Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1926-03-26
THE
HUSBAND OF
THE ORGANISE
By VIRGINIA M. CORNELL

Ohm TRENTON was at nrSt Slgnt
an insignificant looking man, with
hair and beard of no particular
y color He was a sef-made man
who, from an orphaned country boy,
had risen by arduous struggles to be a
city man Of affluence; but, unlike most
of those who have made themselves,
he had never been quite satisfied with
his handiwork.
1t Is possible that he might have
been better satisfied with his achieve
ments had 1t not been for feeling he
had always had that, in taking up the
struggle for wealth, he had left some
thing, the struggle for which would
have been, to him, more worth while.
He had never discovered exactly what
this was, but he was conscious of Its
existence.
In the course of years, John Trenton,
the successful man Of business, with
harmony hidden in his soul, married
the organlst of st. Adams cathedral,
u woman with harmony always at her
fingers ends. She was one Of those
strikingly ethereal looking women who,
nine times out of ten, receive more of
some mans devotion than they de-
serve, and Mrs. Trenton was not the
exception to prove this rule. She had
been no more than q comfortably poor
girl when he married her. Her mar
riage, indeed, had been to her but an
avenue Of escape from that poverty,
for he was not a man she would have
dreamed of marrying otherwise. Had
she married for love, 1t is quite pos
sible that she might have been more
than an ordinarily loving woman; but,
married without 1t, she had never been
able to forgive John Trenton the fact
that he had not been able to inspire
love In her.
But since he had not, she wrapped
herself In her one earthly Joy, the
sounds she evoked from her organ.
Under their spell, her eyes glowed and
her pulses thrilled as they never did
to her husbands voice or touch, nor,
1t is but just to her to add, to the
voice or touch of any man. If she had
a yearning for that greater and more
satisfying emotion-love-thou she
looked at John Trenton with hopeless
eyes, she looked at no other.
He came gradually to look at her
also with hopeless eyes, but in a DIFF
ferent sense. She still seemed to him
the living embodiment Of all perfec-
ton. He had felt Immediately after
the ceremony which had made them
man and wife that there was not room
enough In the earth, nor in the waters
under 1t, to contain his happiness and
exaltatiOn. Afterwards something rose
like a sob in his throat when he
thought of that moment
A few months after their marriage
they went to Europe, where she could
better satisfy the cravings of that pas
sion which, while not for himself, was
yet, he felt, tie between them. Not
only because that, save for him, such
opportunity might have always been
lacking to her, but because sometimes
he thought that he really did under
stand her music. AS 1t absorbed her
more and more, her playing grew to
him more wonderful and divine. He
could not renounce the pleasure Of
watching her fingers as they moved
over the keys, and he had sometimes
a sudden, intense desire to sit at her
place at the organ, and feel 1t obey
his touch as 1t did hers. Once, indeed,
when she had left the room, he laid his
hands upon the keyboard, and sud
den, flashing insight came to him Of
the JOY of pressing the keys upon
which his hands inertly rested, and OF
feeling them obey the impulse Of his
brain, translating the strange thoughts
that had thrilled him since his earliest
boyhood. A wild desire to pour forth
in sounds which she would understand
the passion and pain Of his yearnlng
toward her surged through him. All,
that he could make the organ cry to
her what he had never dared to cry:
Love me; love me love me-" For a
moment he sat in Imagination, hold |
ing her, willingly won, In his arms.
Then he turned from his flashing vision |
as from temptation.
It was after their return from abroad |
that the man who timldly called Mrs. |
Trenton wife came into his title OF
husband Of the organlst," for, despite |
his wealth, she chung to her bench In |
the organ loft on Sundays. She had |
grown farther than ever away from |
him, yet, as he sat each week with the |
crowd Of worshipers at ST. Adams |
cathedral, while at her will the roll of |
the great organ filled the edlfice, she |
still looked to him as in the days when |
he had first dreamt Of winning her
as pure and beautiful and serene as a
far-0ff star. But he had ceased to |
dream that he could put out his arms
and bring the star down to him.
AS years went by and nothing was
changed between them, his position
grew too hard to endure. AS he
brooded, he was frightened by a wom-
anish desire to weep In his wife's pres
ence-to reach out his arms toward her
with a longing cry Of Love me; love
me-" And better the bitterness Of |
death than that, he thought. SO he
decided to go away from her until his |
strength should return to him.
The husband of the organlst Of st.
Adams came, after several years had
passed, to be looked upon rather as a
negative quantity in the city which,
ignorant Of his early struggles, had
known his later success. Only the
splendid mansion on a fashionable |
thOroughfare, where his wife lived In