Chapter XXI

JOY IRVING had unpacked her trunks and set her small apartment to rights, when the postman’s ring sounded, and a moment later a letter was slipped under her door.

She picked it up, and recognised Arthur Stuart’s penmanship. She sat down, holding the unopened letter in her hands.

“It is Arthur’s message, appointing a time and place for our meeting,” she said to herself. “How long ago that strange interview with him seems!—yet it was only yesterday. How utterly the whole of life has changed for me since then! The universe seems larger, God nearer, and life grander. I am as one who slept and dreamed of darkness and sorrow, and awakes to light and joy.”

But when she opened the envelope and read the few hastily written lines within, an exclamation of surprise escaped her lips. It was a brief note from Arthur Stuart and began abruptly without an address (a manner more suggestive of strong passion than any endearing words).

“The first item which my eye fell upon in the telegraphic column of
the morning paper, was the death of my wife in the Retreat for the
Insane. I leave by the first express to bring her body here for
burial.

“A merciful providence has saved us the necessity of defying the laws
of God or man, and opened the way for me to claim you before all the
world as my worshipped wife so soon as propriety will permit.

“I shall see you at any hour you may indicate after to-morrow, for a
brief interview.

“ARTHUR EMERSON STUART.”

Joy held the letter in her hand a long time, lost in profound reflection. Then she sat down to her desk and wrote three letters; one was to Mrs Lawrence; one to the chairman of the church committee, who had requested her resignation; the third was to Mr Stuart, and read thus:

“MY DEAR MR STUART,—Many strange things have occurred to me since I
saw you. I have learned the name of my father, and this knowledge
reveals the fact to me that your unfortunate wife was my half-sister.
I have learned, too, that the loss of my position here as organist is
not due to the narrow prejudice of the committee regarding the shadow
on my birth, but to malicious stories put in circulation by Mrs
Lawrence, relating to me.

“Infamous and libellous tales regarding my life have been told, and
must be refuted. I have written to Mrs Lawrence demanding a letter
from her, clearing my personal character, or giving her the
alternative of appearing in court to answer the charge of defamation
of character. I have also written to the church committee requesting
them to meet me here in my apartments to-morrow, and explain their
demand for my resignation.

“I now write to you my last letter and my farewell.

“In the overwrought and desperate mood in which you found me, it did
not seem a sin for me to go away with the man who loved me and whom I
loved, before false ideas of life and false ideas of duty made him
the husband of another. Conscious that your wife was a hopeless
lunatic whose present or future could in no way be influenced by our
actions, I reasoned that we wronged no one in taking the happiness so
long denied us.

“The last three years of my life have been full of desolation and
sorrow. From the day my mother died, the stars of light which had
gemmed the firmament for me, seemed one by one to be obliterated,
until I stood in utter darkness. You found me in the very blackest
hour of all—and you seemed a shining sun to me.

“Yet so soon as my tired brain and sorrow-worn heart were able to
think and reason, I realised that it was not the man I had worshipped
as an ideal, who had come to me and asked me to lower my standard of
womanhood. It was another and less worthy man—and this other was to
be my companion through time, and perhaps eternity. When I learned
that your insane wife was my sister, and that knowing this fact you
yet planned our flight, an indescribable feeling of repulsion awoke
in my heart.

“I confess that this arose more from a sentiment than a principle.
The relationship of your wife to me made the contemplated sin no
greater, but rendered it more tasteless.

“Had I gone away with you as I consented to do, the world would have
said, she but follows her fatal inheritance—like mother like
daughter. There were some bitter rebellious hours, when that thought
came to me. But to-day light has shone upon me, and I know there is
a law of Divine Heredity which is greater and more powerful than any
tendency we derive from parents or grandparents. I have believed
much in creeds all my life; and in the hour of great trials I found I
was leaning on broken reeds. I have now ceased to look to men or
books for truth—I have found it in my own soul. I acknowledge no
unfortunate tendencies from any earthly inheritance; centuries of
sinful or weak ancestors are as nothing beside the God within. The
divine and immortal _me_ is older than my ancestral tree; it is as
old as the universe. It is as old as the first great Cause of which
it is a part. Strong with this consciousness, I am prepared to meet
the world alone, and unafraid from this day onward. When I think of
the optimistic temperament, the good brain, and the vigorous body
which were naturally mine, and then of the wretched being who was my
legitimate sister, I know that I was rightly generated, however
unfortunately born, just as she was wrongly generated though legally
born.

“My father, I am told, married into a family whose crest is traced
back to the tenth century. I carry a coat-of-arms older yet—the
Cross; it dates back eighteen hundred years—yes, many thousand years,
and so I feel myself the nobler of the two. Had you been more of a
disciple of Christ, and less of a disciple of man, you would have
realised this truth long ago, as I realise it to-day. No man should
dare stand before his fellows as a revealer of divine knowledge until
he has penetrated the inmost recesses of his own soul, and found
God’s holy image there; and until he can show others the way to the
same wonderful discovery. The God you worshipped was far away in the
heavens, so far that he could not come to you and save you from your
baser self in the hour of temptation. But the true God has been
miraculously revealed to me. He dwells within; one who has found
Him, will never debase His temple.

“Though there is no legal obstacle now in the path to our union,
there is a spiritual one which is insurmountable. _I no longer love
you_. I am sorry for you, but that is all. You belonged to my
yesterday—you can have no part in my to-day. The man who tempted me
in my weak hour to go lower, could not help me to go higher. And my
face is set toward the heights.

“I must prove to that world that a child born under the shadow of
shame, and of two weak, uncontrolled parents, can be virtuous,
strong, brave and sensible. That she can conquer passion and
impulse, by the use of her divine inheritance of will; and that she
can compel the respect of the public by her discreet life and lofty
ideals.

“I shall stay in this place until I have vindicated my name and
character from every aspersion cast upon them. I shall retain my
position of organist, and retain it until I have accumulated
sufficient means to go abroad and prepare myself for the musical
career in which I know I can excel. I am young, strong and
ambitious. My unusual sorrows will give me greater power of
character if I accept them as spiritual tonics—bitter but
strengthening.

“Farewell, and may God be with you.

“JOY IRVING.”

When the rector of St Blank’s returned from the Beryngford Cemetery, where he had placed the body of his wife beside her father, he found this letter lying on his table in the hotel.

* * * * *

THE END