CHAPTER XXXV.
“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.”