Was It Right to Forgive? by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (free novel 24 .txt) 📖

haste, and only desirous to reach the door before any unpleasant remark could be made. Mrs. Filmer looked at her white face and embarrassed manner curiously; and turning to Rose, she said:

"Rose, go to Harry's room, and insist upon his seeing you. Tell him Yanna is here; and he must come down to lunch. He has just refused to do so," she added, "and I cannot imagine what is the matter." When Rose had disappeared, she turned to Yanna and said: "Perhaps you can tell me, Yanna?"

"Indeed, I cannot!" Yanna replied, making a motion as if to proceed to the door; which motion Mrs. Filmer prevented by placing her hand lightly upon the girl's shoulder.

"Yanna, my dear, there is no need for deception. I know that Harry and you are engaged. Why, then, pretend that you do not wish to see each other? All I ask is, that you wait for a suitable time, and keep the engagement secret. Under the circumstances, that is as little as you can do."

"Mrs. Filmer, there is no engagement between myself and Mr. Harry Filmer; and, under the circumstances, there never will be. As for 'deception,' I cannot conceive of any condition in which I should resort to it."

"No engagement!"

"None."

"Do you mean that you have refused to marry my son?"

"Under the circumstances, I felt obliged to do so."

"Well! I think it was very inconsiderate, I may say very impertinent in you, to refuse Mr. Filmer. You have caused me much annoyance, Miss Van Hoosen. I hope we shall be able to avoid each other in the future."

"It will not be my fault if we do not. I am sorry to have grieved you, for you have been kind to me, and I shall only remember your kindness."

Mrs. Filmer bowed haughtily, and said, "Good morning, Miss Van Hoosen," and Yanna felt almost as if she had been civilly told to leave the house.

When Rose returned to the dining-room, Yanna had disappeared, and Mrs. Filmer was calmly sipping her bouillon. "Harry will not come down. He says he has a headache. Where is Yanna?" asked Rose.

"She was compelled to go home without delay," answered Mrs. Filmer. "She seemed afraid of her father--perhaps she has his dinner to cook."

"Oh, no! Betta does all that kind of work. I think Yanna was disappointed about the ball. It is too absurd of Mr. Van Hoosen!"

"I imagine the ball will proceed without Miss Van Hoosen. Indeed, I am rather glad we are going to the city soon, for life without the Van Hoosen flavor will be a pleasant change."

"I am sure, mamma, the Van Hoosen flavor has been a great help to us all summer."

"Well! The summer is now over."

"And Yanna is----"

"Oh, Yanna is everything charming! So is Antony! And even Mr. Peter Van Hoosen is picturesquely primitive. But the subject tires me to-day. Take your bouillon, Rose, and then try and secure a sleep." Mrs. Filmer was turning the salad, with a face of great annoyance, and Rose felt that the conversation was closed.

In the meantime, Yanna drove slowly homeward. Her life seemed to be crumbling inwardly. She lingered in the empty wood thinking of Harry, and of the trial which had tested and found him wanting; suffering over again his pettish anger in their parting, and feeling Mrs. Filmer's polite scorn to be the last bitter drop in a cup full of bitterness. She was grateful for the quiet of nature, and not afraid to weep before her. She thought her sorrow to be as great as she could bear; for she was not old enough to know that there are griefs too great to find tears for.

Soon, however, she began to feel after that sure and perfect Love that never deceives and never disappoints, to utter those little prayers of two or three words which spring from the soul direct to God, and always come back with comfort and healing on their wings. She wept and prayed until her heart was like a holy well, running over with the waters of hope and consolation. Her love melted into her intelligence, and her intelligence became love; and this tempering influence and balancing power, gave her strength to keep the expression of her feelings shut up in a granite calm.

And when her father stepped out to meet her, when her eyes caught the pitying love in his eyes, and she went hand in hand with him into the pretty room, where the fire was blazing a welcome, and Betta, with smiles and excuses, was bringing in the dinner; she felt that her own home had plenty of those compensating joys of the present, which fill the heart with comforting thoughts, and the life with the sweet satisfactions and peace of possession.

"Home is a full cup, father!" she said. And Peter, standing at the head of his table, smiled at Yanna; and then lifted up his hands and asked God's blessing on it!


CHAPTER IV

Fortunately for Adriana, the Filmers were not named at the dinner table. Antony had a new subject to discuss; for on the previous day, while in New York, an acquaintance had taken him to a Socialist meeting. The topic had been treated on its most poetic and hopeful side, and Antony was all enthusiasm for its happy possibilities. Peter listened without any emotion. He did not believe that crime, nor even poverty, would be abolished by merely new social arrangements.

"It is the inner change in individuals that will do it, Antony," he said. "I have heard, and I have read, all sides of the Socialism of the day; and I tell you, it is half brutal, and altogether insufficient to cure existing wrongs."

"But, father, if the framework of society, which is all wrong, is put all right, would not individuals in the mass take the right form? As far as I can judge, they are ready to run into any mold prepared for them."

"No. You may set all without right; and all within may remain wrong. It is the new heart and the new spirit that is required. Will Socialism touch the inner man and woman? If not, then Socialism is a failure."

"I do not think it hopes to do this at once; but wider education, more time, more money, more individual liberty----"

"Will only produce more license, more pride of intellect, more self-will; and men and women will become as indomitable as the beasts of the desert; and a law unto themselves."

"Then, father, what would you propose?"

"I see the answer in Yanna's face. She knows, Antony, what I would say, if I could say the words as well as she can--'So much the rather'----go on, Yanna." And Yanna's face lighted and lifted as she repeated with calm intensity:


"So much the rather Thou Celestial Light
Shine inward! and the mind through all her powers.
Irradiate!"


"The Inward Light! That is what is needed. These reformers talk too much, and think, and do, too little. Were there many Americans present?"

"The majority were foreigners. They were not ill-natured; they were even cheerful and good-tempered. They had their wives and children with them. They had beer to drink, and tobacco to smoke, and a good band of music. I heard 'La Marseillaise' played with a wonderful spirit. It set me on fire. I began to feel for my musket and to think of fighting."

"We don't want 'La Marseillaise' here, Antony. We have our own national hymns. The 'Star Spangled Banner' can set my heart thrilling and burning, without making me think of blood and murder. If social reformers will talk to the 'Star Spangled Banner,' and 'The Red, White and Blue,' they will do no harm, and perhaps they may even do some good."

"However, father, most of the men I heard speak appeared to have a great deal of information and much practical wisdom."

"They will need as much again to govern what they have."

"You are prejudiced against anything new, father."

"Perhaps I am, Antony. I am suspicious of new things, even of new planets. I have read of several lately, but I cannot say I believe in them. I find myself sticking to the old list I learned at school; it began with Mercury, and ended with Georgium Sidus. I believe they have given Georgium Sidus a new name; but I don't know him by it."

Antony--who rarely laughed--laughed heartily at his father's solid conservatism; and then the conversation drifted to and fro about the ordinary events of their daily life--the potting of plants, the village taxes, the shoeing of horses, and so forth. And Yanna's calm, serious face told Antony nothing of the suffering in her heart; nor did she desire he should know it. Culture teaches the average woman to suppress feeling; and Yanna had a great dislike to discuss matters so closely personal to her. She was not ignorant either of Antony's love for Rose, and his friendship with Harry had been hitherto without a cloud; why, then, should her private affairs make trouble between lovers and friends?

"At any rate," she thought, "circumstances alter cases; and Antony in his relationship with Rose and Harry must be permitted to act without any sense of obligation to my rights or wrongs."

Peter scarcely looked at the matter in the same temperate way; his sense of the family tie was very strong, and he thought if one member suffered injury all the other members ought to suffer with it. Yet he comprehended Yanna's sensitiveness, her dislike for any discussion of her feelings, her liberal admission that Harry, brought up in a different sphere of life, and under social tenets of special obsequiousness, could not be fairly measured by the single directness of their line and plummet.

She understood from Harry's awkward attitude in his own home that he was suffering, and that he was likely to make others suffer with him. She had no special resentment against Mrs. Filmer. "Her behavior was natural enough; I might have been just as rude under the same provocation," she thought. So she said nothing whatever to her father of the little scene between Mrs. Filmer and herself; she was able to understand Mrs. Filmer's position, and she was satisfied with the way in which she had defended her own. "There is nothing owing between us," she reflected, "and, therefore, there will be no perpetual sense of injury. We shall forgive--and perhaps forget."

She busied herself all afternoon about her simple household duties; affecting to Betta a sudden anxiety about the usual preparations for winter; and she compelled herself to sing as she went up and down, putting away, and taking out, or looking carefully for the ravages of the summer moth. Peter heard her voice in one bravura after another; and for a short time he sat still listening and wondering. For effects are chained to causes, and he asked himself what reason Yanna had for music of that particular kind. By-and-by, he smiled and nodded; he had fathomed the secret of Yanna's mental medicine--though with her it had been a simple instinct accepted and obeyed--and he said softly:

"To be sure! The lifeboat is launched with a shout, and the forlorn hope goes cheering into the breach; so when the heart has a big fight to make, anything that can help it into action is good. Artificial singing will bring the real song; anyway, it helps her to work, and work is the best gospel ever preached for a heartache."