CHAPTER VI.
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.