"Kindness nobler ever than revenge."
If things came right in the Forest, it was not through effort. One had
simply to surrender to its spell, to breathe in the beauty and the calm,
to live there, as the president had said.
Celia's thoughts were interrupted by Sally's hurried entrance.
"Laws a mercy! Miss Celia, honey, Mrs. Whittredge's in the parlor. I come
mighty nigh askin' her what she wanted in dis yere house."
Celia looked up in astonishment. Mrs. Whittredge! What could it mean? "And
she asked for me?" she repeated.
"I done tol' her your mamma was sick, but she 'lowed 'twas you she
wanted."
Celia recovered herself. "Very well, Sally," she said, but it was with a
beating heart she walked the length of the hall. Her enemy! What did it
mean?
Mrs. Whittredge, her heavy veil thrown back a little, stood beside the
table in the centre of the room.
"You are surprised, Celia," she said, as they faced each other, "but there
is something I wish to say to you. No, I will stand, thank you."
Celia waited, feeling, even in the midst of a tumult of emotion, the
tragic beauty of the dark eyes.
Mrs. Whittredge seemed to find words difficult. She looked down at the
table on which her right hand rested. "I have made many mistakes," she
began, "but--I have never meant to wrong any one. At the time of my
husband's illness I--there were things said--I did not agree with Dr.
Fair, and I may have gone too far. It is my misfortune to be intense. I
was very unhappy. I thought the case was not understood. It was my
mistake." She paused.
"And my father died, crushed by the knowledge that he was unjustly blamed
for the death of his friend! The discovery of your mistake comes too
late." Celia's voice was tense with the stored up pain of those two years.
Mrs. Whittredge drew back. "You are hard," she said. "We look at things
from different standpoints. I have told you I wish to wrong no one,
but--ah, your father was cruel--cruel to me!"
"My father was never cruel," Celia cried.
"Listen! He told me I was killing my husband. I, who worshipped him. I,
who--God knows--would have given my life to--" she broke off in a passion
of grief, sinking into a chair and burying her lace in her hands.
Celia stood abashed and trembling before this revelation of a sorrow
deeper than her own,--the sorrow of self accusation and unavailing regret.
"Have you been wronged, are you hard and bitter? Seek the Kingdom of love.
Your Heavenly Father knoweth. He will take care of your cause." For a
moment Celia struggled against the wave of pity that was sweeping over
her, then forgetting everything but the suffering of this woman bowed
before her, she knelt by her side.
"Forgive me," she whispered. "I do not want to be hard. I, too, have
suffered, though not like you. Perhaps we wronged the dead by keeping
bitterness in our hearts. Perhaps to them it is all made right now. I will
forgive; I will try to forget."
Mrs. Whittredge lifted her head. Her face was drawn and white.
"I cannot forget," she said; "it is my misery. But I have no wish to make
other lives as unhappy as my own. Will you believe me when I say I regret
the wrong I did, and that I want to interfere with no one's happiness
hereafter?"
"I will believe it," Celia said, holding out her hand.
Mrs. Whittredge did not refuse it; but her own was very cold in Celia's
clasp. Drawing her veil over her face, without another word she left the
house.
Celia sat still, dazed by the sudden onward sweep of things. A meaning, a
possible motive, beneath Mrs. Whittredge's words occurred to her as her
heart began to beat more quietly. "To interfere with no one's happiness
hereafter." Could Allan--but no, she would not let herself think it. She
would stay in the Forest, and work and wait, and trust in its beneficent
spell.