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

a good full breath after some restraint had been taken away.

There had been a possibility of a break in this union of souls, just when Peter accepted the contract to build the Filmer mansion. Adriana thought it best to speak of her father's work on the new house; and she did this with the simplicity of one who states a fact that may or may not have been understood. Rose was at first a little indignant. She went to her mother with Adriana's letter in her hand.

"She is the daughter of a builder, of a common stone-mason," she cried, "and she never told me until she was obliged to. Mamma, I am disillusioned. I can never trust any one again. In her place, I should have felt it a point of honor not to hide my low birth. Really, mamma, you must excuse me if I weep a little. I am so disappointed--so wronged--so humiliated in Yanna's treachery."

"Nonsense, Rose!" answered Mrs. Filmer. "The girl behaved in the most natural manner. Society would be very disagreeable if people were required to go up and down telling who and what their fathers and grandfathers were. Did you ever ask her the question?"

"It was not my place to do so, mamma. I told her all about you, and Harry, and even papa. She was always talking about her father. She said he was such a noble old man--that he studied with her--and so on. Could I imagine a man laying stones all day, and reading Faraday and Parkman with his daughter at night? Could I, mamma?"

"I should not trouble myself about the girl's father, if I liked the girl. You see, Rose, it is always foolish to make acquaintances upon unknown ground. The Hamilton and Lawson girls were in your classes, and you knew all about them. Friendship with their families would have been prudent, and I advised you to make it."

"I could not, mamma. The Hamiltons declined to be at all familiar with me. As for the Lawsons, they are purse-proud and dangerous. Jemima Lawson has a tongue like a stiletto. She is slangy, too. She called her allowance her 'working expenses'; and she had dreadful private names for the girls she disliked. Miss Lawson you simply could not be civil to; if you were, she immediately began to wonder 'what you wanted from her?'"

"What dreadful creatures!"

"Now, Adriana Van Hoosen had a good name, she dressed well enough, and she really loved me. How could I imagine she was lowly born?"

"Does it matter, Rose?"

"Yes, for she lives quite near to our new house. In fact, her father is building it; and I have asked her so often to come and stay with me in New York, that I cannot, without a quarrel, ignore her in the country."

"In the country, one does not need to be particular. It is rather nice to have a friend in the village who can bring the news. The long summer days would be insupportable without the follies and misfortunes of our neighbors to discuss. Then, if she is pretty and presentable, she will be useful in lawn and tennis parties. I would not mind about Miss Van Hoosen's father. Fathers are not much, anyway; and fortunately she has no mother to annoy us. That makes a great difference. A vulgar mother would be an insurmountable objection. Is Miss Van Hoosen pretty?"

"Yanna is lovely. And she has a fine manner. Our art professor once said to me, 'Your friend Miss Van Hoosen is a gentlewoman with a great deal of background.' I do not know what he meant, but I am sure he intended a great compliment."

"Oh! he meant intellect, emotions, and such things. I am not so sure of Miss Van Hoosen now. There is Harry to be considered. He might fall in love with her. That would be inexpedient--in fact, ruinous."

"Harry fall in love! How absurd! Have not the prettiest girls in our set swung incense before him for five years? Harry glories in his ability to resist temptation. He knows that Eve never could have 'got round' him."

"She ruined Adam in about twenty-four hours. It would have taken Eve about one minute to 'get round' Harry. The boy is really very impressionable."

"Mamma! What a huge joke! Harry impressionable!"

"He is, I assure you, Rose. I presume I know my own son."

"Well, at any rate, he is not worse than the rest. Young men nowadays neither love nor hate. Their love is iced on prudence, and their hatreds have not a particle of courage. I wish I had been born one hundred years ago. I have the heart for a real man."

"You flatter yourself, Rose. You are the very triumph of respectable commonplace. And as for one hundred years ago, the follies of that date were just as innumerable as our own."

"You think I am respectably commonplace, mamma. Then let me tell you, I must be a consummate actress. I do not think you know Rose Filmer. I do not think I know her myself. I hope I have some individuality."

"Individuality! There is nothing more vulgar. I hear Parry with the carriage; will you drive with me?"

"No; I shall answer Adriana's letter, and get the subject off my mind. It is so much easier to know what you dislike to do than to be sure of what you like. Where are you going?"

"To McCreery's. I want some lace."

"Do buy the real article then. It is the chic thing now, to wear real lace, and it does look supreme, among the miles of imitation that are used."

Then Rose went to the library to answer Adriana's letter. It pleased her to think it an important decision, and she sat some time with the pen in her hand, and a judicial air on her beautiful countenance. For she was undeniably a very attractive girl, as she sat in the sunshine that morning, deliberating on Adriana's "deception"; there being to a practiced observer many alluring contradictions in her face and manner. Her hair was the color of ripe wheat, her eyes almond-shaped, blue and limpid; her cheeks and chin dimpled; her mouth rosy and full; her figure supple; her feet small, finely dressed, and quite in view; her whole appearance that of a lovely innocent girl, on the threshold of life. But this exquisite seeming contained possibilities of evil, as well as good. Her dress was full of studied effects, her manners of attitudes and languors; and her charming way of dropping her blue eyes, and then suddenly flashing them open, was a conscious, and not a natural, grace. Even her sweet credulousness had in it an equal capacity for seductive wilfulness and petulance. Nor was she unconscious of this double nature within her; for she had often said to Adriana, "I feel as if there were twenty different girls in me--and the majority of them bad."

Social life, however, so far, had had a salutary effect on her. She had become more equable, more dependent on the approval of others, and less liable to unconventional self-assertions. Nothing, indeed, could have been better for Rose Filmer than the tight social rein of a set which conscientiously tried to be both religious and fashionable. She was compelled to honor les convenances, and to obey them; compelled to suppress her spontaneity--which was seldom a pleasant one--and to consider the feelings of others, as well as the wishes of her own heart. At college she had been remarkable for her self-willed personality; one season in society had taught her a decent self-restraint. Consequently, she deliberated well the answer to her friend's letter.

"If I want to break with her, I have now an excellent excuse," she thought. "I could tell her that, though I have a soul above noticing the accident of birth, my whole nature declares against deception. There are a dozen moralities in the position, and I could retire wounded and innocent, and leave her altogether in the wrong. But do I want to break with Yanna? Would it be to my advantage? I think not. The girls in our set do not like me. Julia Mills the other day called me 'a little hypocrite' to my face. She did it with a laugh, but all the other girls laughed too, and it was not pleasant. Yanna believes in me. Then next summer we shall be at Woodsome, and mamma is right about the long, tiresome summer days. Yanna was born in the village; she knows every one, gentle and simple, and what is the use of neighbors if you cannot gossip about them?

"Besides," she continued, "I have now three lovers, and I have not one girl friend with whom I can talk them over--all the girls in our set are so jealous of me--and Yanna would like to see my love letters, I have no doubt. I wonder if she has a lover yet! I suppose not, poor girl! Then there will be fun in watching Harry. Whether he be utterly heartless, or, as mamma thinks, 'very impressionable,' he cannot meet Yanna day after day without some consequences. I think, upon the whole, it will be best to keep friends with Yanna." And having come to this decision, she raised herself from the reflective attitude into which she had fallen, and going to a table wrote as follows:

"My Beloved Yanna: Did you really think that your lowly birth could change my love for you? No, no! Whether my Yanna be princess or pauper, is no matter to me. I only long for our new house to be finished, that I may have you more constantly near me." Then she hesitated. She was on the point of saying she had long known of Adriana's low birth; but she felt sure Adriana would ask her the "how" and "when" of her information; and there was absolutely no good to accrue from the falsity. But though she wrote eight pages of gushing affection, she was not satisfied; she had not been able to choose her words with precision, and far less able to prevent an aura of patronage which Adriana was as quick to feel as a barometer to answer the atmospheric changes.

"I will not take any patronage from Rose Filmer," she muttered; and then she flung Rose's letter into the fire; "I want nothing from her. Oh! I must answer this letter at once; I could not eat my dinner if I were so much in debt to my self-respect." So Adriana laid away her sewing, and wrote:

"Dear Rose: Thank you for your overflowing letter. It is very kind
of you to overlook what you call the 'accident' of my birth. But I
cannot let you entertain the idea that I think it an 'accident.'
On the contrary, I regard my birth as the well-considered
ordination of Almighty God. I was not an 'accident' to my good
father and mother. I was placed in their care, because the
All-Wise considered the Van Hoosen home the best possible place
for my highest development. I think it is time people stopped
talking about the 'accident' of birth; and I am sure, as soon as
you regard birth in its proper light, you will do so. Your love
for me has led you likewise into a very stupid assertion about
'loving Yanna the same whether she was princess or pauper.' My
dear, there is no question of either. I am as far removed from
pauperism as we