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

also. He drew his hands across his eyes, and stood up, feeling weak and shattered, and ill from head to feet.

"Antony," said Mrs. Filmer, "you have behaved nobly this day. I cannot thank you as I would like to."

"Emma is dead!" he answered. "Dear mother, that is all I can bear to-night. Such a sad, little, suffering life! If I could only have suffered for her! If I could only have been with her at the hour. I watched for that favor. I grudged to leave her, even to eat or sleep--and I missed it after all! For I hoped at the moment of parting to have some vision or assurance that her tender little soul would not have to pass alone through the great outer space and darkness. Where is she now? Who is her Helper? Will Christ indeed carry her in his bosom until her small feet reach the fields of Paradise? Mother! mother! I am broken-hearted this night. Who was with her when she died?"

"It seems that she died alone. The nurse thought she was asleep, and she went downstairs to make herself a cup of tea. When she came back Emma was dead. The doctor says she had a fit and died in it."

"No one to help her! No one to kiss her! It is too cruel! My dear one would open her eyes at last and find no father--no mother--no one at all to say 'good-bye' to her!"

"Come, come, Antony! The doctor thinks she never recovered consciousness. He says she did not suffer. You have saved Rose. Go and say a word to her. She is in despair."

"I will speak to her as soon as I can. I cannot see her until--until the child has been taken away from me."

Mrs. Filmer pressed him no further. She thought it best to leave him much alone. His thin, worn cheeks, and sunken eyes--showing pain, anxiety, and sleepless nights--were touchingly human. They said plainer than any words could, "Trouble me no more until I am stronger; until my soul can reach that serene depth where it can say, 'Thy will be done,' until, indeed, I can turn to Romans, the eighth chapter and the twenty-eighth verse, and stand firmly with its grand charter of God's deliverance in my hand."

When the child was buried, Antony made an effort to speak to his wife. But she would not speak to him. She had assumed an attitude quite unexpected--that of an injured woman. She complained to her mother that an infamous advantage had been taken of a trifling escapade. "I simply went to see an old friend off to Cuba; and Yanna--because of a conversation I had with her a few days previously--is sure I am going to desert my husband and child. She races down to the steamer, and makes a scene there; and Antony follows to bring on a grand climax! No! I will not forgive either Yanna or Antony."

"What had you said to Yanna?"

"Just a little serious conversation--such as I wanted to be good, and so on--and I asked her if anything happened to me to look after baby. Feeling always makes a fool of me. I won't feel any more. I won't want to be good any more."

"You had no necessity to ask that woman to look after baby. Was not I sufficient?"

"I was in one of my good moods. I wanted Yanna to think I was lovely. I do not care now what any one thinks."

And she acted out this programme to its last letter. She was either despondently or mockingly indifferent to all that was proposed. After some delay, her father and mother went to Europe. Yanna and Harry went to stay with Miss Alida; and Antony made what preparations were necessary, and removed his household to the Filmer place at Woodsome. Rose took no part in the removal. When she perceived that the house was to be closed, she accompanied Antony to the country. But no good resulted from the change. She refused to see visitors; if she went out, it was entirely alone; and she passed Yanna and Miss Alida as if they were utter strangers to her. A spoiled, wilful girl, who had never felt the bit on her life, she had suddenly thrown off all control but that of the evil spirit which had taken possession of her.

Still she preserved a kind of decorum. There was a general impression that she had nearly lost her reason about her child's death; and people excused and pitied her aberrations in consequence, or if rumors of the real truth permeated society at Woodsome, it was quickly discredited. Men and women alike pointed to the devotion of Antony and refused to believe it; and in some way the sorrowful shake of Miss Alida's head at Rose's name, and Yanna's painful silence, impressed on the community an idea of Rose's suffering rather than of her wickedness. Sometimes a servant would say boldly that Mrs. Van Hoosen was ill-tempered and took too much wine, but no one credited the judgment, except those who hated Rose and wished to believe it.

Indeed, in the latter respect Rose's temper had had a good result. Antony would have neither wine nor liquor of any kind in his house, and as Rose refused to visit, her opportunities for indulging the taste were limited. She did not appear to mind this deprivation as much as might have been expected. Her insane indulgence of temper swallowed up every other vice. She had drunk mainly to induce that exhilaration which she fancied added so much to her beauty, and to excite that boundless flow of repartee which made her the center of a crowd of silly young men who liked to have their small wits tickled, and who hoarded her jokes to retail as their own.

She had now no little circle to entertain; she did not care to please any one in Woodsome; she even took a pleasure in displeasing Antony, and her one daily excitement was to try to meet Yanna and Miss Alida driving, and embarrass their movements, or pass them with insolent disdain. Peter Van Hoosen was the only person she treated with her old kindness and charm. To him she was gentle and sad, and one morning she wandered an hour with him in his garden, listening to his words of comfort about little Emma, until they were both ready to weep. So that when Peter saw his son next, he spoke sharply to him about Rose, and frankly told him he was not worthy to have the charge of such a little, proud, sensitive heart; indeed, Peter was quite sure that Rose would have been an excellent wife under such guidance as he would have given her.

So the summer went away and Rose had the satisfaction of feeling that she had made all her friends as wretched as she had made herself. Yet there was no apparent effort to do this; and there was no need of effort; for the power of those indirect influences which distil from a life are greater than effort, and Rose had only to wander about the house and grounds, a picture of woe, lonely and uncomplaining, to destroy the summer sunshine and set every one on the edge of quarreling about her. For she had really a strong personality, and her unhappy moods affected the household as perceptibly as rain affects the atmosphere.

For weeks Antony endeavored to understand and conquer this attitude. He followed her in her lonely walks, and she listened to what he said as if she heard him not. Or she permitted him to walk at her side, and yet behaved precisely as if he were not there. If he visited her in her own apartment, she made him just the same nonentity. She heard no question he asked; she answered no remark he made. Kind or reproachful words fell alike upon her consciousness, and she made no sign of being touched by them; for to Antony she had ceased even to pretend to be an angel.

In this abandonment of her duty there was but one hopeful sign--she never neglected herself or her appearance. Whenever she permitted Antony to see her she was beautifully dressed. Her black and white garments were of the loveliest materials, and were so made and worn as to give an air of plaintive pathos and elegance to all her movements. Every day Antony, furtively watching her going out and her coming in, was touched and smitten afresh by loveliness so near and dear to him, and yet so far beyond his power to influence. And yet, every day he grew more hopeless, for Rose's sin was now very different from what it had been. Her temptation to drink had been in his sight a deformity, a disease, a calamity, but while Rose sinned against her will he did not call it a sin; he was as ready to forgive as she was to be sorry. But this indulgence of a defiant temper in the face of her actual transgression, was a sin having its origin in the will; and it was, therefore, in all its essence and results devilish and sorrow-making.

Towards the close of this unhappy summer a lady in the vicinity gave a masked dance, and Antony and Rose received invitations. Antony regarded them as mere courtesies, for they were still in mourning, and it was hardly possible Rose would deny and defy all her summer attitude by accepting them. As she was passing him in the hall he said, "Rose, Mrs. Lawson has sent us invitations to her mask dance. Of course they are merely complimentary."

There was no answer.

"Mrs. Lawson knows we are in mourning; and besides, we may be in the city before the twentieth."

Rose was leisurely walking upstairs, but she heard the words, and a sudden resolve to cap all her contradictions by going to the dance entered her mind. It gave her such a fillip of mischievous pleasure as she had not felt for a long time: and the following day she went into New York and bought what she desired for the occasion. Antony sent a polite refusal and thought no more of the matter. Indeed, on the day before the dance, he began to prepare for a return to the city; and on the twentieth he went into New York to make arrangements for the continuance of his lease, as his own house was not finished. He did not return until a later train than usual, and Rose was in hopes of escaping his notice until her object had been accomplished. Then, of course, there would be a scene; and she enjoyed the prospect of it. She was brewing a storm, and delighting herself in the hellish concoction.

When Antony came home he saw the carriage at the front door, and the coachman waiting by the horses. "Where are you going at this time of night, Clemens?" he asked.

"Mrs. Van Hoosen is going to Mrs. Lawson's dance, sir."

Then Antony turned into the parlor, and leaving open the door, waited for his wife's approach. Very soon a maid ran down with her carriage wraps, and then there was a light step, with a vague waft of perfume, and Antony went to the foot of the staircase. Rose was descending with her mask in her hand. Her fair auburn hair was loose and crowned with poppies. Her short and scanty dress was of vivid scarlet and black, her hose were of scarlet silk, her slippers of black satin, and her arms covered to above the elbows with black gloves. She was, as she mockingly said, "a diablesse in scarlet and