An Ambitious Man

It was like tearing up a half-rooted flower, already drooping from

one transplanting. She said to herself that she could never survive

another change. She read the letter over which lay in her hand, and

tears began to slowly well from her eyes. Joy seldom wept; but now

it seemed to her she was some other person, who stood apart and wept

tears of sympathy for this poor girl, Joy Irving, whose life was so

hemmed about with troubles, none of which were of her own making; and

then, like a dam which suddenly gives way and allows a river to

overflow, a great storm of sobs shook her frame, and she wept as she

had never wept before; and with her tears there came rushing back to

her heart all the old love and sorrow for the dead mother which had

so long been hidden under her burden of shame; and all the old

passion and longing for the man whose insane wife she knew to be a

more hopeless obstacle between them than this mother's history had

proven.

"Mother, Arthur, pity me, pity me!" she cried. "I am all alone, and

the strife is so terrible. I have never meant to harm any living

thing! Mother Arthur, GOD, how can you all desert me so?"

At last, exhausted, she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

She awoke the following morning with an aching head, and a heart

wherein all emotions seemed dead save a dull despair. She was

conscious of only one wish, one desire--a longing to sit again in the

organ loft, and pour forth her soul in one last farewell to that

instrument which had grown to seem her friend, confidant and lover.

She battled with her impulse as unreasonable and unwise, till the day

was well advanced. But it grew stronger with each hour; and at last

she set forth under a leaden sky and through a dreary November rain

to the church.

Her head throbbed with pain, and her hands were hot and feverish, as

she seated herself before the organ and began to play. But with the

first sounds responding to her touch, she ceased to think of bodily

discomfort.

The music was the voice of her own soul, uttering to God all its

desolation, its anguish and its despair. Then suddenly, with no

seeming volition of her own, it changed to a passion of human love,

human desire; the sorrow of separation, the strife with the emotions,

the agony of renunciation were all there; and the November rain,

beating in wild gusts against the window-panes behind the musician,

lent a fitting accompaniment to the strains.