VIOLA’S REPENTANCE.
“Since I must love thee--since a weird, wild fate
Impels me to thy heart against my will--
Do thou this justice to the soul I yield:
_Be its ideal_. Let it not blush to love.
* * * Be noble, truthful, brave,
Love honor more than Love, and more than me.”
When Viola was well enough to receive callers again, Professor Desha
was among the first announced.
Since the day of her accident his heart had been in a tumult of emotion.
He had realized that the interest he took in the fair coquette was deep
and painful--painful because he deemed it no less than a calamity to
lose his heart to one like Viola, who only played at love, and seemed
to have no conception of its depth and sacredness.
Although he was in his dignified way a very attractive man, he did not
have enough personal vanity to suppose that he could succeed in winning
her heart where so many others had failed--even Florian Gay, so young
and handsome, and much richer than himself.
So while she lay ill he began to read his own heart in dismay, and
entered on a struggle with the passion that had stolen on him unawares,
bursting into full flower that tragic day when she had gone down so
swiftly through the broken ice into the black, flowing river to what
might so quickly have been cruel death.
She filled his whole heart and thoughts, and he stood aghast at his own
weakness and folly.
Time was, but a little while ago, that he had frankly despised and
avoided her in his detestation of her heartlessness.
But the few unavoidable meetings with her at the studio of Florian Gay
had removed the keen edge of his dislike. No one could be in Viola’s
company and not yield to the magnetic charm of her presence. After all,
she seemed but a simple, unaffected girl, perhaps not realizing the
harm she did by her gayety and beauty.
So love had come to him against his will, and he chafed bitterly under
it, feeling that the light coquette was not worthy the sacrifice of a
true man’s heart.
He determined to conquer his ill-starred passion as speedily as
possible, and never let Viola have the triumph of knowing she had ever
touched his heart.
While she was ill he did not succeed very well in his desire, because
pity and sympathy softened his feelings.
Then when she began to convalesce, it made him so glad he could not
resist a kind little note and some flowers. It seemed an almost
necessary courtesy, and he intended to stop right there, and never see
her again if he could avoid it.
But Viola sent him a sweet little perfumed note in reply, at the end of
which she said:
“I am almost well again, and indeed you must not blame yourself for
having left me alone on the ice that day, because I sent you, you
know, to help poor Minnie Hyer. I pitied her so much, poor thing!
tumbling about on the ice till she must have been black and blue with
bruises. Then, of course, you never thought of my skating out so far
alone--neither did I, indeed--but I’ll tell you why I did it when I see
you again.”
Much brooding over the last sentence persuaded him that he owed Viola a
duty call.
Evidently she expected it, and--besides, his curiosity was aroused.
What reason had she had for skating out so far indeed?
“I will go--just once. Then I must certainly put the little beauty out
of my thoughts. One can not play with fire. I must give myself up to my
political duties and abjure society,” he decided, grimly.
So he set out for his last call, and when ushered into her charming
presence, the young statesman of thirty--cool and self-possessed enough
ordinarily--trembled so that he could scarcely speak, so keen was his
delight at seeing her again.
Viola had known well that he would come. She had faith in the potency
of those well-chosen words, “when I see you again.”
She smiled him a cordial welcome, and it seemed to him that never
before had she looked so lovely.
Illness had softened down the exuberant vitality of her beauty,
stealing a little roundness and bloom from her cheek, and a little of
the mischief from her luminous eyes. There was a delicate, appealing
languor in her movements, aided by the trailing house-gown whose warm
red tints contrasted so well with her fairness.
“You will pardon me for half reclining among my cushions. I am not
strong yet,” she explained.
“Only lazy, professor,” bantered Aunt Edwina, who then went on with her
fancy-work in an absent-minded way, as if she had almost forgotten his
presence.
Viola set herself to be charming, and presently he overcame his seizure
of timidity, that she took in some alarm for indifference.
“I am trying all I can to forget that day; but, oh! I dream of it every
night, and, oh! I don’t think that I can ever be the same careless,
light-hearted girl again!” she cried, shuddering. “I shall never forget
my sensations as I plunged through the ice, down, down, down to the
bottom of the river, believing that I was going to my death. I was
wondering if I should go to Heaven, for I did not think I had been such
a bad girl, only a bit vain, maybe.”
“A bit vain,” he echoed, wondering if all her coquetries lay so lightly
on her conscience.
“Yes, I have been vain, and I remembered it then,” conceded Viola,
demurely. “I have believed people when they told me I was pretty, and
I rejoiced in exciting admiration. Only that morning I admired myself
so much in my new skating suit, and thought what a sensation I should
create on the ice. But oh, how I repented everything when I went
crashing through into the cold water! Oh, how good God was to send some
one to save me! I shall try to be a better girl the rest of my life!”
she added, seriously, her eyes growing soft with the dew of threatening
tears.
Aunt Edwina was listening, though she seemed so busy, for she
interposed and said:
“You know, dear, Doctor Herron said you must not permit your mind to
dwell on the shock of that accident. He says it will make you nervous
if you don’t put it out of your mind.”
“But, auntie, it seems to me that I ought to keep it in mind always so
as to be a better girl, for indeed I mean to be hereafter,” objected
Viola, with the most charming humility.
“Pshaw, child, you’ve always been sweet and good with one
exception--you flirt too much. But I don’t suppose you can help that
any more than you can help breathing. It was born in you, and maybe it
doesn’t do much harm,” returned the old lady, quite forgetting Desha’s
presence.
Viola blushed up to the edges of her silky dark hair and stole a glance
at him.
“I wish that _you_ could judge me as kindly,” she murmured, almost
entreatingly.
“Miss Van Lew!” deprecatingly.
“Oh, I know the things you have said about me. Other girls too good to
flirt,” bitterly, “weren’t too good to repeat them to me,” defiantly.
“Miss Van Lew, I beg your pardon. You see that was before I knew you,”
he hastened to explain, abjectly.
“Oh, I forgive you. I don’t bear malice,” she returned, sunnily.
“Yet I heard that you had threatened to break my heart,” teasingly.
“Oh, I did not mean it. I wouldn’t if I could--not that I ever expect
to have the chance,” she returned, somewhat incoherently, her cheeks
flaming under his steady gaze.
“You are very kind,” he said, lightly; but the subject chafed him.
He changed it by saying, “You promised to tell me why you ventured so
imprudently far on the ice that day?”
“Oh, yes,” and she began to laugh. “It was this way: I saw Minnie
Hyer’s partner skating out toward me. He was almost as clumsy as
Minnie, and I said to myself: ‘I will not be bothered with that great
gawk if I have to skate across the Potomac to escape him!’ So I went
flying, and--suddenly I heard the ice cracking with my weight and
realized my danger. I started to go back, but the thin ice broke,
and--oh!” cried Viola, hiding her suddenly blanched face in her tiny
white hands.
“Do not think of it any more,” he said, remembering her aunt’s caution.
“Oh, but I must!” she cried, impulsively. “And I haven’t told you yet
how anxious I am to know the name of the hero who saved my life. I am
so anxious to thank him and to have papa reward him handsomely--if he
would accept it.”
“I should imagine he would be glad of a reward--or that he needed it.
He was not particularly well dressed, though as handsome as a prince,
and as brave as a hero,” Professor Desha replied.
“Poor and proud,” commented Aunt Edwina.
“And you have no slightest idea as to his identity?” Viola cried,
anxiously.
“Not the slightest; and I am sorry, for I would like to know such a
brave man better. He told me you were sinking for the second time when
he dived after you,” returned Desha, generously, though a spasm of
pain contracted his heart at her interest in the handsome unknown.
But he could not blame her at all. It would have appeared most
ungrateful if she had not taken any interest.
He began to think of going, but still he lingered, feasting his eyes on
her lovely pale face that he was promising himself never to see again.
She began to ask him about the gayeties she had missed during her
illness, and it gave him the opportunity he desired of saying that he
had attended few social functions lately. His time had been occupied
with congressional duties, and he had resolved to eschew the delights
of society.
“That is too bad,” Viola exclaimed; and it seemed to him as if there
was genuine regret in her tones and in the quick glance of her soft
eyes.
He wondered, with a furious throb at his heart, if she really took an
interest in him, or was it only polite pretense?
Ah, since Fate had made him love her against his will, how glorious it
would have been to win her--to teach her the true beauty and sacredness
of love, to be proud of her, to realize with her the great happiness
of loving and being loved! It staggered him, the trembling hope, the
superlative joy of the thought.
Then came a quick revulsion:
“Her tender tones and looks mean nothing. She has tried them on other
men; she shall not tangle me in her toils! It is all deceit, and I hate
myself for being so weak!”
He got up, fired with bitter anger at himself and her, and made
abrupt adieus to her and her aunt, saying he had almost forgotten an
appointment with Senator Hoar in the delight of their society. He
hoped Viola would soon be well again and enjoying her re-entrance into
society, etc.; then he tore himself away.