Was It Right to Forgive? A Domestic Romance

They sat still a little to praise the Professor, and then the ladies prepared for their afternoon shopping. They were full of anticipation, and Adriana was radiant with those pleasant hopes that only stir the heart of youth. Among the silks and laces, the gowns and cloaks and trimmings, they had some happy calculations; and when they left Arnold & Constable’s, it was already dusk and cold. They passed out of the store quickly, Yanna looking straight before her, and having her muff raised slightly towards her face. So neither of them saw the young man who bent eagerly forward from a passing hansom, and looked at them with amazement, and yet with an intense interest.

It was Harry Filmer on his way home; and if the driver had not known his home, he would certainly have passed it, so astonished was he at what he had seen, and so lost in speculation as to how such a thing could be.

“Whom do you think I met driving with Madame Zabriski this evening as I came home?” he said to his mother and Rose, as soon as an opportunity offered.

“Madame Zabriski’s friends are called legion,” answered Mrs. Filmer; “but I am sure we know no one who is on driving terms with the proud old woman.”

“Nevertheless, it was a great friend of yours, Rose – in fact, it was Yanna Van Hoosen.”

Mrs. Filmer turned round and looked at her son with scornful incredulity. “The thing is absurd!” she said. “You have been mistaken. Miss Van Hoosen has quite a common face.”

“It was Yanna,” persisted Harry, sulkily. “I 133 should think I know Yanna when I see her. I have good reason to do so. Her face was clear as light against the winter gloom. I can tell you, it gave me a shock.”

“In the Zabriski carriage? I cannot understand it. Was Madame Zabriski with her?”

“I have never seen Madame Zabriski except at the opera. Women look different in their carriage wraps.”

“I am almost certain that I heard, or I read, that she had gone with a party to Florida. You are sure it was Miss Van Hoosen?”

“Positive.”

“Then,” said Rose, “I think Yanna is acting very strangely. Why has she not written to me? I sent her a long letter last week, and she has not answered it. However, I shall probably see her brother this evening, and he will tell me whatever there is to tell.”

Thus it happened that Antony received a smiling invitation that night into the Filmers’ opera box; and that he was translated into the seventh circle of delight by Rose’s amiability and preference. To other visitors she was delightfully cordial, but she kept Antony at her side, and treated him with a familiar confidence she gave to no one else. Even Mrs. Filmer was more polite. She had noticed between Antony and her daughter a very intimate and apparently interesting conversation, and she perceived that Rose was much impressed by its tenor; and that she treated her lover with an unusual consideration. It was therefore likely that something strange had occurred; and she wisely accommodated herself to the mood it had induced.

But there was no conversation on the subject until 134 they were at home. Then Mrs. Filmer, in her dressing-gown and slippers, went to Rose’s room to receive her confidence. The girl was sitting half-undressed before the fire, with a soft, happy expression on her face. She sighed and smiled when her mother entered, and then began to uncoil her hair, and to spread it loose over the back of the chair on which she sat.

“It is too long, Rose,” said Mrs. Filmer, passing the shining locks through her fingers. “You ought to have it cut a little.”

“So many things ought to be done that are neglected. You came to hear about Yanna, eh, mamma?”

“What did Mr. Van Hoosen say?”

“Yanna and he are both staying with their cousin, Miss Alida Van Hoosen – you know papa sold her some land in Woodsome last summer. Miss Van Hoosen has rented the Zabriski house, with all its belongings, servants, carriages, opera box, etc.”

“Now I begin to understand. This Miss Van Hoosen and Madame Zabriski have been friends since their school days. They are together every winter; and every one thinks it necessary to speak of their ‘lovely friendship,’ and so on. And so she is a relative of the girl you know? Why did you not tell me this before?”

“They are only cousins – distant cousins – and Yanna never said much about her. We often passed her house when we were driving; and if we saw her at the window, or in the garden, we bowed to her. She appeared to be a very good-tempered old lady, and she must be so, for she has invited Yanna and her brother to stay with her until Easter.”

“Well! Wonders never cease! It may, however, be a good thing for you, Rose. This lady must know 135 many of the Zabriski set; and she will doubtless give some entertainments to her cousins. And somehow you are not popular with our own acquaintances, so that it would be a little triumph for you to step up from among them. I should go and see your friend in the morning.”

“I intend to do so. I promised her brother I would be there early. He said he was sure that Yanna had written to me.”

Then she rose, laid down the hairpins she had been idly fingering, and going to a closet, took out of it a bottle and a small wine glass. Mrs. Filmer instantly arrested her hand. “What are you doing, Rose?” she asked, angrily. “You took enough wine before coming upstairs. Do you know that Harry said to me yesterday, ‘Rose takes too much wine for a young girl; she will spoil her complexion.’”

“Tell Harry to mind his own complexion. I really have a pain – an indigestion, mamma. I always suffer from it when I eat a lobster salad, and I foolishly ate one to-night. I am only going to take a teaspoonful as medicine.”

“Why, Rose! My God! Rose, it is brandy! Give the bottle to me at once! What do you mean? Are you mad?”

“Not at all. I am only tired to death, and not well.”

Mrs. Filmer had the bottle in her hand, and she sat down with it, and began to cry hysterically. The fear, the doubt, that had been for some time couchant, hushed, hidden, had suddenly sprung like a wild beast at her heart. She felt as if she must choke, but in the midst of her anguish, she clung to the bottle with the desperation of a mother who holds back death from her child.

For some minutes Rose stood watching her, not affected by the grief she witnessed; only conscious of an indifference she could not master, and whose foundation was anger and annoyance. But when her mother had sobbed her passion of grief away, and lay white, still and exhausted in her chair, Rose went to her side, and kissed the tears off her cheeks, and said with an accent of deep injury:

“Mamma, dear mamma! You are making your head ache for nothing at all. Every one of the girls I know take a teaspoonful of brandy now and then, when they are tired and sick. Harry does the same thing very often. Why should he blame me? And then for you to act as if I had committed some dreadful crime! It is too bad! You might have faith in your daughter. No wonder so many people treat me shyly, when you come to my room to insult me. Oh, mamma, it is too cruel! It is too cruel! It is, indeed!”

Then mother and daughter wept together, and things were said between them far too sacred to be put into words – confessions, that had no articulate form; promises, that were never to be broken; sympathy, alliance, love invincible, hoping all things, believing all things! And when at length “good-night” was kissed, not spoken, there was an air of solemnity on Mrs. Filmer’s face that the world had never seen there, not even in church; and Rose was white as a lily, and her fair head drooped, and her heart was heavy, though not quite uncomforted. Long after her mother had gone away, the girl sat quiet as a stone, half-undressed, with sleep far from her eyes and her conscience wide awake; and it was not until the clock of a neighboring church struck three that she roused herself and began to finish her preparations for sleep.

“It is so hard to be good, and yet I do so long to be good!” she muttered; and then, because it had been her life-long custom, she fell upon her knees and clasped her hands; and a sacred fear suddenly encompassed her, and she was quite silent. Nevertheless, the struggling soul – sleepless and foreseeing – cried out to the All-Merciful; and so, though she knew it not, she prayed.

CHAPTER VI

Miss Alida might well congratulate herself on the interesting entanglements which she had voluntarily brought into her own placid life. Day by day, they grew into her heart, and gave that human zest to her employments and amusements, that their mere forms could never have done. A ball-room in which Rose was to watch, and Antony was to advise or sympathize with, was something more than a space for dancing. In the theatre or opera, there was a personal drama under her observation, in which she played no subordinate part; and even at her own fireside and table, she found that in many ways she could direct and advise and control events, to the end she thought most desirable.

For she had definitely made up her mind that the marriage of Rose to Antony would be the girl’s salvation; and she was resolved to accomplish it. That Mrs. Filmer actively, and Mr. Filmer mildly, disapproved the union only filliped her design onward to its completion. She believed Emma Filmer’s affections to have “undergone the world” and become dead to all but worldly considerations of position and money. And as for Henry Filmer’s opinions on any living question, she thought it might be as profitable to consult a mediæval ghost. In both of these conclusions she was wrong; but it would have been very difficult to have convinced her of her error.

Adriana’s affairs in some respects gave her less trouble. Adriana felt no special interest in any of the 139 gentlemen inclined to feel a special interest in her. Only to Professor Snowdon did she show herself in that sweet home abandon which was her great charm; to all others, she was grave, tideless-blooded, calm and cool. The ordinary young man was a little uncomfortable in her presence. She had none of the ready platitudes which were the current coin of his conversation; and in the spaciousness of her nature, he got bewildered and lost.

This attitude was a trifle provoking sometimes. “You are too large-minded, Adriana,” said Miss Alida to her one morning, as they sat talking. “That comes of measuring yourself by Cousin Peter all the time. But though it is right that old people should think for themselves, youth ought to be conventional. What harm is there in dancing? And why can you not go to the Filmers’ dance?”

“There is not, perhaps, any harm in the act of dancing; but father says no one can dance and think at the same time, and that way mischief lies. When you dance, your brains are in your toes, and you let consideration slip. You are at the mercy of your emotions also; and that is a kind of thing to rot the moral fibre. I quote father, and you need not hold up your hands at my ‘consideration.’ As for going to Mrs. Filmer’s, I have a personal reluctance to do so. She practically bowed me out of her house not so long ago.”

“But Rose did not know it. And Emma Filmer is a woman of the world, and appreciates people according to the company they keep. As far as I have known her, she periodically deserts her old friends for more eligible new ones. She thought she had done with you, and she wished to be done with you, because you interfered with Harry.”

“So, then, if I go to Rose’s dance, she will be sure I have done so for an opportunity to interfere with Harry once more.”

“Then go for that very purpose. I would. I am provoked to death with the young man. He has refused all my invitations – very sorry to do so – but – ”

“But he did not want to come. He evidently does not care to meet me again. It is very humiliating.”

“He fears to meet you again. And I think, Yanna, you made him drink a very humble cup. Men do not readily forgive such wounds to their self-esteem.”

“Harry has disappointed me. I hear nothing good of him.”

“I wouldn’t quite believe all Rose said on that subject. It is true that he is running a fast rig with a lot of gilded goslings, whose money came from industrious, economical ancestors. And it is also true that Harry has but a small inherited income, and must depend largely upon the results of his transactions in Wall Street; and that, therefore, he is simply going to poverty in very swagger company. But nothing else will cure him of his folly; not his father’s advice, nor his mother’s tears, nor love, nor honor, nor any good thing. Only poverty cures extravagance. Some day he will doubtless be sorry enough. Harry’s great want in life is a friend who will make him do what he can do.”

“It is a want we all share.”

“Then be a friend, and make me do what I can do.”

“You can do the thing you sketched out for yourself and others to Professor Snowdon. Bring together all the pure Dutch gentlewomen you know. Then begin your benevolent Holland Society. You are a fine 141 organizer, and excel in setting every one around you either to work or play.”

“Now, Yanna, it is my turn. Your duty is to forgive Emma Filmer, and to do good to her just because she did evil to you – which is a nice way of saying, go to the Filmer ball, and be as lovely to Harry as possible.”

“You know father does not like me to go to dances; and Mrs. Filmer will not understand my presence in the light you put it. She does not think I have been badly used, and she would not consider my being ‘lovely to Harry’ a kindness. I would rather talk no more on that subject.”

“Very well.” Miss Alida said the words with an air of disappointment, and then walked to the window to recover herself. In a few minutes she turned round, and said pleasantly: