CHAPTER XVIII.
“I DROVE POOR VIOLA TO HER DEATH!”
“Was ever any beautiful, thoughtless young girl more cruelly punished for the fault of coquetry?” thought Viola, as she buried her hot, burning face in her hands, her heart swelling with rage against Florian and Philip.
“I hate them both!” she sobbed, miserably, in her bitter defeat, not comprehending yet the full enormity of the conduct that had roused her two lovers to resentment.
Why, at the sea-shore last summer she had known a pretty girl from Chicago that was engaged to four young men at once, and played them off against one another in the most skillful fashion, to the amusement of all her girl friends who were in the secret.
Viola caught herself wondering now how the pretty flirt had ever got out of the scrape.
Then her thoughts came back to her own pitiful plight. How was she ever going to face to-morrow?
True, she might take Philip’s advice and say they had quarreled, and she had thrown him over. But the thought of her father’s anger made her shudder with fear, and her passionate pride revolted at telling him the real truth—that she had been deserted by Philip and scorned by Florian.
No; she dare not go to her father with either story, the humiliating truth, or the clever fiction suggested by Desha.
In either case his wrath would be something terrible.
She had learned this when he upbraided her in the case of George Merrington.
She was thankful that Aunt Edwina, weary of the preparations for to-morrow, had retired early to her room. No one could know aught of the shameful humiliation that had come to her to-night—no one but those two heartless ones who had brought this irredeemable woe to her hitherto careless happy life.
Viola sat still in her chair, crushing Florian’s harsh note between her icy fingers, her eyes staring blankly before her out of her deathly white face, seeing in fancy the wreck of her life lying in ruins at her feet.
What a sensation there would be to-morrow when she had to face every one with the declaration that there would be no wedding!
How could she ever face Aunt Edwina’s gentle surprise and persistent curiosity, her father’s wrath, and the wonder and the veiled mockery of her little social world?
She had been so proud, so haughty—and now her pride was leveled in the dust.
And she was too angry for repentance, too resentful to accept her fate.
A passionate longing to punish Desha for his desertion throbbed at her heart, but alas! she was helpless. With Florian’s help she might have done it—might still have been wedded to-morrow, and turned the exchange of bridegrooms into a jest, baffling the world’s curiosity, and thwarting Desha’s intentions—but now the thought of to-morrow drove her mad. How could she face its keen humiliation and live?
She to whom life had always been so fair and beautiful suddenly found it a dark and gloomy spot from which she shrank in blind terror, madly longing for death.
“I wish I was dead!” she groaned in her tearless despair and dread of to-morrow.
She felt a terrible loneliness, a feeling that there was no one on earth to whom she could turn for help or pity in this dark, dark hour when all the joy of her life had fallen to her feet in ruins.
She rose, pacing up and down the floor with interlocked hands and blazing eyes. Half crazed with the sudden shock of trouble, Viola’s thoughts took a sudden, desperate turn, paltered with an awful temptation.
She murmured hollowly:
“I can not bear my pain and live! Death were better.”
Death would still the aching of the weary head, the throbbing of the tortured heart, save her from tomorrow.
If she could only die, the secret of her cruel humiliation would die with her—neither Philip Desha nor Florian Gay would dare stand up in the face of the pitying world and say: “I drove poor Viola to her death.”
They would be ashamed and afraid of condemnation. Remorse would seize their hearts, their old love would return and overwhelm them with grief.
If she only could get some morphine, she could soon end her sorrow. Death would come gently, painlessly.
When they called her in the morning she would not answer, her soul would have slipped away gently in the night.
They would dress her in the beautiful bridal gown, cover her coffin with flowers, and lay her in the earth, weeping for the fair young life so untimely ended.
Viola sobbed aloud at this moving picture; but it did not deter her from the grim resolve that took possession of her distraught mind.
Stealing unnoticed to her room, she slipped on a warm seal-skin jacket and donned a cap to match, drawing a close veil over her face.
Then slipping down to a rear entrance, she left the house unperceived, by a gate the servants used, intent on reaching the drug store on the corner to procure the morphine.
Her face was deathly pale, her lips writhed in pain, her eyes gleamed wildly with her desperate purpose to baffle fate that used her so cruelly.
She did not observe as she closed the gate that a gentleman had run down the steps of her home and walked briskly to the corner, waiting there for an electric car.
It was a quiet street and seemingly deserted this cold March night, so that he observed with surprise the slender, graceful figure flitting before him, noting with a start that it looked like Miss Van Lew.
She darted into the drug store, and curiosity made him draw near the door to satisfy his doubts.
He heard the sweet musical voice, to whose tender songs he had listened in rapture every day, asking in hoarse, unnatural accents for morphine, and then the answer of the clerk who said that he could not sell such a dangerous drug without a doctor’s prescription.
Viola turned silently and went out into the street, passing Rolfe Maxwell without perceiving him, in the absorption of her misery.
She stood a moment watching the electric car now bearing swiftly down toward the corner, and the young man thought as she advanced into the street, that she was about to signal it.
He said to himself in perplexity:
“What a strange freak for Miss Van Lew, boarding an electric car at ten o’clock at night to go after morphine! Yet there is no one sick at her house, as I am aware.”
Perplexed and uneasy, he moved forward after her and just then a terrible thing happened.
Viola, mad with misery, and assailed by an irresistible temptation, threw herself recklessly across the track, where the advancing wheels of the car would in another moment crush out her life.
The truth flashed on him in lightning horror. The girl intended to commit suicide.
It was dark just there, and the conductor had not perceived her frantic deed. What was to save the poor girl from instant death as the swift engine of destruction rushed down upon her prostrate form?
Rolfe Maxwell’s heart seemed to stand still with horror. Was it possible to save her now? to save her or only to meet death in the effort?
He sprang after her with outstretched hand, clutching her skirts, dragging her back, clearing the way just as the car rushed past, grazing his bowed head, and knocking him down.
Strange to say no one had witnessed the terrible tragedy so bravely avoided. Only the silent stars looked down on the cold street upon Viola and her rescuer struggling to their feet, the girl uninjured, the man slightly dazed from a blow on the head.
He clutched her arm tightly and led her to the pavement, saying sternly:
“I have saved you from yourself at the risk of my own life; but, Miss Van Lew, why did you attempt this terrible deed?”
The girl trembled, shuddered, and her great somber eyes flared up to his face.
“Mr. Maxwell!” she exclaimed, in alarm.
“Yes, Rolfe Maxwell,” he answered. “I was just leaving your father’s house and I saw you go into the drug store, and when you failed to get morphine you threw yourself in front of that advancing car. Why did you do it, Miss Van Lew, you whom we supposed to be the happiest girl in the world?”
His voice was stern, yet a thrill of such tender anxiety ran through it that she felt instinctively he was her friend. Clinging to him piteously, she sobbed:
“Oh, do not scold me! I am so unhappy!”
The piteous voice went to his heart, and as they stood there together, she trembling like a leaf as she clung to him, he could not resist pressing the little hand on his arm, and answering, gently:
“I did not wish to be harsh with you, but I do not understand, you know.”
Viola was frightened almost to death. She faltered:
“I can not explain. I can only confess that I was very unhappy, and wished to die! You will not tell papa, will you?”
“I must do so in order that you may be watched to prevent another attempt at suicide,” he replied, gravely; adding: “May I take you home now?”
“Oh, not yet, please! I am afraid—afraid!” she wailed, dreading her father’s wrath. “Oh, let us walk along the streets awhile, please.”
She thought she could persuade him to keep her secret, but he was resolute in taking her home and telling her father.
“I dare not trust you unless you promise not to make such another attempt,” he said, so firmly that she cried, petulantly:
“Who are you that dares assume authority over me?”
“I am your true friend, I hope, Miss Van Lew, and I would not willingly see your fair young life thrown away.”
She startled him by murmuring:
“My friend! Come, I like that word! All other men have been my lovers!”
She did not guess how his heart beat as he answered:
“I could be your lover, too, Miss Van Lew, but fate is against me. You seem to need a friend. Let me hold that precious place.”
They walked slowly along the street, her trembling hand drawn through his arm. In spite of all her trouble Viola could not help seeing how tall and handsome he was, with glorious dark eyes that had given her a strange, delicious thrill every time she met their earnest glance.
She had a subtle feeling that here was a true heart—one to rest on and confide in, sure of pity and sympathy.
She faltered, weakly:
“You—you would not wish to be my friend if you knew me well. There are—are”—gaspingly—“men who hate me because I—I used to flirt when I did not know it was very cruel.”