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

the question. A bad man may not be able to impose spurious children on his wife; but that does not prevent him from imposing them on his friend and neighbor."

"That is a case between man and man, not between a man and his wife; and we have nothing to do with it. I am only trying to convince you that Harry is not as bad as you think he is."

"And I say that it is wrong to expect purity from wives and not also from their husbands."

"My dear Yanna, we shall have to call justice to our aid. There are certain virtues that belong peculiarly to men, and others which belong peculiarly to women. For instance, bravery is to a man all that chastity is to a woman. The want of courage that disgraces a man is no slur to a woman. If a ship is going to pieces, men postpone their own deliverance until all the women have been saved; and if they did not, they would be infamous forever in the eyes of their fellow men. In the hour of death or danger, women faint and cry out, and it is no shame to them, it is only womanly, and they are loved the more for it; but if men were to so far forget themselves, what a measure of contempt would be justly given them! Yet men do not complain of this apparent unfairness; they know that being men, they must suffer as men, and not claim the privilege of a woman's immunity."

"One sin cannot excuse another, Cousin Alida."

"It is not only one, there are many other points, which are just as remarkable; for instance, there is the dishonor of being found out cheating at cards. Men laugh at the fault in women; they call them 'pretty little frauds,' and go on with the game. But if a man is caught in the same act, he is quickly sent to Coventry, or to Halifax, or to some other shameful limbo."

"Women are proverbially weak, and men assume to be their superiors in strength of character. They ought to prove it."

"Come, come, Mrs. Filmer! If a woman's weakness is an excuse, then the vigor, the strength, and the temptations of men are a much larger one. Their very excess of life makes them powerful to do, and impotent to resist. It is clearly unreasonable to expect men to be both as they are and as they are not. Simple justice demands that we should be more tolerant with men than with women on the score of those offences, which are the death-blow to a woman's good name. You see, then, that each sex has a right to plead certain extenuations not permissible to the other sex."

"I see that it is the privilege of the male sex to wound and to injure the female sex; and the privilege of the latter to bear and to forgive."

"Well, then, Yanna, to forgive is a noble privilege, a safe and blessed generosity. And I can tell you, that I have known many pure, chaste wives who were just as bad wives as you could possibly find--cruel, selfish, spiritually-proud, intolerant women, filling their husband's days with the bitterness of their tempers, or else giving way to an egotism of despair and weeping worse than all the wrongs they complain of."

"My dear cousin, I do hope that you do not include me in that list."

"I hope not, Yanna. I hope not. There are certain things that can only be got by renouncing them--your own way, your own desire is usually one of these things."

"What am I to do then? I cannot bear things as they are."

"If you cannot bear your troubles, you may be able to bear their remedies. You ought to have for Harry such a love as masters Time, and the infelicities of Time. Have you this love?"

"Yes, I have."

"You can bear to think of loving Harry and living with him eternally?"

"I should be miserable if I thought death would separate us."

"Good gracious, child! And yet you have suffered the word 'divorce' to pass your lips. Just remember that men do not marry women because they are very beautiful, or very clever, or very good, indeed; they generally marry them because there is 'something nice about them.' Now, let Harry always find there is 'something nice about you.' You do not complain of Harry to any one, do you?"

"I have not, until this morning; nor have I listened to any report about him."

"Quite right. To talk of matrimonial troubles is to burn the dirtiest chimney ever set on fire. But there are sins of omission as well as of commission. You have stayed at home too much. You ought to go out with Harry while his mood is to go out."

"I cannot go with the set that Rose and he prefer."

"You can go with my set. Harry must really be forgetting how you look in anything but tweed and China silk. Put away every appearance of being an injured wife. Be a happy wife. Let him always come into an atmosphere of good humor. No man can resist that."

"Rose and Mrs. Filmer drop so many unkind words about me."

"Drop kind ones about them. The incongruity will eventually strike him."

"His family have always tried to make sorrow for me."

"Of course. A wife's foes are to be found in her husband's family. Let them plot and plan, and you be sincere. Whatever is sincere invariably conquers. A week to-day we are going to have a grand dinner-party. Wear your wedding dress, and I have brought you my sapphires and diamonds. Dress your hair high. Dress to the utmost of your conception of what is splendid. Then march on Harry, and take him anew by storm. One-half of men's passion for pretty actresses is grounded on their picturesque dressing. If they saw the same girls in a housemaid's cotton gown and apron, they would not look at them."

"Such a low side to touch Harry on!"

"Oh, dear me! Can you build a marble palace without the rough wood scaffolding? Do but be bright and cheerful and handsome and patient, and my word for it! you will see how swiftly Harry will tire of meaner women. For the rapid transformation whereby carnal love is turned into carnal hatred is one of the most wonderful things to consider. Now mind, you are to conquer all before you next Thursday night!"

So the invitation was formally sent, and Adriana announced her intention of accepting it. Harry was a trifle annoyed. He had grown accustomed to going out alone, and feeling a kind of safe repose in the idea of the wife watching on his hearthstone.

"Do you think you had better go, dear?" he asked. "Is little Harry well enough to leave? And there is your dress! I suppose it will be a very fine affair."

"Cousin Alida made a point of my being present. I must go for dinner. I need not stay long after."

"I have an engagement at the Union Club that very night--rather an important one--I wonder how I can manage?"

"You can take me to the Zabriski house, and make your apologies in person to Cousin Alida. After your dinner at the club, you can call for me. I dare say I shall be ready to go home."

"Those Zabriski affairs are so very stupid."

"Still, we like to have the invitations."

"If you do go, Yanna, dress as Mrs. Harry Filmer ought to dress."

"Certainly, Harry, I will." And then with renewed hope she made her preparations. They were so successful that her face was radiant with delight when she pressed her cousin's large, capable hand and whispered:

"Harry said I was the most beautiful creature he had seen this season."

"You are," answered Miss Alida, looking with pride at the stately woman robed in white satin and lace, and sparkling with jewels. Fortunately, she had Professor Snowdon for a companion; and he brought out the brightest and sweetest traits of her nature, so that she recaptured all that old charm of presence which had once made her irresistible. So swiftly grew her confidence in her own powers again that she was easily persuaded to take a share in the music that followed the dinner; and when Harry came to escort her home he found her standing by the piano, and singing to its wandering, penetrating melody, with a delightful voice:


"Love in her sunny eyes doth basking play;
Love walks the pleasant mazes of her hair;
Love does on both her lips forever stray,
And sows and reaps a thousand kisses there."


And as she sang, she caught Harry's beaming glance; and so she sang to him, thrilling his heart with the passionate melody till a love like that of his first betrothal swayed it.

When she went away, Miss Alida put her face under the pretty pink hood, and whispered: "Good night, Yanna! You have done everything I wished and hoped. Harry is saved!"

But Miss Alida knew only the probable ways of men and women. This exquisite Adriana clothed in satin, and gemmed with sapphires, seemed to her the proper angel of the recreant husband. But the wisdom of The All Wise had ordained a very different woman; even one of those poor souls expected by theologians to be damned, but intended by God to be an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.


CHAPTER IX

One afternoon towards the end of March, Adriana was riding down Broadway. At Twenty-third Street there was some obstruction and delay, and she saw Duval and Rose together. They were coming up Fifth Avenue, and their walk was lingering and absorbed, Duval's attitude being specially earnest and lover-like. Rose was listening with a faint smile, and Adriana noticed that she was dressed with great care, and that she had flowers both at her breast and in her hands. Adriana's first thought was to alight and join the pair; but her second thought was a reproof of her suspicion--"Charity thinketh no evil," she mused, "and Rose may have simply met the man and permitted him to walk at her side."

Then she reflected that she had never heard Rose name Duval since her marriage; and that the man had been conspicuously absent from the Van Hoosen entertainments. She knew also that Rose was vain and sentimental, and that one of her dear, dangerous pleasures was to make every man think "it might have been." But she did not know that on the subject of Mr. Duval Rose and her husband had a passionate, intermitting quarrel, that Rose put Duval's name on every list of her guests, and that Antony always crossed it off, with peremptory positiveness, and that consequently there was in Rose's heart a secret partisanship which had a dangerous romance about it. For it was impossible for Antony to prevent Rose from meeting the man in the houses of friends, in the crowded foyers of the theatre or opera, on the street, on the drive in the park; and on all such occasions a glance, a word, a lingering hand clasp, conveyed to Rose a meaning she ought not to have understood, and won from her in return an interest or sympathy she ought not to have given.

For once that this secret understanding was established, she found it hard to escape from its influence; gradually, almost unconsciously, the intimacy grew; and Rose, feeling sure in her heart that she meant nothing