HIDDEN GRIEF.
“Is it worth while to love, to waken chords
Of deepest feeling--rapture, doubt, and pain--
And for the chance of joy that love affords,
To part with peace that may not come again?
Stony the path that Love must climb, and steep,
And far below the heights a dark abyss--
Are not untroubled days and dreamless sleep
Better than this?”
Desha looked with new interest at Viola as some one led her to the
piano.
So she _could_ love, the beautiful coquette, and she had learned the
lesson at last! This, then, was the secret of the change in her, the
pensive shade that touched her face. Love and sorrow had come to her
hand in hand.
He felt a great curiosity over the young man who had touched Viola’s
heart, when the proudest and the richest had sued to her in vain.
“Yet most probably he is not worthy of the prize,” he thought,
vehemently. “Some handsome, flippant youth, such as most often takes
the fancy of very young girls.”
But it gave him a pang to think that his own years numbered thirty.
“Quite an old man in her eyes, very likely,” he thought, ruefully, as
he moved a little nearer the piano to watch her face while she sang.
Her singing was one of the many rare gifts the good fairies had brought
to Viola’s cradle at her birth. Her voice was a rare soprano, full of
passion and feeling, and it thrilled every heart as she sang:
“‘There lived a lady long ago,
Her heart was sad and dark--ah, me!
Dark with a single secret woe
That none could ever see.
“‘She left her home, she lost her pride,
Forgot the jeering world--ah, me!
And followed a knight, and fought and died,
All for the love of--chivalry.
“‘She died; and when in her last cold sleep
She lay all pale and cold--ah, me!
They read of a love as wild and deep
As the deep, dark sea.’”
The song fixed itself in Desha’s memory, and the day came when he
recalled it in wonder.
She would not sing again, but she played them some rare instrumental
pieces--two very gay and brilliant, one exquisitely sad and sweet; and
this last one stayed in Desha’s heart with the song, because of their
melting pathos, so different from anything formerly associated with the
lovely, volatile belle. He had not believed that her feelings were deep
enough for the pathos to which she had given expression through her
voice and touch.
“Love has taught her everything,” he thought, with unconscious, bitter
envy of George Merrington.
“I must be going presently, because I shall look in at another
reception tonight,” Mrs. Wellford said, arousing him from something
like a trance of thought. “I wish you would find my husband for me,
Phil. He has stolen off to some quiet corner to smoke, I expect. Tell
him I am going in ten minutes.”
“Yes,” he answered, absently, moving away from her side, and wondering
why Viola had so suddenly left the room just as he was thinking of
bidding her good-night.
He wandered about through the crowded rooms, wondering where he should
find Mr. Wellford, who was a successful patent attorney devoted to his
business, and secretly bored by gay society, though his wife dragged
him into it willy-nilly. Having made his bow to his hostess, he was
usually to be found in some secluded spot, seeking solace in a good
cigar, and all the happier if he could find some congenial soul to
share his pleasure and exchange good stories with him.
He was not in the thronged drawing-room, nor library, nor supper-room,
so Desha went along the wide hall, seeking all the open doors, thinking
perchance to blunder on a smoking-room.
The scent of a Havana came to him suddenly, promising speedy success,
so he stopped abruptly before the half-drawn _portière_ of a small room
or alcove, with tall palms and flowering azaleas standing about in a
dim, soft light. They had, in fact, been removed here temporarily from
the over-crowded conservatory, to make room for the promenading couples
tonight.
“He is here, the vandal, with his cigar,” thought Desha, pushing back
the curtain and blundering across the threshold.
Some one was there certainly, but not Wellford, and the young man
started back, hoping his intrusion might not be observed.
Viola, laboring under strong excitement of mind, exaggerated by his
neglect and the keen pathos of her own music, had hidden herself away
here for a brief, hysterical outbreak that she could not control.
“Let me steal away awhile
From the revel to the gloom,
Let me leave that careless smile
Just outside the quiet room;
Let the tears and stifled sighs,
All day aching in my breast,
Like a tropic tempest rise,
Or volcano’s burning crest.
“Let me give one hour to tears,
Pressing heavy on my heart,
For the weary, hopeless years,
While I act my bitter part;
Smiling in the world’s cold face,
Lest it guess my hidden pain,
Weeping in this secret place,
For love’s treasure given in vain.”
When Desha saw the white-robed girl hidden there among the palms, with
her face in her hands, sobbing low and bitterly, a passionate longing
came to him to take her in his arms and try to comfort her in her
tender sorrow, but instead he turned quickly away, praying in his heart
that she would not notice his intrusion.
But through her stifled sobs Viola’s ear caught the sound of the
entering footstep. She sprang forward to hide herself behind the palm
from curious eyes, and at the same moment caught the sound of a heavy
fall.
Peering from behind her ambush, she saw that the intruder, in his haste
to retreat, had stumbled over a flower-stand and fallen just inside
the door. He must have been stunned by the fall, for he lay quite
motionless, with his pale, handsome face upturned to the light, and
she saw with alarm that it was no other than the object of her painful
thoughts--Philip Desha!