Was It Right to Forgive? A Domestic Romance

She did not answer. She was very pale, her eyes were cast down, her mouth trembled, her hand clasped nervously the back of the chair by which she stood. She did not dare to look at Harry. He was so troubled, so reproachful, so handsome.

“Will you at least shake hands, Yanna?” he asked, coming to her side. Then she looked into his face, 104 and he held her a moment to his heart, as with kisses on her sweet, sad mouth, he murmured, “Yanna! Yanna!” ere he went hastily away.

And as soon as he was gone, a quick realization of all she had lost, or resigned, reproached her. The most beautiful points in Harry’s character came to the front – his love, his generous temper, his kindness to women, his cheerfulness, his physical beauty and grace, his fine manners! Oh, he had been in so many respects a most charming lover! No other could ever fill his place. Even his fault towards her had sprung from a virtue, and though in its development it showed him to be lacking in just perceptions and strength of character, were these indeed unpardonable faults?

This was the trend of her feeling in the first moments of her misery; and it was followed by a sentiment very like anger. She sat still as if turned into stone. All her life seemed to be suddenly behind her, and her future only a blank darkness. “And it is my own fault!” she thought passionately. “The bird that sang in my heart all summer long has flown away; but it was my own hand that sent it out into the world, and there, doubtless, some other woman, more loving and less wise, will open her heart to its song. Alas! alas!” And a great wave of love drifted her off her feet; she lost all control of her feelings, and sobbed as despairingly as the weakest and most loving of her sex could have done.

In the meantime, Harry was making himself utterly wretched in much the same manner. The presence of a servant being intolerable, he sent his man on a message to the express office, and then, as he drove homeward, deliberately tortured himself with a consideration of all the sweet beauty, and all the sweet 105 nature, he had lost. “And what for?” he asked, with that quick temper which is one of the first symptoms of disappointed love. “That Rose may have more dances, and a little more éclat, and that I may play the elegant host at my mother’s teas. Father ought to do the civil thing in his own house. It is too bad that he does not do so. It is not fair to him. People must talk about it. As for writing a book! Pshaw! Nobody considers that any excuse for neglecting social duties – and it is not!”

He shook the reins impatiently to this decision, and then suddenly became aware of a bit of vivid coloring among the leafless trees. It was dusk, but not too dark to distinguish Rose’s figure, wrapped in her red cloak, with the bright hood drawn over her head. She was leaning on Antony Van Hoosen, and Harry walked his horses and watched the receding figures. Their attitude was lover-like, and they were so absorbed in each other that they were blind and deaf to his approach.

“Oh – h – h! So that is the way the wind blows! What a shame for Rose to take a heart like that of Antony Van Hoosen’s for a summer plaything! I know exactly how she is tormenting the poor fellow – telling him that she loves him, but that this, and that, and the other, prevent the possibility, etc., etc., – killing a man while he looks up adoringly, and thanks her for it. Poor Antony! Such a good, straightforward fellow! And I know Rose means no more than she means when she pets her poodle. Well, thank goodness! Yanna did not try to make a fool of me. She is, at least, above that kind of meanness. She has a heart. And she is suffering to-night, as much as I am – and I hope she is! She ought to! – Well, Thomas, 106 how did you get here before me? Been at the express office?”

“Yes, sir. Nothing there, sir. I met Jerry coming from the mail, and he gave me a lift.”

Then Harry threw down the reins, and went into the house. It looked very desolate, wanting the precious Lares and ornaments which Mrs. Filmer took with her wherever she meant to dwell for any time. She was accustomed to say that “there were certain things in every family which took on the family character, and which gave the family distinction to their home.” “It is the miniatures and the carved ivories, and the little odds and ends of old furniture and of our own handiwork, that give the Filmer-y look to the house,” she had said that afternoon to Rose, who was fretting at the “uselessness of dragging the old-fashioned things to and from the city, when they had now a home of their own in the country.”

The whole tone of the house was fretful and restless; the halls were crowded with trunks; the dinner was belated; and Mrs. Filmer had a nervous headache, and was weary and suffering. She looked reproachfully at Harry when he came to the table, and Harry understood the look. He had been needed, and he had not been present, and the newly roused sense of his father’s responsibility made him answer the look relatively.

“It is too bad that you have everything to do, mother. Why do you let father sneak away to the city?”

“Do not talk absurdly, Harry. Your father did not ‘sneak away.’ You know I begged him to go. The disturbance of the ball and the packing after it would have knocked him to pieces for the whole winter.”

At this moment Rose entered. She was radiant and innocent-looking, and full of apologies for her three minutes’ tardiness; and she answered Harry’s keen, interrogative look with one of such guileless listlessness that Harry was compelled to wonder whether it really had been his sister in the wood at that hour. All dinner time his thoughts wandered round this uncertainty and the certainty that Antony, at least, was a positive case. And then, if it was not Rose, whom could Antony have been making love to? For Harry had no doubts as to the occupation of the couple.

When they were alone, Harry suddenly turned to his sister and asked: “What were you doing in the wood so late this evening, Rose?”

“Me! In the wood?”

“Were you not in the wood with Antony Van Hoosen?”

She shrugged her shoulders scornfully and answered: “Mamma can tell you what I have been doing all afternoon.”

“Indeed, I can, Harry. Rose has had to look after many things you might have attended to for her; but then, Rose,” added Mrs. Filmer, turning her head languidly to her daughter, “there were the Van Hoosens to look after. Your brother is mad that way. If he cannot see the girl, he fancies he sees her brother. Thank heaven, we shall be rid of them to-morrow!”

“Oh, mamma! I think you too have Yanna and Antony on your brain.”

“Well, Rose, I have undergone them all summer; and I may now say frankly that I do not like them.”

“You have a sick headache, dear mamsie. Do go to bed. Shall I help you? No? Well, then, I will go myself. For I am tired, and so forth.”

She went off with a kiss, and an airy recommendation to follow her good example; and Harry rose as if to obey it. His mother opened her heavy eyes and said: “Wait a few minutes, Harry, my dear. You look miserable. You eat nothing. You have been to see Yanna. Can you not let that girl alone?”

“The girl has let me alone. She has refused even to write to me. I am miserable. And I do not feel as if anything, as if anything on earth, can atone for the loss of Yanna’s love.”

“Not even my love?”

“That is a thing by itself. It is different. I understand to-night what is meant by a broken heart.”

“The feeling does not last, Harry. In New York you will soon wonder at yourself for enduring it an hour – these bare dripping woods, this end-of-all-things feeling, is a wretched experience; – but a broken heart! Nonsense!”

“Mother, there is no use talking. I am miserable; and I do think that you are to blame.”

“Me!”

“You have wounded Yanna’s feelings in some way, I know.”

“Yanna’s feelings!” cried Mrs. Filmer.

“Yes; and they are very precious to me; more so than my own feelings.”

“Or than mine? Speak out, Harry. Be as brutal as you want to be. I might as well know the worst now as again.”

“I do not care for New York. I do not care for the preparations you have made. I will not go out at all. I have given myself to this society nonsense, because it pleased you, mother; but I can do so no longer. How can I dress, and dance, and make compliments 109 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 110 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 111 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 112 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.”