An Ambitious Man

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

It was in thoughts like these that Joy relieved her heart of some of the bitterness and sorrow which weighed upon it. And day after day she bore about with her the dread of having the story of her mother’s sin known in her new home.

As our fears, like our wishes, when strong and unremitting, prove to be magnets, the result of Joy’s despondent fears came in the scandal which the Baroness had planted and left to flourish and grow in Beryngford after her departure. An hour before the services began, on the day of Preston Cheney’s burial, Joy learned at whose rites she was to officiate as organist. A pang of mingled emotions shot through her heart at the sound of his name. She had seen this man but a few times, and spoken with him but once; yet he had left a strong impression upon her memory. She had felt drawn to him by his sympathetic face and atmosphere, the sorrow of his kind eyes, and the keen appreciation he had shown in her art; and just in the measure that she had been attracted by him, she had been repelled by the three women to whom she was presented at the same time. She saw them all again mentally, as she had seen them on that and many other days. Mrs Cheney and Alice, with their fretful, plain, dissatisfied faces, and their over-burdened costumes, and the Baroness, with her cruel heart gazing through her worn mask of defaced beauty.

She had been conscious of a feeling of overwhelming pity for the kind, attractive man who made the fourth of that quartette. She knew that he had obtained honours and riches from life, but she pitied him for his home environment. She had felt so thankful for her own happy home life at the time; and she remembered, too, the sweet hope that lay like a closed-up bud in the bottom of her heart that day, as the quartette moved away and left her standing alone with Arthur Stuart.

It was only a few weeks later that the end came to all her dreams, through that terrible anonymous letter.

It was the Baroness who had sent it, she knew—the Baroness whose early hatred for her mother had descended to the child. “And now I must sit in the same house with her again,” she said, “and perhaps meet her face to face; and she may tell the story here of my mother’s shame, even as I have felt and feared it must yet be told. How strange that a ‘love child’ should inspire so much hatred!”

Joy had carefully refrained from reading New York papers ever since she left the city; and she had no correspondents. It was her wish and desire to utterly sink and forget the past life there. Therefore she knew nothing of Arthur Stuart’s marriage to the daughter of Preston Cheney. She thought of the rector as dead to her. She believed he had given her up because of the stain upon her birth, and, bitter as the pain had been, she never blamed him. She had fought with her love for him and believed that it was buried in the grave of all other happy memories.

But as the earth is wrenched open by volcanic eruptions and long buried corpses are revealed again to the light of day, so the unexpected sight of Arthur Stuart, as he took his place beside Mabel and the Baroness during the funeral services, revealed all the pent-up passion of her heart to her own frightened soul.

To strong natures, the greater the inward excitement the more quiet the exterior; and Jay passed through the services, and performed her duties, without betraying to those about her the violent emotions under which she laboured.

The rector of Beryngford Church requested her to remain for a few moments, and consult with him on a matter concerning the next week’s musical services. It was from him Joy learned the relation which Arthur Stuart bore to the dead man, and that Beryngford was the former home of the Baroness.

Her mother’s manuscript had carefully avoided all mention of names of people or places. Yet Joy realised now that she must be living in the very scene of her mother’s early life; she longed to make inquiries, but was prevented by the fear that she might hear her mother’s name mentioned disrespectfully.