_ CHAPTER XX
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 menage, 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. _