The Clergyman's Wife and Other Sketches/Forgiving not Forgetting

by Anna Cora Mowatt

FORGIVING NOT FORGETTING.

---

ou have wronged me—I forgive you—but I cannot forget," was Mrs. Flintwell's reply to Miss Abbie Lightly, who came to her a suppliant for pardon.

Abbie was thoughtless, impulsive, unsettled in character. All that was evil within her floated up to the surface, bubbling and babbling, and readily stimulated into action. But there was a golden vein of virtue lying beneath the froth and foam of her effervescent nature. When the passing excitement, which prompted light speech and rash act, subsided; when she sat in the calm seclusion of her own chamber, the good angel, Reflection, softly entered in, and, with sad visage, raised a magic mirror before her eyes, and showed her inconsequent deeds flitting by in long procession, and sorrowfully rehearsed her short-comings and their sequence. And Abbie gazed upon that reproachful presentment, and listened to that gentle, regretful tone, and was moved to contrition! Better still, she rose up courageously and went to the one against whom she had sinned. Though her spirit was proud it was also generous, and she humbled herself meekly to confess her fault, and penitently to implore forgiveness.

Even so she had gone to Mrs. Flintwell. She owed her a debt of gratitude which should have sealed her lips when bitter and maligning thoughts rose to her unbridled tongue; yet she had spoken ill of her; she had given a malicious interpretation to fair-seeming conduct, and assigned interested motives to actions which bore the appearance of noble self-sacrifice.

Mrs. Flintwell's manners lacked all softness; there was about her a hard solidity, a ramrod uprightness of mind and deportment. She was stern in her honesty, blunt in her truthfulness; her uncompromising integrity often caused her to be rude, for she regarded suavity merely as graceful hypocrisy. She possessed kind feelings, and was actuated by a strong desire to serve her fellow-creatures; but, unhappily, she was not blessed with one particle of tact which could prompt her to use that considerate delicacy which renders services acceptable.

Her favors were conferred in such a decided, pointed way, and so obviously from a sense of right, rather than from tenderness or sympathy, that those whom she desired to benefit, experienced an inclination to reject the proffered aid, and struggle on, rather than receive help so unlovingly tendered.

Mrs. Flintwell always walked in the straight and narrow way, however sharp the stones; no flowery considerations ever lured her into some more tempting by-road. She had no patience with those whose feet were too weak, or whose evil inclinations were too strong to tread the same flinty path.

When Abbie went to her in contrite mood, Mrs. Flintwell listened frigidly to her confession, and replied in an icy tone, "You have wronged me—I forgive you, but I cannot forget!"

Their social position caused the two ladies constantly to meet. Abbie was always treated by Mrs. Flintwell with marked coldness and distrust. Her air seemed to say, "I know you; I am keeping watch over your doings; I am guarding against you." Her whole manner showed that the recollection of the wrong she had received was ever fresh in her memory; that, in her own language (language so often used by those who say—ay, and think they pardon,) she had forgiven, but not forgotten.

Not forgotten? Then the wrong is registered, not wiped out! If thus chronicled, if unblotted out, then, assuredly, it is not forgiven, however she who pardons with her lips only, may try to cheat herself into the belief that she has actually pardoned. Put no faith in such forgiveness. There is no pardon that forgives, yet forgets not.

To pardon truly, internally, the very memory of the wrong should be gradually obliterated, and if the stirring of some chance chord calls up an involuntary remembrance, it will quickly be silenced and cast out of the thoughts. Let us not flatter ourselves into the convenient belief that we generously, and with Christian leniency, forgive the injuries we receive (and who is so insignificant that he receives none?) if we keep a strict account of their sum and magnitude. Not one single one of them is fully pardoned until it has been plunged beneath the waters of Lethe!