An Ambitious Man

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“There is a rumour afloat,” he said, “that Joy is not Mr Irving’s child. I love your daughter, Mrs Irving, and I feel it is my right to know all the circumstances of her life. I believe the story which was told my mother to be the invention of some enemy who is jealous of Joy’s beauty and talents, and I would like to be in a position to silence these slanders.”

So Mrs Irving told the story to the end; and having told it, she felt relieved and happy in the thought that it was imparted to the only two people whom it could concern in the future.

No disturbing fear came to her that the rector would hesitate to make Joy his wife. To Berene Dumont, love was the law. If love existed between two souls she could not understand why any convention of society should stand in the way of its fulfilment.

Arthur Stuart in his rôle of spiritual confessor and consoler had never before encountered such a phase of human nature. He had listened to many a tale of sin and folly from women’s lips, but always had the sinner bemoaned her sin, and bitterly repented her weakness. Here instead was what the world would consider a fallen woman, who on her deathbed regarded her weakness as her strength, her shame as her glory, and who seemed to expect him to take the same view of the matter. When he attempted to urge her to repent, the words stuck in his throat. He left the deathbed of the unfortunate sinner without having expressed one of the conflicting emotions which filled his heart. But he left it with such a weight on his soul, such distress on his mind that death seemed to him the only way of escape from a life of torment.

His love for Joy Irving was not killed by the story he had heard. But it had received a terrible shock, and the thought of making her his wife with the probability that the Baroness would spread the scandal broadcast, and that his marriage would break his mother’s heart, tortured him. Added to this were his theories on heredity, and the fear that there might, nay, must be, some dangerous tendency hidden in the daughter of a mother who had so erred, and who in dying showed no comprehension of the enormity of her sin. Had Mrs Irving bewailed her fall, and represented herself as the victim of a wily villain, the rector would not have felt so great a fear of the daughter’s inheritance. A frail, repentant woman he could pity and forgive, but it seemed to him that Mrs Irving was utterly lacking in moral nature. She was spiritually blind. The thought tortured him. To leave Joy at this time without calling to see her seemed base and cowardly; yet he dared not trust himself in her presence. So he sent her the strangely worded letter, and went away hoping to be shown the path of duty before he returned.

At the end of three months he came home stronger in body and mind. He had resolved to compromise with fate; to continue his calls upon Joy Irving; to be her friend and rector only, until by the passage of time, and the changes which occur so rapidly in every society, the scandal in regard to her birth had been forgotten. And until by patience and tenderness, he won his mother’s consent to the union. He felt that all this must come about as he desired, if he did not aggravate his mother’s feeling or defy public opinion by too precipitate methods.

He could not wholly give up all thoughts of Joy Irving. She had grown to be a part of his hopes and dreams of the future, as she was a part of the reality of his present. But she was very young; he could afford to wait, and while he waited to study the girl’s character, and if he saw any budding shoot which bespoke the maternal tree, to prune and train it to his own liking. For the sake of his unborn children he felt it his duty to carefully study any woman he thought to make his wife.

But when he reached home, the surprising intelligence awaited him that Miss Irving had left the metropolis. A brief note to the church authorities, resigning her position, and saying that she was about to leave the city, was all that anyone knew of her.

The rector instituted a quiet search, but only succeeded in learning that she had conducted her preparations for departure with the greatest secrecy, and that to no one had she imparted her plans.

Whenever a young woman shrouds her actions in the garments of secrecy, she invites suspicion. The people who love to suspect their fellow-beings of wrong-doing were not absent on this occasion.