“IT WAS PIQUE, NOT LOVE.”
Days passed, and with their flight Viola took up the threads of her
home life again, but with a subtle difference.
The light-hearted gayety of other days had faded from her brow, and a
pensive shadow replaced it. She cared no more for society, declining
all invitations on the score of her mourning. She spent many hours
alone before the portrait of Rolfe Maxwell, that had been hung in her
favorite room. Each day she placed fresh flowers on a stand before it.
Judge Van Lew and his sister looked on indulgently. They thought it
was remorse that dictated these expressions of feeling; they could not
believe that Viola had learned to love her husband of an hour. She
would get over this morbid grief presently and make up with Desha.
“It is this somber black she wears that saddens her mind. The year
will soon be over, and I shall persuade her to lay it aside and be her
own bright self again,” said Aunt Edwina, consolingly; and that very
evening she said, coaxingly:
“Dear, do you know it almost breaks your poor papa’s heart to see you
always in that heavy, dismal black? Besides, he considers it quite
prejudicial to your health. Now, won’t you please us, dear, by laying
it aside in the evenings for something lighter in white or lavender?”
Viola knew how they doted on her, and how she had grieved their hearts
by her long stay abroad. She did not refuse, and permitted her aunt to
select a soft white merino gown from her wardrobe, and have the maid
trim it with pale lavender ribbons and dainty white chiffon. Then with
great, odorous clusters of purple violets on her breast and in her
hair, she went down to her father, who started with delight, exclaiming:
“What a delightful change, my dear! Now you look more like my little
girl Viola, and perhaps you will play and sing for me again?”
Viola was in an acquiescent mood. She granted his request, though she
had never before touched the piano since she came home. She tried to
put her heart into the work, playing all he asked for, even singing
again, and he noticed her voice had lost none of its beauty or power,
only gained a deeper pathos that made it irresistible.
Suddenly, in the midst of the singing, a caller was
announced--Professor Desha.
Viola greeted him with no apparent embarrassment, only she wished in
her heart that she had still worn her black gown, and wondered if papa
and Aunt Edwina had known of his coming.
But her hasty glance at their faces showed no consciousness, only
surprise, and in a little while they had slipped away, and she found
herself alone with her old lover--alone for the first time since that
March night almost a year ago when they had quarreled so bitterly, and
he had gone away in anger, leaving her a jilted bride, mad with shame
and misery.
It all rushed over them both, and they could not speak of indifferent
things. Desha cried, passionately:
“Viola, you surely understand why I have come?”
She smiled strangely, thinking that, like Florian, he wanted to pay his
debt and get it over.
She resolved that she would permit him to do so as soon as possible,
wishing also to have it over.
Desha’s eyes glowed with excitement as he said:
“Viola--if you will permit me to call you again by that sweet name--you
received my letter sent to you on the morning of the day that was to
have witnessed our wedding?”
She inclined her dark head in silent assent, and the exquisite odor of
the violets on her breast floated out to him entrancingly, intoxicating
his senses till he longed to crush her against his heart, whispering to
her of all his love and repentance and despair.
But there was no encouragement to such daring in her distant,
half-weary pose as she waited for his next words, her large, brilliant
eyes fixed on his pale, intellectual face, while she wondered how it
had ever commanded her love.
“Then, dearest, you know how soon and how bitterly I repented the
momentary madness of that night, when in my pride and anger I left
you, declining to fulfill my engagement of the morrow. You know how I
repented and begged you to take me back, but you can never dream of the
anguish I endured when I learned that you were wedded to another--lost
to me forever.”
Viola remembered repentantly how revengefully she had planned this
suffering for him and gloated on the thought of it, and was silent.
“But I will not dwell on this past unhappy year, Viola. Suffice it
to say that I have suffered enough to atone for the folly of that
night--enough even to win your pity and forgiveness. And you are free
again, and I grasp at the bare chance of going back to the past that
promised such happiness for us both. Oh, Viola, I love you still, more
passionately if possible than a year ago, because your loss has taught
me your value! Dearest, has your heart grown cold to me, or can you
give me a little hope?”
“How much in earnest he seems, yet perhaps, like Florian, he can be
easily consoled for his disappointment,” thought Viola, as she nerved
herself to say, gently:
“I am very sorry you have loved me all this while, because I can not
give you any hope.”
“Is this resentment at my folly, Viola? Do you wish to put me on
probation, to punish me as I deserve? Do so if you will, but I shall
not complain if only you will try to love me again,” Philip Desha
answered her, with sad patience and wistful hope.
Viola was touched by his humility--so touched that her voice trembled
as she twined her white fingers nervously together, replying:
“It is best to be frank with you, is it not? Then believe me, I bear
you no resentment for that eventful night, and I do not wish to
punish you for anything--least of all for what you did that night,
because--because--everything turned out for the best.”
“Viola!” incredulously.
“For the best,” she repeated, firmly; adding: “I am glad I did not
marry you that day, for I found out that I did not love you after all.”
If the solid earth had opened at his feet, Philip Desha could not have
been more astonished than at that declaration from Viola.
His thoughts ran hastily back over the past, and he remembered how
easily she had been wooed, and how much she had seemed to love him. He
decided that it was pride and pique that moved her now. He would have
to overcome both before he could win her back.
A deep flush rose to her pale, beautiful face, and she cried, hastily:
“I know that you do not believe me--that you are looking back over the
past and saying to yourself that I gave you every encouragement to love
me, that I even led you on, and almost entrapped you into proposing
that night when you fell and hurt yourself, and in my fright I said the
most silly things--”
“The most charming things--words that kindled hope in my despairing
heart and made me the happiest of men!” interrupted her lover,
fervently.
Still blushing warmly, Viola continued:
“I actually believed myself very much in love with you, and when I tell
you what a disposition I have, you will readily understand my mistake.”
He bowed and waited, while she went on, frankly:
“As a child I always wanted most ardently whatever was refused to me,
and brought every energy to bear until I attained its possession, only
to find out afterward that I cared nothing for it whatever, and had
only struggled for it out of the inherent perversity of a nature that
adored the unattainable. My nurse related that I often cried for the
moon.”
She paused a moment, startled at his deepening pallor, then made the
confession:
“I met you several times in society, Professor Desha, and I did not
actually give you a second thought until a rival belle, a spiteful
girl, told me frankly how very strongly you had expressed your
disapprobation of me in general, deploring the fact that any true man’s
heart could be wrecked by such a heartless butterfly. In my anger and
resentment I marked you at once for a victim of my charms.”
“Ah!” he cried, in actual pain at her confession.
“It was wicked, and I am ashamed of it now, but I promised to be
frank, and I will not spare myself,” cried Viola; adding: “Yes, I
angled for your heart with all the arts of the finished coquette,
but you withstood me so valiantly that you awakened that trait in my
nature, that longing for whatever was denied me. It grew on me till it
possessed me, fooled me, made me believe you actually necessary to my
heart. Pique and vanity masqueraded in the garb of love. I won you, and
believed that I was happy. Then came that night!”
He was about to speak, but she held up her hand, saying:
“Wait till I have done. Will you listen to the story of what happened
that night after you left me?”
He bowed his head, and Viola began by telling him, to his great
surprise, how she had tried to recall Florian and failed.
“In my bitter humiliation I felt I could not face the sensation of
tomorrow. I went out and threw myself beneath the wheels of a passing
trolley car to end my life.”
“Oh, my God, Viola!”
“It is the truth that I am telling you; and my life’s story would have
ended then and there but that a passing stranger darted forward, and at
the risk of his own noble life snatched me from a terrible death. It
was Rolfe Maxwell, and with gentle sympathy he drew from me the story
of my sorrows, and my futile plan for saving myself from the next day’s
sensation by marrying Florian. Then he threw himself into the breach,
offered marriage, owning that he loved me. Now I will tell you what I
have never confessed to any living soul before: I accepted his offer,
and at that moment my whole heart went out to him in a fullness of
passion and devotion such as never had any part in the lukewarm emotion
I felt once for Florian and for you afterward. I realized suddenly
that I had never really loved you and did not now regret you, but that
the fullness of love and happiness awaited me with the man who had so
nobly saved my young life from shipwreck, earning my love and gratitude
at one stroke. My great mistake was that I was ashamed to confess the
truth to him then, and he made the chivalrous mistake of leaving me
free till I could grow to care for him, going at once to Cuba, where he
soon met his tragic death.”