him
that Miss Irving had left the metropolis. A brief note to the
church authorities, resigning her position, and saying that she was
about to leave the city, was all that anyone knew of her.</p>
<p>The rector instituted a quiet search, but only succeeded in learning
that she had conducted her preparations for departure with the greatest
secrecy, and that to no one had she imparted her plans.</p>
<p>Whenever a young woman shrouds her actions in the garments of secrecy,
she invites suspicion. The people who love to suspect their fellow-beings
of wrong-doing were not absent on this occasion.</p>
<p>The rector was hurt and wounded by all this, and while he resented
the intimation from another that Miss Irving’s conduct had been
peculiar and mysterious, he felt it to be so in his own heart.</p>
<p>“Is it her mother’s tendency to adventure developing
in her?” he asked himself.</p>
<p>Yet he wrote her a letter, directing it to her at the old number,
thinking she would at least leave her address with the post-office for
the forwarding of mail. The letter was returned to him from that
cemetery of many a dear hope, the dead-letter office. A personal
in a leading paper failed to elicit a reply. And then one day
six months after the disappearance of Joy Irving, the young rector was
called to the Cheney household to offer spiritual consolation to Miss
Alice, who believed herself to be dying. She had been in a decline
ever since the rector went away for his health.</p>
<p>Since his return she had seen him but seldom, rarely save in the
pulpit, and for the last six weeks she had been too ill to attend divine
service.</p>
<p>It was Preston Cheney himself, at home upon one of his periodical
visits, who sent for the rector, and gravely met him at the door when
he arrived, and escorted him into his study.</p>
<p>“I am very anxious about my daughter,” he said.
“She has been a nervous child always, and over-sensitive.
I returned yesterday after an absence of some three months in California,
to find Alice in bed, wasted to a shadow, and constantly weeping.
I cannot win her confidence—she has never confided to me.
Perhaps it is my fault; perhaps I have not been at home enough to make
her realise that the relationship of father and daughter is a sacred
one. This morning when I was urging her to tell me what grieved
her, she remarked that there was but one person to whom she could communicate
this sorrow—her rector. So, my dear Dr Stuart, I have sent
for you. I will conduct you to my child, and I leave her in your
hands. Whatever comfort and consolation you can offer, I know
will be given. I hope she will not bind you to secrecy; I hope
you may be able to tell me what troubles her, and advise me how to help
her.”</p>
<p>It was more than an hour before the rector returned to the library
where Preston Cheney awaited him. When the senator heard his approaching
step, he looked up, and was startled to see the pallor on the young
man’s face. “You have something sad, something terrible
to tell me!” he cried. “What is it?”</p>
<p>The rector walked across the room several times, breathing deeply,
and with anguish written on his countenance. Then he took Senator
Cheney’s hand and wrung it. “I have an embarrassing
announcement to make to you,” he said. “It is something
so surprising, so unexpected, that I am completely unnerved.”</p>
<p>“You alarm me, more and more,” the senator answered.
“What can be the secret which my frail child has imparted to you
that should so distress you? Speak; it is my right to know.”</p>
<p>The rector took another turn about the room, and then came and stood
facing Senator Cheney.</p>
<p>“Your daughter has conceived a strange passion for me,”
he said in a low voice. “It is this which has caused her
illness, and which she says will cause her death, if I cannot return
it.”</p>
<p>“And you?” asked his listener after a moment’s
silence.</p>
<p>“I? Why, I have never thought of your daughter in any
such manner,” the young man replied. “I have never
dreamed of loving her, or winning her love.”</p>
<p>“Then do not marry her,” Preston Cheney said quietly.
“Marriage without love is unholy. Even to save life it is
unpardonable.”</p>
<p>The rector was silent, and walked the room with nervous steps.
“I must go home and think it all out,” he said after a time.
“Perhaps Miss Cheney will find her grief less, now that she has
imparted it to me. I am alarmed at her condition, and I shall
hope for an early report from you regarding her.”</p>
<p>The report was made twelve hours later. Miss Cheney was delirious,
and calling constantly for the rector. Her physician feared the
worst.</p>
<p>The rector came, and his presence at once soothed the girl’s
delirium.</p>
<p>“History repeats itself,” said Preston Cheney meditatively
to himself. “Alice is drawing this man into the net by her
alarming physical condition, as Mabel riveted the chains about me when
her mother died.</p>
<p>“But Alice really loves the rector, I think, and she is capable
of a much stronger passion than her mother ever felt; and the rector
loves no other woman at least, and so this marriage, if it takes place,
will not be so wholly wicked and unholy as mine was.”</p>
<p>The marriage did take place three months later. Alice Cheney
was not the wife whom Mrs Stuart would have chosen for her son, yet
she urged him to this step, glad to place a barrier for all time between
him and Joy Irving, whose possible return at any day she constantly
feared, and whose power over her son’s heart she knew was undiminished.</p>
<p>Alice Cheney’s family was of the best on both sides; there
were wealth, station, and honour; and a step-grandmamma who could be
referred to on occasions as “The Baroness.” And there
was no skeleton to be hidden or excused.</p>
<p>And Arthur Stuart, believing that Alice Cheney’s life and reason
depended upon his making her his wife, resolved to end the bitter struggle
with his own heart and with fate, and do what seemed to be his duty,
toward the girl and toward his mother. When the wedding took place,
the saddest face at the ceremony, save that of the groom, was the face
of the bride’s father. But the bride was radiant, and Mabel
and the Baroness walked in clouds.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
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<p>Alice did not rally in health or spirits after her marriage, as her
family, friends and physician had anticipated. She remained nervous,
ailing and despondent.</p>
<p>“Should maternity come to her, she would doubtless be very
much improved in health afterward,” the doctor said, and Mabel,
remembering how true a similar prediction proved in her case, despite
her rebellion against it, was not sorry when she knew that Alice was
to become a mother, scarcely a year after her marriage.</p>
<p>But Alice grew more and more despondent as the months passed by;
and after the birth of her son, the young mother developed dementia
of the most hopeless kind. The best specialists in two worlds
were employed to bring her out of the state of settled melancholy into
which she had fallen, but all to no avail. At the end of two years,
her case was pronounced hopeless. Fortunately the child died at
the age of six weeks, so the seed of insanity which in the first Mrs
Lawrence was simply a case of “nerves,” growing into the
plant hysteria in Mabel, and yielding the deadly fruit of insanity in
Alice, was allowed by a kind providence to become extinct in the fourth
generation.</p>
<p>This disaster to his only child caused a complete breaking down of
spirit and health in Preston Cheney.</p>
<p>Like some great, strongly coupled car, which loses its grip and goes
plunging down an incline to destruction, Preston Cheney’s will-power
lost its hold on life, and he went down to the valley of death with
frightful speed.</p>
<p>During the months which preceded his death, Senator Cheney’s
only pleasure seemed to be in the companionship of his son-in-law.
The strong attachment between the two men ripened with every day’s
association. One day the rector was sitting by the invalid’s
couch, reading aloud, when Preston Cheney laid his hand on the young
man’s arm and said: “Close your book and let me tell you
a true story which is stranger than fiction. It is the story of
an ambitious man and all the disasters which his realised ambition brought
into the lives of others. It is a story whose details are known
to but two beings on earth, if indeed the other being still exists on
earth. I have long wanted to tell you this story—indeed,
I wanted to tell it to you before you made Alice your wife, yet the
fear that I would be wrecking the life and reason of my child kept me
silent. No doubt if I had told you, and you had been influenced
by my experience against a loveless marriage, I should to-day be blaming
myself for her condition, which I see plainly now is but the culmination
of three generations of hysterical women. But I want to tell you
the story and urge you to use it as a warning in your position of counsellor
and friend of ambitious young men.</p>
<p>“No matter what else a man may do for position, don’t
let him marry a woman he does not love, especially if he crucifies a
vital passion for another, in order to do this.” Then Preston
Cheney told the story of his life to his son-in-law; and as the tale
proceeded, a strange interest which increased until it became violent
excitement, took possession of the rector’s brain and heart.
The story was so familiar—so very familiar; and at length, when
the name of <i>Berene Dumont</i> escaped the speaker’s lips, Arthur
Stuart clutched his hands and clenched his teeth to keep silent until
the end of the story came.</p>
<p>“From the hour Berene disappeared, to this very day, no word
or message ever came from her,” the invalid said. “I
have never known whether she was dead or alive, married, or, terrible
thought, perhaps driven into a reckless life by her one false step with
me. This last fear has been a constant torture to me all these
years.</p>
<p>“The world is cruel in its judgment of woman. And yet
I know that it is woman herself who has shaped the opinions of the world
regarding these matters. If men had had their way since the world
began, there would be no virtuous women. Woman has realised this
fact, and she has in consequence walled herself about with rules and
conventions which have in a measure protected her from man. When
any woman breaks through these conventions and errs, she suffers the
scorn of others who have kept these self-protecting and society-protecting
laws; and, conscious of their scorn, she believes all hope is lost for
ever.</p>
<p>“The fear that Berene took this view of her one mistake, and
plunged into a desperate life, has embittered my whole existence.
Never before did a man suffer such a mental hell as I have endured for
this one act of sin and weakness. Yet the world, looking at my
life of success, would say if it knew the story, ‘Behold how the
man goes free.’ Free! Great God! there is no bondage
so terrible as that of the mind. I have loved Berene Dumont with
a changeless passion for twenty-three years, and there has not been
a day in all that time that I have not during some hours endured the
agonies of the damned, thinking of all the disasters and misery that
might have come into her life through me. Heaven knows I would
have married her if she had remained. Strange and intricate as
the net was which the devil wove about me when I had furnished the cords,
I could and would have broken through it after that strange night—at
once the heaven and the hell of my memory—if Berene had remained.
As it was—I married Mabel, and you know what a farce, ending in
a tragedy, our married life has been. God grant that no worse
woes befell Berene; God grant that I may meet her in the spirit world
and tell her how I loved her and longed for her companionship.”</p>
<p>The young rector’s eyes were streaming with tears, as he reached
over and clasped the sick man’s hands in his. “You
will meet her,” he said with a choked voice. “I heard
this same story, but without names, from Berene Dumont’s dying
lips more than two years ago. And just as Berene disappeared from
you—so her daughter disappeared from me; and, God help me, dear
father—doubly now my father, I crushed out my great passion for
the glorious natural child of your love, to marry the loveless, wretched
and <i>unnatural</i> child of your marriage.”</p>
<p>The sick man started up on his couch, his eyes flaming, his cheeks
glowing with sudden lustre.</p>
<p>“My child—the natural child of Berene’s love and
mine, you say; oh, my God, speak and tell me what you mean; speak before
I die of joy so terrible it is like anguish.”</p>
<p>So then it became the rector’s turn to take the part of narrator.
When the story was ended, Preston Cheney lay weeping like a woman on
his couch; the first tears he had shed since his mother died and left
him an orphan of ten.</p>
<p>“Berene living and dying almost within reach of my arms—almost
within sound of my voice!” he cried. “Oh, why did
I not find her before the grave closed between us?—and why did
no voice speak from that grave to tell me when I held my daughter’s
hand in mine?—my beautiful child, no wonder my heart went out
to her with such a gush of tenderness; no wonder I was fired with unaccountable
anger and indignation when Mabel and Alice spoke unkindly of her.
Do you remember how her music stirred me? It was her mother’s
heart speaking to mine through the genius of our child.</p>
<p>“Arthur, you must find her—you must find her for me!
If it takes my whole fortune I must see my daughter, and clasp her in
my arms before I die.”</p>
<p>But this happiness was not to be granted to the dying man.
Overcome by the excitement of this new emotion, he grew weaker and weaker
as the next few days passed, and at the end of the fifth day his spirit
took its flight, let us hope to join its true mate.</p>
<p>It had been one of his dying requests to have his body taken to Beryngford
and placed beside that of Judge Lawrence.</p>
<p>The funeral services took place in the new and imposing church edifice
which had been constructed recently in Beryngford. The quiet interior
village had taken a leap forward during the last few years, and was
now a thriving city, owing to the discovery of valuable stone quarries
in its borders.</p>
<p>The Baroness and Mabel had never been in Beryngford since the death
of Judge Lawrence many years before; and it was with sad and bitter
hearts that both women recalled the past and realised anew the disasters
which had wrecked their dearest hopes and ambitions.</p>
<p>The Baroness, broken in spirit and crushed by the insanity of her
beloved Alice, now saw the form of the man whom she had hopelessly loved
for so many years, laid away to crumble back to dust; and yet, the sorrows
which should have softened her soul, and made her heart tender toward
all suffering humanity, rendered her pitiless as the grave toward one
lonely and desolate being before the shadows of night had fallen upon
the grave of Preston Cheney.</p>
<p>When the funeral march pealed out from the grand new organ during
the ceremonies in the church, both the Baroness and the rector, absorbed
as they were in mournful sorrow, started with surprise. Both gazed
at the organ loft; and there, before the great instrument, sat the graceful
figure of Joy Irving. The rector’s face grew pale as the
corpse in the casket; the withered cheek of the Baroness turned a sickly
yellow, and a spark of anger dried the moisture in her eyes.</p>
<p>Before the night had settled over the thriving city of Beryngford,
the Baroness dropped a point of virus from the lancet of her tongue
to poison the social atmosphere where Joy Irving had by the merest accident
of fate made her new home, and where in the office of organist she had,
without dreaming of her dramatic situation, played the requiem at the
funeral of her own father.</p>
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<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
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<p>Joy Irving had come to Beryngford at the time when the discoveries
of the quarries caused that village to spring into sudden prominence
as a growing city. Newspaper accounts of the building of the new
church, and the purchase of a large pipe organ, chanced to fall under
her eye just as she was planning to leave the scene of her unhappiness.</p>
<p>“I can at least only fail if I try for the position of organist
there,” she said, “and if I succeed in this interior town,
I can hide myself from all the world without incurring heavy expense.”</p>
<p>So all unconsciously Joy fled from the metropolis to the very place
from which her mother had vanished twenty-two years before.</p>
<p>She had been the organist in the grand new Episcopalian Church now
for three years; and she had made many cordial acquaintances who would
have become near friends, if she had encouraged them. But Joy’s
sweet and trustful nature had received a great shock in the knowledge
of the shadow which hung about her birth. Where formerly she had
expected love and appreciation from everyone she met, she now shrank
from forming new ties, lest new hurts should await her.</p>
<p>She was like a flower in whose perfect heart a worm had coiled.
Her entire feeling about life had undergone a change. For many
weeks after her self-imposed exile, she had been unable to think of
her mother without a mingled sense of shame and resentment; the adoring
love she had borne this being seemed to die with her respect.
After a time the bitterness of this sentiment wore away, and a pitying
tenderness and sorrow took its place; but from her heart the twin angels,
Love and Forgiveness, were absent. She read her mother’s
manuscript over, and tried to argue herself into the philosophy which
had sustained the author of her being through all these years.</p>
<p>But her mind was shaped far more after the conventional pattern of
her paternal ancestors, who had been New England Puritans, and she could
not view the subject as Berene had viewed it.</p>
<p>In spite of the ideality which her mother had woven about him, Joy
entertained the most bitter contempt for the unknown man who was her
father, and the whole tide of her affections turned lavishly upon the
memory of Mr Irving, whom she felt now more than ever so worthy of her
regard.</p>
<p>Reason as she would on the supremacy of love over law, yet the bold,
unpleasant fact remained that she was the child of an unwedded mother.
She shrank in sensitive pain from having this story follow her, and
the very consciousness that her mother’s experience had been an
exceptional one, caused her the greater dread of having it known and
talked of as a common vulgar liaison.</p>
<p>There are two things regarding which the world at large never asks
any questions—namely, How a rich man made his money, and how an
erring woman came to fall. It is enough for the world to know
that he is rich—that fact alone opens all doors to him, as the
fact that the woman has erred closes them to her.</p>
<p>There was a common vulgar creature in Beryngford, whose many amours
and bold defiance of law and order rendered her name a synonym for indecency.
This woman had begun her career in early girlhood as a mercenary intriguer;
and yet Joy Irving knew that the majority of people would make small
distinctions between the conduct of this creature and that of her mother,
were the facts of Berene’s life and her own birth to be made public.</p>
<p>The fear that the story would follow her wherever she went became
an absolute dread with her, and caused her to live alone and without
companions, in the midst of people who would gladly have become her
warm friends, had she permitted.</p>
<p>Her book of “Impressions” reflected the changes which
had taken place in the complexion of her mind during these years.
Among its entries were the following:-</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>People talk about following a divine law of love, when they wish
to excuse their brute impulses and break social and civil codes.</p>
<p>No love is sanctioned by God, which shatters human hearts.</p>
<p>Fathers are only distantly related to their children; love for the
male parent is a matter of education.</p>
<p>The devil macadamises all his pavements.</p>
<p>A natural child has no place in an unnatural world.</p>
<p>When we cannot respect our parents, it is difficult to keep our ideal
of God.</p>
<p>Love is a mushroom, and lust is its poisonous counterpart.</p>
<p>It is a pity that people who despise civilisation should be so uncivil
as to stay in it. There is always darkest Africa.</p>
<p>The extent of a man’s gallantry depends on the goal.
He follows the good woman to the borders of Paradise and leaves her
with a polite bow; but he follows the bad woman to the depths of hell.</p>
<p>It is easy to trust in God until he permits us to suffer. The
dentist seems a skilled benefactor to mankind when we look at his sign
from the street. When we sit in his chair he seems a brute, armed
with devil’s implements.</p>
<p>An anonymous letter is the bastard of a diseased mind.</p>
<p>An envious woman is a spark from Purgatory.</p>
<p>The consciousness that we have anything to hide from the world stretches
a veil between our souls and heaven. We cannot reach up to meet
the gaze of God, when we are afraid to meet the eyes of men.</p>
<p>It may be all very well for two people to make their own laws, but
they have no right to force a third to live by them.</p>
<p>Virtue is very secretive about her payments, but the whole world
hears of it when vice settles up.</p>
<p>We have a sublime contempt for public opinion theoretically so long
as it favours us. When it turns against us we suffer intensely
from the loss of what we claimed to despise.</p>
<p>When the fruit must apologise for the tree, we do not care to save
the seed.</p>
<p>It is only when God and man have formed a syndicate and agreed upon
their laws, that marriage is a safe investment.</p>
<p>The love that does not protect its object would better change its
name.</p>
<p>When we say <i>of</i> people what we would not say <i>to</i> them,
we are either liars or cowards.</p>
<p>The enmity of some people is the greatest compliment they can pay
us.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>It was in thoughts like these that Joy relieved her heart of some
of the bitterness and sorrow which weighed upon it. And day after
day she bore about with her the dread of having the story of her mother’s
sin known in her new home.</p>
<p>As our fears, like our wishes, when strong and unremitting, prove
to be magnets, the result of Joy’s despondent fears came in the
scandal which the Baroness had planted and left to flourish and grow
in Beryngford after her departure. An hour before the services
began, on the day of Preston Cheney’s burial, Joy learned at whose
rites she was to officiate as organist. A pang of mingled emotions
shot through her heart at the sound of his name. She had seen
this man but a few times, and spoken with him but once; yet he had left
a strong impression upon her memory. She had felt drawn to him
by his sympathetic face and atmosphere, the sorrow of his kind eyes,
and the keen appreciation he had shown in her art; and just in the measure
that she had been attracted by him, she had been repelled by the three
women to whom she was presented at the same time. She saw them
all again mentally, as she had seen them on that and many other days.
Mrs Cheney and Alice, with their fretful, plain, dissatisfied faces,
and their over-burdened costumes, and the Baroness, with her cruel heart
gazing through her worn mask of defaced beauty.</p>
<p>She had been conscious of a feeling of overwhelming pity for the
kind, attractive man who made the fourth of that quartette. She
knew that he had obtained honours and riches from life, but she pitied
him for his home environment. She had felt so thankful for her
own happy home life at the time; and she remembered, too, the sweet
hope that lay like a closed-up bud in the bottom of her heart that day,
as the quartette moved away and left her standing alone with Arthur
Stuart.</p>
<p>It was only a few weeks later that the end came to all her dreams,
through that terrible anonymous letter.</p>
<p>It was the Baroness who had sent it, she knew—the Baroness
whose early hatred for her mother had descended to the child.
“And now I must sit in the same house with her again,” she
said, “and perhaps meet her face to face; and she may tell the
story here of my mother’s shame, even as I have felt and feared
it must yet be told. How strange that a ‘love child’
should inspire so much hatred!”</p>
<p>Joy had carefully refrained from reading New York papers ever since
she left the city; and she had no correspondents. It was her wish
and desire to utterly sink and forget the past life there. Therefore
she knew nothing of Arthur Stuart’s marriage to the daughter of
Preston Cheney. She thought of the rector as dead to her.
She believed he had given her up because of the stain upon her birth,
and, bitter as the pain had been, she never blamed him. She had
fought with her love for him and believed that it was buried in the
grave of all other happy memories.</p>
<p>But as the earth is wrenched open by volcanic eruptions and long
buried corpses are revealed again to the light of day, so the unexpected
sight of Arthur Stuart, as he took his place beside Mabel and the Baroness
during the funeral services, revealed all the pent-up passion of her
heart to her own frightened soul.</p>
<p>To strong natures, the greater the inward excitement the more quiet
the exterior; and Jay passed through the services, and performed her
duties, without betraying to those about her the violent emotions under
which she laboured.</p>
<p>The rector of Beryngford Church requested her to remain for a few
moments, and consult with him on a matter concerning the next week’s
musical services. It was from him Joy learned the relation which
Arthur Stuart bore to the dead man, and that Beryngford was the former
home of the Baroness.</p>
<p>Her mother’s manuscript had carefully avoided all mention of
names of people or places. Yet Joy realised now that she must
be living in the very scene of her mother’s early life; she longed
to make inquiries, but was prevented by the fear that she might hear
her mother’s name mentioned disrespectfully.</p>
<p>The days that followed were full of sharp agony for her. It
was not until long afterward that she was able to write her “impressions”
of that experience. In the extreme hour of joy or agony we formulate
no impressions; we only feel. We neither analyse nor describe
our friends or enemies when face to face with them, but after we leave
their presence. When the day came that she could write, some of
her reflections were thus epitomised:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>Love which rises from the grave to comfort us, possesses more of
the demons’ than the angels’ power. It terrifies us
with its supernatural qualities and deprives us temporarily of our reason.</p>
<p>Suppressed steam and suppressed emotion are dangerous things to deal
with.</p>
<p>The infant who wants its mother’s breast, and the woman who
wants her lover’s arms, are poor subjects to reason with.
Though you tell the former that fever has poisoned the mother’s
milk, or the latter that destruction lies in the lover’s embrace,
one heeds you no more than the other.</p>
<p>The accumulated knowledge of ages is sometimes revealed by a kiss.
Where wisdom is bliss, it is folly to be ignorant.</p>
<p>Some of us have to crucify our hearts before we find our souls.</p>
<p>A woman cannot fully know charity until she has met passion; but
too intimate an acquaintance with the latter destroys her appreciation
of all the virtues.</p>
<p>To feel temptation and resist it, renders us liberal in our judgment
of all our kind. To yield to it, fills us with suspicion of all.</p>
<p>There is an ecstatic note in pain which is never reached in happiness.</p>
<p>The death of a great passion is a terrible thing, unless the dawn
of a greater truth shines on the grave.</p>
<p>Love ought to have no past tense.</p>
<p>Love partakes of the feline nature. It has nine lives.</p>
<p>It seems to be difficult for some of us to distinguish between looseness
of views, and charitable judgments. To be sorry for people’s
sins and follies and to refuse harsh criticism is right; to accept them
as a matter of course is wrong.</p>
<p>Love and sorrow are twins, and knowledge is their nurse.</p>
<p>The pathway of the soul is not a steady ascent, but hilly and broken.
We must sometimes go lower, in order to get higher.</p>
<p>That which is to-day, and will be to-morrow, must have been yesterday.
I know that I live, I believe that I shall live again, and have lived
before.</p>
<p>Earth life is the middle rung of a long ladder which we climb in
the dark. Though we cannot see the steps below, or above, they
exist all the same.</p>
<p>The materialist denying spirit is like the burr of the chestnut denying
the meat within.</p>
<p>The inevitable is always right.</p>
<p>Prayer is a skeleton key that opens unexpected doors. We may
not find the things we came to seek, but we find other treasures.</p>
<p>The pessimist belongs to God’s misfit counter.</p>
<p>Art, when divorced from Religion, always becomes a wanton.</p>
<p>To forget benefits we have received is a crime. To remember
benefits we have bestowed is a greater one.</p>
<p>To some men a woman is a valuable book, carefully studied and choicely
guarded behind glass doors. To others, she is a daily paper, idly
scanned and tossed aside.</p>
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<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>While Joy battled with her sorrow during the days following Preston
Cheney’s burial, she woke to the consciousness that her history
was known in Beryngford. The indescribable change in the manner
of her acquaintances, the curiosity in the eyes of some, the insolence
or familiarity of others, all told her that her fears were realised;
and then there came a letter from the church authorities requesting
her to resign her position as organist.</p>
<p>This letter came to the young girl on one of those dreary autumn
nights when all the desolation of the dying summer, and none of the
exhilaration of the approaching winter, is in the air. She had
been labouring all day under a cloud of depression which hovered over
her heart and brain and threatened to wholly envelop her; and the letter
from the church committee cut her heart like a poniard stroke.
Sometimes we are able to bear a series of great disasters with courage
and equanimity, while we utterly collapse under some slight misfortune.
Joy had been a heroine in her great sorrows, but now in the undeserved
loss of her position as church organist, she felt herself unable longer
to cope with Fate.</p>
<p>“There’s no place for me anywhere,” she said to
herself. Had she known the truth, that the Baroness had represented
her to the committee as a fallen woman of the metropolis, who had left
the city for the city’s good, the letter would not have seemed
to her so cruelly unjust and unjustifiable.</p>
<p>Bitter as had been her suffering at the loss of Arthur Stuart from
her life, she had found it possible to understand his hesitation to
make her his wife. With his fine sense of family pride, and his
reverence for the estate of matrimony, his belief in heredity, it seemed
quite natural to her that he should be shocked at the knowledge of the
conditions under which she was born; and the thought that her disappearance
from his life was helping him to solve a painful problem, had at times,
before this unexpected sight of him, rendered her almost happy in her
lonely exile. She had grown strangely fond of Beryngford—of
the old streets and homes which she knew must have been familiar to
her mother’s eyes, of the new church whose glorious voiced organ
gave her so many hours of comfort and relief of soul, of the tiny apartment
where she and her heart communed together. She was catlike in
her love of places, and now she must tear herself away from all these
surroundings and seek some new spot wherein to hide herself and her
sorrows.</p>
<p>It was like tearing up a half-rooted flower, already drooping from
one transplanting. She said to herself that she could never survive
another change. She read the letter over which lay in her hand,
and tears began to slowly well from her eyes. Joy seldom wept;
but now it seemed to her she was some other person, who stood apart
and wept tears of sympathy for this poor girl, Joy Irving, whose life
was so hemmed about with troubles, none of which were of her own making;
and then, like a dam which suddenly gives way and allows a river to
overflow, a great storm of sobs shook her frame, and she wept as she
had never wept before; and with her tears there came rushing back to
her heart all the old love and sorrow for the dead mother which had
so long been hidden under her burden of shame; and all the old passion
and longing for the man whose insane wife she knew to be a more hopeless
obstacle between them than this mother’s history had proven.</p>
<p>“Mother, Arthur, pity me, pity me!” she cried.
“I am all alone, and the strife is so terrible. I have never
meant to harm any living thing! Mother Arthur, <i>God</i>, how
can you all desert me so?”</p>
<p>At last, exhausted, she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.</p>
<p>She awoke the following morning with an aching head, and a heart
wherein all emotions seemed dead save a dull despair. She was
conscious of only one wish, one desire—a longing to sit again
in the organ loft, and pour forth her soul in one last farewell to that
instrument which had grown to seem her friend, confidant and lover.</p>
<p>She battled with her impulse as unreasonable and unwise, till the
day was well advanced. But it grew stronger with each hour; and
at last she set forth under a leaden sky and through a dreary November
rain to the church.</p>
<p>Her head throbbed with pain, and her hands were hot and feverish,
as she seated herself before the organ and began to play. But
with the first sounds responding to her touch, she ceased to think of
bodily discomfort.</p>
<p>The music was the voice of her own soul, uttering to God all its
desolation, its anguish and its despair. Then suddenly, with no
seeming volition of her own, it changed to a passion of human love,
human desire; the sorrow of separation, the strife with the emotions,
the agony of renunciation were all there; and the November rain, beating
in wild gusts against the window-panes behind the musician, lent a fitting
accompaniment to the strains.</p>
<p>She had been playing for perhaps an hour, when a sudden exhaustion
seized upon her, and her hands fell nerveless and inert upon her lap;
she dropped her chin upon her breast and closed her eyes. She
was drunken with her own music.</p>
<p>When she opened them again a few moments later, they fell upon the
face of Arthur Stuart, who stood a few feet distant regarding her with
haggard eyes. Unexpected and strange as his presence was, Joy
felt neither surprise nor wonder. She had been thinking of him
so intensely, he had been so interwoven with the music she had been
playing, that his bodily presence appeared to her as a natural result.
He was the first to speak; and when he spoke she noticed that his voice
sounded hoarse and broken, and that his face was drawn and pale.</p>
<p>“I came to Beryngford this morning expressly to see you, Joy,”
he said. “I have many things to say to you. I went
to your residence and was told by the maid that I would find you here.
I followed, as you see. We have had many meetings in church edifices,
in organ lofts. It seems natural to find you in such a place,
but I fear it will be unnatural and unfitting to say to you here, what
I came to say. Shall we return to your home?”</p>
<p>His eyes shone strangely from dusky caverns, and there were deep
lines about his mouth.</p>
<p>“He, too, has suffered,” thought Joy; “I have not
borne it all alone.” Then she said aloud:</p>
<p>“We are quite undisturbed here; I know of nothing I could listen
to in my room which I could not hear you say in this place. Go
on.”</p>
<p>He looked at her silently for a moment, his cheeks pale, his breast
heaving. Before he came to Beryngford, he had fought his battle
between religion and human passion, and passion had won. He had
cast under his feet every principle and tradition in which he had been
reared, and resolved to live alone henceforth for the love and companionship
of one human being, could he obtain her consent to go with him.</p>
<p>Yet for the moment, he hesitated to speak the words he had resolved
to utter, under the roof of a house of God, so strong were the influences
of his early training and his habits of thought. But as his eyes
feasted upon the face before him, his hesitation vanished, and he leaned
toward her and spoke. “Joy,” he said, “three
years ago I went away and left you in sorrow, alone, because I was afraid
to brave public opinion, afraid to displease my mother and ask you to
be my wife. The story your mother told me of your birth, a story
she left in manuscript for you to read, made a social coward of me.
I was afraid to take a girl born out of wedlock to be my life companion,
the mother of my children. Well, I married a girl born in wedlock;
and where is my companion?” He paused and laughed recklessly.
Then he went on hurriedly: “She is in an asylum for the insane.
I am chained to a corpse for life. I had not enough moral courage
three-years ago to make you my wife. But I have moral courage
enough now to come here and ask you to go with me to Australia, and
begin a new life together. My mother died a year ago. I
donned the surplice at her bidding. I will abandon it at the bidding
of Love. I sinned against heaven in marrying a woman I did not
love. I am willing to sin against the laws of man by living with
the woman I do love; will you go with me, Joy?” There was
silence save for the beating of the rain against the stained window,
and the wailing of the wind.</p>
<p>Joy was in a peculiarly overwrought condition of mind and body.
Her hours of extravagant weeping the previous night, followed by a day
of fasting, left her nervous system in a state to be easily excited
by the music she had been playing. She was virtually intoxicated
with sorrow and harmony. She was incapable of reasoning, and conscious
only of two things—that she must leave Beryngford, and that the
man whom she had loved with her whole heart for five years, was asking
her to go with him; to be no more homeless, unloved, and alone, but
his companion while life should last.</p>
<p>“Answer me, Joy,” he was pleading. “Answer
me.”</p>
<p>She moved toward the stairway that led down to the street door; and
as she flitted by him, she said, looking him full in the eyes with a
slow, grave smile, “Yes, Arthur, I will go with you.”</p>
<p>He sprang toward her with a wild cry of joy, but she was already
flying down the stairs and out upon the street.</p>
<p>When he joined her, they walked in silence through the rain to her
door, neither speaking a word, until he would have followed her within.
Then she laid her hand upon his shoulder and said gently but firmly:
“Not now, Arthur; we must not see each other again until we go
away. Write me where to meet you, and I will join you within twenty-four
hours. Do not urge me—you must obey me this once—afterward
I will obey you. Good-night.”</p>
<p>As she closed the door upon him, he said, “Oh, Joy, I have
so much to tell you. I promised your father when he was dying
that I would find you; I swore to myself that when I found you I would
never leave you, save at your own command. I go now, only because
you bid me go. When we meet again, there must be no more parting;
and you shall hear a story stranger than the wildest fiction—the
story of your father’s life. Despite your mother’s
secretiveness regarding this portion of her history, the knowledge has
come to me in the most unexpected manner, from the lips of the man himself.”</p>
<p>Joy listened dreamily to the words he was saying. Her father—she
was to know who her father was? Well, it did not matter much to
her now—father, mother, what were they, what was anything save
the fact that he had come back to her and that he loved her?</p>
<p>She smiled silently into his eyes. Glance became entangled
with glance, and would not be separated.</p>
<p>He pushed open the almost closed door and she felt herself enveloped
with arms and lips.</p>
<p>A second later she stood alone, leaning dizzily against the door;
heart, brain and blood in a mad riot of emotion.</p>
<p>Then she fell into a chair and covered her burning face with her
hands as she whispered, “Mother, mother, forgive me—I understand—I
understand.”</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>The first shock of the awakened emotions brings recklessness to some
women, and to others fear.</p>
<p>The more frivolous plunge forward like the drunken man who leaps
from the open window believing space is water.</p>
<p>The more intense draw back, startled at the unknown world before
them.</p>
<p>The woman who thinks love is all ideality is more liable to follow
into undreamed-of chasms than she who, through the complexity of her
own emotions, realises its grosser elements.</p>
<p>It was long after midnight when Joy fell into a heavy sleep, the
night of Arthur Stuart’s visit. She heard the drip of the
dreary November rain upon the roof, and all the light and warmth seemed
stricken from the universe save the fierce fire in her own heart.</p>
<p>When she woke in the late morning, great splashes of sunlight were
leaping and quivering like living things across the foot of her bed;
she sprang up, dazed for a moment by the flood of light in the room,
and went to the window and looked out upon a sun-kissed world smiling
in the arms of a perfect Indian summer day.</p>
<p>A happy little sparrow chirped upon the window sill, and some children
ran across the street bare-headed, exulting in the soft air. All
was innocence and sweetness. Mind and morals are greatly influenced
by weather. Many things seem right in the fog and gloom, which
we know to be wrong in the clear light of a sunny morning. The
events of the previous day came back to Joy’s mind as she stood
by the window, and stirred her with a sense of strangeness and terror.
The thought of the step she had resolved to take brought a sudden trembling
to her limbs. It seemed to her the eyes of God were piercing into
her heart, and she was afraid.</p>
<p>Joy had from her early girlhood been an earnest and sincere follower
of the Christian religion. The embodiment of love and sympathy
herself, it was natural for her to believe in the God of Love and to
worship Him in outward forms, as well as in her secret soul. It
was the deep and earnest fervour of religion in her heart, which rendered
her music so unusual and so inspiring. There never was, is not
and never can be greatness in any art where religious feeling is lacking.</p>
<p>There must be the consciousness of the Infinite, in the mind which
produces infinite results.</p>
<p>Though the artist be gifted beyond all other men, though he toil
unremittingly, so long as he says, “Behold what I, the gifted
and tireless toiler, can achieve,” he shall produce but mediocre
and ephemeral results. It is when he says reverently, “Behold
what powers greater than I shall achieve through me, the instrument,”
that he becomes great and men marvel at his power.</p>
<p>Joy’s religious nature found expression in her music, and so
something more than a harmony of beautiful sounds impressed her hearers.</p>
<p>The first severe blow to her faith in the church as a divine institution,
was when her rector and her lover left her alone in the hour of her
darkest trials, because he knew the story of her mother’s life.
His hesitancy to make her his wife she understood, but his absolute
desertion of her at such a time, seemed inconsistent with his calling
as a disciple of the Christ.</p>
<p>The second blow came in her dismissal from the position of organist
at the Beryngford Church, after the presence of the Baroness in the
town.</p>
<p>A disgust for human laws, and a bitter resentment towards society
took possession of her. When a gentle and loving nature is roused
to anger and indignation, it is often capable of extremes of action;
and Arthur Stuart had made his proposition of flight to Joy Irving in
an hour when her high-wrought emotions and intensely strung nerves made
any desperate act possible to her. The sight of his face, with
its evidences of severe suffering, awoke all her smouldering passion
for the man; and the thought that he was ready to tread his creed under
his feet and to defy society for her sake, stirred her with a wild joy.
God had seemed very far away, and human love was very precious; too
precious to be thrown away in obedience to any man-made law.</p>
<p>But somehow this morning God seemed nearer, and the consciousness
of what she had promised to do terrified her. Disturbed by her
thoughts, she turned towards her toilet-table and caught sight of the
letter of dismissal from the church committee. It acted upon her
like an electric shock. Resentment and indignation re-enthroned
themselves in her bosom.</p>
<p>“Is it to cater to the opinions and prejudices of people like
<i>these</i> that I hesitate to take the happiness offered me?”
she cried, as she tore the letter in bits and cast it beneath her feet.
Arthur Stuart appeared to her once more, in the light of a delivering
angel. Yes, she would go with him to the ends of the earth.
It was her inheritance to lead a lawless life. Nothing else was
possible for her. God must see how she had been hemmed in by circumstances,
how she had been goaded and driven from the paths of peace and purity
where she had wished to dwell. God was not a man, and He would
be merciful in judging her.</p>
<p>She sent her landlady two months’ rent in advance, and notice
of her departure, and set hurriedly about her preparations.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>Twenty-five years before, when Berene Dumont disappeared from Beryngford,
she had, quite unknown to herself, left one devoted though humble friend
behind, who sincerely mourned her absence.</p>
<p>Mrs Connor liked to be spoken of as “the wash-lady at the Palace.”
Yet proud as she was of this appellation, she was not satisfied with
being an excellent laundress. She was a person of ambitions.
To be the owner of a lodging-house, like the Baroness, was her leading
ambition, and to possess a “peany” for her young daughter
Kathleen was another.</p>
<p>She kept her mind fixed on these two achievements, and she worked
always for those two results. And as mind rules matter, so the
laundress became in time the landlady of a comfortable and respectable
lodging-house, and in its parlour a piano was the chief object of furniture.</p>
<p>Kathleen Connor learned to play; and at last to the joy of the lodgers,
she married and bore her “peany” away with her. During
the time when Mrs Connor was the ambitious “wash-lady” at
the Palace, Berene Dumont came to live there; and every morning when
the young woman carried the tray down to the kitchen after having served
the Baroness with her breakfast, she offered Mrs Connor a cup of coffee
and a slice of toast.</p>
<p>This simple act of thoughtfulness from the young dependant touched
the Irishwoman’s tender heart and awoke her lasting gratitude.
She had heard Berene’s story, and she had been prepared to mete
out to her that disdainful dislike which Erin almost invariably feels
towards France. Realising that the young widow was by birth and
breeding above the station of housemaid, Mrs Connor and the servants
had expected her to treat them with the same lofty airs which the Baroness
made familiar to her servants. When, instead, Berene toasted the
bread for Mrs Connor, and poured the coffee and placed it on the kitchen
table with her own hands, the heart of the wash-lady melted in her ample
breast. When the heart of the daughter of Erin melts, it permeates
her whole being; and Mrs Connor became a secret devotee at the shrine
of Miss Dumont.</p>
<p>She had never entertained cordial feelings toward the Baroness.
When a society lady—especially a titled one—enters into
competition with working people, and yet refuses to associate with them,
it always incites their enmity. The working population of Beryngford,
from the highest to the lowest grades, felt a sense of resentment toward
the Baroness, who in her capacity of landlady still maintained the airs
of a grand dame, and succeeded in keeping her footing with some of the
most fashionable people in the town.</p>
<p>Added to these causes of dislike, the Baroness was, like many wealthier
people, excessively close in her dealings with working folk, haggling
over a few cents or a few moments of wasted time, while she was generosity
itself in association with her equals.</p>
<p>Mrs Connor, therefore, felt both pity and sympathy for Miss Dumont,
whose position in the Palace she knew to be a difficult one; and when
Preston Cheney came upon the scene the romantic mind of the motherly
Irishwoman fashioned a future for the young couple which would have
done credit to the pen of a Mrs Southworth.</p>
<p>Mr Cheney always had a kind word for the laundress, and a tip as
well; and when Mrs Connor’s dream of seeing him act the part of
the Prince and Berene the Cinderella of a modern fairy story, ended
in the disappearance of Miss Dumont and the marriage of Mr Cheney to
Mabel Lawrence, the unhappy wash-lady mourned unceasingly.</p>
<p>Ten years of hard, unremitting toil and rigid economy passed away
before Mrs Connor could realise her ambition of becoming a landlady
in the purchase of a small house which contained but four rooms, three
of which were rented to lodgers. The increase in the value of
her property during the next five years, left the fortunate speculator
with a fine profit when she sold her house at the end of that time,
and rented a larger one; and as she was an excellent financier, it was
not strange that, at the time Joy Irving appeared on the scene, “Mrs
Connor’s apartments” were as well and favourably known in
Beryngford, if not as distinctly fashionable, as the Palace had been
more than twenty years ago.</p>
<p>So it was under the roof of her mother’s devoted and faithful
mourner that the unhappy young orphan had found a home when she came
to hide herself away from all who had ever known her.</p>
<p>The landlady experienced the same haunting sensation of something
past and gone when she looked on the girl’s beautiful face, which
had so puzzled the Baroness; a something which drew and attracted the
warm heart of the Irishwoman, as the magnet draws the steel. Time
and experience had taught Mrs Connor to be discreet in her treatment
of her tenants; to curb her curiosity and control her inclination to
sociability. But in the case of Miss Irving she had found it impossible
to refrain from sundry kindly acts which were not included in the terms
of the contract. Certain savoury dishes found their way mysteriously
to Miss Irving’s <i>ménage</i>, and flowers appeared in
her room as if by magic, and in various other ways the good heart and
intentions of Mrs Connor were unobtrusively expressed toward her favourite
tenant. Joy had taken a suite of four rooms, where, with her maid,
she lived in modest comfort and complete retirement from the social
world of Beryngford, save as the close connection of the church with
Beryngford society rendered her, in the position of organist, a participant
in many of the social features of the town. While Joy was in the
midst of her preparations for departure, Mrs Connor made her appearance
with swollen eyes and red, blistered face.</p>
<p>“And it’s the talk of that ould witch of a Baroness,
may the divil run away with her, that is drivin’ ye away, is it?”
she cried excitedly; “and it’s not Mrs Connor as will consist
to the daughter of your mother, God rest her soul, lavin’ my house
like this. To think that I should have had ye here all these years,
and never known ye to be her child till now, and now to see ye driven
away by the divil’s own! But if it’s the fear of not
being able to pay the rint because ye’ve lost your position, ye
needn’t lave for many a long day to come. It’s Mrs
Connor would only be as happy as the queen herself to work her hands
to the bone for ye, remembering your darlint of a mother, and not belavin’
one word against her, nor ye.”</p>
<p>So soon as Joy could gain possession of her surprised senses, she
calmed the weeping woman and began to question her.</p>
<p>“My good woman,” she said, “what are you talking
about? Did you ever know my mother, and where did you know her?”</p>
<p>“In the Palace, to be sure, as they called the house of that
imp of Satan, the Baroness. I was the wash-lady there, for it’s
not Mrs Conner the landlady as is above spakin’ of the days when
she wasn’t as high in the world as she is now; and many is the
cheerin’ cup of coffee or tay from your own mother’s hand,
that I’ve had in the forenoon, to chirk me up and put me through
my washing, bless her sweet face; and niver have I forgotten her; and
niver have I ceased to miss her and the fine young man that took such
an interest in her and that I’m as sure loved her, in spite of
his marrying the Judge’s spook of a daughter, as I am that the
Holy Virgin loves us all; and it’s a foine man that your father
must have been, but young Mr Cheney was foiner.”</p>
<p>So little by little Joy drew the story from Mrs Connor and learned
the name of the mysterious father, so carefully guarded from her in
Mrs Irving’s manuscript, the father at whose funeral services
she had so recently officiated as organist.</p>
<p>And strangest and most startling of all, she learned that Arthur
Stuart’s insane wife was her half-sister.</p>
<p>Added to all this, Joy was made aware of the nature of the reports
which the Baroness had been circulating about her; and her feeling of
bitter resentment and anger toward the church committee was modified
by the knowledge that it was not owing to the shadow on her birth, but
to the false report of her own evil life, that she had been asked to
resign.</p>
<p>After Mrs Connor had gone, Joy was for a long time in meditation,
and then turned in a mechanical manner to her delayed task. Her
book of “Impressions” lay on a table close at hand.</p>
<p>And as she took it up the leaves opened to the sentence she had written
three years before, after her talk with the rector about Marah Adams.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>“It seems to me I could not love a man who did not seek to
lead me higher; the moment he stood below me and asked me to descend,
I should realise he was to be pitied, not adored!”</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>She shut the book and fell on her knees in prayer; and as she prayed
a strange thing happened. The room filled with a peculiar mist,
like the smoke which is illuminated by the brilliant rays of the morning
sun; and in the midst of it a small square of intense rose-coloured
light was visible. This square grew larger and larger, until it
assumed the size and form of a man, whose face shone with immortal glory.
He smiled and laid his hand on Joy’s head. “Child,
awake,” he said, and with these words vast worlds dawned upon
the girl’s sight. She stood above and apart from her grosser
body, untrammelled and free; she saw long vistas of lives in the past
through which she had come to the present; she saw long vistas of lives
in the future through which she must pass to gain the experience which
would lead her back to God. An ineffable peace and serenity enveloped
her. The divine Presence seemed to irradiate the place in which
she stood—she felt herself illuminated, transfigured, sanctified
by the holy flame within her.</p>
<p>When she came back to the kneeling form by the couch, and rose to
her feet, all the aspect of life had changed for her.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Joy Irving had unpacked her trunks and set her small apartment to
rights, when the postman’s ring sounded, and a moment later a
letter was slipped under her door.</p>
<p>She picked it up, and recognised Arthur Stuart’s penmanship.
She sat down, holding the unopened letter in her hands.</p>
<p>“It is Arthur’s message, appointing a time and place
for our meeting,” she said to herself. “How long ago
that strange interview with him seems!—yet it was only yesterday.
How utterly the whole of life has changed for me since then! The
universe seems larger, God nearer, and life grander. I am as one
who slept and dreamed of darkness and sorrow, and awakes to light and
joy.”</p>
<p>But when she opened the envelope and read the few hastily written
lines within, an exclamation of surprise escaped her lips. It
was a brief note from Arthur Stuart and began abruptly without an address
(a manner more suggestive of strong passion than any endearing words).</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>“The first item which my eye fell upon in the telegraphic column
of the morning paper, was the death of my wife in the Retreat for the
Insane. I leave by the first express to bring her body here for
burial.</p>
<p>“A merciful providence has saved us the necessity of defying
the laws of God or man, and opened the way for me to claim you before
all the world as my worshipped wife so soon as propriety will permit.</p>
<p>“I shall see you at any hour you may indicate after to-morrow,
for a brief interview.</p>
<p>“ARTHUR EMERSON STUART.”</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>Joy held the letter in her hand a long time, lost in profound reflection.
Then she sat down to her desk and wrote three letters; one was to Mrs
Lawrence; one to the chairman of the church committee, who had requested
her resignation; the third was to Mr Stuart, and read thus:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>“My Dear Mr Stuart,—Many strange things have occurred
to me since I saw you. I have learned the name of my father, and
this knowledge reveals the fact to me that your unfortunate wife was
my half-sister. I have learned, too, that the loss of my position
here as organist is not due to the narrow prejudice of the committee
regarding the shadow on my birth, but to malicious stories put in circulation
by Mrs Lawrence, relating to me.</p>
<p>“Infamous and libellous tales regarding my life have been told,
and must be refuted. I have written to Mrs Lawrence demanding
a letter from her, clearing my personal character, or giving her the
alternative of appearing in court to answer the charge of defamation
of character. I have also written to the church committee requesting
them to meet me here in my apartments to-morrow, and explain their demand
for my resignation.</p>
<p>“I now write to you my last letter and my farewell.</p>
<p>“In the overwrought and desperate mood in which you found me,
it did not seem a sin for me to go away with the man who loved me and
whom I loved, before false ideas of life and false ideas of duty made
him the husband of another. Conscious that your wife was a hopeless
lunatic whose present or future could in no way be influenced by our
actions, I reasoned that we wronged no one in taking the happiness so
long denied us.</p>
<p>“The last three years of my life have been full of desolation
and sorrow. From the day my mother died, the stars of light which
had gemmed the firmament for me, seemed one by one to be obliterated,
until I stood in utter darkness. You found me in the very blackest
hour of all—and you seemed a shining sun to me.</p>
<p>“Yet so soon as my tired brain and sorrow-worn heart were able
to think and reason, I realised that it was not the man I had worshipped
as an ideal, who had come to me and asked me to lower my standard of
womanhood. It was another and less worthy man—and this other
was to be my companion through time, and perhaps eternity. When
I learned that your insane wife was my sister, and that knowing this
fact you yet planned our flight, an indescribable feeling of repulsion
awoke in my heart.</p>
<p>“I confess that this arose more from a sentiment than a principle.
The relationship of your wife to me made the contemplated sin no greater,
but rendered it more tasteless.</p>
<p>“Had I gone away with you as I consented to do, the world would
have said, she but follows her fatal inheritance—like mother like
daughter. There were some bitter rebellious hours, when that thought
came to me. But to-day light has shone upon me, and I know there
is a law of Divine Heredity which is greater and more powerful than
any tendency we derive from parents or grandparents. I have believed
much in creeds all my life; and in the hour of great trials I found
I was leaning on broken reeds. I have now ceased to look to men
or books for truth—I have found it in my own soul. I acknowledge
no unfortunate tendencies from any earthly inheritance; centuries of
sinful or weak ancestors are as nothing beside the God within.
The divine and immortal <i>me</i> is older than my ancestral tree; it
is as old as the universe. It is as old as the first great Cause
of which it is a part. Strong with this consciousness, I am prepared
to meet the world alone, and unafraid from this day onward. When
I think of the optimistic temperament, the good brain, and the vigorous
body which were naturally mine, and then of the wretched being who was
my legitimate sister, I know that I was rightly generated, however unfortunately
born, just as she was wrongly generated though legally born.</p>
<p>“My father, I am told, married into a family whose crest is
traced back to the tenth century. I carry a coat-of-arms older
yet—the Cross; it dates back eighteen hundred years—yes,
many thousand years, and so I feel myself the nobler of the two.
Had you been more of a disciple of Christ, and less of a disciple of
man, you would have realised this truth long ago, as I realise it to-day.
No man should dare stand before his fellows as a revealer of divine
knowledge until he has penetrated the inmost recesses of his own soul,
and found God’s holy image there; and until he can show others
the way to the same wonderful discovery. The God you worshipped
was far away in the heavens, so far that he could not come to you and
save you from your baser self in the hour of temptation. But the
true God has been miraculously revealed to me. He dwells within;
one who has found Him, will never debase His temple.</p>
<p>“Though there is no legal obstacle now in the path to our union,
there is a spiritual one which is insurmountable. <i>I no longer
love you</i>. I am sorry for you, but that is all. You belonged
to my yesterday—you can have no part in my to-day. The man
who tempted me in my weak hour to go lower, could not help me to go
higher. And my face is set toward the heights.</p>
<p>“I must prove to that world that a child born under the shadow
of shame, and of two weak, uncontrolled parents, can be virtuous, strong,
brave and sensible. That she can conquer passion and impulse,
by the use of her divine inheritance of will; and that she can compel
the respect of the public by her discreet life and lofty ideals.</p>
<p>“I shall stay in this place until I have vindicated my name
and character from every aspersion cast upon them. I shall retain
my position of organist, and retain it until I have accumulated sufficient
means to go abroad and prepare myself for the musical career in which
I know I can excel. I am young, strong and ambitious. My
unusual sorrows will give me greater power of character if I accept
them as spiritual tonics—bitter but strengthening.</p>
<p>“Farewell, and may God be with you.</p>
<p>“Joy Irving.”</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>When the rector of St Blank’s returned from the Beryngford
Cemetery, where he had placed the body of his wife beside her father,
he found this letter lying on his table in the hotel.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
<p>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, AN AMBITIOUS MAN ***</p>
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