An Ambitious Man
Page 39It was a superb morning in early October. New York was like a
beautiful woman arrayed in her fresh autumn costume, disporting
herself before admiring eyes.
Absorbed in each other's society, their pulses beating high with
youth, love and health; the young couple walked through the crowded
avenues of the great city, as happily and as naturally as Adam and
Eve might have walked in the Garden of Eden the morning after
Creation.
Both were city born and city bred, yet both were as unfashionable and
untrammelled by custom as two children of the plains.
In the very heart of the greatest metropolis in America, there are
people who live and retain all the primitive simplicity of village
life and thought. Mr Irving had been one of these. Coming to New
York from an interior village when a young man, he had, through
wholly free from the social life of the city in which he lived.
After his marriage his entire happiness lay in his home, and Joy was
reared by parents who made her world. Mrs Irving sympathised fully
with her husband in his distaste for society, and her delicate health
rendered her almost a recluse from the world.
A few pleasant acquaintances, no intimates, music, books, and a large
share of her time given to charitable work, composed the life of Joy
Irving.
She had never been in a fashionable assemblage; she had never
attended a theatre, as Mr Irving did not approve of them.
Extremely fond of outdoor life, she walked, unattended, wherever her
mood led her. As she had no acquaintances among society people, she
knew nothing and cared less for the rules which govern the
graceful figure were well known among the poorer quarters of the
city, and it was through her work in such places that Arthur Stuart's
attention had first been called to her.
As for him, he was filled with that high, but not always wise,
disdain for society and its customs, which we so often find in town-
bred young men of intellectual pursuits. He was clean-minded,
independent, sure of his own purposes, and wholly indifferent to the
opinions of inferiors regarding his habits.
He loved the park, and he asked Joy to walk with him there, as freely
as he would have asked her to sit with him in a conservatory. It was
a great delight to the young girl to go.
"It seems such a pity that the women of New York get so little
benefit from this beautiful park," she said as they strolled along
a way from their carriages, and the poor people no doubt derive new
life from their Sunday promenades here. But there are thousands like
myself who are almost wholly debarred from its pleasures. I have
always wanted to walk here, but once I came and a rude man in a
carriage spoke to me. Mother told me never to come alone again. It
seems strange to me that men who are so proud of their strength, and
who should be the natural protectors of woman, can belittle
themselves by annoying or frightening her when alone. I am sure that
same man would never think of speaking to me now that I am with you.
How cowardly he seems when you think of it! Yet I am told there are
many like him, though that was my only experience of the kind."