THE first shock of the awakened emotions brings recklessness to some
women, and to others fear.
The more frivolous plunge forward like the drunken man who leaps from the
open window believing space is water.
The more intense draw back, startled at the unknown world before them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There must be the consciousness of the Infinite, in the mind which
produces infinite results.
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.
Joy’s religious nature found expression in her music, and so something
more than a harmony of beautiful sounds impressed her hearers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Is it to cater to the opinions and prejudices of people like _these_
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.
She sent her landlady two months’ rent in advance, and notice of her
departure, and set hurriedly about her preparations.
* * * * *
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
_ménage_, 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.
“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.”
So soon as Joy could gain possession of her surprised senses, she calmed
the weeping woman and began to question her.
“My good woman,” she said, “what are you talking about? Did you ever
know my mother, and where did you know her?”
“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.”
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.
And strangest and most startling of all, she learned that Arthur Stuart’s
insane wife was her half-sister.
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.
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.
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.
“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!”
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.
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.