Was It Right to Forgive? Part 10

"She was compelled to go home without delay," answered Mrs. Filmer.

"She seemed afraid of her father--perhaps she has his dinner to cook."

"Oh, no! Betta does all that kind of work. I think Yanna was disappointed about the ball. It is too absurd of Mr. Van Hoosen!"

"I imagine the ball will proceed without Miss Van Hoosen. Indeed, I am rather glad we are going to the city soon, for life without the Van Hoosen flavor will be a pleasant change."

"I am sure, mamma, the Van Hoosen flavor has been a great help to us all summer."

"Well! The summer is now over."

"And Yanna is----"

"Oh, Yanna is everything charming! So is Antony! And even Mr. Peter Van Hoosen is picturesquely primitive. But the subject tires me to-day. Take your bouillon, Rose, and then try and secure a sleep."

Mrs. Filmer was turning the salad, with a face of great annoyance, and Rose felt that the conversation was closed.

In the meantime, Yanna drove slowly homeward. Her life seemed to be crumbling inwardly. She lingered in the empty wood thinking of Harry, and of the trial which had tested and found him wanting; suffering over again his pettish anger in their parting, and feeling Mrs.

Filmer's polite scorn to be the last bitter drop in a cup full of bitterness. She was grateful for the quiet of nature, and not afraid to weep before her. She thought her sorrow to be as great as she could bear; for she was not old enough to know that there are griefs too great to find tears for.

Soon, however, she began to feel after that sure and perfect Love that never deceives and never disappoints, to utter those little prayers of two or three words which spring from the soul direct to G.o.d, and always come back with comfort and healing on their wings. She wept and prayed until her heart was like a holy well, running over with the waters of hope and consolation. Her love melted into her intelligence, and her intelligence became love; and this tempering influence and balancing power, gave her strength to keep the expression of her feelings shut up in a granite calm.

And when her father stepped out to meet her, when her eyes caught the pitying love in his eyes, and she went hand in hand with him into the pretty room, where the fire was blazing a welcome, and Betta, with smiles and excuses, was bringing in the dinner; she felt that her own home had plenty of those compensating joys of the present, which fill the heart with comforting thoughts, and the life with the sweet satisfactions and peace of possession.

"Home is a full cup, father!" she said. And Peter, standing at the head of his table, smiled at Yanna; and then lifted up his hands and asked G.o.d's blessing on it!

CHAPTER IV

Fortunately for Adriana, the Filmers were not named at the dinner table. Antony had a new subject to discuss; for on the previous day, while in New York, an acquaintance had taken him to a Socialist meeting. The topic had been treated on its most poetic and hopeful side, and Antony was all enthusiasm for its happy possibilities. Peter listened without any emotion. He did not believe that crime, nor even poverty, would be abolished by merely new social arrangements.

"It is the _inner_ change in individuals that will do it, Antony,"

he said. "I have heard, and I have read, all sides of the Socialism of the day; and I tell you, it is half brutal, and altogether insufficient to cure existing wrongs."

"But, father, if the framework of society, which is all wrong, is put all right, would not individuals in the ma.s.s take the right form? As far as I can judge, they are ready to run into any mold prepared for them."

"No. You may set all without right; and all within may remain wrong.

It is the new heart and the new spirit that is required. Will Socialism touch the inner man and woman? If not, then Socialism is a failure."

"I do not think it hopes to do this at once; but wider education, more time, more money, more individual liberty----"

"Will only produce more license, more pride of intellect, more self-will; and men and women will become as indomitable as the beasts of the desert; and a law unto themselves."

"Then, father, what would you propose?"

"I see the answer in Yanna's face. She knows, Antony, what I would say, if I could say the words as well as she can--'_So much the rather_'----go on, Yanna." And Yanna's face lighted and lifted as she repeated with calm intensity:

"So much the rather Thou Celestial Light s.h.i.+ne inward! and the mind through all her powers.

Irradiate!"

"The Inward Light! That is what is needed. These reformers talk too much, and think, and do, too little. Were there many Americans present?"

"The majority were foreigners. They were not ill-natured; they were even cheerful and good-tempered. They had their wives and children with them. They had beer to drink, and tobacco to smoke, and a good band of music. I heard '_La Ma.r.s.eillaise_' played with a wonderful spirit. It set me on fire. I began to feel for my musket and to think of fighting."

"We don't want '_La Ma.r.s.eillaise_' here, Antony. We have our own national hymns. The '_Star Spangled Banner_' can set my heart thrilling and burning, without making me think of blood and murder. If social reformers will talk to the '_Star Spangled Banner_,' and '_The Red, White and Blue_,' they will do no harm, and perhaps they may even do some good."

"However, father, most of the men I heard speak appeared to have a great deal of information and much practical wisdom."

"They will need as much again to govern what they have."

"You are prejudiced against anything new, father."

"Perhaps I am, Antony. I am suspicious of new things, even of new planets. I have read of several lately, but I cannot say I believe in them. I find myself sticking to the old list I learned at school; it began with Mercury, and ended with Georgium Sidus. I believe they have given Georgium Sidus a new name; but I don't know him by it."

Antony--who rarely laughed--laughed heartily at his father's solid conservatism; and then the conversation drifted to and fro about the ordinary events of their daily life--the potting of plants, the village taxes, the shoeing of horses, and so forth. And Yanna's calm, serious face told Antony nothing of the suffering in her heart; nor did she desire he should know it. Culture teaches the average woman to suppress feeling; and Yanna had a great dislike to discuss matters so closely personal to her. She was not ignorant either of Antony's love for Rose, and his friends.h.i.+p with Harry had been hitherto without a cloud; why, then, should her private affairs make trouble between lovers and friends?

"At any rate," she thought, "circ.u.mstances alter cases; and Antony in his relations.h.i.+p with Rose and Harry must be permitted to act without any sense of obligation to my rights or wrongs."

Peter scarcely looked at the matter in the same temperate way; his sense of the family tie was very strong, and he thought if one member suffered injury all the other members ought to suffer with it. Yet he comprehended Yanna's sensitiveness, her dislike for any discussion of her feelings, her liberal admission that Harry, brought up in a different sphere of life, and under social tenets of special obsequiousness, could not be fairly measured by the single directness of their line and plummet.

She understood from Harry's awkward att.i.tude in his own home that he was suffering, and that he was likely to make others suffer with him.

She had no special resentment against Mrs. Filmer. "Her behavior was natural enough; I might have been just as rude under the same provocation," she thought. So she said nothing whatever to her father of the little scene between Mrs. Filmer and herself; she was able to understand Mrs. Filmer's position, and she was satisfied with the way in which she had defended her own. "There is nothing owing between us," she reflected, "and, therefore, there will be no perpetual sense of injury. We shall forgive--and perhaps forget."

She busied herself all afternoon about her simple household duties; affecting to Betta a sudden anxiety about the usual preparations for winter; and she compelled herself to sing as she went up and down, putting away, and taking out, or looking carefully for the ravages of the summer moth. Peter heard her voice in one _bravura_ after another; and for a short time he sat still listening and wondering. For effects are chained to causes, and he asked himself what reason Yanna had for music of that particular kind. By-and-by, he smiled and nodded; he had fathomed the secret of Yanna's mental medicine--though with her it had been a simple instinct accepted and obeyed--and he said softly:

"To be sure! The lifeboat is launched with a shout, and the forlorn hope goes cheering into the breach; so when the heart has a big fight to make, anything that can help it into action is good. Artificial singing will bring the real song; anyway, it helps her to work, and work is the best gospel ever preached for a heartache."

The evening was brightened by Antony's metamorphosis into a man of fas.h.i.+on. His late frequent visits to New York were explained when he rather consciously came into the sitting-room. He was in full dress, and looked remarkably handsome; and Peter felt very proud of his son.

It is a humbling thing to confess that he had never had such a quick, positive pride in him before. The potent and mysterious power of dress, and of a fine personal presence, jumped to his eyes, and appealed to his heart, with a prompt.i.tude Antony's bravest and most unselfish deeds had never effected. He stood up and looked at his son with a kindling pleasure in his face; and when Yanna sent him off with prodigal compliments, he privately endorsed every one of them.

True, he afterwards took himself to task for his vanity; and with expansive bluntness, told Yanna that her brother was just as fine a fellow in homespun as in broadcloth; but the broadcloth image remained with him, and he could not help some very pertinent private reflections on the value of culture and good society, as exemplified in his own family.

Yanna did not sleep much. All night long she heard the voices and the carriages of the people going to or coming from the ball; and the solemn stillness of the early morning was offended by their vacant laughter, or noisy chattering. She was glad to be called from restless and unhappy slumber, to the positive comfort of daylight and day's work. But she did not see Antony again until the dinner hour. He was then in high spirits, and quite inclined to talk of the entertainment.

"It was very like the Van Praaghs' and the Gilberts' affair," he said.

"The same people were there, and I think they wore the same dresses--white and fussy, and flary, flowery things, you know, Yanna.

But Rose Filmer was unlike every other woman."

"Was she handsome? Well dressed? In good spirits? Kind? and in all her other best moods?"

"Yanna, she was in every way perfection. Her dress was wonderful. And, oh! the lift of her head, and the curl of her lip, and her step like a queen's! She was charming! She was sweet, oh, so sweet!"

Yanna smiled at his enthusiastic admiration of her friend, but Peter said nothing until they were alone. Then he turned to his son, and asked: "Antony, are you thinking of falling in love with Miss Filmer?"

"I have been in love with her ever since I first saw her."

"You could not ask a girl like that to be your wife. She has been brought up to luxury; she could not bear poverty."