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

pleased you, mother; but I can do so no longer. How can I dress, and dance, and make compliments when I wish I were dead? Yes, I do! Life has not a charm left."

"Your father, your sister!"

"Oh, mother! they are not Yanna. If you are perishing for water, wine will not take its place."

"You are very ungrateful, and if I call you ungrateful I can call you nothing worse. Remember how I have planned and saved; how I have bowed here, and becked there, in order to gain the social position we now enjoy. Without my help, would you have got into the best clubs? Would you visit in the houses where you are now welcome?"

"I know; but I do not value these things. Yanna has taught me better."

"Harry, you make me lose all patience. It is a shameful thing to tell me now, after my labor, after you have reaped the harvest of it, that you do not care; to put that Van Hoosen girl in the place of all your social advantages, and of all your kindred. It is outrageous! Why, the man I bought my chickens from was a Van Hoosen! And I was so magnanimous that I never named it to Miss Van Hoosen. Any other lady would have asked her if he was a relative, just for the pleasure of setting her down a little. I did not."

"You might easily have asked Yanna. She has no false pride."

"Now, Harry, you have exhausted my patience. We will have no more of this 'Yanna' nonsense, if you please. I have had as much Van Hoosen as I can endure."

"My dear mother, your husband is a Van Hoosen. Ask father if it is not so. Father, and Rose, and I are descended from the daughter of the first American Peter Van Hoosen; and Yanna is descended from his son. That is all the difference. We are the same family."

"Do not be absurd!"

"Ask father."

"I do think you might have a little pity for me. I am suffering in every nerve. I am trembling, and faint, and utterly worn out, both in mind and body; and then you come and wound me in my dearest loves and hopes; stab after stab. But I am only your loving, foolish mother! I am not Yanna! and--and----" Then she rose, looking steadily at Harry the while. And she really was ill and suffering. Distress, physical and mental, was written on every feature; her eyes were tearless, but full of anguish; and she was hardly able to stand when she rose to her feet. What could Harry do? His anger vanished. His sense of injustice vanished. He went to his mother and comforted her with kisses. He supported her to her room, and so left her, once more absolutely mistress of the situation. But all night long, whether he was asleep or awake, his heart kept up the same longing, pitiful cry of "Yanna! Yanna!"

Yanna was even more miserable. Peter wondered at her fretfulness, until she told him that Harry Filmer had called to say "Good-bye." She told him with a slight air of injury, and Peter felt that much talk on the subject would then be unwise. He could have reminded her that to those who suffer patiently the suffering is less; but the indulgent love and wisdom of the good old man taught him that there are occasions when it is better to leave the wounded to the strength of silence than to offer them the balm of sympathy. So he listened quietly, while she wished she had been more sure of herself--more sure that Harry was wrong--more sure that she was absolutely right--that she had been more considerate of their different educations--more patient of his shortcomings. All her reproaches of herself tacitly included her father, but Peter knew it was not yet the time to defend himself. He made no reply to her querulous accusations and regretful wishes until she said:

"I trust that when we act foolishly and turn our backs on happiness God will not condemn us to our own choice. I wonder if I pray to God to send me once more the good I refused, if He will hear me?"

"We must never pray merely selfish prayers, Yanna," answered Peter sadly. "God might be angry enough to grant us our prayers. It is better to say, 'Thy will be done.'"

Then she rose up hastily and went out of the room, but still more hastily returned, and lifting her father's head--which was bowed upon his hands--said: "My dear, dear father! My precious father!" And Peter stood up then, and kissed her, and blessed her, and said: "Let the light of His Countenance be upon you, my dearest!"

Was she happy then? Ah, no! Her heart was wounded all over. She felt as if it were bleeding. As she entered her room the picture of the thorn-crowned Saviour met her eyes, and she went close to it, and looked thoughtfully at the Man of Sorrows. Resignation, mournful and simple, yet full of lofty heroism, spoke to her; and the personality of which it was the ideal seemed to fill the room; but she was not comforted. She undressed herself slowly, feeling at length the tears she had so long restrained dropping upon her fingers as they trembled about their duty.

But when she laid her head upon her pillow, and the room was dark and still, suddenly her grief found a voice that she could understand; and she sobbed, "Oh, mother! mother! If you were here this night! If you were only here! You would know how to pity me!" And so sobbing, she went to sleep; and in her sleep she was comforted. For the golden ladder between heaven and earth is not removed; and the angels going to and fro must meet on their road many mothers called earthward by their children's weeping, and hastening to them "with healing on their wings."


CHAPTER V

"All, then, has come to an end; and I feel as if I had buried every sweet day we lived together!" These were Adriana's first thoughts in the morning. However, she had slept heavily, as God often permits those to sleep for whom sorrow lies in wait; and she was stronger to bear the burden of the days before her. They were very dreary and monotonous for many weeks; for the fall was a wet and sunless one. Yet it was not the heavy atmosphere and the melancholy heavens that depressed her; it was rather the mental and moral drizzle of the household; and for this she was herself much to blame.

She restrained all confidence; she would not talk to her father or brother about the Filmers; she responded to no effort to amuse her, and she would not permit herself to weep. And as tears and laughter and mutual confidence are the means appointed to stay life's overflow, and to give the full heart ease, she missed the natural comforters of her position. And as she gave no confidence to Antony, Antony also kept his hopes and doubts, his joys and sorrows, to himself. If Adriana had spoken to him of Harry, he would have gladly discussed with her Rose's heart-breaking ways with him--her advances and retreats, her kindness and her cruelty, her love and her disdain.

But brother and sister alike kept silence, and Peter did not feel at liberty to comfort uncomplained-of suffering; nor yet to offer advice in circumstances of which his children presumed him to be either ignorant or unsympathetic. Nevertheless, he suffered both mentally and really with them; for most houses adopt more or less of the mental aspects of the dwellers in them, and the old happy contentment which had filled Peter's home with sunshine in all weathers was invaded by many shadows. The order of his life was broken-up, and its very pleasures were robbed of their sweetness. Dinner-time, and bed-time, and all the times and seasons of domestic existence went on undisturbed; and the books were brought out, and Peter read aloud with even an exaggerated interest; but the heart was out of all Adriana's duties and amusements; and Peter, try as he would, felt it difficult to control a feeling of anger against the strangers who had entered his home only to make those he loved miserable.

For a month Antony vibrated between Woodsome and New York; but finally he resolved to stay in the city. He said something to his father about "western securities, and the opportunity he had for making money in them," but both Peter and Adriana knew that his real object was Rose Filmer. His desertion had, however, one good result, it made Adriana feel that she must resume her old companionship with her father. She could not now suppose that Antony was with him, or that her father was with Antony, or if they were really together, slip away to her own room, on the presumption they did not want her company in order to discuss the country, or the horses, or the best time to plant.

She accepted the duty with much of her old, sweet cheerfulness. "We are alone again, dear father!" she said, "and I am going to see how happy I can make you." And Peter's swift acceptance of this promise, the joy on his face, his ready oblivion of all her neglect, his eager interest in all she proposed, went to her heart like the wine of gladness.

"Suppose I teach you chess, father!"

The proposal made Peter happy as a child. He answered that there was nothing he wished to learn so much. He said he would go to New York that very day for the men and the board--Staunton men and board--nothing cheaper. He kept his word. He brought back the plain, sensible pieces and their mimic battle-field in his hands. He was as enthusiastic a pupil as any teacher could desire, and yet he was brimming with conversation of all that he had seen in the city, and on the train, and the ferry boats. And at last, when the little table was drawn to the hearth and the two sat down to the game, it was wonderful to see how eager and how receptive he was!

"It is the grandest bit of play in the world, Yanna," he said, when at last the pieces were reluctantly restored to their box. "You have given me one of the happiest evenings I ever had in my life!" and his eyes shone with love and gratitude. "My girl is the best of all girls! May God Almighty bless her!"

And without extenuations or exceptions, Adriana had also one of the happiest evenings of her life. No one can gain a great victory over self and not be happy. Adriana walked upstairs erect, with a smile on her lips, and a glow in her heart, such as she had not felt for many weeks. She undressed with her old alertness and method; she knelt down in happy confidence, feeling that she could ask to be made happy when she had made others happy.

From this brave new beginning, there was no back-sliding--or at least none that Peter was permitted to feel. For Adriana was ashamed of herself when she realized how much of the pleasure of other lives she had sacrificed to her own selfish sorrow. Peter appeared next day to be ten years younger. Betta was bright and busy as a summer bee; the two old house-dogs came back confidently to the rug before the fire; the stable-man got a smile through the window, and then ventured to ask a favor for his wife.

"How cruel I have