THE EFFECT OF DR. DELANO’S FORGIVENESS.
As soon as Clara recovered her strength somewhat, she visited Susie
daily, and spent a great deal too much time with her, to please Mrs.
Forest. One day she found her in her conservatory, where the sashes were
all raised, busily planting young tube-rose plants in pots. “These,”
said Susie, “_must_ not flower until December;” and she spoke as though
the fate of worlds depended upon her success. “If you never go back,
Clara, we will build up a great florist business. We will not only sell
flowers, but shrubs, and shade-trees, and evergreens. See these little
junipers and spruces,” she added, leading Clara to the garden; “they
grow just perfectly. Oh, if I only had a thousand dollars! but I shall
make quite a little sum this winter;” and so she ran on detailing her
hopes and plans, and as she talked, she stooped among brilliant beds of
verbenas, and with her scissors commenced the most merciless onslaught,
cutting off every flower, and even all the stalks for some inches. Clara
uttered an exclamation at the devastation.
“You see I _may_ fail with my tube-roses, but I am sure of these. By
cutting back the plants, and making the earth soft and rich about them,
I force splendid cutting that will root easily, and make nice plants for
winter flowering. I have a cooler spot in my conservatory for verbenas.”
“Why, Susie, how much you know about the subject!” said Clara,
admiringly, as Susie went on with her work.
“I know a little about botany, you see, and I learned a great many
practical details at Anderson’s. You’ve no idea how kind he was and is
to me. He has engaged to buy every tube-rose, orange-blossom, camellia,
violet, and white-rose I can produce from October to April. I shall send
my first orange-blossoms in a few days. At Christmas every camellia will
bring fifty cents. I shall get forty-five if he retails them at fifty. I
only had thirty last winter, but I ought to have at least fifty this
coming winter, and the next winter, oh, Clara! I can have ten times that
number easily; but I want some one to help me. Mrs. Buzzell is growing
old, and cannot do as much of the house-work as she did, and I _must_
not neglect my flowers.”
“Why should I not come with you?” asked Clara, enthusiastically. “Susie,
I have an ‘impression,’ as the spiritualists say, that this is a
heaven-appointed way for you and me to work out our salvation together.
I can sell my watch, if necessary, though I would hate to do it. It is
an elegant chronometer, given me by father Delano. I am crazy to work,
Susie. Can I not do something now? Why should these fine verbenas lie
here to rot, and here you have sweet-mignonette by the yard, all in
blossom!”
“If I only had a place in the city for little bouquets, not the
conventional style, but sweet little ones for the hair and to wear at
the breast;” and while she was speaking, she took a spray of
scarlet-verbena, set it around with mignonette and a bordering of
apple-geranium leaves. “They ought to bring ten cents at this season—at
least five.”
“Why, Susie, they could be sold by the thousand. I believe Miss Galway,
my dressmaker, could dispose of any number. Let us set to work at once
and make up a hundred of them, and you take them to her to-morrow, with
a letter from me. I have her confidence, and can count on her assent.
Nothing will be lost anyway, if we fail.” Susie seized the opportunity,
and the work commenced. A layer of thirty just covered the bottom of the
basket Susie provided—a very ugly basket, that came from the florist’s
with Neapolitan violet roots. Five layers, one hundred and fifty
bouquets, were ready before Clara left, and the next morning, at ten
o’clock, were actually on sale in Miss Galway’s window, labeled “ten
cents each.” Susie returned in high spirits. She had found Miss Galway
charming. Two of the bouquets had been sold in five minutes. “Oh,
Clara!” she exclaimed, “if I had only known, I could have kept her
supplied all summer.” At the end of three days, Miss Galway wrote,
enclosing twelve dollars, the balance after deducting commission. “The
last of the flowers, Miss Galway said, had been sold toward evening, on
the Common, by her little sister, who was anxious to sell more.” They
had pleased Miss Galway’s customers, especially because of the rare
fragrance of the geranium. Susie sent more, but the stock soon
diminished, for she had not counted on this new market. The
apple-geranium became precious, and new plans commenced to mature in
Susie’s ever-active brain.
Meanwhile Mrs. Forest was anxious. Clara’s attention was being called
away from the one string her mother constantly kept harping on—the
reconciliation. Dr. Forest, however, encouraged the firm of “Dykes and
Delano,” as he called it, and promised to put some money into the
“concern.” He was delighted at Clara’s first successful idea. “What a
thoroughly woman’s way of doing things,” he said. “No man would ever
have had the cheek to impress a dressmaker into the flower business. Go
on; you two women have good business notions, and you are sure of
success.” Mrs. Forest heard these encouragements with inward pain, and
finally, when she could not endure the silence of Clara’s husband any
longer, she wrote to him herself. Her letter was a masterpiece of
shallow tact. What he read very plainly “between the lines,” was, that
he had only to whistle for Clara, and she would fly to him like a
submissive spaniel; though Mrs. Forest had by no means intended to make
him too confident. She had dwelt long upon the duty to society devolving
upon married people, and upon the necessity of circumspect conduct in
husbands. The answer came immediately, and was a triumph to Mrs. Forest,
who lost no time in bringing the matter up before the doctor and Clara.
That day Clara had felt wretched, and had kept her room. She had
suffered one of those inevitable relapses, which all those who have
“loved and lost” can perfectly understand. It is one of the tricks Love
plays us, to leave an impress of his own divine beauty in the heart,
through whatever form he has gained entrance there. Clara had been
mourning her dead for months, and the agony had only returned on that
day, as it had often returned before. The worst of it had been endured,
when her father came in in the afternoon. “To-day is a bad day for you,
darling, I see. Life is a grasshopper, isn’t it?” This was one of his
distortions of the text, “The grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire
shall fail.”
When Mrs. Forest came in, an hour later, Clara was lying on the lounge
and the doctor was reading to her. Mrs. Forest, feeling in a very
complaisant mood, and not wishing to present immediately the subject of
Albert’s letter, sat down to her sewing, and begged the doctor to go on
reading. He finished some ten pages of a critique on _Heat as a Mode of
Motion_, by Professor Tyndall.
“Well, I call that ponderous,” said Mrs. Forest, greatly relieved when
the reading ended. “Do _you_ really find anything interesting in that,
Clara?”
“Certainly I do, mamma dear. Why do you ask?”
“Well, it seems to me positive affectation. I can’t believe you
understand that explanation of expansion by heat.”
“But I do. I have read the original carefully. See!” and taking a lot of
spools from her mother’s work-basket, she piled them up compactly, their
sides all parallel. “Now imagine these spools the atoms of iron, for
example, as they lie when the iron is cold. Now a motion is set up among
these atoms. That motion is heat, and it changes the relative position
of the atoms in this way, or something like it, only I can’t make them
stand; but don’t you see, if I pile them so that their corners only
touch, they will occupy more space?”
“Well, yes. I think I see it somewhat mistily; but where did you read
this and other ponderous books like it? I think I remember you devoting
your time to novels, quite as naturally as other girls.”
“Oh, I read a great deal at Stonybrook. We had a blue-stocking society,
only we called it _The Bas Bleu Club_. We met every Saturday morning,
and darned our stockings to the accompaniment of such reading as this,
and the girl who read, got her own stockings darned that day for
nothing. One of our obligations was to let nothing pass until we
thoroughly comprehended it, and sometimes the matter would be so
ponderous, as you say, and our interruptions so numerous, that we got
over scarcely a page at a sitting; but we learned a great deal in that
way; even our crude guesses at the author’s meaning often led to the
truth, and our circuitous wandering had a comical charm about it.”
“And how many young ladies could be induced to spend their time so
seriously?”
“We commenced with over sixty, dwindled down to about twenty, and kept
that number very steadily. Miss Marston was the only teacher whom we
ever invited to join us. One of her tricks deceived us for a long time.
This was to pretend ignorance, and get the other _Bas Bleus_ to
enlighten her. When we found her out, we revenged ourselves by assuming
that she knew nothing, and so explained everything elaborately.”
“A secret society, no doubt,” said the doctor.
“Oh, yes. We were sworn to the deepest secrecy. We were required to
swear by the ‘_unholeyness_ of our stockings;’ and when any candidate
blushed and hesitated, there was a roar, and we mercifully changed the
oath to the ‘un-hole-y-ness of our future stockings.’”
“And pray, which way did you swear, my dear?”
“Now, mamma dear, that is personal,” said Clara, laughing. “When the
session was over, the stockings all nicely mended, and our heads well
crammed with scientific nuts for future digestion, the _Bas Bleus_ gave
way to the most unrestrained jollity. Miss Marston was perfectly
charming, and the greatest romp among us. Often, the next Monday in
class, listening to her demonstration of problems in trigonometry, we
could hardly believe that this grave personage was the _Bas Bleu_ who
had actually rolled on the carpet with us in the exciting exercise known
as _cat’s cradle_. But I’m sure no one ever peached, and I don’t think
she would have cared if any one had.”
“No,” said the doctor. “Those who have real dignity are never afraid of
losing it.”
“Young ladies’ schools of to-day are very different, I think, from those
of my time,” said Mrs. Forest. “The teachers I used to know never
descended from their dignity pedestal, and if they had I don’t think
they would have been able to get back again with the grace of Miss
Marston.” Here Mrs. Forest inquired particularly about the late visit of
that lady to the White Mountains, and this lead easily to the object
Mrs. Forest had nearest at heart. The doctor sat very quiet while she
urged Clara in the most earnest way, to make up her mind to be
reconciled to her husband. “You do not feel as I do in this matter,” she
said, appealing to the doctor. “I do so wish you did.”
“If I could feel it to be for the best, Fannie, I would use every effort
in my power to bring about a reconciliation.”
“Then why do you not do it?” Mrs. Forest asked, brightening up suddenly.
“Because, simply, I can’t believe it for the best.” Mrs. Forest’s
countenance fell. Clara sighed but said nothing while her mother talked
of Dr. Delano, wondering why she spoke so confidently of his sentiments
toward his wife. Mrs. Forest urged the natural goodness and uprightness
of Albert, his anxiety for his wife’s return, the blessedness of
forgiveness, and then the terrible evils that would result if idle
tongues were not made to cease their gossiping.
“Have I not been taught,” replied Clara, wearily, “to avoid doing wrong,
not from fear of punishment, but from the love of right, and faith in
the beneficent results of a wise course—to defy all scandal, if only I
was sure of being guided by my best feelings?”
“Our feelings are a blind guide,” said Mrs. Forest, reproachfully. “That
is your father’s teaching, and I must confess I don’t see the good
effects of it.”
“One good effect was going contrary to your advice, mother dear, and
befriending Susie Dykes.”
“The end is not yet,” said Mrs. Forest, sententiously, and apparently
much occupied with her sewing. “I believe such latitudinarian sentiments
weakened your chances of gaining the permanent respect of your husband.
Had you firmly insisted at first that you would not have that
ill-regulated Miss Wills in your house, your husband would have honored
you all the more for it.”
“I never should have dreamed of such a policy,” said Clara, very
earnestly. “If we had gone and settled in the Desert of Sahara
immediately after marriage, where Albert had never seen any woman but
me, to be sure, he might not have changed; but I am not proud of a love
that I cannot hold against all the flirts in the world. Miss Wills has
certainly a greater charm for Albert than I have, and I wish her joy of
her conquest. I’ve cried out about all the tears there are, as Susie
said of Dan, and I mean to be sensible, and see if I cannot live without
a husband who is the lover of another woman. I mean to go into the
flower business with good, true-hearted Susie Dykes.”
Mrs. Forest let her sewing drop, but seeing it was not wise to oppose
Clara on two points at once, she returned to Albert. He was, she said,
very anxious to atone for the past. He could never be happy as he was.
He had no deep regard for any one but his wife. Here Mrs. Forest
unfolded a letter. Clara’s heart beat violently. “Oh, if he does really
want me! if he does really love me!” cried she. “Convince me only of
that, and I will fly to him. I will humbly ask his forgiveness, and
devote every hour of my life to making him happy.”
“Well, well, do let us hear what he says,” said the doctor, impatiently,
seeing with alarm the excited condition of Clara. Amid the most perfect
silence, Mrs. Forest smoothed out her letter and commenced:
“MY DEAR MRS. FOREST:—You cannot doubt that I regret as much as you do,
the step my wife has taken, and I appreciate the sympathy you kindly
offer.
“In my opinion, Mrs. Delano is entirely unjustifiable in so rash a
movement. A wife should trust her husband until she has absolute proof
of his infidelity. Mrs. Delano will not pretend that she has any such
proof, though I admit indiscretion on my part. Tell her, if she will
return at once, before any more mischief is wrought by idle tongues, I
shall forgive her leaving me, and endeavor hereafter to avoid causes of
trouble between us. Until she returns there is nothing more for me to
say or do in the premises.
“Accept, dear madam, assurances of my profound respect.
“ALBERT DELANO, M.D.”
When Mrs. Forest ended, Clara was lying with her face to the wall, her
hand pressed tightly over her heart. Dr. Forest, looking intently into
vacancy, was whistling a low melancholy air. Clara turned her head, and
as their eyes met, gravity sat on both faces like a pall; but only for
an instant, and then both simultaneously burst into laughter; but
Clara’s tears flowed at the same time, and her whole frame was convulsed
hysterically.
“Fannie,” said the doctor, alarmed at Clara’s condition, “your letter is
too tragic, by far. Go quick and get me some brandy, and have Dinah
bring a hot foot-bath.”