The sick man started up on his couch, his eyes flaming, his cheeks glowing with sudden l.u.s.tre.
"My child--the natural child of Berene"s love and mine, you say; oh, my G.o.d, speak and tell me what you mean; speak before I die of joy so terrible it is like anguish."
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.
"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.
"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."
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 pa.s.sed, and at the end of the fifth day his spirit took its flight, let us hope to join its true mate.
It had been one of his dying requests to have his body taken to Beryngford and placed beside that of Judge Lawrence.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
CHAPTER XVIII
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.
"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."
So all unconsciously Joy fled from the metropolis to the very place from which her mother had vanished twenty-two years before.
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.
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 ma.n.u.script over, and tried to argue herself into the philosophy which had sustained the author of her being through all these years.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:-
People talk about following a divine law of love, when they wish to excuse their brute impulses and break social and civil codes.
No love is sanctioned by G.o.d, which shatters human hearts.
Fathers are only distantly related to their children; love for the male parent is a matter of education.
The devil macadamises all his pavements.
A natural child has no place in an unnatural world.
When we cannot respect our parents, it is difficult to keep our ideal of G.o.d.
Love is a mushroom, and l.u.s.t is its poisonous counterpart.
It is a pity that people who despise civilisation should be so uncivil as to stay in it. There is always darkest Africa.
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 h.e.l.l.
It is easy to trust in G.o.d 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.
An anonymous letter is the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a diseased mind.
An envious woman is a spark from Purgatory.
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 G.o.d, when we are afraid to meet the eyes of men.
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.
Virtue is very secretive about her payments, but the whole world hears of it when vice settles up.
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.
When the fruit must apologise for the tree, we do not care to save the seed.
It is only when G.o.d and man have formed a syndicate and agreed upon their laws, that marriage is a safe investment.
The love that does not protect its object would better change its name.
When we say OF people what we would not say TO them, we are either liars or cowards.
The enmity of some people is the greatest compliment they can pay us.