An Ambitious Man

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

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.