Morethan two decades had passed since Preston Cheney followed the dictates of his ambition and married Mabel Lawrence.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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:
“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.
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.
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.
Judge Lawrence died when Alice was fifteen years of age, leaving both his widow and his daughter handsomely provided for.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
TheBaroness had always been a churchgoing woman, yet she had never united with any church, or subscribed to any creed.
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.
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?
This had been true of the pastor in Beryngford, and it proved equally true of their spiritual adviser in Washington and in New York.
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.
But each Sunday this successful robber occupied his high-priced church pew, devoutly listening to the divine word.
He never failed to partake of the holy communion, nor was his right to do so ever questioned.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yet a vision of youth and beauty always made the Baroness unhappy, now that both blessings were irrevocably lost to her.
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.
“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.”
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.
Upin 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.
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.
“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.”
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.
“Where does she come from?” asked the deacon, as a pause in the music occurred.
“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.
“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.”
Again the organ pealed forth, this time in that passionate music originally written for the Garden Scene inFaust, and which the church has boldly taken and arranged as a quartette to the words, “Come unto me.”
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.”
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.
“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.”
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.”
“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.”
The girl’s pink cheek flushed crimson, like a rose bathed in the sunset colours of the sky.
“I did not think you were a man to coin pretty speeches,” she said.
“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.”
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.
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.
Both were city born and city bred, yet both were as unfashionable and untrammelled by custom as two children of the plains.
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.
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.
She had never been in a fashionable assemblage; she had never attended a theatre, as Mr Irving did not approve of them.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
“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.”
“Then you believe in evolution?” Joy asked with a note of surprise in her voice.
“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.”
“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.
They were seated on a rustic bench now, under the shadow of a great tree.
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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.”
“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.
“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.”
Joy was still thinking of the reflection the rector had cast upon his congregation. It hurt her, and she protested.
“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.”
The rector smiled sadly.
“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.
“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.”
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!”
“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.”
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.”
Eversince 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.
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:—
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.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.If we could all be compelled by some mysterious power tothink aloudon 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.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.It is a curious fact, that the most aggressively sensitive persons are at heart the most conceited.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.After the devil had made all the trouble for woman he could with the fig leaf, he introduced the French heel.It is well to see the ridiculous side of things, but not of people.Most of us would rather be popular than right.
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.
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.
If we could all be compelled by some mysterious power tothink aloudon 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.
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.
It is a curious fact, that the most aggressively sensitive persons are at heart the most conceited.
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.
After the devil had made all the trouble for woman he could with the fig leaf, he introduced the French heel.
It is well to see the ridiculous side of things, but not of people.
Most of us would rather be popular than right.
To these impressions Joy added the following:—
It is not the interior of one’s house, but the interior of one’s mind which makes home.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.I wish we had more religion in the world and fewer churches.People who believe in no God, invariably exalt themselves into His position, and worship with the very idolatry they decry in others.Music is the echo of the rhythm of God’s respirations.Poetry is the effort of the divine part of man to formulate a worthy language in which to converse with angels.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.Death should be called the Great Revealer instead of the Great Destroyer.Some people think the way into heaven is through embroidered altar cloths.The soul that has any conception of its own possibilities does not fear solitude.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.Astronomers know more about the character of the stars than the average American mother knows about the temperament of her daughters.To some women the most terrible thought connected with death is the dates in the obituary notice.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.
It is not the interior of one’s house, but the interior of one’s mind which makes home.
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.
I wish we had more religion in the world and fewer churches.
People who believe in no God, invariably exalt themselves into His position, and worship with the very idolatry they decry in others.
Music is the echo of the rhythm of God’s respirations.
Poetry is the effort of the divine part of man to formulate a worthy language in which to converse with angels.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Death should be called the Great Revealer instead of the Great Destroyer.
Some people think the way into heaven is through embroidered altar cloths.
The soul that has any conception of its own possibilities does not fear solitude.
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.
Astronomers know more about the character of the stars than the average American mother knows about the temperament of her daughters.
To some women the most terrible thought connected with death is the dates in the obituary notice.
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.
Therector 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
The Baroness listened with a cold, sinking sensation at her heart
“I am sure your son would never make a choice which was not agreeable to you,” she ventured.
“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.”
And then the Baroness, with drawn lips and anguished eyes, took both of Mrs Stuart’s hands in hers, and cried out:
“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.”
The two women fell weeping into each other’s arms.
Preston Cheneyconceived 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.
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.
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.
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.
Before the organist had finished her introduction, he turned to Alice, saying:
“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?”
“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.
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.
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.
When the organist had finished her second selection, Mr Cheney addressed the same question to his wife which he had addressed to Alice.
“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.
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?”
“Yes, wait until we get home, and I will tell you all about her,” the Baroness replied.
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.
The rector saw him and came down into the aisle to speak to him.
“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.”
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.”
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
“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?”
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.
“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?”
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.”
“I am sure I don’t care to know her,” chimed in Alice. “I thought her quite bold and forward in her manner.”
“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.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
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.
“I wish she were my daughter,” he said to himself; “what a comfort and delight a girl like that would be to me!”
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.
“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.”
Twoweeks 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.
But inquiry elicited the information that the young musician had merely employed a substitute because her mother was lying seriously ill at home.
It was then that the Baroness put into execution a desire she had to make the personal acquaintance of Joy Irving.
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.
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.
She made her resolve known to the rector.
“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?”
“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.”
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.
Our guardian angels sometimes send these feelings as danger signals to our souls.
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.
“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.”
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.
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:
“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.
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.
“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.
“Berene!”
“Madam!”
The two spoke simultaneously, and the invalid had started upright in bed.
“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.
“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.”
Joy passed out with drooping head and a sinking heart. As the door closed behind her the Baroness spoke.
“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?”
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.