“COULD YE COME BACK TO ME, DOUGLAS, DOUGLAS!”
Viola reached home after leaving Mae at the cottage in a whirl of
conflicting emotions--pride in her dead husband’s heroism, anger at her
father’s duplicity.
“How excited you look, Viola. I believe you were imprudent in going out
this afternoon,” cried the judge, solicitously.
Viola’s somber gray eyes flashed sudden lightning as she cried:
“I would not have missed going for anything in the world, for I have
found out two very important things today.”
Aunt Edwina cried out instantly with lively curiosity:
“What were they, my dear?”
“Oh, auntie, how surprised you will be when I tell you that I have
found out who saved my life that day on the ice when I came so near
being drowned!” proudly.
Mrs. Herman groaned to herself:
“Oh, dear, is that romance going to crop up again?” But aloud she said,
placidly: “Yes, dear!”
Viola threw her arms about the old lady, and cried, sobbingly:
“Only think, it was he, my own dear, deeply injured Rolfe!”
“Not Rolfe Maxwell!” cried the judge, starting to his feet in surprise.
“Rolfe Maxwell, and no other!” Viola replied, a deep flush kindling in
her cheek as she lifted her head, and added:
“Rolfe Maxwell, the noble young hero whom you so generously rewarded
for twice saving the life of your daughter.”
“Rewarded!” stammered the judge, growing pale.
“Yes, rewarded by treachery and falsehood, sending him away from his
bride to meet a cruel death, his heart already broken by the thought
that I was ungrateful, and repudiated my marriage vows. You, my father,
whom I believed so noble and high-minded, invented cruel falsehoods to
drive my husband away from me forever! And your cruel schemes, alas
succeeded but too well. His death lies at your door!” cried Viola, in
passionate reproach, her heart burning with a sense of her wrongs.
“Viola, how did you learn these things?” groaned the judge, and she
answered, frankly:
“From his poor, bereaved mother, in whom he confided before he went
away to meet a cruel death at the hands of the wicked Spaniards.”
There followed a shocked silence, the judge realizing how bitterly he
had erred, and how hopeless was the thought of any atonement to the man
who lay in his untimely grave.
He was a proud, reserved man, and it was hard to confess himself in the
wrong, and ask forgiveness of the daughter, who such a little while ago
was a pretty, willful child whom he had scolded for her heartlessness.
But Viola was a woman now, hurried out of girlishness by a great
trouble. She had gained a wonderful dignity that almost awed him, while
her keen reproaches cut him to the heart.
In his anxiety to make her think as well as she could of him under the
cruel circumstances, he put aside pride and reserve, and answered,
humbly:
“Dear child, I was in the wrong, but I did it for your sake. I believed
you had married Maxwell out of pique, while still loving Philip Desha,
and when you fainted dead away on receiving his letter of repentance,
my suspicions were confirmed. When I invented the stories that sent
Rolfe Maxwell away, I did it for your sake, believing you would be
glad to be free again to renew your vows with Desha. If I made a
grave mistake, as your words imply, I can only crave your pardon in
all humility. My judgment was at fault, but my heart was true, and my
remorse since poor Maxwell’s death has been keen and bitter, though so
silent.”
She saw the signs of suffering on his pale grave face, and read them in
his tremulous voice, and her heart was softened.
She cried in anguish:
“Oh, papa, I would give the world to undo the wrong done my dead
husband! to have him back again, and tell him I love him for his
bravery and for all he has suffered for my sake! But that is forever
impossible, and I can only love him dead, and hope to meet him in
another world, and so for the sake of that dear hope, that I may be
good enough to attain future happiness, I must forgive you all you did
in your mistaken zeal for me.”
She gave him her cold little hand, and let him kiss her tear-wet face,
then hurried to her own room, to kneel down and weep the passionate
tears of a vain despair.
“Let me kneel beside the bed,
Let my tears fall down like rain,
While I pray with drooping head:
‘God have pity on my pain!’
When love smiles, how sweet the world!
When love changes, life grows dark;
All its hopes in ruin hurled,
Quenched in gloom, hope’s glimm’ring spark!”
The next day Judge Van Lew called his daughter into the library, and
said, tenderly:
“My dear, I have a little plan to make atonement as far as possible for
the wrong I did you.”
Viola gazed at him wonderingly; and he added:
“You remember, I refused in the heat of anger to permit you to have the
fortune your mother willed you on your marriage, because you had not
complied with the conditions set; but I am now convinced that I did
wrong. Maxwell was a noble young man, after all, and if he were alive
now I would welcome him as a son-in-law.”
“Thank you, papa!” she exclaimed, with a gratified smile; and he added:
“When your mother died her private fortune was a quarter of a million,
and by judicious investments I have doubled the amount. Here are the
necessary papers that make you mistress of a half million dollars, and
if you can make this contribute to the happiness that my error so
cruelly jeopardized, I shall be more than gratified.”
Viola did not feel as if the wealth of the world could add to her
happiness just now, but she would not wound her father by telling him
the truth. She accepted his gift in the same loving spirit in which it
was conferred, thanking him with a tender caress, and saying that she
should not know what to do with so much money.
Her heart cried in secret:
“Oh, if Rolfe were but alive to share it with me, how happy we might
be! Alas! I can never be happy now, for I have learned too late that I
loved him with a passion never dreamed of when I fancied myself in love
with others!”