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Bressant: A Novel

by Julian Hawthorne · English · Gutenberg #15596 · 579,104 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Bressant: A Novel

Author: Julian Hawthorne


        
Release date: April 9, 2005 [eBook #15596]
                Most recently updated: December 14, 2020

Language: English

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Credits: E-text prepared by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team from page images generously made available by the Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State University Libraries


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E-text prepared by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Mary Meehan, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team from page images generously
made available by the Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State
University Libraries



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BRESSANT

A Novel

by

JULIAN HAWTHORNE

1873







CONTENTS.

       I.--HOW PROFESSOR VALEYON LOSES HIS HANDKERCHIEF

      II.--SIGNS OF A THUNDER-SHOWER

     III.--SOPHIE AND CORNELIA ENTER INTO A COVENANT

      IV.--A BUSINESS TRANSACTION

       V.--BRESSANT PICKS A TEA-ROSE

      VI.--CORNELIA BEGINS TO UNDO A KNOT

     VII.--PROFESSOR VALEYON MAKES A CALL

    VIII.--GREAT EXPECTATIONS

      IX.--THE DAGUERREOTYPE

       X.--ONLY FOR TO-NIGHT!

      XI.--EVERY LITTLE COUNTS

     XII.--DOLLY ACTS AN IMPORTANT PART

    XIII.--A KEEPSAKE

     XIV.--NURSING

      XV.--AN UNTIMELY REMINISCENCE

     XVI.--PARTING AN ANCHOR

    XVII.--SOPHIE'S CONFESSION

   XVIII.--A FLANK MOVEMENT

     XIX.--AN INTERMISSION

      XX.--BRESSANT CONFIDES A SECRET TO THE FOUNTAIN

     XXI.--PUTTING ON THE ARMOR

    XXII.--LOCKED UP

   XXIII.--ARMED NEUTRALITY

    XXIV.--A BIT OF INSPIRATION

     XXV.--ANOTHER INTERMISSION

    XXVI.--BRESSANT TAKES A VACATION

   XXVII.--FACT AND FANCY

  XXVIII.--A DISAPPOINTMENT

    XXIX.--FOUND

     XXX.--LOST

    XXXI.--MOTHER AND SON

   XXXII.--WHERE TWO ROADS MEET

  XXXIII.--TILL THE ELEVENTH HOUR

   XXXIV.--THE HOUR AND THE MAN




CHAPTER I.

HOW PROFESSOR VALEYON LOSES HIS HANDKERCHIEF.


One warm afternoon in June--the warmest of the season thus
far--Professor Valeyon sat, smoking a black clay pipe, upon the broad
balcony, which extended all across the back of his house, and overlooked
three acres of garden, inclosed by a solid stone-wall. All the doors in
the house were open, and most of the windows, so that any one passing in
the road might have looked up through the gabled porch and the
passage-way, which divided the house, so to speak, into two parts, and
seen the professor's brown-linen legs, and slippers down at the heel,
projecting into view beyond the framework of the balcony-door.
Indeed--for the professor was an elderly man, and, in many respects, a
creature of habit--precisely this same phenomenon could have been
observed on any fine afternoon during the summer, even to the exact
amount of brown-linen leg visible.

Why the old gentleman's chair should always have been so placed as to
allow a view of so much of his anatomy and no more is a question of too
subtle and abstruse conditions to be solved here. One reason doubtless
lay in the fact that, by craning forward over his knees, he could see
down the passage-way, through the porch, and across the grass-plot which
intervened between the house and the fence, to the road, thus commanding
all approaches from that direction, while his outlook on either side,
and in front, remained as good as from any other position whatsoever. To
be sure, the result would have been more easily accomplished had the
chair been moved two feet farther forward, but that would have made the
professor too much a public spectacle, and, although by no means
backward in appearing, at the fitting time, before his fellow-men, he
enjoyed and required a certain amount of privacy.

Moreover, it was not toward the road that Professor Valeyon's eyes
were most often turned. They generally wandered southward, over the
ample garden, and across the long, winding valley, to the range of
rough-backed hills, which abruptly invaded the farther horizon. It was
a sufficiently varied and vigorous prospect, and one which years had
endeared to the old gentleman, as if it were the features of a friend.
Especially was he fond of looking at a certain open space, near the
summit of a high, wooded hill, directly opposite. It was like an oasis
among a desert of trees. Had it become overgrown, or had the surrounding
timber been cut away, the professor would have taken it much to heart. A
voluntary superstition of this kind is not uncommon in elderly gentlemen
of more than ordinary intellectual power. It is a sort of half-playful
revenge they wreak upon themselves for being so wise. Probably Professor
Valeyon would have been at a loss to explain why he valued this small
green spot so much; but, in times of doubt or trouble, be seemed to
find help and relief in gazing at it.

The entire range of hills was covered with a dense and tangled
timber-growth, save where the wood-cutters had cleared out a steep,
rectangular space, and dotted it with pale-yellow lumber-piles, that
looked as if nothing less than a miracle kept them from rolling over and
over down to the bottom of the valley, or where the gray, irregular face
of a precipice denied all foothold to the boldest roots. There was
nothing smooth, swelling, or graceful, in the aspect of the range. They
seemed, hills though they were, to be inspired with the souls of
mountains, which were ever seeking to burst the narrow bounds that
confined them. And, for his part, the professor liked them much better
than if they had been mountains indeed. They gave an impression of
greater energy and vitality, and were all the more comprehensible and
lovable, because not too sublime and vast.

In another way, his garden afforded as much pleasure to the professor as
his hills. From having planned and, in a great measure, made it himself,
he took in it a peculiar pride and interest. He knew just the position
of every plant and shrub, tree and flower, and in what sort of condition
they were as regarded luxuriance and vigor. Sitting quietly in his
chair, his fancy could wander in and out along the winding paths,
mindful of each new opening vista or backward scene--of where the shadow
fell, and where the sunshine slept hottest; could inhale the fragrance
of the tea-rose bush, and pause beneath the branches of the elm-tree;
the material man remaining all the while motionless, with closed
eyelids, or, now and then, half opening them to verify, by a glance,
some questionable recollection. This utilization, by the mental
faculties alone, of knowledge acquired by physical experience, always
produces an agreeable sub-consciousness of power--the ability to be, at
the same time, active and indolent.

In about the centre of the garden, flopped and tinkled a weak-minded
little fountain. The shrubbery partly hid it from view of the balcony,
but the small, irregular sound of its continuous fall was audible in the
quiet of the summer afternoons. Weak-minded though it was, Professor
Valeyon loved to listen to it. It suited him better than the full-toned
rush and splash of a heavier water-power; there was about it a human
uncertainty and imperfection which brought it nearer to his heart.
Moreover, weak and unambitious though it was, the fountain must have
been possessed of considerable tenacity of purpose, to say the least,
otherwise, doing so little, it would not have been persistent enough to
keep on doing it at all. It was really wonderful, on each recurring
year, to behold this poor little water-spout effecting neither more nor
less than the year before, and with no signs of any further aspirations
for the future.

A flight of five or six granite steps led up from the garden to the
balcony, and, although they were quite as old as the rest of the house,
they looked nearly as fresh and crude as when they were first put down.
The balcony itself was strongly built of wood, and faced by a broad and
stout railing, darkened by sun and rain, and worn smooth by much leaning
and sitting. Overhead spread an ample roof, which kept away the blaze
of the noonday sun, but did not deny the later and ruddier beams an
entrance. On either side the door-way, the windows of the dining-room
and of the professor's study opened down nearly to the floor. Every
thing in the house seemed to have some reference to the balcony, and,
in summer, it was certainly the most important part of all.

From the balcony to the front door extended, as has already been said,
a straight passage-way, into which the stairs descended, and on which
opened the doors of three rooms. It was covered with a deeply-worn strip
of oil-cloth, the pattern being quite undistinguishable in the middle,
and at the entrances of the doors and foot of the stairs, but appearing
with tolerable clearness for a distance of several inches out along the
walls. A high wainscoting ran along the sides; at the front door stood
an old-fashioned hat-tree, with no hats upon it; for the professor had
a way of wearing his hat into the house, and only taking it off when he
was seated at his study-table.

The gabled porch was wide and roomy, but had seen its best days, and was
rather out of repair. The board flooring creaked as you stepped upon it,
and the seams of the roof admitted small rills of water when it rained
hard, which, falling on the old brown mat, hastened its decay not a
little. A large, arched window opened on either side, so that one
standing in the porch could be seen from the upper and lower front
windows of the house. The outer woodwork and roof of the porch were
covered by a woodbine, trimmed, however, so as to leave the openings
clear. A few rickety steps, at the sides and between the cracks of
which sprouted tall blades of grass, led down to the path which
terminated in the gate. This path was distinguished by an incongruous
pavement of white limestone slabs, which were always kept carefully
clean. The gate was a rattle-boned affair, hanging feebly between two
grandfatherly old posts, which hypocritically tried to maintain an air
of solidity, though perfectly aware that they were wellnigh rotted away
at the base. The action of this gate was assisted--or more correctly
encumbered--by the contrivance of a sliding ball and chain, creating a
most dismal clatter and flap as often as it was opened. The white-washed
picket fence, scaled and patched by the weather, kept the posts in
excellent countenance; and inclosed a moderate grass-plot, adorned with
a couple of rather barren black cherry-trees, and as many firs, with
low-spread branches.

Above the house and the road rose a rugged eminence, sparely clothed
with patches of grass, brambles, and huckleberry-bushes, the gray knots
of rock pushing up here and there between. On the summit appeared
against the sky the outskirts of a sturdy forest, paradise of nuts and
squirrels. The rough road ran between rude stone-fences and straggling
apple-trees to the village, lying some two miles to the southeast. About
two hundred yards beyond the Parsonage--so Professor Valeyon's house was
called, he, in times past, having officiated as pastor of the
village--it made a sharp turn to the left around a spur of the hill,
bringing into view the tall white steeple of the village meeting-house,
relieved against the mountainous background beyond.

They dined in the Parsonage at two o'clock. At about three the professor
was wont to cross the entry to his study, take his pipe from its place
on the high wooden mantel-piece, fill it from the brown earthen-ware
tobacco-box on the table, and stepping through the window on to the
balcony, takes his place in his chair. Here he would sit sometimes till
sundown, composed in body and mind; dreaming, perhaps, over the rough
pathway of his earlier life, and facilitating the process by exhaling
long wreaths of thinnest smoke-layers from his mouth, and ever and anon
crossing and recrossing his legs.

On the present afternoon it was really very hot. Professor Valeyon,
occupying his usual position, had nearly finished his second pipe. He
had thrown off the light linen duster he usually wore, and sat with his
waistcoat open, displaying a somewhat rumpled, but very clean white
shirt-bosom; and his sturdy old neck was swathed in the white necktie
which was the only visible relic of his ministerial career. He had
covered his bald head with a handkerchief, for the double purpose of
keeping away the flies, and creating a cooling current of air. One of
his down-trodden slippers had dropped off, and lay sole-upward on the
floor. There was no symptom of a breeze in the still, warm valley, nor
even on the jagged ridges of the opposing hills. The professor, with all
his appliances for coolness and comfort, felt the need of one strongly.

Mellowed by the distance, the long shriek of the engine, on its way from
New York, streamed upon his ears and set him thinking. A good many years
since he had been to New York!--nine, positively nine--not since the
year after his wife's death. It hardly seemed so long, looking back upon
it. He wondered whether time had passed as silently and swiftly to his
daughters as to him. At all events, they had grown in the interval from
little girls into young ladies--Cornelia nineteen, and Sophie not more
than a year younger. "Bless me!" murmured the professor aloud, taking
the pipe from his mouth, and bringing his heavy eyebrows together in a
thoughtful frown.

He would scarcely have believed, in his younger years, that he would
have remained anywhere so long, without even a thought of changing the
scene. But then, his society days were over long ago, and he had seen
all he ever intended to see of the world. Here he had his house, and his
daily newspaper, and his books, and his garden, and the love and respect
of his daughters and fellow-townspeople. Was not that enough--was it not
all he could desire? But here, insensibly, the professor's eyes rested
upon the vacant spot at the summit of the hill opposite.

Very few people, be they never so old, or their circumstances never so
good, would find it impossible to mention something which they believe
they would be the happier for possessing. Perhaps Professor Valeyon was
not one of the exceptions, and was haunted by the idea that, were some
certain event to come to pass, life would be more pleasant and gracious
to him than it was now. Doubtless, however, an ideal aspiration of some
kind, even though it be never realized, is itself a kind of happiness,
without which we might feel at a loss. If the professor's solitary wish
had been fulfilled, and there had been no longer cause for him to say,
"If I had but this, I should be satisfied," might it not still happen
that in some unguarded, preoccupied moment he should start and blush to
find his lips senselessly forming themselves into the utterance of the
old formula? Would it not be a sad humiliation to acknowledge that the
treasure he had all his life craved, did not so truly fill and occupy
his heart as the mere act of yearning after it had done?

In indulging in these speculations, however, we are pretending to a
deeper knowledge of Professor Valeyon's private affairs than is at
present authorizable. After a while he withdrew his eyes from the
hill-tops, sighed, as those do whose thoughts have been profoundly
absorbed, and knocked the ashes out of his pipe. He began to debate
within himself--for the mind, unless strictly watched, is apt to waver
between light thoughts and grave--whether or no it was worth while to
make a second journey into the study after more tobacco. Perhaps
Cornelia was within call, and would thus afford a means of cutting the
Gordian knot at once. No! he remembered now that she had walked over to
the village for the afternoon mail, and would not be back for some time
yet. And Sophie--poor child! she would not leave her room for two weeks
to come, at least.

"I wonder whether they ever want to see any thing of the outside world?"
said the old gentleman to himself, elevating his chin, and scratching
his short, white beard. "Reasonable to suppose they could appreciate
something better than the society hereabouts! A picnic once in a
while--sleigh-ride in winter--sewing-bees--dance at--at Abbie's; and all
in the company of a set of country bumpkins, like Bill Reynolds, and
awkward farmers' daughters!

"It won't do--must be attended to! The good education I was at such
pains to give them--it'll only make them miserable if they're to wear
their lives out here. I'm getting old and selfish--that's the truth of
the matter. I want to sit here, and have my girls take care of me!
Pshaw!

"Sophie, now--well, perhaps she don't need it so much, yet; she's
younger than her sister, and has a good deal more internal resource:
besides, she's too delicate at present. But Neelie--Neelie ought to go
at once--this very summer. She needs an enormous deal of action and
excitement, bodily and mental both, to keep her in wholesome condition.
Has that same restless, feverish devil in her that I used to have; never
do to let it feed upon itself! must get her absorbed in outside things!

"But what am I to do?" resumed the professor, sitting up in his chair,
and shaking out his shirt-sleeves--for the heat of his meditations had
brought on a perspiration; "what can I do--eh? Sophie not in condition
to travel--can't leave her to take Cornelia--no one else to take
her--and she can't go alone, that's certain! Humph!"

Professor Valeyon paused in his soliloquy, like a man who has turned
into a closed court under the impression that it is a thoroughfare, and
stared down with upwrinkled forehead at the sole of the kicked-off
slipper, indulging the while in a mental calculation of how many days it
would take for the hole near the toe to work down to the hole under the
instep, and thus render problematical the possibility of keeping the
shoe on at all. It might take three weeks, or, say at the utmost, a
month; one month from the present time. It was at the present time about
the 15th of June, the 14th or the 15th, say the 15th! Well, then, on the
15th of July the slipper would be worn out; in all human probability the
weather would be even hotter then than it was now; and yet, in the face
of that heat he would be obliged to go over to the village, get Jonas
Hastings to fit him with a new pair, and then go through the long agony
of breaking them in! At the thought, great drops formed on the old
gentleman's nose, and ran suddenly down into his white mustache.

But this digression of thought was but superficial, and the sense that
something serious underlaid it remained always latent. The professor
leaned back in his chair, and sighed again heavily. It was true that he
was growing old, and now that he contemplated action, he felt that in
the last nine years the inertia of age had gained upon him. Besides, he
greatly loved his daughters, and though it is easy to say that the
greatest love is the greatest unselfishness, yet do we find a weakness
in our hearts which we cannot believe wholly wrong, strongly prompting
us to yearn and cling--even unwisely--to those who have our best
affection. "And what seems wise to-day may be proved folly to-morrow,"
is our argument, "so let us cling to the good we have."

And Professor Valeyon well knew that what time his daughters departed to
visit the outer world was likely to be the beginning of a longer journey
than to Boston or New York. They were attractive, and, it was to be
supposed, liable to be attracted; he would not be so weak as to imagine
that their love for their father could long remain supreme. But this old
man, who had kept abreast of the learning of the world, and was scarred
with many a bruise and stab received during his life's journey; who had
filled a pulpit, too, and preached Christian humility to his fellow
townspeople, had yet so much human heat and pride glowing like embers in
his old heart as to feel strong within him a bitter jealousy and sense
of wrong toward whatever young upstarts should intrude themselves, and
venture to brag of a love for his flesh and blood which might claim
precedence over his own. Doubtless the feeling was unworthy of him, and
he would, when the time came, play his part generously and well; but, so
long as the matter was purely imaginary, we may allow him some natural
ebullition of feeling.

So powerful, indeed, was the effect produced upon Professor Valeyon by
the succession and conflict of gloomy and painful emotions, that he laid
down his black clay-pipe upon the broad arm of the easy-chair, and began
to search in all directions for his handkerchief: indulging himself
meanwhile with the base reflection that as there was no present
probability of depriving himself of his daughters, that ceremony must,
for a time at least, be postponed. While yet the handkerchief-hunt was
in full cry, the professor's ears caught the rattle and flap of the
opening gate, and following it the quick, vigorous tap of small
boot-heels upon the marble flagstones. Next came a light, rustling
spring up the creaking porch-steps, and ere the old gentleman could
get his head far enough over his knees to see down the entry, a
fresh-looking young woman appeared smiling in the door-way, dressed in
a tawny summer-suit, and holding up in one hand a long, slender envelop,
sealed with a conspicuous monogram, and stamped with the New York
post-mark.




CHAPTER II.

SIGNS OF A THUNDER-SHOWER.


Before the delivery of the letter, a very pretty little ceremony took
place. The professor had stretched forth his hand to receive it, when,
by a sudden turn of the wrist and arm, the young lady whisked it out of
his reach and behind her back, and in place of it brought down her
fresh, sweet face with its fragrant mouth to within two inches of his
own wrinkled and bristly visage. A moment after, the ceremony was
completed, the letter delivered, and the postman, stepping over her
father's fallen slipper, leaned against the balcony-railing, and waited
for further developments.

The professor took his spectacles from his waistcoat pocket, placed them
carefully upon his strongly-marked nose, and scrutinized in turn the
direction, post-mark, and seal. With a sniff of surprise, he then tore
open the envelop, and became immediately absorbed in the contents of the
inclosure, indicating his progress by much pursing and biting of his
lips, wrinkling of his forehead, and drawing together of his heavy
eyebrows. Having at length reached the end of the last page, he turned
it sharply about, and went through it once more, with half-articulate
grunts of comment; and finally, folding the letter carefully up, and
replacing it in the torn envelop, he caught the spectacles off his
nose, and, with them in one hand and the paper in the other, fixed his
eyes upon the vacant spot at the summit of the hill.

His daughter meanwhile had taken off her brown straw-hat, and was using
it as a fan, keeping up a light tattoo with one foot upon the plank
flooring. Her face was glowing with her four-mile walk in the hot sun,
but she showed no signs of weariness. The position in which she stood
was easy and graceful, but there was nothing statuesque or imposing
about it; it was evident that at the very next instant she might shift
into another equally as happy. Her eyes wandered from one object to
another with the absence of concentration of one whose mind is not fixed
upon any thing in particular. From the letter between the professor's
finger and thumb, they traveled upward to his thoughtful countenance;
thence took a leap to the decrepit water-spout which depended weakly
from the corner of the balcony-roof, and thence again ascended to a
great, solid, white cloud, with turreted outline clear against the blue,
which was slowly sliding across the sky from the westward, and
threatened soon to cut off the afternoon sunshine.

The professor restlessly altered the position of his legs, thereby
drawing his daughter's attention once more to himself. Thinking she had
waited as long as was requisite for the maintenance of her dignity as a
non-inquisitive person, she transferred herself lightly to the arm of
her father's chair, grasping his beard in her plump, slender hand, and
turned his face up toward hers.

"Well, papa! aren't you going to tell what the news is? Is it nice?"

"Very nice!" said papa, taking her irreverent hand into his own, and
keeping it there. "At least you will think so," he added, looking half
playful and half wistful.

Cornelia brought her lips into a pout, all ready to say, "what?" but did
not say it, and gazed at her father with round, interrogating eyes.

"You'd be very glad to go away and leave me, of course," continued the
professor, assuming an air of studied unconcern.

"Papa!" exclaimed the young lady, with an emphatic intonation of
affection, indignation, and bewilderment.

"What! not be glad to go to New York, and to all the fashionable
watering-places, and be introduced to all the best society?" queried the
old gentleman, in hypocritical astonishment.

"Papa!" again exclaimed the young lady; but this time in a tone which
the tumult of delight, anticipation, and a fear lest there should be a
mistake somewhere, softened almost into a whisper. She had risen from
the arm of the chair to her feet, and stood with her hands clasped
together beneath her chin.

The professor laughed a short and rather unnatural laugh. "I thought you
wouldn't be obstinate about it, when you came to think it over," said
he, dryly. He folded up his spectacles and put them back in his
waistcoat pocket with, unusual elaboration of manner. "So you would
really like to have a change, would you? Well, I trust you will not be
disappointed in your expectations of society and watering-places. At all
events, you may learn to appreciate home more!" Here the professor
laughed again, as if he considered it a joke.

Cornelia was too much entranced by the new idea to have any notion of
what he was talking about; she was already hundreds of miles away,
living in stately houses, driving in magnificent carriages, sweeping in
gorgeous silks and laces through gilded and illuminated ballrooms, and
listening to courtly compliments from handsome and immaculate gentlemen.
But when, presently, her scattered faculties began to return to a more
normal state, an unquenchable curiosity to know how the miracle was to
be worked, seized upon her. She dropped on her knees beside her father's
chair, took his hand in both of hers, and looked up in his face.

"But how is it to be, papa, dear? I mean, whom am I to go with? and when
am I to go?--dear me, I haven't a thing to wear! Shall I have time to
get any thing ready? Isn't Sophie invited too? How strange it all seems!
I can hardly realize it, somehow. From whom is the letter?"

"Can you remember when you were about nine years old?" inquired the
professor.

"I don't know, I am sure," replied Cornelia, in some surprise at the
irrelevancy of the question. "Nothing particular. Oh! I know! we were in
New York!" said she, beginning to see some connection, and breaking into
a smile.

"Do you remember seeing a lady there," continued the professor, talking
and looking straight at nothing, "who made a great deal of you and
Sophie, and asked you to call her Aunt Margaret?"

"Oh--I believe--I do--," said Cornelia, slowly; "I think I didn't like
her much, because she was deaf or something, and talked in such a high
voice. She wasn't really our aunt, was she? Did she write the letter?"

"Yes, she did, my dear, and invites you and Sophie to spend the summer
with her. You don't dislike her so much as to refuse, I suppose, do
you?"

"O papa!" exclaimed his daughter, deprecatingly; for the old gentleman
had spoken rather in a tone of reproof. "I'm sure she's as kind and good
as she can be; I was only telling what I especially remembered about
her, you know. How did she come to think of us after so long?"

"I used to know her quite well, long before you were born, my dear,"
replied the professor, tapping with his fingers on the arm of the chair;
"and at that time I should not have been surprised at her offering me
any kindness. I _am_ surprised now," he added, with a good deal of
feeling; "she's a better friend than I thought."

Cornelia remained silent for several moments, because, not in the least
comprehending what sort of ground her papa was walking on, she feared
that the questions and remarks she was anxious to advance might jar with
his mood. At length, a sufficient time having elapsed to warrant, in her
opinion, the introduction of intelligible topics, she looked up and
spoke again.

"How soon, papa--how soon did you say--am I to go?"

"First of July, Aunt Margaret says. Will that give you time enough to
make yourself fine?"

"Now, papa, you're making fun of me," exclaimed the young lady,
delighted that he should be in the humor to do so, yet speaking in that
semi-reproachful tone which ladies sometimes adopt when the other sex
makes their costume the object of remark, "I can make myself as fine as
I can be by that time, of course! But how is it about Sophie? Won't she
be able to go too?"

Papa shook his head, and combed his bristly white beard with his
fingers. "Sophie has been very ill," said he; "it wouldn't be safe to
have her go anywhere this summer. We can't take too much care of her.
Typhoid pneumonia is a dangerous thing, and though she's on the way to
recovery now, she might easily relapse. And then," added the old
gentleman, in a more inward tone, "she would recover no more."

Although he mumbled this sentence to himself, Cornelia caught his
meaning, more, probably, from his manner than from any thing she heard;
and being of an emotional and warmly-tender disposition, she began to
cry. She loved her sister very much; and something must also be allowed
to the fact that, having a great happiness in prospect for herself, she
could afford to expend more sympathy on those less fortunate. As for the
professor, he, for a second time that afternoon, gave evidence of
possessing disgracefully little control over himself. He began another
fruitless search after his handkerchief, and finally asked Cornelia,
with some heat, whether she knew what had become of it.

"Why, it's on your head, papa!" warbled she, brightly changing a laugh
for her tears; and papa, putting up his hand in great confusion, and
finding that it was indeed so, laughed also, and this time in a
perfectly natural manner; but he blew his nose very resoundingly, for
all that.

The atmosphere being serene once more, the joy of the future became
again strong in Cornelia's heart, and coupled with it, an earnest
longing to disburden herself to some one, and who but her sister should
be her confidant? So she rose from her knees, and picked up her brown
straw hat, which, in the excitement, had fallen to the floor.

"Is there any thing you'd like to do, papa dear?" asked she, laying her
forefinger caressingly upon his bald head. "Because if there isn't, I, I
should like--I think I'd better go to Sophie."

Professor Valeyon nodded his head, being in truth desirous of taking
solitary counsel with himself. The letter contained a good deal more
than the invitation he had communicated to Cornelia, and he could not
feel at ease until he had more thoroughly analyzed and digested it. So
when his daughter had vanished through the door, with a smile and a kiss
of the hand, he mounted his spectacles again, and spread the letter open
on his knee.

After reading a while in silence, he spoke; though his voice was audible
only to his own mental ears.

"There was a time," said he, "when I wouldn't have believed I could ever
hear the news of that man's death, and take it so quietly! And now he
sends me his son!--as it were bequeaths him to me. Can it be as a
hostage for forgiveness, though so late? or is it merely because he knew
I could not but feel a vital interest in the boy, and would instruct and
treat him as my own? He was a shrewd judge of human nature--and yet, I
must not judge him harshly now."

Here Professor Valeyon happened again to catch sight of his slipper, and
interrupted his soliloquy to extend his stockinged toe, fork it toward
himself, and having, with some trouble, got it right side uppermost, to
put it on. And then he referred once more to the letter.

"I should like to know whether he was aware that Abbie was here, or that
she was alive at all! Margaret says nothing about it in her letter. If
he did, of course he must have written to her, or, if he was determined
to die as for these last twenty years and more he has lived, he would
never _knowingly_ have sent the boy where she was, on any consideration.
Well, well, I can easily find out how that is, from either Abbie or the
boy. By-the-way, I wonder whether this _incognito_ of his may have any
thing to do with it? Hum! Margaret says it's only so that he may not be
interrupted in his studies by acquaintances. Well, that's likely
enough--that's likely enough!"

"By-the-way, where's the young man to stay? At Abbie's, of course,
if--Margaret says, at some good boarding-house. Well, Abbie's is the
only one in town. It's a singular coincidence, certainly, if it _is_ a
coincidence! Perhaps I'd better go down at once and see Abbie, and have
the whole matter cleared up. I shall have time enough before supper, if
I harness Dolly now."

As Professor Valeyon arrived at this conclusion, he uplifted himself,
with some slight signs of the rustiness of age, from his chair, took his
brown-linen duster from the balcony railing across which it had been
thrown, and put it on, with laborious puffings, and a slight increase of
perspiration. Then, first turning round, to make sure that he had all
his belongings with him, he entered the hall-door, and passed through
into his study.

The rooms in which we live seem to imbibe something of our
characteristics, and the examination of a dwelling-place may not
infrequently throw some light upon the inner nature of its occupant. The
professor's study was of but moderate size, carpeted with a
red-and-white check straw matting, considerably frayed and defaced in
the region of the table, and faded where the light from the windows fell
upon it. The four walls were hidden, to a height of about seven feet
from the floor, with rows upon rows of books, of all sizes and varieties
of binding, no small proportion being novels, and even those not
invariably of a classical standard. The only picture was a stained
engraving of the Transfiguration, over the mantel-piece, in a faded and
fly-be-spotted gilt frame. In the centre of the room, occupying, indeed,
a pretty large share of all the available space, stood an ample
study-table, covered with green baize, darkened, for a considerable
space around the inkstand, by innumerable spatterings of ink. It
supported a confused medley of natural and unnatural accompaniments to
reading and writing. A ponderous ebony inkstand, with solid cut-glass
receptacles, one being intended for powder, though none was ever put in
it, a mighty dictionary, which, being too heavy to be considered
movable, occupied one corner of the table by itself: the earthen
tobacco-jar, with a small piece chipped from the cover; pamphlets and
books, standing or lying upon one another; heaps of rusty steel and
blunted quill pens; a quire or two of blue and white letter-paper; a
paper-knife, loose in the handle, but smooth of edge; a box of lucifer
matches, and several burnt ends; an extra pipe or two; the professor's
straw hat; a brass rack for holding letters and cards; and a great deal
of pink blotting-paper scattered about everywhere.

Opposite the table stood a chair, straight-backed and severe, in which
Professor Valeyon always sat when at work. He had a theory that it was
not well to be too much at bodily ease when intellectually occupied.
Directly behind the chair, upon the shelf of a bookcase, stood a plaster
cast of Shakespeare's face, the nose of which was most unaccountably
darkened and polished. It is doubtful whether even the professor himself
could have cleared up the mystery of this deepened color in the immortal
bard's nose. But whoever, during those hours set apart by the old
gentleman for solitary labor and meditation, had happened to peep in at
the window, would, ten to one, have beheld him tilted thoughtfully back
in his chair, abstractedly tweaking, with the forefinger and thumb of
his right hand, the sacred feature in question. He had done it every
day, for many years past, and never once found himself out, and,
doubtless, the great poet was far too broad-minded ever to think of
resenting the liberty, especially as it was only in his most thoughtful
moments that the professor meddled with him.

The room contained little else in the way of furniture, except a few
extra chairs, and a malacca-joint cane, with an ivory head, which stood
in a corner near the door. It produced an impression at once of
cleanliness and disorder, therein bearing a strong analogy to the
professor's own person and habits; and the disorder was of such a kind,
that, although no rule or system in the arrangement of any thing was
perceptible, Professor Valeyon would have been at once and almost
instinctively aware of any alteration that might have been made, however
slight.

On entering the study, the old gentleman first shuffled up to the
fireplace, flapping the heels of his slippers behind him as he went, and
deposited his pipe on the mantel-piece. Next, he put on his straw hat,
and, turning to the engraving of the Transfiguration, which had served
him as a looking-glass almost ever since it had hung there, he put
himself to rights, with his usual fierce scowlings, liftings of the
chin, and jerkings at collar and stock. When every thing seemed in
proper trim, he took his ivory-headed cane from its place in the corner,
and made his way along the entry to the front door.

"Bless me!" ejaculated the professor, as he emerged upon the porch,
shading his eyes from the white dazzle of the road; "how hot it is, sure
enough!" Scarcely had he spoken, however, when the sun, which had been
coquetting for the last half-hour with the majestic white cloud which
Cornelia had idly watched from the balcony, suddenly plunged his burning
face right into its cool, soft bosom, and immediately a clear, gray
shadow gently took possession of the landscape.

"Humph!" grunted the professor again, turning a sharp, wise eye to the
westward, "we shall have a thunder-shower before long. I must take the
covered wagon. But how's this? I declare I've forgotten to change my
slippers! I'm growing old--I'm growing old, that's certain!"

As the old gentleman stood, shaking his head over this new symptom of
approaching senility, he happened to turn his eyes in the direction of
the village, and descried a figure approaching rapidly from the turn in
the road, which at once arrested his attention.

"Who can that be?" muttered he to himself, frowning to assist his
vision. "None of the town boys, that's certain. Never saw such a figure
but once before! If any thing, this is the better man of the two.
By-the-way, what if it should be--! Humph! I believe it is, sure
enough."

By this time the stranger, a very tall and broadly built young man, with
a close brown beard, and quick, comprehensive eyes, had arrived opposite
the house, and stood with one hand on the gate.

"Is this the parsonage?" demanded he, speaking with great rapidity of
utterance, and turning his head half sideways as he spoke, without,
however, removing his eyes from the professor's face.

The old gentleman nodded his head, "It is known by that name, sir!" said
he.

With the almost impatient quickness which marked every thing he did--a
quickness which did not seem in any way allied to slovenliness or
inaccuracy, however--the young man pushed through the gate, which
protested loudly against such rough usage, and walked hastily up to the
porch-steps. He paused a moment ere ascending.

"Are you Professor Valeyon?" he asked.

Again the professor bowed his head in assent. "And are you--?" began
he.

The young man sprang up the steps, and grasping the other's
half-extended hand, gave it a brief, hard shake.

"I'm Bressant," said he.




CHAPTER III.

SOPHIE AND CORNELIA ENTER INTO A COVENANT.


When Cornelia left her father on the balcony, she danced up-stairs, and
chasséed on tiptoe up to the door of Sophie's room. There she stopped
and knocked.

Somehow or other, nobody ever went into that room without knocking. It
never entered any one's head to burst in unannounced. The door was an
unimposing-looking piece of deal, grained by some village artist into
the portraiture of an as yet undiscovered kind of wood, and considerably
impaired in various ways by time. It could not have been the door,
therefore. Nor was the bolt ever drawn, save at certain hours of the
morning and night. Sophie was not an ogre, either. Cornelia, who was
very trying at times, would have found it hard to recall an occasion
when Sophie had answered or addressed her sharply or crossly. If she
exerted any influence, or wielded any power, it was not of the kind
which attends a violent or morose temper. But no vixen or shrew, how
terrible soever she may be, can hope at all times or from all people to
meet with respect or consideration; while to Sophie Valeyon the world
always put on its best face and manner, secretly wondering at itself the
while for being so well-behaved.

As to the affair of knocking, Sophie herself had never said a word about
it, one way or another. She always took it as a matter of course;
indeed, had she been loquacious on the subject, or insisted upon the
observance, Cornelia for one would have been very likely to laugh to
scorn and disregard her, therein acting upon a principle of her own,
which prompted her to measure her strength against any thing which
seemed to challenge her, and never to give up if she could help it. But
she had never had a trial of strength with Sophie, and possibly was
quite contented that it should be so. She would have shrunk from
thwarting or crossing her sister as she would from committing a secret
sin: there might be no material or visible ill-consequence, but the
stings of conscience would be all the sharper.

So Cornelia knocked and entered, and the quiet, cool room in which her
sister lay seemed to glow and become enlivened by the joyous reflection
of her presence. Yet the effect of the room upon Cornelia was at least
as marked. She hushed herself, as it were, and tried, half
unconsciously, to adapt herself to the tone of her surroundings; for,
although her physical nature was sound and healthy, almost to
boisterousness, her perceptions remained very keen and delicate, and
occasionally rallied her upon the redundancy of her animal well-being
with something like reproof.

It was singular, with how few and how simple means was created the
impression of purity and repose that this chamber produced! It brought
to mind the pearly interior of a shell, and a fanciful person might have
listened for the sea-music whispering through. The walls were papered
with pale gray, relieved by a light pink tracery, and the white-muslin
curtains were set off by a pink lining. A bunch of wild-flowers and
grasses, which Cornelia had gathered that morning, and Sophie had
arranged, stood on the mantel-piece. There were four or five
pictures--one, a bass-relief of Endymion, deep asleep, yet conscious in
his dream that the moon is peeping shyly over his polished shoulder, had
been copied from a famous original by Sophie herself. She had painted it
in a pale-brown mezzotint, which was like nothing in nature, but seemed
suitable of all others for the embodiment of the classic fable. This
picture hung over the mantel-piece. Opposite Sophie's bed was an
illumination of the Lord's Prayer, with clear gold lettering, and
capitals and border of celestial colors. The dressing-table was covered
with a white cloth, on which reposed a comb and brush and a pink
pin-cushion with a muslin cover, and over which hung a crayon of the
cherub of the Sistine Madonna, who leans his chin upon his hand.

Within reach of Sophie's hand as she lay, were suspended a couple of
hanging shelves, which held her books. There were not a great many of
them, but they all bore signs of having been well read, and there was at
the same time a certain neatness and spotlessness in their appearance
which no merely new books could ever possess, but which was communicated
solely by Sophie's pure finger-touches. On the opposite side of the bed
stood a small table, on which ticked a watch; and beside the watch was a
work-basket, full of those multifarious little articles that only a
woman knows how to get together.

Looking around the room, and noting the delicate nicety and precision of
its condition and arrangement, one would have supposed that Sophie's own
hands must have been very lately at work upon it. But it was many weeks
since she had even sat in the easy-chair that stood in the
rosy-curtained window; and, although now far advanced in convalescence,
she had taken no part in the care of her room since her illness. Why it
had still continued to retain its immaculateness was one of many similar
mysteries which must always surround a character like Sophie's. Every
thing she accomplished seemed not so much to be done, as to take place,
in accordance with her idea or resolve; and there were always, in her
manifestations of whatever kind, more spiritual than material elements.

When Cornelia entered, Sophie laid down her sewing, and looked up-with a
smile in her eyes, which were large and gray, and the only regularly
beautiful part of her face. She had a way of confining a smile to them,
when wishing merely to express good-will or pleasure, which was peculiar
to herself, and very effective. Cornelia walked quite soberly up to the
bedside, kissed her sister, and then stood silent for several moments.

Compared with her recent exhilaration, this was very extraordinary
behavior. She had rushed up-stairs intent upon pouring into Sophie's
ears the whole gorgeous tale of her hopes and anticipations for the
coming summer. Yet no sooner was she within the door than her excitement
seemed to die out, and her enthusiasm ebb away. Extraordinary as it
appeared, it was by no means a rare occurrence. Cornelia alone could
have told how common; if, indeed, she ever reflected upon the matter.
She was very quick to feel a divergence of interests between her sister
and herself, and always inferred that Sophie could not sympathize with
any thing for which she had no personal taste. In the present instance,
it had all at once occurred to her that her sister would not be likely
to care half so much about the gayeties of fashionable watering-places
and city-life as she did, and might therefore treat with indifference
what was to her an affair of the greatest moment; and a snub being one
of those things which Cornelia found it most difficult, even in the
mildest form, to endure, she had resolved, on the spur of the moment, to
approach the topic of her proposed departure with the same coolness
which she expected Sophie to manifest when she heard about it.

"Have you kept at that sewing ever since I went away?" asked she, idly
examining the work which Sophie had laid down.

"I believe so," replied Sophie, stroking her chin to a point between her
forefinger and thumb. "It's so pleasant to be able to sew again at all
that I should consider it no hardship to have to sew all day."

Cornelia's thoughts immediately reverted to the dresses which the next
two weeks must see made.

"You wouldn't be strong enough to do that, though, would you? I mean to
sew on dresses, and all that sort of thing?"

"Dresses?" said Sophie, looking up inquiringly into her sister's face.
"Oh, you mean your dress for Abbie's Fourth-of-July party? I thought you
were going to wear your--"

"Oh, no, not that; I wasn't thinking of that," interrupted Miss Valeyon,
with a gesture as if deprecating the idea of having ever entertained
ideas so lowly. "I shall hardly be in town on the Fourth," she added,
reflectively, as if calculating her engagements.

Sophie looked amazed, though it would have taken a keener observer than
Cornelia was at the moment to detect the slight contraction of the under
eyelids, and the barely perceptible droop of the corners of the mouth.
She saw that her sister had something of moment to tell her, and was,
for some reason, coquettish about bringing it out. Cornelia was often
entertaining to Sophie when she least had intention of being so; but
Sophie was far too tender of the young lady's feelings knowingly to let
her suspect it.

"Not be in town?" repeated she, demurely taking up her work; "why, where
are you going, dear?"

"Oh!" said Cornelia, with one of those little half-yawns wherewith we
cover our nervousness or suspense, "I didn't tell you, did I? Papa
received a letter from a lady in New York, the one who wanted us to call
her 'Aunt Margaret' when we were there ever so long ago--the year after
mamma died, you know--asking me to come to her house there, and go round
with her to Saratoga and all the fashionable watering-places. The
invitation was for about the first of July, so--"

Cornelia, speaking with a breathless rapidity which she intended for
_sang froid_, had got thus far, when Sophie, who had dropped her work
again, and had been regarding her with a beautiful expression of
surprise, joy, and affection in her eyes, stretched forth her arms,
cooed out a tender little cry of happy congratulation and sympathy, and
hugged her sister around the neck for a few moments in a very eloquent
silence.

"Why, Sophie!" murmured Cornelia, covered with an astonishment of
smiles and tears, "how sweet you are! I didn't think you'd care; I
thought you'd think it foolish in me to be glad, dear Sophie!"

"My darling!" said Sophie, with another hug. She felt rebuked and
remorseful; for if, as Cornelia's words unconsciously implied, her
sympathy was unexpected, it would appear she had gained a reputation for
coldness and indifference which she was far from coveting. It often
happens, certainly, that those whom we consider intellectually beneath
us, and whom, supposing them too dull to comprehend the evolutions of
our minds, we occasionally use for our amusement, possess an instinctive
insight far keener than that of experience, enabling them to read our
very souls with an accuracy which puts our self-knowledge to the blush,
and might quite turn the tables upon us, could they themselves but
appreciate their power.

"But tell me all about it," resumed Sophie; "all the particulars. And
then we'll discuss the dresses. Dear me! I long to get to work upon
them."

As a matter of fact, Cornelia had very few particulars to tell: all she
knew was the simple fact she had already stated. But it needed only a
small spark to enkindle her imagination; she plunged at once into a
perfect flower-garden of bright thoughts and rainbow fancies;
foreshadowed her whole journey from the arrival in New York to the
latest grand ball and conquest; glowed over the horses, the houses, and
the people; speculated profoundly in possible romances and romantic
possibilities, and became so eloquent in a pretty, half-childish,
half-womanish way she had, that Sophie's eyes shone, and she told
herself that Neelie was the dearest, cunningest sister in the world.

From these glorious imaginings they descended--or ascended, perhaps--to
the dresses, and then Sophie's low, steady voice mingled with Cornelia's
rich, strenuous one, like pure water with red wine. Cornelia paced the
little room backward and forward--she could never keep still when she
was talking about what interested her, and now paused by the window, now
before the mantel-piece, now leaned for a moment on the foot-board of
Sophie's bed. She was very happy; indeed, this may have been the
happiest hour of her life, past or to come. We all have our happiest
hour, probably; and not always shall we find that happiness to have been
caused by higher or less selfish considerations than those which
animated Cornelia Valeyon.

During one of her visits to the window, she was arrested by the vision
of an unknown young man coining up the road. She at once became silent.

"What is it?" demanded Sophie, presently.

"Some man--a new one--a gentleman--awfully big!" reported Cornelia, in
detached sentences, with a look between each one.

"As big as Bill Reynolds?" asked Sophie, with a twinkle in her face.

"How absurd, Sophie! Bill Reynolds, indeed! He isn't up to this man's
shoulder. Besides, this is a gentleman, and--oh!" exclaimed Cornelia,
breaking off suddenly, and drawing back a step from the window.

"Has the gentleman had an accident?" inquired Sophie, still twinkling.

"He's stopped here--speaking to somebody--father, I believe; he's
coming in--there! do you hear?" cried Cornelia, turning round with large
eyes and her finger at her mouth, and speaking in a thrilling whisper.
The sound of the quick, irregular tread of Mr. Bressant, following the
professor into the study, was audible from below.

"Who can he be?" resumed she presently, as Sophie said nothing.

"If he's a gentleman, we don't need to know any more, do we?" replied
her sister, from behind her sewing.

"Well, he is one," rejoined Cornelia, uncertain whether she was being
made fun of or not. "He was dressed like one; not _bandboxy_, you know,
but nicely and easily; and he stands and moves well; and then his
face--"

"Is he handsome?" asked Sophie, as Cornelia paused.

"Oh! he has that refined look--I can't describe it--better than
handsome," said she, giving a little wave with her hand to carry out her
meaning.

"It's lucky he was so big," remarked Sophie, very innocently, "or you
might not have been able to see so much of him in such a little time."

"Sophie!" said Cornelia, after a silence of some moments, speaking with
tragic deliberation, "you're making fun of me; I think you're very
unkind. I don't see what there is to laugh at in what I said; and if
there was any thing, I think _you_ might not laugh."

"O Neelie--dear Neelie!" exclaimed Sophie, coloring with regret and
shame; "I didn't think you'd mind it; it was only my foolishness. Don't
think I meant to be unkind to you, dear. I wish the man had never come
here, whoever he is, if he is to come between us in any way. Won't you
forgive me, darling?" and she held out her hand to Cornelia with a
wistful, beseeching look in her eyes that thawed her sister's resentment
immediately, and after a very brief struggle to preserve her dignity,
she subsided with her face upon the pillow beside her sister's.

"We won't ever quarrel or any thing again, will we, Sophie?" said she,
after a while.

"Never about that gentleman, at all events!" answered Sophie; and then
they both laughed and kissed each other to seal the bargain.

Once, long afterward, Cornelia remembered that kiss, and the words that
had accompanied it; and pondered over the bitter significance with which
the simple act and playful agreement had become fraught.

But now, the subject was soon forgotten, and they fell to talking about
the dresses once more; nor was the topic by any means exhausted when
they were interrupted by the professor's voice calling to them from
below.




CHAPTER IV.

A BUSINESS TRANSACTION.


Professor Valeyon led the way to the study, stood his cane in the
corner, and placed a chair for his guest, in silence. "Just like his
father!" said he to himself, as he repaired to the mantel-piece for his
pipe; "not a bit of his mother about him. Who'd have thought so sickly a
baby as they said he was, would have grown into such a giant?--Smoke?"
he added, aloud.

"You must talk loud to me--I'm deaf," said the young man, with his hand
to his ear.

"Pleasant thing in a pupil, that!" muttered the old gentleman, as he
filled his pipe and lit it. "How it reminds one of his father--that
bright questioning look, when he leans forward! One might know who he
was by that and nothing else!" He sat down in his chair, and ruminated a
moment.

"Hardly expected you up here so soon after your loss," observed he, in
as kindly a tone and manner as was comportable with speaking in a very
loud key.

"Loss! I've had no loss!" returned Bressant, with a look of perplexity.
"Oh! you mean my father!" he exclaimed, suddenly, throwing his head back
with a half-smile. He very seldom laughed aloud. "There was nothing to
do. The funeral was the day before yesterday. I did all the business
before then. Yesterday I packed up, and here I am!"

"Death couldn't have been unexpected, I presume?" said the professor,
on whom Bressant's manner made an impression of resignation to his loss
rather too complete.

"The hour of death can only be a matter of guess-work at any time,"
returned the young man. "My father had been expecting to die for some
months past; but he'd been mistaken once or twice before, and I thought
he might be this time. But he happened to guess right."

"Filial way of talking, that," thought Professor Valeyon, rather taken
aback. "Didn't get that from his father; he was soft spoken enough, in
all conscience! Queer now, this matter of resemblance! there's a certain
something in his style of speaking, and in the way he looks just after
he has spoken, that reminds me of Mrs. Margaret. Deaf people are all
something alike, though; and he's been with her a great deal, I suppose.
Well, well! as to the way he spoke about his father, what looked like
indifference may have been merely embarrassment, or an attempt to
disguise feeling; or perhaps it was but a deaf man's peculiarity. At all
events, it can do no harm to suppose so."

"Were you with him during his last moments?" asked he.

"Oh, yes! I saw him die," answered Bressant, nodding, and pulling his
close-cut brown beard.

Professor Valeyon smoked for a while in silence, occasionally casting
puzzled and searching glances at the young man, who took up a book from
the table--it happened to be a volume of Celestial Mechanics--and began
to read it with great apparent interest. His face was an open and
certainly not unpleasant one; very mobile, however, and vivid in its
expressions; the eyebrows straight and delicate, and the eyes bright and
powerful. The forehead was undeniably fine, prominently and capaciously
developed. Nevertheless--and this was what puzzled the professor--there
was a very evident lack of something in the face, in no way interfering
with its intellectual aspect, but giving it, at times, an unnatural and
even uncanny look. In meeting the young man's eyes, the old gentleman
was ever and anon conscious of a disposition to recoil and shudder, and,
at the same time, felt impelled, by what resembled a magnetic
attraction, to gaze the harder. Did the very fact that some universal
human characteristic was omitted from this person's nature endow him
with an exceptional and peculiar power? There was an uncertainty, in
talking and associating with him, as to what he would do or say; an
ignorance of what might be his principles and points of view; an
impossibility of supposing him governed by common laws. Such, at least,
was the professor's fancy concerning him.

But again, turning his eyes to his pipe, or out of the window, was it
not fancy altogether? Beyond that he was unusually tall and broad across
the shoulders, and of a very intelligent cast of features, what was
there or was there not in this young man different from any other? He
had the muffled irregular voice, and alert yet unimpressible manner,
peculiar to deafness. But was there any thing more? The professor took
another look at him. He was reading, and certainly there were no signs
of any thing strange in his appearance, more than that, at such a time,
he should be reading at all. It was when speaking of his father that
the uncanny expression had been especially noticeable. "Suppose," said
Professor Valeyon to himself, "we try him on another subject."

"You've been educated at home, I understand," began he, from beneath his
heavy eyebrows.

"Oh, yes!" replied Bressant, shutting his book on his knee, and
returning the professor's look with one of exceeding keenness and
comprehensiveness. "Educated to develop faculties of body and mind, not
according to the ordinary school and college system." He drew himself
up, with an air of such marvelous intellectual and physical efficiency,
that it seemed to the professor as if each one of his five senses might
equal the whole capacity of a common man. And then it occurred to him
that he remembered, many years ago, having heard some one mention a
theory of education which aimed rather to give the man power in whatever
direction he chose to exercise it, than to store his mind with greater
or less quantities of particular forms of knowledge. The only faculty to
be left uncultivated, according to this theory, was that of human
love--this being considered destructive, or, at least, greatly
prejudicial, to progress and efficiency in any other direction. The
professor could not at the moment recall who it was had evolved this
scheme, but it became involuntarily connected in his mind with
Bressant's peculiarities.

"According to the letter I received to-day, you come here to be trained
to the ministry," resumed he. "Has all your previous education had this
in view?"

"The education would have been the same, understand, whatever the end
was to be," explained the young man, with a shrewd smile in his sharp
eyes. "I am as well prepared to study theology as if I had been aiming
at it all my life; but I might take up engineering or medicine as well
as that. About a year ago, I decided to become a minister."

"And what led you to do that?" demanded the old gentleman, with rather a
stern frown. He did not like the idea of approaching religion in other
than a reverent and self-searching attitude.

"My father first suggested it," replied Bressant, on whom the frown
produced no sort of impression. "At the time, it surprised me,
especially from him. Afterward, I concluded I could not do better. No
one has such a chance to move the world as a minister. I thought of
Christ, and Paul, and Luther, and many before and since. They were all
ministers, and who had greater power? I felt I had the ability, and I
decided that it was as a minister I could best use it."

"But what are you going to use it for?" questioned the professor,
settling his spectacles on his nose, and leaning across the table in his
earnestness.

"The men I have mentioned used theirs to invent, or confirm, or
overthrow, religious sects, and perhaps they couldn't have done better
in their age. Their names are as well known now as ever, and that's the
best test. But I hope I may discover a better method. I shall have the
advantage of their experience and mistakes. Perhaps I shall develop and
carry out to its conclusion the dogma of Christianity. That would be
well as a beginning."

"Very well, that's certain!" assented the professor, dryly. "It's all I
shall be able to give you any assistance in, too, so we needn't discuss
what the next step will be. By-the-way, did you ever hear of doing any
thing for the glory of God, and for the love of your fellow-men?"

"Oh, yes! they're pass-words of the profession, and have their use,"
returned Bressant, with another of his keen smiles. "If you want to
climb above the world, the rounds in your ladder must be made of common
woods that everybody knows the names of. The Bible is full of such, and
some of them are works of genius in themselves. After all, it is the
people who must immortalize us, and we must feed them with what they are
in the habit of eating."

"What induced you to come here, sir?" asked the professor, abruptly.

"I never should have come of myself," answered the young man, with
entire frankness. "I never heard your name mentioned until less than a
year ago. It was the first time my father was expecting to die. He told
me you were a wise man, and learned besides; he had known you when you
were young; you would have some interest in teaching me; he would feel
more at ease to die, if he knew you were directing me. I thought it
over, as I said, and decided to come. Understand, I knew of no one
except you, and I didn't want to go to a theological school."

"Humph!" grunted the professor, who was by no means well satisfied with
the prospect, yet had reasons of his own for taking up the matter if
possible. He smoked for a while longer, and Bressant resumed his book.

"By-the-way, about this _incognito_ of yours," said the former at
length, laying aside his pipe, and taking off his straw hat: he had
forgotten to remove it on entering, and it had been oppressing him with
a sense of vague inconvenience ever since. "What is the meaning of it?
Do you mean to keep it strict? Is the idea you own?"

"Oh, no! I heard nothing of it till after my father was dead. It was
Mrs. Vanderplanck--she who wrote you the letter--who first spoke to me
of it, and said he had desired it. I don't know what the necessity of it
is, but it must be kept a strict secret. Should any one besides you know
who I am, I stand in danger of losing my fortune."

"Ah, ha! lose your fortune!" exclaimed the professor, frowning so
portentously as to unseat his spectacles. "How does that happen, sir?"

Bressant looked considerably amused at the old gentleman's evident
emotion; the more as he saw no occasion for it. "I never had the
curiosity to ask how," said he, pulling at his beard. "I shall run no
risks with my fortune. I'm satisfied to know there might be danger;
there's no difficulty in keeping silence about a name."

Professor Valeyon rose from his chair and walked to the window. A mighty
host of gray clouds, piled thickly one upon another, and torn and
tunneled by feverish wind-gusts, were hastening swiftly and silently
across the sky from the west. Beyond, where they were thickest and
angriest, a yellowish, lurid tint was reflected against them. The valley
darkened like a frowning face, and the summits of the western hills
were blotted out of sight. A lightning-flash shivered brightly through
the air, and then came the first growling, leaping, accumulating peal of
thunder. A sudden, rustling breath swept through the garden, and,
following it, in big, quick drops, and soon in an unintermittent
myriad-footed tramp, the rustling, perpendicular down-pelting of the
rain.

In less than a minute, a gray, wet veil had been drawn across the
farther side of the valley, hiding it from the professor's sight. Even
the outer limits of the garden grew indistinct. The leaves of the trees
bobbed ceaselessly up and down, and glistened and dripped; the shrubs
and flowers seemed to lift themselves higher from the earth, and stretch
out their green fingers to the plenteous shower. The tinkle of the
fountain was quite obliterated, and the ordinarily smooth surface of the
basin sprang upward in thousands of tiny pyramids, as if madly welcoming
the impact of the rain-drops. Small cataracts tore in desperate haste
down the slope of the garden-paths, laying bare in their pigmy fury the
lower strata of rough gravel and pebbles. Upon the roof of the balcony
was maintained an evenly sonorous monotone of drubbing, as if
innumerable fairy carpenters were nailing on the shingles. The invalid
water-spout had a hard time of it; it was racked, shaken, and bullied,
and continually choked itself with the volubility of its fluent
utterances, which were instantly swallowed up in the bottomless depths
of the waste-barrel. A strong, cool, earthy odor rose from the garden,
and was wafted past the professor's nostrils, and into the heated house.
The moist brown flower-beds exhaled a fragrant thankfulness, and the
grass-blades looked twice as green and twice as tall as before.
Meanwhile the heavy, regular pulse of the thunder had been beating
intermittently overhead, and bounding ponderously from hill-side to
hill-side; and ever and anon the lightning had showed startlingly in
dazzling zigzags through the omnipresent shadow. But now it seemed that
there was a little less weight in the fall, and gloom in the air. The
pervading freshness of the breeze made itself more unmistakably
perceptible. The west began to lighten, and the rain and darkness
drifted to the east. As for Professor Valeyon, if his thoughts had been
in a tumult, like the elements, might they not become quiet again also?

"After all," said the old gentleman to himself, "it's not the young
fellow's fault. If his father was a heartless scoundrel, it doesn't
follow that he knows it. Well, the man is dead--it can't be helped now,
that's certain. But what a cunningly-contrived plot it is! Shuts my
mouth by confiding to me the _incognito_ and sending me the son to
educate; destroys the last hope of setting an old wrong right; takes
advantage, for base ends, of the deepest feelings of human hearts: not
to speak of preventing the young man himself from being party to a noble
and generous action. Did ever man carry such a load down to the grave!

"Suppose Margaret--no! it isn't likely she would know any thing about
it. He wasn't the man to make confidants of women. She gave the message
to the son, not knowing what it meant, probably. Why, he wouldn't have
dared to tell her! And then inviting Cornelia--no, no! I've had some
acquaintance with Margaret, and, with all her nonsense, I believe she's
honest. Besides, what interest could she have to be otherwise? To be
sure, she didn't give me the true reason for the _incognito_; but that's
nothing; she's just the woman to tell a useless fib, and reserve the
truth for important occasions only--or what she thinks such."

The professor remained a while longer at the window, abstractedly
staring at the drops which hastened after one another from the wet
eaves. Suddenly he turned around, and walked up to the table, flapping
his slipper-heels, and settling his spectacles, as he went.

"Did any one ever speak to you of your mother, sir?" demanded he in the
ear of the reading Bressant. "Confound the fellow!" passed at the same
time through his mind; "does he think I'm a chair or a table?"

"My mother?" repeated the young man, looking up, and appearing somewhat
surprised at the idea of his ever having possessed the article. "Oh,
yes! my father once told me she was dead. It was long ago. I'd almost
forgotten it."

"Told you she was dead, hey? Humph! just what I expected!" growled the
old gentleman, who seemed, however, to become additionally wrathful at
the intelligence. After a moment's scowl straight at his would-be pupil,
he shuffled up to his chair, and sat solidly down in it. Bressant (to
whom the professor had probably appeared to the full as peculiar as he
to the professor), seeing signs of an approach to business in his action
and attitude, tossed his book on the table, leaned forward with his
elbows on his knees, and fixed his eyes directly upon the old
gentleman's glasses.

"You seem to be in the habit of speaking your own mind freely, sir,"
observed the latter; "and I shall do the same, on this occasion at least
I'm going to accept you as a pupil, and shall do my best for you; but
you must understand it's by no means on your own account I do it. As far
as I have seen them, I don't like your principles, your beliefs, or your
nature. You're the last man I should pick out for a minister, or for any
other responsible position. In every respect, except intelligence and an
unlimited confidence in yourself, you seem to me unfit to be trusted. In
training you for the ministry, I shall do it with the hope--not the
expectation--of instilling into you some true and useful ideas and
elevated thoughts. If I succeed, I shall have done the work of a whole
churchful of missionaries. If I fail, I shan't recommend you to be
ordained. And never forget that you will be indebted for all this to
some one you've never known, and who, I am at present happy to say,
don't know you. Whether or not you'll ever become acquainted is known to
God alone, and I'm very glad that the matter lies entirely in His hands.
Now, sir, what have you to say?"

Bressant, who had been looking steadily and curiously at the professor
during the whole of this long speech, now passed his hand from his
forehead down over his face and beard--a common trick of his--smiled
meditatively, and said:

"I'm glad you agree to take me. I don't care for your recommendation if
I have your instruction. Shall we begin to-morrow?"

There followed a discussion relative to hours, methods, and materials,
which lasted very nearly until tea-time. Then, as there was still some
rain falling, the professor extended to his pupil an invitation to
supper, on his accepting which the old gentleman shuffled out into the
entry, and called to Cornelia to come down and make the necessary
preparations.




CHAPTER V.

BRESSANT PICKS A TEA-ROSE.


Supper was ready: Cornelia surveyed the table for the last time, to make
sure it was all right. It was an extension-table, but the spare leaves
had been removed, and it was reduced to a circle. A mellow western light
from that portion of the sky unswathed in clouds streamed through the
window, and did duty as a lamp. The cloth was white, and tapered down in
soft folds at the corners; a pleasant profusion of sparkling china and
silver, and of savory eatables, filled the circumference of the board,
leaving just space enough to operate in, and no more. In the centre of
the table, and perceptible both to eyes and nose on entering the room,
was a tall glass dish, lined with wet green leaves, and pyramided with
red strawberries. A comfortable steam ascended from the nose of the
tea-pot, and vanished upward in the gloom of the ceiling; the brown
toast seemed crackling to be eaten; the smooth-cut slices of marbled
beef lay overlapping one another in silent plenteousness; and the knives
and forks glistened to begin. Cornelia opened the entry-door, and called
across to her papa in the study that supper was ready. Then she took up
her position behind her chair, with one hand resting on its back, and a
silent determination that the visitor, whoever he was, should be
impressed with her dignity, condescension, and good looks.

"This is my daughter Cornelia. Mr. Bressant is going to be a pupil of
mine, my dear," said the professor, as he and Bressant advanced into the
room.

He gave his hand an introductory wave in Cornelia's direction as he
spoke, but probably did not speak loud enough to be distinctly beard by
his guest. Nevertheless, seeing the motion and the lady, Bressant
inclined forward his shoulders with an elastic readiness of bearing
which was customary with him, in spite of his unusual stature, and then
took his place at the table without bestowing any further attention upon
her. It passed through Cornelia's mind, as she lifted the tea-pot, that
Mr. Bressant was outrageously conceited, and should be taken down at the
first opportunity. She had made a very graceful courtesy, and it was not
to be overlooked in that way with impunity.

"Milk and sugar, sir?" said she, interrogatively, raising her eyes to
the young man's face with a somewhat gratuitous formality of manner, and
holding a piece of sugar suspended over the cup.

Bressant had certainly been looking in her direction as she spoke; he
had the opposite place to her at table; but instead of replying, even
with a motion of the head, he, after a moment, turned to Professor
Valeyon, who was gently oscillating himself in the rocking-chair he
always occupied at meals, and asked him whether he knew any thing about
a place in town called "Abbie's Boarding-house."

Cornelia laid down the sugar and tongs, and looked very insulted and
flushed. What sort of a creature was this her papa had brought to his
supper-table? Papa, who had noticed the awkward turn, and was tickled by
the humor thereof, could not forbear to give evidence of amusement,
insomuch that his daughter, who was by no means of a lymphatic
temperament, was almost ready to leave the table, or burst into tears
with injured and astonished dignity.

Bressant, with that exceeding quickness of perception which most persons
with his infirmity possess under such circumstances, transferred his
glance from the professor to the young lady, and at once arrived at a
pretty correct understanding of the difficulty. He was not embarrassed,
for it had probably never occurred to him that his deafness was so much
a defect as a difference of organization, and he lost no time in
explaining matters in his customary way.

"I'm deaf; when you talk to me you must speak loud," said he, looking
full at Cornelia's disturbed face.

Miss Valeyon had never been so thoroughly discomfited. She was smitten
on three sides at once. Bad enough to be insulted; worse, having become
properly angry, to find no insult was meant; and, worst of all, to have
been the means of drawing attention, by her bad temper, to a physical
infirmity in her papa's guest. She abandoned upon the instant all
intention of being ceremonious and imposing, and only thought how she
might atone, to her papa and to Bressant, for her ill-behavior.

He would not take tea--nothing but water; and, as Cornelia proceeded in
silence to pour out her papa's cup, the latter answered Bressant's
question about the boarding-house.

"Know it very well, sir. Very good house. What have you heard about it?"

"Nothing more than that; I asked a man at the depot. My trunk has been
taken there. I'm satisfied if the woman 'Abbie' is respectable, and
gives me enough to eat." The young man had accepted Cornelia's tender of
a slice of beef, and seemed fully equal to doing it again.

"The 'woman Abbie' respectable, sir!" exclaimed the professor in
half-muzzled ire; but he checked himself suddenly, and tried to be
contented with shoving his plate, tumbler, and tea-cup, to and fro
before him. "I could not have recommended you to a better person," he
added presently, evidently putting a restraint upon himself. "I have the
highest--I hold her in very high estimation, sir."

Bressant nodded, and presently took some more of the beef.

"Have you seen Abbie yet, Mr. Bressant?" inquired Cornelia in a timid
tone, which, however, was deprived of all melody by the effort to suit
it to the young man's ears. But it was necessary to say something.

"Oh, no!" he replied, smiling at her in the pure good-nature of physical
complacency, and noticing for the first time that she was an agreeable
spectacle. He judged absolutely and primitively, never having had that
experience of women which might have enabled him to make comparison the
base of his opinion. "I came right up here from the depot. My trunk was
sent to the boarding-house; it will hire a room for me, I suppose."

At this sally, Cornelia smiled very graciously, though ten minutes
before she would have snubbed it promptly. She had had some experience
with the young men of the village--easy victims--and had acquired a
rather good opinion of her satirical powers. But Bressant was a peculiar
case; his deafness enlisted her compassion and forbearance, and her own
late rudeness made her gentle. Perhaps the young gentleman was not so
far out of the way in failing to consider his infirmity a disadvantage.

Meanwhile, Professor Valeyon was swinging backward and forward, ever and
anon pausing to take a bite or a sup, and eying the stem of the
strawberry-dish, in deepest contemplation. Cornelia, who from a
combination of causes, felt more embarrassed than ever in her
remembrance, devoutly wished that he would rouse himself, and make some
conversation. She did all she could, in the way of supplying the guest
with eatables, and making little remarks upon them, to fill up awkward
pauses; but she was conscious she was being stupid; and even when she
thought of a good thing to say, the reflection that it must needs be
shouted aloud made her pause until the available moment had gone by. It
was some relief that Bressant ate well, and seemed in no way shy or cast
down himself. There was a freshness and vivacity in his enjoyment of his
supper which was pleasing to Cornelia for several reasons: it was
evidently very far from being affected, was consequently indirectly
complimentary to her, and showed a certain boyishness in him which
contrasted very agreeably, or, as Cornelia would have said, "cunningly,"
with his mature and intellectual aspect. In fact, Bressant was in a
particularly happy mood. The cool air and pleasant room, and the
gratification of a healthy appetite, caused his senses to expand, and,
as it were, sun themselves. Cornelia's beauty could not have been
presented under more favorable auspices, especially as woman's
loveliness had heretofore been an unturned page in the young man's life.
True, it pleased him in the same way as, and probably not to a greater
degree than, would the symmetrical elegance of a vase, or the tinted
beauty of a flower; but he had not yet known the limitless additional
charm given by life, variety, and emotion. Would he ever know it? or was
he so profoundly ignorant of the matter as to run in danger of finding
it out unexpectedly, and perhaps too late?

The strawberry pyramid sank and disappeared. Cornelia began anxiously to
wonder what was to be done now. Bressant sat enjoying his sensations,
and Professor Valeyon, who appeared to have arrived at some definite
conclusion after his meditations, rolled up his napkin and shoved it
into the ring, previous to setting it down with that peculiar tap which
announced that the meal was over.

On leaving the table, Bressant sauntered out of the room and on to the
balcony, with a disregard of what other people might intend, which
caused Cornelia to recollect her first impression of him. Nevertheless,
not knowing what else she could do, she followed, and found him leaning
over the railing, and looking about him with serene enjoyment. The
clouds had been mostly dispersed; a fresh air moved in the damp garden;
and Cornelia was soon aware that the mosquitoes were abroad. Her
muslin-covered arms and shoulders began to suffer.

Bressant raised himself at her approach, and stood with one hand
against the railing, looking down upon her with a half-smile of interest
and satisfaction, which made Cornelia feel not so much like a human
being, as some rare natural curiosity which he was glad to have the
opportunity of examining.

"You are one of the daughters?" said he, with the sudden scrutinizing
contraction of the eyebrows that often accompanied his questions. "There
are two, aren't there? Which one are you?"

"I'm Cornelia," replied she, provoked, as the words left her mouth, that
she had not said "Miss Valeyon." But the question had surprised her out
of her presence of mind, and the necessity of speaking loud, if nothing
else, hindered her from making the correction.

"Is the other any thing like you?" resumed he, after a moment's more
contemplation, which, spite of its directness, had in it a certain
element of unsophisticatedness that prevented it from seeming rude.

"Who, Sophie?" exclaimed the young lady, bursting forth into an
unexpected gurgle of laughter, to which Bressant at once responded in
kind, though having no idea what the merriment was about. "I wish you
could see her! There couldn't be a greater difference if I was a negro!"

The laugh died away in Bressant's eyes, and he pressed his hand rapidly
down over his face, as if to sharpen his wits, or clear away cobwebs.

"That's natural," he remarked, reflectively. "I never saw any thing like
you."

"If he'd said 'any _body_,'" thought Cornelia, "I should have said he
meant to compliment. How funny he is! just like a boy in some ways. I
believe I know more than he does, after all!"

"Have you any sisters, Mr. Bressant?" asked she aloud, looking up at him
with more cordiality and confidence than she had yet felt or shown.

"Not any. I should think it would be a good thing. Do you like it?"

"Of course; but then I am a sister myself, so it don't apply," said
Cornelia, with the sunshine of another laugh. It was delightful to look
at her at such times; every part of her partook of the merriment, so
that her hands, feet, and waist, might all be said to laugh for
themselves. Cornelia could express a great deal more in a bodily than in
a spiritual way. Her material self, indeed, seemed so completely and
bounteously endowed as to leave little place or occasion for a soul. The
warm, rounded, fragrant, wholesome personality which met the eye,
satisfied it; the harmonious tumult of life, that thrilled in every
movement, was contentment to the other perceptions; the thought of a
soul, bringing with it that other of death, was cold and inconsistent.
Such mortal perfection loses its full effect, unless we can look upon it
as physically immortal: as soon as we begin to refine our ideas into the
abstract, we sully our enjoyment.

"But your mother must have given you some idea of what a sister would
be," continued Cornelia, presently.

"Would she? I wish I had one!" said the young man, unconscious that no
such desire had ever entered his head till now, and yet at a loss to
account for its presence. "Mine died more than twenty years ago," he
explained.

"The poor boy! I believe he don't know what a woman is!" murmured
Cornelia to herself, perhaps not displeased at the reflection that it
lay with her to enlighten him. "No wonder he looked at me as if I were a
mammoth squash, or something. I'm going down in the garden to pluck a
tea-rose bud," added she aloud. "Won't you come?"

"Yes," said Bressant, following her down the glistening granite steps
with an air of half-puzzled admiration. He liked his new sensations very
much, but knew not what to make of them; and so had a sense of
adventurous uncertainty, which was perhaps a pleasure in itself.

Cornelia walked down the path in front of him, picking her dainty steps
to avoid stray spears of grass or weeds, and gathering up her light
skirts in one hand, out of the way of the bushes which leaned lovingly
forward to drop a tear upon her. At length she reached the tea-rose
bush, and paused there. Bressant came up and stood beside her.

It was just dark enough to make the difference between a perfect and an
imperfect bud a matter of some doubt. Cornelia peeped cautiously about,
putting aside the wet twigs gingerly, and lifting up one flower after
another; desisting every once in a while to slap at the fine sting of a
mosquito on her arms or neck.

"Oh! there's one that looks nice!" exclaimed she, disposing her drapery
to reach across the bush for a distant bud which looked in every respect
satisfactory. But Bressant saw it, and plucked it without effort,
drawing blood from his finger as he did so, however. He smelt it, and
looked from it to Cornelia, apparently trying to identify an idea.

"Aren't you going to give me my bud?" demanded Miss Valeyon. "What's the
matter, sir?"

"In some way it reminds me of you," replied he, giving it to her with a
shake of the head. "I don't see how, but it does!"

Cornelia gave him a sharp side-look, to make out if he was sincere; but
his face at the moment was in shadow.

"Perhaps because it pricked your finger," said she.

She had not spoken loud, and was almost startled when his reply showed
he had heard her. There was again that expression of marvellous
efficiency and power in his face and bearing, but combined with one
partly doubt and partly shrewd scrutiny.

"I plucked the bud all the same," he remarked. Cornelia, for some
reason, felt a little provoked and a little frightened. He wasn't
entirely unsophisticated after all; and she felt quite uncertain where
the ignorance ended and the knowledge began. She put the bud in her
hair, and they walked on, Bressant being now at her side, instead of
behind. The path was hardly wide enough for two, and now and then she
felt her shoulder touch his arm. Every time this happened, she fancied
her companion gave a kind of involuntary start, and looked around at her
with a quick, inquiring expression--fancied, for she did not meet his
look, being herself conscious of a sort of irregularity of the breath
and pulse attending these contacts, which she could not understand, and
did not feel altogether at ease about. Certainly, there was something
odd in this Bressant! Cornelia hardly knew whether he strongly repelled
or powerfully attracted her. She had half a mind to run back to the
house.

At this moment, however, they arrived at the fountain, and stood
silently contemplating its weak, persistent struggles. The heavy rain
had not raised its spirits a whit; but neither had it lessened its sense
of duty to be performed. It labored just as hard if not harder than
ever.

Presently Bressant walked round to the opposite side of the basin, shook
himself and stamped his feet, like one overcoming a feeling of
drowsiness, and then, stooping down, put his hand in the water and
brought some up to his forehead. It passed through Cornelia's mind that
she had read in her "Natural Philosophy," at school, that water was a
good conductor of electricity, but she could not establish any clear
connection between her remembrance of this fact and Bressant's action.
The results of thoughts often present themselves to us when the
processes remain invisible.

"What an absurd little fountain!" observed he, coming round again to
Cornelia, and looking down upon her with a smile that seemed to call for
a responsive one from her. "What is the use of it?"

"Oh, we're used to it, you know; and then that little sound it makes is
pleasant to listen to."

"Is it?" said Bressant, apparently struck by the idea. "I should like to
hear it. 'A pleasant sound!' I never thought of a sound being pleasant."

"Poor fellow!" thought Cornelia again, with a strong impulse of
compassion and kindliness. "What a dreary life, not even to know that
sounds were beautiful! I suppose all the voices he hears must be harsh
and unnatural, and those are the only kinds of sounds he would attend
to." Looking at him from this new point of view, the feeling of mistrust
and uncertainty of a few minutes before was forgotten. Standing near the
margin of the basin was a rustic bench fantastically made of curved and
knotted branches, the back and arms contrived in rude scroll-work, and
the seat made of round transverse pieces, through whose interstices the
rain-water had passed, leaving it comparatively dry. Cornelia sat down
upon it and motioned Bressant to take his place by her side. As he did
so, she could not help a slight thrill of dismay. He was so very big,
and took up so much room!

Bressant sat looking straight before him, and said nothing. Stealing a
side-glance at him, Cornelia was possessed by an absurd fancy that he
was alarmed at his position. The idea of being able to scare such a
giant excited the young lady's risibilities so powerfully that she could
not contain herself, but, to her great horror, broke suddenly forth into
a warbling ecstasy of laughter. Bressant looked around, in great
surprise. It was an occasion for presence of mind. Something must be
done at once.

"Hush! hold perfectly still! It was so absurd to see you sitting there,
and not knowing! There--now--still!" _Spat!_

A mosquito, which, after considerable reconnoitring, had settled upon
Bressant's broad hand, had sacrificed its life to rescue Cornelia from
her dilemma.

Bressant felt the soft, warm fingers strike smartly, and then begin to
remove, cautiously and slowly, because the mosquito was possibly not
dead after all. What was the matter with the young man? His blood and
senses seemed to quiver and tingle with a sensation at once delicious
and confusing. In the same instant, he had seized the soft, warm fingers
in both his hands, and pressed them convulsively and almost fiercely.
Cornelia very naturally cried out, and sprang to her feet. Bressant, it
would seem not so naturally, did the same thing, and with the air of
being to the full as much astonished and startled as she.

"What do you mean, sir? how dare you--?" she said, paling after her
first deep flush.

He looked at her, and then at his own hand, on which the accommodating
mosquito was artistically flattened, and then at her again, with a
slight, interrogative frown.

"How did it happen? What was it? I didn't mean it!"

Cornelia was quite at a loss what to do or say under such extraordinary
circumstances. She felt short of breath and indignant; but she had never
heard of a young man's questioning a lady as to how he had come to take
a liberty with her. As she stood thus confounded, her unfortunate
perception of the ludicrous betrayed her once more; but this time her
recent shock played a part in it, and came very near producing a bad fit
of hysterics. Bressant looked on without a word or a motion.

In less than a minute, for Cornelia's nerves were very strong, and had
never been overtaxed, she had regained command of herself. Bressant was
standing between her and the house, and she pointed up the path.

"Please go home as quickly as possible."

Off he walked, with every symptom of readiness and relief. Cornelia
followed after, but, when she reached the house, she found her papa
staring inquiringly out of his study-door; the uncanny pupil in divinity
had disappeared.




CHAPTER VI.

CORNELIA BEGINS TO UNDO A KNOT.


Bressant, to do him justice--for he was, on the whole, rather apt to be
polite than otherwise, in his way--entirely forgot the professor's
existence for the time being. He was too self-absorbed to think of other
people. He thought he was bewitched, and felt a strong and healthy
impulse to throw off the witchery before doing any thing else. He sprang
up the steps, across the balcony, traversed the hall with a quick tramp
that shook the house, snatched his hat from the old hat-tree, came down
upon the porch-step (which creaked in a paroxysm of reproach at his
unaccustomed weight), and, in another moment, stood outside the
Parsonage-gate, which, to save time, he had leaped, instead of opening.

The road was white no longer, but brown and moist. The sky overhead was
deep purple, and full of stars. The air wafted about hither and thither
in little, cool, damp puffs, which were a luxury to inhale. Bressant
drew in two or three long lungfuls; then, setting his round straw hat
more firmly on his head, he leaned slightly forward, and launched
himself into a long, swinging run.

To run gracefully and well is a rare accomplishment, for it demands a
particularly well-adjusted physical organization, great strength, and a
deep breath-reservoir. Bressant's body poised itself lightly between
the hips, and swayed slightly, but easily, from side to side at each
spring. The knees alternately caught the weight without swerving, and
shifted it, with an elastic toss, from one to the other. The feet came
down sharp and firm, and springily spurned the road in a rapid though
rhythmical succession. In a few moments, the turn around the spur of the
hill was reached, and the runner was well settled down to his pace.

The stone-fences, the occasional apple-trees, the bushes and bits of
rock bordering the road, slipped by half seen. The full use of the eyes
was required for the path in front, rough as it was with loose stones,
and seamed with irregular ruts. Easy work enough, however, as long as it
remained level, and open to the starlight. But, some distance beyond,
there dipped a pretty abrupt slope, and here was need for care and
quickness. Sometimes a step fell short, or struck one side, to avoid a
stone, or lengthened out to overpass it. The whole body was thrown more
back, and the heels dug solidly into the earth, at each downward leap.
Here and there, where the incline was steeper, four or five foot-tramps
followed rapidly upon each other; and then, gathering himself up, with a
sudden, strong clutch, as it were, the young man continued on as before.
Thus the slope was left behind; and now began a low, long stretch, lying
between meadows, overshadowed by a bordering of willow-trees, and
studded with lengths of surreptitious puddles, for the ground was
clayey, and the rain was unabsorbed. As Bressant entered upon it, he
felt the cold moisture of the air meet his warm face refreshingly; he
was breathing deep and regularly, and now let himself out to a yet
swifter pace than before.

The willow-trees started suddenly from the forward darkness, and
vanished past in a dusky twinkling. The road seemed drawn in swift,
smooth lines from beneath his feet, he moving as in a mighty treadmill.
The breeze softly smote his forehead, and whispered past his ears. Now
he rose lightly in the air over an unexpected puddle, striking the
farther side with feet together, and so on again. Twice or thrice, his
steps sounded hollowly over a plank bridging. At a distance, steadily
approaching, appeared the outlet, light against the dark willow setting.
When it was reached, ensued a rough acclivity, hard for knees and lungs,
winding upward for a considerable distance. Up the runner went, with
seemingly untired activity, and the stones and sand spurted from beneath
his ascending feet. The air became drier and warmer again as he mounted,
and the meadows slept beneath him in their clammy darkness.

Near the brow of the hill stood a farm-house, black against the sky.
Bressant marked the light through the curtained window, dimly bringing
out a transverse strip of road; the pump standing over its trough with
uplifted arm and dangling cup; the rambling shed, with the wagon half
hidden beneath it; the barn, with blank windowless front, and shingled
roof. A dog barked sharply at him, as he echoed by, but inaudibly to
Bressant's ears. Presently a raised sidewalk divided off from the road,
affording a smoother course; the outlying houses of the village slipped
past one after another; a white picket-fence twittered indistinguishably
by. The runner was nearing the end of his journey, and now leaned a
little farther forward, and his feet fell in a quicker rhythm than ever.

At the beginning of the village street stood the corner grocery; a
wooden awning in front, some men loafing at the door, who looked up as
the sound of Bressant's passing struck their ears; within, an indistinct
vision of barrels of produce, hams pendent from the dusky ceiling, some
brooms in a corner, and a big cheese upon the counter. Next succeeded
the series of adjoining shop-fronts, with their various windows, signs,
and styles; all wooden and clap-boarded, however, except the fire-engine
house, of red brick, with its wide central door and boarded slope to the
street. Bressant's steps echoed closely back from between the buildings;
once he clattered sharply over a stretch of brick sidewalk; once dodged
aside to avoid overrunning a dark-figured man. The village was left
behind; yonder stood the boarding-house, dimly white and irregular of
outline; he remembered it from the glimpse he had had in passing on his
way from the depot. In a few quick moments more he stood before the
door, glowing warm, from head to foot, drawing his deep breath easily,
his blood flowing in full, steady beats through heart and veins. He took
off his hat, passed his handkerchief over forehead and face, and then
pulled the tinkling door-bell. A fat Irish girl presently appeared, and
ushered him in with a stare and a grin, wiping her hands upon her apron.

Meanwhile Cornelia, having said a few words to her father to excuse
Bressant's unceremonious departure--she refrained instinctively from
letting him know what had actually taken place--bade him good-night, and
went up-stairs with a more sober step than was her wont. She tapped at
Sophie's door, and stayed just long enough to make the necessary
arrangements for the night. Sophie, being drowsy, asked but few
questions, and received brief replies. When Cornelia reached her own
room, she closed the door with a feeling of relief. It had never been
her habit to fasten her door; but to-night, after advancing a few paces
into the chamber, she hesitated, turned back, and drew the bolt. Then,
having hastily pulled down the curtains, she seemed for the first time
to be free from a sensation of restraint.

She walked up to the dressing-table, which was covered with a disorderly
medley of a young lady's toilet articles--comb and brush, a paper of
pins, ribbons, a brooch, little vase for rings, an open purse, a soiled
handkerchief--and began mechanically to undo her hair, and shake out the
braids. It was dark-brown hair, not soft and delicately fine like
Sophie's, but vigorous and crisp, each hair seeming to be distinct, and
yet harmonizing with the rest. As it was loosened and fell voluminously
spreading over her shoulders, she paused, resting against the table, and
looked at her face in the glass with critical earnestness. The candle,
standing at one side of the mirror, cast soft and deep shadows beneath
the darkly-defined eyebrows, and against the straight line of the nose,
and around the clear, short curves of the mouth and upper lip. The light
rested tenderly on her firm, oval cheeks, so deep-toned, yet pale, and
brought out an almost invisible dimple on each cheek-bone beneath the
eye, usually only to be distinguished when she laughed or smiled. The
forehead, so far as it could be seen beneath the hair, was smooth and
straight, neither high nor especially wide. The ears were small and
white, but rather too much cut away below to be in perfect proportion.
Over all seemed spread a mellow, rich, transparent, laughing medium,
that was better than beauty, and without which beauty would have seemed
cold and tame, or at least passionless. There was a delicate mystery in
the face, too, not conscious or self-woven, but of that impalpable and
involuntary sort which sometimes looks from the eyes of young unmarried
women, whose natures have developed sweetly and freely, without warping
or forcing. It has nothing to do with religion, nor with what we
commonly understand by spirit. It is not to be described or analyzed;
like the blue of heaven, it is the infinitely elusive property which is
the very secret and necessity of its existence.

Cornelia looked searchingly at this face, and, though much of its
subtlest charm must necessarily have been lost upon her, she saw a great
deal that gave her pleasure. She had never been subjected to that
awakening but coarsening process which teaches a girl to call herself a
beauty; but there is a certain amount of instinctive perception, in
these matters, and she could not but know that what had virtue to
gratify her would not lack in effect over others. Nor was she in the
habit of taking stock of herself in the looking-glass; only to-night she
seemed to have an especial motive in making or renewing her own
acquaintance.

At length she dropped her eyes, and, with nimble fingers and
swiftly-applied hair-pins, wound up her hair into its nocturnal knot.
She removed her ear-rings and rings, and put them into the vase; but
here reverie overtook her once more, and held her in a meditative
half-smile, until consciousness revived, and startled the blood into her
cheeks. She walked over to her little sofa, with dispatch and business
in her step, and sat down to unlace her boots.

There is something in these little ever-recurring actions,
however--these things which we do so often as to do them
unconsciously--which predisposes to thought and reflection. Cornelia,
having untied the knot, had not got farther than the fourth hole from
the top, her eyes meanwhile wandering slowly around the picturesque but
rather disorderly little room, before she became dreamily interested in
watching the shadow of a neck-scarf she had hung upon the support of the
looking-glass, projected upon the wall by the flickering light of the
candle. As she looked, her fingers began to labor upon the boot-lace,
and her eyes grew gradually larger and darker. Occasionally there were
little quiverings of the upper and under lids, barely perceptible
movements of the tip of the nose and the nostrils, and twitching at the
mouth-corners. By-and-by the twitchings resolved themselves into a
smile, very faint and far away at first, but broadening and brightening
every moment; now, the dimples were visible at half a glance, and now,
upon the still air of the chamber, there rippled forth--

Cornelia put her hand to her mouth, and gave a quick, furtive glance
over her shoulder, as if in fear lest some one might have overheard her.
She recollected with some relief that the door was locked at any rate,
and the curtains down. But, for all that, as she realized what she had
been thinking about, and how very far her papa or Sophie would be from
laughing if they were told about it, she felt her cheeks tingle, and
could not be busy enough with that boot-lace!

There! that was off; now for the other. What a queer man he was, though!
Could all that have been put on in the garden--pretending he didn't
know! (This was such a tiresome old knot!) If she only hadn't been such
a goose and laughed--what must he think? What could have been the reason
he rushed off in such a hurry? Probably was afraid she'd tell papa, and
then he couldn't be his pupil. Suppose she should tell! that would be
mean, though. Perhaps he didn't intend it, after all. He seemed nice in
some ways, though he was so queer. Very likely it was only a sort of
spasm--an electric, magnetic thing--she had heard of something of the
sort. Yes, and she had felt funny herself that evening--a numb, quivery,
prickly kind of sensation: it may have been the thunder-storm! It was
strange, though; she never remembered to have felt it before. She
wondered whether Mr. Bressant ever had. Perhaps deaf people were more
subject to it. What a pity he should be deaf! It made it so awfully
embarrassing to talk to him sometimes. It must be dreadful for them to
be in love with anybody. Imagine having to talk in that way to a deaf
person! or being--

This time it was the candle which took upon itself the task of warning
and censorship. It flickered, flared, gasped, and went out. It was a
very pathetic, and, it is to be hoped, effective way of remonstrance.
But the last thing seen of Cornelia, she was sitting on the sofa,
leaning carelessly forward, one hand holding her curved, little, booted
foot, the knot still untied, her eyes fixed dreamily on nothing, the
half-smile flickering on her lips, and the womanly contours of her
figure doubtfully lighted and darkly shaded by the uncertain
candle-light.




CHAPTER VII.

PROFESSOR VALEYON MAKES A CALL.


The morning following Bressant's arrival was clear and cool. Professor
Valeyon looked out of the window of his bedroom, which was at the
garden-end of the house, and opposite Cornelia's, and saw the cold,
white mists lying in the valley, and the rough hills, like islands,
lifting their dark shoulders above it.

As he looked, the sun, having climbed a few inches above the eastern
uplands, let a bright glance fall right upon the open spot at the summit
of the professor's favorite hill. A few minutes afterward he poured a
golden flood into the valley, carrying consternation to the delaying
vapors, insomuch that they straightway put themselves into commotion
preparatory to departure. No spare time was allowed them; some were
bundled off into the dark gullies and passes of the hills; others betook
themselves hastily to that side of the valley which was yet in shadow,
to sleep a few moments beyond the legitimate time; others still, finding
escape impossible, rose heavenward like a mighty incense, and were by
the sun converted into something wellnigh as glorious as himself.

"Good simile for a sermon, that! turning persecution into a means of
glorification!" thought the professor, recurring to the days of his
pastorship.

As may be inferred, the old gentleman was in the habit of getting up
early; a praiseworthy practice, but one so universal with elderly people
as to suggest a doubt of its being entirely a voluntary virtue. Be that
as it may, the professor was up, and proceeded to set his blood in
motion over a wash-bowl. His toilet was not so intricate and serious a
matter as it might have been forty years or so previous, but was
nevertheless a duty most scrupulously and conscientiously performed,
from June to December, and round again. The last thing attended to
before putting on his coat was always carefully to brush and dispose his
hair. Until within two or three years, he had been able to keep up
appearances by coaxing a gray rift across the top of the bald place; but
it had grown month by month thinner and grayer, and more difficult to
keep in position, until at last he had bravely told himself it was a
vanity and a delusion, and had consigned it to obscurity and oblivion
among the rusty side-locks which still sturdily surrounded the naked and
inaccessible summit. Since that time he had occasionally allowed his
thoughts to revert to it regretfully, though not bitterly nor
rebelliously.

But, on this particular morning, he stood, brush in hand, before his
looking-glass with an expression upon his elderly features at once
undecided, wistful, and shame-faced; detached, after a short search, a
few frosty spears from the assortment at the left side of his head;
scrutinized them anxiously for a moment, and then, by the aid of a
little water, and cautious brushing and pulling, succeeded in spatting
them down into their long-abandoned place.

"I'm an old fool, that's certain!" muttered he, as, after a final
surreptitious sort of glance at the unaccustomed embellishment, he
turned away. "But then I don't go out calling every day!"

He slipped on his coat, opened his door, and descended the stairs with
his usual solid deliberation. As he emerged upon the balcony, the
sunshine had just lighted up the tree-tops in the garden, but a little
nest of white mist still rested upon the fountain, whose indefatigably
small gabble could be heard proceeding mysteriously from the centre
thereof. A few large, thin mosquitoes, cold and portentously hungry from
their all-night's fast, came swooping at the professor with shrieks of
dismal tenuity, intending to get a warm breakfast out of him. But he had
had large experience in dealing with such gentry, and, so far from
standing treat, he slew several and threw the rest into confusion.

"And now," said he to himself, as he descended the steps, "I'll take a
look at Dolly; Michael hasn't let out Lady Bountiful or the hens yet, I
suspect."

The barn lay in a separate enclosure to the west of the garden; it was a
primitive structure enough, but had been refitted within so as to afford
accommodation for the family steed and the cow. The former, Dolly, was a
well-preserved bay, neatly put together, and, had the professor been so
inclined, she might have become a celebrity in her day. As it was, she
had seen no more stirring duty than to convey her owner to and from
church, during the years of his ministrations there; to draw the plow
and the hay-cart occasionally, and to gallop over the rough country
roads beneath the side-saddle, for the benefit of Cornelia or Sophie.
She was at this time about fifteen years old, but still retained much
of the spirit of her best days, and not unfrequently gave the professor
some pains to keep her within bounds.

He threw open the barn-door, and forth upon the crisp air floated the
close, sweet smell of hay and cow's breath. Some swallows twittered and
glanced up near the dark roof, as smart and wide-awake as if they had
not just been startled out of bed. The sun, shining through the cracks
and knot-holes into the dusky interior, drew lines of dusty light across
the darkness. A hen, that had escaped from the coop and got up into the
hay-loft to lay an egg, set up a strongly-remonstrative cackle against
being disturbed in so interesting a proceeding. Lady Bountiful lowed
argumentatively, and Dolly stamped, wagged her head knowingly up and
down, and then shook it with a whinny. The professor patted her neck and
smoothed down her nose.

"Need some exercise, don't you, old girl?" quoth he, looking pleasantly
upon her. "All right! we'll go down-town after breakfast. Yes! we'll
make a call on Abbie." So saying, he pulled down some fresh hay, and
left her to champ it; then, picking his way across the uneven floor to
where the white and horned countenance of Lady Bountiful was thrust
through the bars of her stall, he slipped her halter and let her out
into the meadow. Having examined the wagon, to make sure it was in
proper order, he concluded his labors by throwing open the hen-coop, out
of which immediately hastened a troop of indignant and astonished fowls,
led by a rooster, who seemed always to be vacillating between
insufferable masculine arrogance and an effeminate curiosity and
avarice.

By the time Professor Valeyon had remounted the granite steps, he was
quite ready to do justice to his breakfast. Cornelia came singing
down-stairs, with a full-blown tea-rose in her hair, and looking as if
she had already breakfasted upon the greater part of the day's sunshine.
She reported Sophie to be awake and comfortable, so the gentleman
climbed up-stairs and shuffled into her peaceful, rose-colored room to
give her a morning kiss. The Lord's Prayer glowed forth as brightly from
the wall as if it had been pronounced for the first time that day.

"Well, heard all about my new pupil from Cornelia, I suppose?" said
papa, when the kiss had been given, sitting down by the bedside, and
holding his daughter's pale, slender hand in his own.

"He who came last evening? No, I've not seen Neelie to speak to her,
since he was here. What is he to be taught?"

"Wants to be a minister," replied the professor, rubbing his beard.
"Shall do what I can for him, because he's the son of a former friend,
now dead. I'm afraid he won't do, though. Needs a good deal besides
Hebrew and history."

"But you can give him all he does need, papa," rejoined Sophie, with
serene faith in the old gentleman's infallibility.

"I don't know," returned he, his eyes resting upon the Lord's Prayer. "I
don't know," he repeated, turning them to his daughter's transparent
face, which seemed almost an incarnation of the divine words. "I think,
my dear, that you could put some ideas into his head that would do him
more good than any thing I can give him;" and he smiled gravely upon
her.

"All right, papa," said Sophie, gayly, with a tender kindling of her
soft, gray eyes. "Nothing could make me happier than to do good to
somebody. As soon as I get well enough, I'll take him under my charge."

Her manner was playful, but there was a vibration in her tone which
caught the professor's ear, and conveyed to him the idea that there was
an unseen depth of yearning and passionate desire to be something more
than an invalid, selfish and helpless, during her earthly life; an
inheritance, perhaps, of the apostolic spirit which had played a not
inconsiderable part in the history of his own life. And surely, he may
have thought, there never was human being better qualified than she to
inspire to high and pure simplicity of life and thought, were it merely
by the example of her own. And would it not be a strange and beautiful
thing, if this beloved daughter of his should be the means of turning to
worthier and truer ambitions a man whom, of all others, he had reason to
wish honored and respected among mankind! It was a very alluring
thought, and the professor quite lost himself for a few moments in the
contemplation of it. He did not reflect, and Sophie could not know, that
there might be danger in the prosecution of such a scheme; for, all the
knowledge which a young girl like her can have or impart, must find its
ultimate origin in the heart. But then, again, the matter had taken no
definite or practical shape in his mind as yet, and things which in the
abstract may wear an appearance of being highly desirable often put on
quite a different look when presented in concrete form. This would be
especially the case with a man like Professor Valeyon, who was half a
dreamer, and half a practical, common-sensible individual. With Sophie,
however, whose whole life was necessarily a tissue of delicate and
high-wrought theories, there was no safeguard of the kind to be relied
upon.

No more conversation was had upon the subject at that time. The
professor went down to his breakfast, and, having disposed of it with
good appetite, and smoked his morning-pipe with quiet satisfaction,
Michael brought Dolly and the wagon round to the front door, the old
gentleman clambered in, and off they rattled to Abbie's boarding-house.

This "Abbie," as she was called in the village--indeed, not more than
one in a hundred knew her other name--had long been an institution among
the townspeople. When she first became a resident was uncertain: some
said more, some less than twenty years ago. Certain it was, at all
events, that she had grown, during her sojourn there, from a young and
comely, though sober-faced woman, to considerably more than middle age;
though time had perhaps used her less kindly than most women in her
situation in life, which is saying a good deal. No one could tell where
she came from, or what her previous life had been. She had first made
her appearance as purchaser of the house in which she had ever since
lived, and kept boarders. She was uncommunicative, without seeming
offensively reserved; quietly tenacious of her rights, though far from
grasping or aggressive, and was endowed with decided executive ability.
She had made a most unexceptionable landlady; one or two of her
boarders had been with her almost since the inception of her enterprise;
while all the better class of transient visitors to the village, which
had a moderate popularity as a summer resort, made their first
application for rooms to her.

Some ten or twelve years after her establishment, Professor Valeyon and
his family had moved into town. They had not taken up their quarters at
Abbie's, though she could easily have accommodated them, as far as room
went; a circumstance which caused all the more surprise in some
quarters, because there seemed to have been some previous acquaintance
between herself and the professor. But Abbie was even less talkative
upon this than upon other subjects; and no one ventured to catechise the
grave and forcible-looking man who was the only other source of possible
information. After a time, he settled in the house which subsequently
became the parsonage; and, since no particular relations were kept up
between his family and the boarding-house keeper, curiosity and comment
died a natural death, and it even came to be doubted whether they ever
had met each other before, after all.

Abbie, at the present time, was a taciturn personage, neither tall nor
short, stout nor thin. Her eyebrows were straight and strongly marked,
and much darker than her hair, which, indeed, had begun to turn gray
several years before. There was nothing especially noticeable in her
other features, except that the lips were habitually compressed, and the
chin so square-cut and firm as to be almost masculine. A good many
little wrinkles could be traced around the mouth, and at the corners of
the eyes, especially when she was much depressed; and sometimes her
expression was very hard and stern. Her manners were quite
undemonstrative; they seemed to be neither fastidious nor the reverse,
and it would have been hard to predicate from them in what station of
life she had been brought up. She certainly adapted herself well to
whatever society she happened to be with; neither patricians nor
plebeians found any thing to criticise; but, whether this were the
result of tact, or owing merely to the adoption of a negative standard,
no one could say. In language she was uniformly correct, without seeming
at all scholastic; she occasionally used the idioms and dialectic
peculiarities of those around her, though never with the air of being
heedlessly betrayed into them.

On the whole, therefore, the boarding-house keeper remained a problem or
a commonplace, according to the fancy of the observer. In any case, she
had grown to be a necessity, if not a popular element, in the village
society. It was in her large, rambling rooms that all the grand parties
and social celebrations took place. Was a picnic or other
pleasure-expedition in prospect, Abbie's experience and managing ability
were depended on for its success. She it was who arranged the details of
weddings; and her assistance was almost as necessary a condition of a
legitimate funeral, as that of Death himself!

Professor Valeyon drove up to the door in his wagon, got down with all
the care that the successful support of his burden of years demanded,
and chained Dolly to the much-gnawed post which was fixed for the
purpose on the edge of the sidewalk. He ascended the steps, and was met
by Abbie on the threshold. He removed his hat with old-fashioned
courtesy, and gave her cold hand a quiet, warm grasp.

"Good-morning, Abbie," said he, gruffly, but cheerfully, and with a very
kind look out of his deep-set old eyes. "Is all well with you this
morning?"

"Yes," replied she, with a faint smile, that seemed to show more of
weariness than merriment. "Come into the boudoir, Professor Valeyon.
You're a stranger."

"But that's going to be remedied--that's going to be remedied!" rejoined
the old gentleman, seating himself, and allowing his hand to wander to
the top of his head, to make sure the hair-swathe was safely in
position. "Bond of union been established between us, you know."

Abbie laid her finger upon her under lip--a common act of hers when
interested or absorbed--and looked at her caller inquiringly.

"That young fellow that came last night, sent his trunk up before coming
himself. Saw him, didn't you?"

Abbie shook her head. "I saw his trunk, but not him. Mr. Bressant, I
think. You know him?"

"He's going to study divinity with me. I take some interest in him,
though he's in an unsatisfactory condition just now; intellectual
savagery, I should call it. I take it, his training has been at fault.
Seems to have no social nor affectionate instincts. It would be a good
thing to make him feel their value, to begin with."

"I'll make it as home-like for him as I can, Professor Valeyon."

"Well, well! I meant to ask you to do it. It'll be a new experience for
him. He's never known a mother since he was a baby, and his father
was--well!"--the old man checked himself--"his father is just dead." He
seemed about to add something more in regard to the deceased gentleman,
but forbore, glancing narrowly at Abbie, who looked only grave and
thoughtful.

"How old is he? A boy?" she asked, presently.

"Boyish in some ways, but must be twenty-five or six, and looks older. A
tall fellow, well made."

"He might still be a son of mine," said Abbie, with another dim smile,
and a sigh. "Perhaps it would do me no harm to consider him as such.
Would that satisfy you?"

"Just what I want!" exclaimed the professor heartily, and with
heightened color. "Something can be made of him, I think," he added;
"but a great deal depends on the sort of treatment he eats and sleeps
under. Well, you be motherly to him, Abbie. That's all I have to ask.
You will find good in it for yourself, too, as you say: more than you
think, very likely."

She sighed again, playing absently with her fingers upon her
dark-colored dress, and gazing out of the window. Professor Valeyon said
no more on the subject of Bressant, but spoke of Cornelia's proposed
trip, and the Fourth-of-July party, and Sophie's convalescence; and
finally took his straw-hat from the table upon which he had placed it,
and moved toward the door.

"Good-by, Abbie. Remember"--the old gentleman paused, with her hand in
his, and glowing upon her from beneath his bushy eyebrows; "remember you
have friends about you who don't need to be sought after. And another
thing, Abbie; if you should ever find that Time has the power to
liberate as well as to imprison you, don't forget that some wants may
exist a long while without finding expression, but that they do exist,
for all that!"

Perhaps it was the consciousness that he was using rather grandiloquent
language in the wording of this enigmatical little speech, that caused
the good professor to look so red and embarrassed. Abbie drew her hand
away, and laid her finger on her lip.

"Can you still say that?" asked she, with a sad kind of gleam in her
eyes and voice.

"More than ever--more than ever!" declared he, with emphatic
incoherence. And without more words he hurried down the steps, and in
another minute was rattling rapidly homeward, astonishing Dolly herself
by the speed which he encouraged her to put forth.

"It'll all work round," soliloquized he; "very good beginning this. If I
could have spoken more explicitly--but she'll be prepared, and that's a
great step toward clearing things up. Gee up! Dolly."




CHAPTER VIII.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS.


"Sophie," said Cornelia, several days afterward, "do you know, I believe
I'll stay for that party at Abbie's, after all."

The two sisters were engaged in planning out an evening dress, and
Sophie's bed was so covered with the confusion thereof, that her quiet
little face, appearing above, looked odd by contrast.

"I'm glad," replied she, with the simplicity and lack of ornamentation
that made her words forcible; "and I'm sure Abbie will be glad, too."

"There's no reason why I shouldn't, you know," resumed the elder sister,
falling into that pleasing vein of argument wherein we consciously
express the views of our interlocutor; "a few days won't make any
difference to Aunt Margaret, and I wouldn't like to have poor old Abbie
think that I slighted her, just because I am going to enter New York
society! Besides, I think this dress will look very nice when it's
finished--don't you?"

"Yes, dear," said Sophie, smiling to herself. "Is Mr. Bressant going to
the party?"

"Oh, I don't know. No, I should suppose not. He's a great student, you
know, and is going to be a minister and every thing. That isn't the sort
of people that takes interest in parties. Besides, he couldn't hear the
music, so, of course, he couldn't dance."

"Some deaf people can hear music, and even compose it."

"Can they? But then just imagine having to talk to a deaf person in a
ballroom! it would be awfully embarrassing, don't you think so?"

Sophie, who knew her sister well, and was very shrewd besides, began to
suspect that it would not be displeasing to Cornelia to be opposed, and
even out-argued upon the question of Mr. Bressant's probable attendance
at the party, and qualifications to make himself agreeable when there.
She enjoyed the amusement, in Her demure way, and was besides interested
to hear something about her father's pupil.

"I should think," said she, in a modestly suggestive manner, keeping her
eyes busy with her work, "that it would be less embarrassing at a party
than anywhere. You know everybody expects to say and hear nothing but
nonsense, and there isn't a great deal said even of that. And you're
obliged to talk loud, at any rate, on account of the music and noise."

"Well, you may be right," admitted Cornelia, who certainly did take her
sister's opposition with admirable good-nature. "And I was thinking,
Sophie, perhaps if they are not very deaf indeed, you know they might
get so used to the sound of one's voice as to hear it even when it
wasn't so much raised."

"Why, certainly!" assented Sophie; "to some kinds of voices, at any
rate; probably to a woman's more easily than to a man's. Is Mr. Bressant
very deaf, Neelie?"

Cornelia glanced quickly at her sister, but was reassured by the grave
composure of her aspect. Nevertheless, she was deeply engrossed in her
new dress as she made reply.

"Oh! no. Well, not so very; I can hardly tell, though, I've spoken to
him so little. He's rather quick at catching your meaning, sometimes, I
think."

"Do you think he's a man who would get married?"

"Oh! I don't believe he'll ever be married," said Cornelia, and blushed,
she scarce knew why. "No woman would marry him."

"Is he so disagreeable?"

Cornelia moved her shoulders in a little shudder. "Oh, not that exactly;
but he's so cold and bright and hard. And he isn't always that way,
either. There are times when he's so strange--so different! I don't
believe he understands himself then. There seems to be a wild fire in
him, that once in a while blazes up, and scorches and frightens him as
well as other people."

Sophie was perhaps more interested in this extravaganza of Cornelia's
than if she had known the incident upon which it was mainly founded;
but, on the other hand, it is possible that less exaggerated language
would not have given her so correct an idea of Bressant's character.
Cornelia--there being nothing else to especially occupy her
thoughts--had allowed them to run a good deal upon Bressant, and upon
what happened by the fountain in the garden: perhaps she had mingled the
real things and events with the fantasies of her dreams, and thus built
up an impression and theory in regard to the young man considerably more
picturesque than was warranted by the premises at her command. All this
would have been done involuntarily; and possibly Sophie's question
elicited the first conscious perception and statement of what Cornelia's
opinion had grown to be. But unconscious judgments are often more
accurate than deliberate ones because there is more of intuition about
them.

Be that as it may, from the moment Sophie imbibed the idea that there
was something strange, fierce, and ungovernable in Bressant's nature,
she felt her sympathy and interest moved and aroused. It was the
instinctive attraction of one strong spirit toward another, the more,
because that other was so differently embodied, endowed, and
circumstanced. She was a bed-ridden invalid, but she thrilled, like
Achilles, at the first gleam and clangor of arms. The only thing that
Sophie feared, and from which she shrank, was Sin. All else attracted
her in proportion as it was powerful, stirring, or awe-inspiring.
Delicate, sensitive, and apparently meek and timid as was her nature,
her heart was firm as a Roman general's, and her soul as large and
sympathetic as an Apostle's. Did the occasion offer, this pale
minister's daughter was capable of great and immortal deeds.

"Which way do you like him best, Neelie?" demanded she at length,
removing the dilated gaze of her gray eyes from the round knot on the
top of the bed-post; "when he's cold and bright, or when he's wild and
fiery."

"Oh! I don't like him at all!" exclaimed Cornelia, shuddering again.

Lest she should be suspected of a wilful misstatement, it may be as
well to show how it might happen that she should deceive herself in the
matter. Such likes and dislikes as she had heretofore felt could one and
all have been paraphrased as a more or less agreeable state of mind,
induced by the sight or thought of such and such an individual. She had
never conceived the possibility that a vital affection could take its
origin in aversion and fear, and grow strong through turmoil, passion,
and suffering. As a matter of course, she estimated her feeling toward
Bressant by the only gauge she had, and with no reference to the fact
that it was a wholly inadequate one.

The majority of the impressions she had received of him could not
certainly be called pleasant; and that he was continually in her
thoughts; that every thing she heard or saw connected itself, in one way
or another, with him; that he bore a possible part in many of her
imaginations of the future--these were factors she did not take into
account, because ignorant of their significance. The conclusion that she
did not like him was therefore a legitimate one, according to the light
she had.

Whatever Sophie may have thought of Cornelia's answer, she said no more,
but lay in reverie, opening and shutting her scissors in an objectless
manner, until Cornelia's voice flowed forth again.

"Isn't it a pity he wasn't a nice, jolly, society fellow? it would have
been such fun this winter! As it is, I don't suppose we shall be able to
do so much even as if we were alone."

"From something papa said the other day, I think he'd like to try and
make Mr. Bressant more of a society fellow; perhaps it would wear away
that coldness and hardness you speak of."

"What I teach him the arts and pleasures of fashionable life?" exclaimed
Cornelia, laughing. "Dear me! I'd no more think of trying to teach that
great big thing any thing than--any thing!"

"But you can make him go to Abbie's party, if you are to be there
yourself, and then, if you don't want to instruct him, you can give him
to some one who isn't afraid of him, and--have Bill Reynolds all to
yourself."

Cornelia laughed and pouted, and told Sophie she was mean; but probably
felt it a relief to have poor Bill's name introduced, he being so
palpably _hors de combat_.

"It would be pretty good fun, after all--walking round on the arm of
that great, tall, broad-shouldered creature, and telling him how to
behave! I believe I _will_ try it!" and she straightened herself up with
a very valiant air.

"It will be your last chance, remember!" said Sophie, looking up with a
deep smile in her eyes. "I promised papa that when I was well I'd take
charge of Mr. Bressant myself!"

Sophie's life, as has been said, was preeminently an ideal one.
Materialism disturbed and perplexed her, and she ignored it as much as
possible. She was inspired and excited by the ideal she had conceived of
Bressant, and of her sphere of action with regard to him. But, had the
physical personality of the man been thrust upon her in the first place,
she would have very likely recoiled, her finer intuitions would have
been jarred, and their precision paralyzed. Standing aloof, however,
living and acting only in the realm of her pure maiden creeds, every
thing seemed clear and simple enough. Right should be done, and wrong be
righted; there would be no material conditions or hinderances; results
were attained immediately.

But life is not what the pure-hearted girl painted it in her ideal
dreams. The unconsidered obstacles rise into frowning and insurmountable
barriers. Those we would make our beneficiaries often fail to appreciate
their position, and turn our good into a worse evil than their own. We
may theorize about the human soul, but, to put our theories to the test,
is to assume an awful responsibility.




CHAPTER IX.

THE DAGUERROTYPE.


Bressant occupied two adjoining rooms at Abbie's boarding-house; one
contained his bed and the other was fitted up as his study. They were on
the second floor of the house, and attainable through two turns in the
lower entry, a winding flight of narrow stairs, and an uncertain, darkly
erratic route above.

The study was some twelve feet by eight; the floor ornamented by a
carpet which, to judge from the size of the pattern, must have been
designed to grace some fifty-foot drawing-room. The furniture consisted
of a deal table with a folding leaf, a chair, a stove--which, perhaps
because it was so small, had been permitted to remain all summer--and a
broad-seated lounge with squeaky springs, but quite roomy and
comfortable, which monopolized a large portion of the room. The walls
were papered with a bewildering diamond pattern, in blue and white. Upon
the outside window-sill stood a pot of geraniums, and another of
heliotrope.

A good many books were stowed away in various parts of the study; piled
one upon another in the corner by the stove, ranged side by side beneath
the lounge, carefully disposed upon the inner window-sill, and occupying
as much space as could be spared to them on the table. There were few
ornaments to be seen; no landscapes or hunting-scenes--no pictures of
pretty women--no fancy pieces for the mantel--no wine either, nor
cigars, for Bressant neither smoked nor drank. A beautifully-finished
and colored drawing of a patent derrick, in plan and side elevation, was
pinned to the wall opposite the window. Above the mantel-piece hung an
ingeniously-contrived card almanac, by which the day of week and month
could be told for a hundred years to come. Two small globes, terrestrial
and astronomical, stood upon the table; on the mantel-piece was an
ordinary kerosene-lamp, with a conical shade of enamelled green paper,
arabesqued in black, and ornamented with three transparencies,
representing (when the lamp was lighted) bloody and fiery scenes in the
late war; but in the daytime appearing to be nothing more terrible than
plain pieces of white tissue-paper.

For two weeks Bressant had done his studying and thinking in this room.
He had enormous powers of application, naturally and by acquisition, and
the first fortnight had seen them exerted to their full extent. This
diligence, however, was practised not so much because the course of
study marked out necessitated it, as by way of voluntary
self-discipline. His first evening's experience in the Parsonage garden
had given the young man a serious shock; a disturbing influence had
obtained possession of him, of which he could understand no more than
that it appeared to have some connection with Cornelia. It interfered,
at unexpected moments, with his processes of thought; it distracted his
schemes of argument; it wrote itself unintelligibly upon the page he was
reading. It even followed him in his rough tramps up the hills and
through the woods, and sometimes shook the hand which held the pen
during his compositions.

Bressant knew not how best to combat his novel difficulty. Although
called into existence by an extraneous circumstance, it seemed to have
struck root in every faculty of his mind, and, what was more, into the
inmost core of every faculty. He was possessed, not by seven devils, but
by one devil in seven different forms. He felt that the only thing to be
done, if he did not intend to make an entire surrender of himself, was
to take stern and rigorous measures for deliverance. The best course
that suggested itself was to study his sevenfold devil down; taking
every precaution, of course, to keep out of the way of all additional
contamination; and this course he adopted, and had conscientiously
adhered to. It was with very pardonable satisfaction that he felt his
malady gradually and surely give way before his unsparing regimen, until
by the first of July he considered himself entirely whole and in working
order, and beyond danger of relapse.

He sometimes wondered why the professor persisted in inviting him to
take dinner, or stay to tea, or sit on the balcony in the evening, or go
on a picnic into the woods. Why couldn't the old gentleman divine the
cause of his invariable and unhesitating refusals? Leaving other
considerations out of the question, would such things be likely to
increase his knowledge of theology, or further the lofty schemes of his
ambition? He would be glad when that daughter left the house! What was
it about her that had so disturbed and beclouded the heretofore
untroubled stream? Were other women like her, or was she alone in her
dangerous capacity? If the first, with what assurance could he look
forward to the intellectual mastery of the world! If the last, what a
refinement of misfortune to have been so thrown with her! What if he
should give up Professor Valeyon altogether? No, no! if he could not
conquer his destiny here, he could not be sure of doing it anywhere. Let
him only be self-controlled and prudent--keep carefully and
systematically out of the woman's way. Or perhaps--for it was not
gratifying or dignified thus to live in terror of a minister's
daughter--perhaps he might ultimately learn to associate and hold
intercourse with her, unharmed. That would be a triumph worth striving
for! Indeed, how could he feel secure until it had been won? Again, did
there at present exist any such risk as he had brought himself to
imagine? Was not this first ordeal, and its effects, all that was to be
apprehended? What if all his anxiety, and self-control, and prudence,
had been wasting themselves upon nothing? Would it not be worth while to
try the experiment? to prove whether he was still liable to this strange
witchery and enchantment? even if so it should turn out, it was still
well that the point should be settled once for all. Decided, then, that
he should take the first opportunity to put himself to the test.

Thus did the young man argue around his instinct, ignorant that the
poison was at that moment circulating in his blood, and prompting the
very sophistries that his brain produced. He who is cured begets a
wholesome aversion toward what has harmed him; he feels no curiosity to
prove whether or no he be yet open to mischief from it. Bressant's
poison was in fact an elixir, whose delicious intoxication he had
experienced once, and which his whole nature secretly but urgently
craved to taste again.

A result somewhat similar to this was doubtless what Professor Valeyon
aimed at in his plan of developing the emotional and affectional
elements of his pupil, albeit he was far from imagining what might be
the cost and risk to every thing which he himself held most dear. Like
many other men, of otherwise liberal mind and clear insight into
character, he had certain convictions and principles, derived from
contemplating the facts and results of his own life, which he believed
must produce upon other people's mental and moral constitutions as good
an effect as upon his own. And possibly, could we divest our regimen of
life of all personal flavor and conformation, it might, other things
being favorable, suit our friends very tolerably well. But, until we are
able to throw off the fetters of our own individuality, the measure of
our garments can never accurately fit anybody else.

On the morning of the 1st of July, Bressant sat at his table, with his
books and papers about him. He was in an excellent humor, for he had
just arrived at the conclusion that he might, and would, safely
encounter his bugbear Cornelia. If the professor invited him to tea, and
to spend the evening, he was resolved to accept; and, at that moment, he
felt a hand laid upon his shoulder, and, turning quickly round,
recognized the sombre figure of the boarding-house keeper.

Although he had lived with her two weeks, he had not as yet had other
than the briefest communication with her. He probably thought ho had in
hand many matters of more importance than the cultivation of his
landlady's acquaintance; and she, whatever may have been her desire to
carry out the promise she had made to the professor, had not found it
possible to be other than indirectly observant of his welfare.

"I knocked, Mr. Bressant, but I couldn't make you hear. I came to ask
you to do me a little favor, sir."

Bressant had risen to his feet, and stood leaning against the back of
his chair. He nodded and smiled good-naturedly, his hand busy with his
beard, and his eyes taking in, with mild curiosity, the plain and
plainly-dressed woman before him. What favor could she expect him to do
for her? He'd just as lief agree to any thing that wouldn't interfere in
any way with his arrangements. Of course, she wouldn't ask any thing
more. As long as he paid his board-bill, and created no disturbance,
what obligations did he owe her?

"You see, sir," proceeded Abbie, gently rattling the bunch of keys that
hung at her belt, "we've been in the habit of giving a party here, three
or four times a year, for the young folks to come and dance and enjoy
themselves. There will be one next Thursday, the 4th of July. Will you
come down, and join in?"

Bressant threw back his head, with one of his brief laughs. "Come to a
dance? But I don't know how to dance! I never go into society. What
should I do? Thank you for asking me!"

"I thought you might be interested to look on at one of our country
hops," said Abbie, whose eyes observed the young man's manner, as he
spoke, with a closeness that would have embarrassed most men. "There's a
good deal to amuse yourself with besides dancing. The school-master will
be there, and the minister that is now, and Professor Valeyon."

"Professor Valeyon?" repeated Bressant, leaning forward, with his hand
to his ear, and the vivid, questioning expression on his face, which was
peculiar to himself.

The movement appeared to produce a disproportionate effect upon Abbie.
Her finger tremblingly sought her under lip; a quiver, as if from a
sudden pain, passed across her forehead; there was a momentary
unsteadiness in her eyes, and then they fastened, almost rigidly, upon
the young man's face. So habitual was the woman's self-control, however,
that these symptoms, whatever they betokened, were repressed and
annulled, till none, save a particularly sharp-sighted person, would
have noticed them. Bressant was thinking only of Professor Valeyon, and
would scarcely have troubled himself, in any case, about the neuralgic
spasms of his landlady.

"The professor and Miss Valeyon will both come," said Abbie, as soon as
the neuralgia, if that it were, would allow her to speak. "Excuse me,
sir--may I sit down a moment?" These words were uttered hurriedly, and,
at the same moment, the woman made a sudden step to the lounge, and
dropped down upon it so abruptly that the venerable springs creaked
again.

"Beg your pardon, ma'am," said Bressant, rather awkwardly. "Must be an
infirm old person," he added to himself. "She looks older, even, than
when she came in!"

"Well, sir," said she, with rather a constrained air, rising, from the
sofa in a way that confirmed the young man's opinion about her
infirmity; "well, sir, shall I expect you on Thursday evening?"

"Yes; I'll come," said he, with an elastic inclination of his shoulders,
and a smile. He thought himself fortunate in so good an opportunity to
put his invulnerability to the proof.

Abbie bowed without speaking, and moved toward the door. Having opened
it, she turned round, with her hands upon the latch: "Professor Valeyon
tells me you're an orphan, sir?"

"My father died last month; I never knew my mother," returned Bressant,
pushing his brown beard between his teeth, and biting it impatiently. He
wished people would get through asking him about his deceased relatives.

"Never knew your mother! it must have been--have you never felt the need
of her?"

"Oh, no! I was better without one," said he, quite provoked at his
landlady's pertinacity. He turned about, and threw himself into his
chair. The woman shrank back beyond the threshold.

"Good-day, sir, and thank you," she said. But Bressant could not be
expected to hear the low, timid tone in which she spoke. Seeing that he
made no response, she softly closed the door.

She went along the dark entry to her own room. On a little table in one
corner stood an old-fashioned desk. She opened it, and, unlocking an
inner drawer, took therefrom a small morocco case, lined with red
velvet, and containing a daguerreotype much faded by age. She studied it
long and earnestly, but seemingly without any very satisfactory result.

"But how can I expect it?" murmured she. "So long ago as this was
taken! so sickly and unformed as he was then! But, oh! did they think I
could be blind to that face, and form, and expression! and there is none
other but he, now; the father is dead. Dead! Well, may God forgive him
all the evil of his life! I'm sure I do. But what will this turn out to
be, I wonder--a curse or a blessing? I must wait--it isn't for me to
speak; I must wait, and the end may be happy, after all."




CHAPTER X.

ONLY FOR TO-NIGHT!


On the evening of the 4th of July, Professor Valeyon and Cornelia got
into the wagon, and drove off, behind Dolly, to the boarding-house. It
was a warm, breathless night, and the stars looked brighter and more
numerous than usual.

The boarding-house was one of the largest buildings in town--an
accidental sort of structure, painted white, green-blinded, and
protected, from the two roads at whose intersection it stood, by a
white-washed board-fence, deficient in several places. The house
expanded into no less than four large bay-windows, affording an outlook
to three small rooms upon the ground-floor. The four or five other
larger apartments were forced to pass a gloomy existence behind a
loop-hole or two apiece, which could not have measured over three feet
in any direction.

The two largest rooms lay corner to corner, at right angles to one
another, and communicating by a passage-way through their point of
contact. Who the original genius was who discovered the admirable
facilities this else preposterous arrangement afforded for dances will
remain forever unknown; but the experiment once tried became an
institution as permanent as Abbie herself.

The small triangle of space between the two rooms, which to utilize had
theretofore been an unsolved problem, served admirably as a station for
the band; they could be heard in either apartment equally well. The
small boudoirs, nooks, and corners, which were scattered here and there
with lavish hand, did excellent duty as flirtation-boxes for those of
the dancers who needed that refreshment; the only drawback being that
one was never quite sure of privacy, on account of the complicated
system of doors and entries that prevailed.

But, in spite of all objections, a dance at Abbie's was the rallying-cry
of the community. All the respectable people in town put on their newest
clothes--and if they were new it did not so much matter what the style
might be--and thronged, on foot or in wagon, to the boarding-house door.
They came to have a good time, and they always succeeded in their
object. What pigeon-wings were performed! what polkas perpetrated! what
waltzes wrecked! How the long lines of the Virginia Reel, or "On the
Road to Boston," extended through the hall from end to end, and how the
couples twisted, whirled, and scooted between them! How the call-man,
with his violin under his chin, stopped playing to vociferate his
orders, or anathematize some bewildered pair! How the old folks, sitting
on chairs and benches along the walls, nodded and smiled and mumbled to
one another as the ruddy faces of their descendants passed and repassed
before them, and spoke to one another of like scenes thirty, or forty,
or fifty years ago! How happy everybody was, and what a jolly noise they
made!

As Cornelia and her papa approached the house, every window was alight,
above and below. The door was thrown hospitably open, and the lamplight
streamed forth and ran down the steps, and lay in a long rectangular
pool upon the road. Abbie stood near the entrance, directing the ladies
one way and the gentlemen another. Punctuality at an affair of this kind
being among the village virtues, the whole company was present within a
surprisingly short time of the appointed hour.

"Good-evening, Professor Valeyon; good-evening, my dear; how well-you
look! Step up-stairs--the first room on the right."

"My pupil is to be here to-night, isn't he?" inquired the professor, as
his daughter vanished.

"Yes, he said he'd be down. He doesn't seem to be used to society. Miss
Cornelia told me she thought it would do him good to begin, so I went up
the other day and asked him."

"Oh! humph!" said the old gentleman, who had vainly endeavored to catch
Abbie's eye while she was speaking. He stood silent a few moments, and
then moved off to the gentlemen's dressing-room, taking a pair of
white-kid gloves from his pocket as he went.

Cornelia, having removed her hood, put on her slippers, shaken out her
skirt, touched her hair with the tips of her gloved fingers, and settled
the ribbon at her throat, descended to the reception-room--as that part
of the entrance-hall where Abbie stood was styled--and found her papa
awaiting her. She was about to take his arm, when the hostess touched
her on the shoulder.

"Wait a moment," said she, with a peculiar grave smile; "I'll bring you
your _protégé_."

Bressant was standing in the door-way of an inner room, leaning with the
elbow of one arm in the hand of the other, as he pulled at his mustache
and twisted the beard on his chin. He looked ill at ease, and as if he
rather regretted his intrepidity in coming down. Had he been what is
called a student of human nature, he might have been interested in the
quaint people and customs which an occasion like this would bring to
light. But he believed that all the traits and elements of mankind at
large were comprised, in a superior form, within himself, and that,
knowing himself, he would virtually know the world. This somewhat
exclusive creed had, doubtless, been aided and abetted by his deafness,
which, even had he been otherwise inclined by nature, must have thrown
him back, in great measure, upon himself; or, possibly, the dogma may
have been but an outgrowth of the physical defect: he fights hard and
well, in this world, who counteracts the bias given by bodily infirmity.
In any case, however, since such was the position of his mind, he could
scarcely be expected to derive much entertainment from a social occasion
like the present. It is even uncertain whether he would not actually
have repented and taken to flight, had not Abbie come up at the critical
moment, and carried him off to Cornelia.

"I wanted to have the pleasure of presenting Mr. Bressant to you
myself," said she, with the same peculiar smile; and so left them
together.

The young man stood confronting the young woman, who, besides being
dressed with great taste, looked, owing to the whimsical circumstances
in which she was placed, every bit of beauty she had. Bressant stared
at her in astonishment.

One woman's beauty cannot be contrasted with another's; as well compare
a summer valley with the white clouds sailing over it; each is to be
enjoyed in its own way. But Cornelia's loveliness carried with it a
peculiar quality, which not only gratified the eye, but went further,
and seemed to touch a vital chord in the beholder, jarring throughout
his being with a sweet distribution of effect, and causing heart and
voice to vibrate. It made Bressant conscious in every fibre that he was
man and she woman. Whence came the influence he could not tell, and
meanwhile it gained ever stronger and deeper hold upon him. Was it from
the eyes, a-sparkle with the essence of youth and health? or from the
mouth, with its red warmth of full yet delicate curves? the gates of
what sweetness of breath! or from the crisp, dark, lustreless luxuriance
of the hair? or from the curved shadows melting on the cheeks, and
nestling beneath the chin? He could trace it to no single one of these
various elements--yet how lovely all were! Whence, then, was it? In a
bottle of wine there are many drops, alike in color, shape, flavor, and
sparkle; in which one, of all, lurks the intoxication? The only way to
make sure of the drop is to drink the bottle; and, even then, though
there will be no doubt about the intoxication, its precise origin may
still be disputed.

As Bressant bowed to Cornelia, who courtesied grandly in return, the
band struck up a waltz, which seemed to be at once reflected in her face
and manner. She was particularly sensitive to musical impressions, and
instinctively looked up to Bressant's face for sympathy, forgetting at
the moment that his infirmity would probably debar him from sharing her
enjoyment. However that might be, he was certainly not indifferent to
the silent music of her beauty; he was gazing down upon her with an
intensity which caused her to droop her eyes, and draw an uneven breath
or two. There was in him all a man's fire, strangely mingled with the
freshness of a boy.

"Take my arm," said he, offering it to her. After an instant's
hesitation, more mental, however, than physical, she laid her graceful
hand within it, and they moved toward the dancing-room.

But at the instant of contact an electric pulsation seemed to pass
through Cornelia's blood, imbuing it with a powerful ichor, alien to
herself, yet whose potency was delicious to her. She fancied, also, that
she herself went out in the same way to her companion, establishing a
magnetic interchange of personalities, so that each felt and shared the
other's thoughts and emotions.

They now stood in the principal dancing-hall, where several couples, who
had already taken the floor, were revolving with various degrees of
awkwardness. The music had flowed into Cornelia's ears until she was
full of the rhythmical harmony. She glanced up once more at her partner,
this time with a lustrous look of confidence. Was it possible that he
had become inspired through her? Certainly it seemed as if the feeling
of the tune were discernible in his face as well as hers; it was even
betokened by the lightsome pose of his figure, and a scarcely subdued
buoyancy in his step. Moment by moment did the occult sympathy between
one another and the cadence of the music grow more assured and complete;
and at length--though precisely how it came about neither Cornelia nor
Bressant could have told--they were conscious of floating through the
room, mutually supporting and leading on each other, mind and motion
pulsating with the beat of the tune, amid a bright, half-seen chaos of
lights, faces, and forms, dancing a waltz!

Neither felt any surprise at what, but a few moments before, both would
have deemed an impossibility. The easy, whirling sweep of the motion,
not ending nor beginning, seemed, to Bressant as well as to Cornelia,
the most natural thing in the world. Beautifully as she danced, he was
no whit her inferior. They moved in complete accord. Years of practice
could not have made the harmony more perfect.

The charm of dancing, although nothing is easier than to experience it,
is something that eludes statement. It is the language of the body,
graceful and significant. It has that in it which will make it live and
be loved so long as men and women exist as such. The fascination of the
motion, the magic of the music, the hour, the lights; the nearness, the
touch of hands, the leaning, the support, the starting off in fresh
bewilderments; the trilling down the gamut of the hall; the pauses and
recommencements; even the little incidents of collision and escape; the
trips, slips, and quick recoveries; the breathless words whispered in
the ear, and the laughter; the dropped handkerchief, the crushed fan,
the faithless hair-pin--these, and a thousand more such small elements,
make dancing imperishable.

Presently--and it might have been after a minute or an hour, for all
they could have told--Bressant and Cornelia awoke to a sense of four
bare walls, papered with a pattern of abominable regularity, a floor of
rough and unwaxed boards, a panting crowd of country girls and bumpkins.
The music had ceased, and nothing remained in its place save a fiddle, a
harp, and an inferior piano.

"Come out to the door!" said Bressant, "the air here is not fit for us
to breathe."

They went, Cornelia leaning on his arm, silent; their minds inactive,
conscious only of a pleasant, dreamy feeling of magnetic communion. Both
felt impelled to keep together--to be in contact; the mere thought of
separation would have made them shudder.

The door stood open, and they emerged through it on to the wooden steps.
At first their eyes, dazzled by the noisy glare of the house, could
distinguish nothing in the silent darkness without. But, by-and-by, a
singular gentle radiance began to diffuse itself through the soft night
air, as if a new moon had all at once arisen. They looked first at each
other, and then upward at the sky. Cornelia pressed her companion's arm,
and caught her breath.

From the north had uprisen a column of light, of about the apparent
breadth of the Milky Way, but far more brilliant, and defined clearly at
the edges. Higher and higher it rose, until it reached the zenith.
Pausing a moment there, it then began to slide and lengthen down the
southern slope of the sky, lower and lower, till its extreme limit
seemed to mingle with the haze on the horizon. Having thus completed its
stupendous sweep, it remained, brightening and paling by turns, for
several minutes. Finally, it slowly and imperceptibly faded away,
vanishing first at the loftiest point of all, and lingering downward on
either side, till all was gone.

"What a glorious arch!" exclaimed Cornelia.

"It was put there for us, was it not?" rejoined Bressant.

Some of the other guests had come out in time to see the latter part of
this spectacle, as it trembled athwart the heavens. They "Oh'd" and
"Ah'd" in vast astonishment and admiration; and one of them humorously
asserted that it had been engaged, at a huge expense, to celebrate the
anniversary of American Independence. So the celestial arch vanished in
the echo of a horse-laugh. But Bressant and Cornelia, as they stood
silently arm-in-arm, felt as if it were rather the presage of an
emancipation of their own selves. From, or to what, they did not ask;
nor did the old superstition, that such signs foretell ruin and
disaster, recur to their minds until long afterward.

Dancing was now recommenced, but, by an unuttered agreement, the two
refrained from participating again. The enjoyment had been too entire to
risk a repetition. They sat down in one of the small boudoirs, which,
through a demoralized corridor, commanded a view of the extremity of one
of the dancing-rooms.

From this vantage-ground they could see the distinctive features of the
assembly pass before their eyes. Girls who danced well striving to look
graceful in the arms of men who danced ill, or floundering women
bringing disgrace and misery upon embracing men. Dancers of the old
school, whose forte lay in quadrilles and contra-dances, cutting strange
capers, with faces of earnest gravity. People smiling whenever spoken
to, and without hearing what was said; and on-lookers smiling, by a sort
of photographic process, at fun in which they had no concern.
Introductions, where the lady was self-possessed and bewitching, the
gentleman monosyllabic and poker-like; others, where he was off-hand,
ogling, and facetious; she, timid, credulous, and blushing. All kinds of
costumes, from the solitary dress-coat, and low-necked ball-dress, worn
respectively by Mr. and Mrs. Van Brueck from Albany, to the mixed tweed
sack and trousers, and the checked gingham, adorning the Browne boy and
girl.

"How foolish it all seems when you're not doing it yourself!" remarked
Cornelia at last, laughing softly.

"But very wise when you are."

"How beautifully you danced! I didn't know you could."

"I never did before--I couldn't, with any one but you. As soon as we
touched each other, I felt every thing through you."

"It was very strange, wasn't it? and yet I don't wonder at it, somehow."

"It would have been stranger not to have been so."

"Why, how have you been hearing what I said?" suddenly exclaimed
Cornelia, looking at him in surprise; "I've been almost whispering all
this time!"

"Have you? It sounded loud enough to me. But I could hear you think
to-night, I believe. Will it be so to-morrow, do you suppose?"

"To-morrow!" repeated Cornelia. "Dear me! to-morrow is my last day
here."

"The last day!" echoed Bressant, in a tone of dismay. "Shall we find one
another the same as to-night when you come back?"

"Why not?" responded she, with a resumption of cheerfulness. "I sha'n't
be gone but three months."

So the conversation lingered along, until gradually the greater part of
it was supported by Bressant, while Cornelia sat quiet and listened--a
thing she had never done before. But the young man's way of expressing
himself was picturesque and piquant, keeping the attention thoroughly
awake. His ideas and topics were original. He plunged into the midst of
a subject and talked backward and forward at the same time, yet conveyed
a marvelously clear idea of his meaning. Sometimes the last word was the
key-note that rendered the whole intelligible. And he had the bearing of
a man all unaccustomed to deal with women--ignorant of the traditional
arts of entertainment which society practises upon itself. He talked to
Cornelia as he might have done to a man, and yet his manner showed a
subtle difference--a lack of assurance--a treading in a pleasant garden
with fear of trespassing--the recognition of the woman. To Cornelia it
had the effect of the most soothing and delicious flattery; had he been
as worldly-wise as other men, he could not have been so delicate.

He, for his part, gave himself wholly up to be fascinated and absorbed
by the lovely woman at his side. Did a thought of danger intrude, the
whisper, "Only for to-night, only for to-night!" sufficed to banish it.
Yet another day, and he would return to the old life once more.




CHAPTER XI.

EVERY LITTLE COUNTS.


Mr. William Reynolds arrived late, perhaps because he delayed too long
over the niceties of his toilet. He was a country young man, fashioned
upon a well-worn last. His occupation for several years past had been to
attend to the furnishing and driving of a milk-cart, and, very likely,
it was this which had hindered the proper development of his figure. At
all events, he was stoutest where it is generally thought advisable to
be lean, and narrow where popular prejudice demands breadth. His knees
were more conspicuous than his legs, and his elbows than his arms. His
face was striking, chiefly because an accident in early life had
prostrated his nose; the expression, though lacking force, was in the
main good-natured, the eyes were modestly veiled behind a pair of
eye-glasses, which stayed on, as it were, by accident.

Mr. Reynolds was an admirer of Cornelia's; a fact which was the occasion
of much pleasant remark and easy witticism. More serious consequences
were not likely to ensue, for such men as he seldom attain to be other
than indirectly useful or mildly obnoxious to their fellow-creatures.
But the strongest instincts he had were social; and it was touching to
observe the earnestness with which they urged him to lumber the path of
fashion and gay life. He nearly broke his own heart, and unseated his
instructor's reason, in his efforts to learn dancing; and, to secure
elegant apparel for Sundays and parties, he would forswear the butcher's
wagon for months at a time. Once in a while he would smoke an Havana
cigar from the assortment to be found at the grocery-store on the
corner, and sometimes, when a national holiday or the gloom of
unrequited love rendered strong measures a necessity, he would become
recklessly convivial over muddy whisky-and-water amid the spittoons and
colored prints of the hotel bar-room.

On the present evening he arrived late, and came upon Cornelia and
Bressant just as the latter was proposing to obtain the professor's
consent to accompanying her home on foot.

Mr. Reynolds advanced, smiling; a polka was being played at the moment,
and he playfully contorted his figure and balanced his head from side to
side in time with the tune, while with his right forefinger he beckoned
winningly to Miss Valeyon to join him in the dance. Bressant gave an
involuntary shudder of disgust; it seemed to him a grisly caricature of
the inspiration he himself had felt at the beginning of the evening. But
Cornelia was equal to the emergency.

"If you'll go and ask papa now," said she, "I'll take care of this
person meantime. He's known me so long, I don't want to be impolite to
him."

A good deal of harm may be done in this world by what is called a
reluctance to be uncivil. There is generally more selfishness than
consideration about it. All sincere admiration, no matter from how low a
source, is grateful to us. Cornelia knew that Bill Reynolds worshipped
her with his whole small capacity, and she was unwilling to deny herself
the miserable little incense, and give him plainly to understand that,
though it was not distasteful to her, he was. And who could blame her
for not wanting to hurt his feelings?

Bressant had no such delicate scruples, and would gladly have assisted
poor Bill through the open bow-window. He departed on his errand,
however, with nothing more than a look of intense dissatisfaction, which
was entirely lost upon the infatuated Reynolds.

"How lovely you do look to-night, Miss Valeyon! I almost think sometimes
it ain't fair anybody should look as lovely as you do. Elegant music
they've got to-night, ain't it? Come, now--just one turn. What?"

Cornelia actually had danced with this young gentleman on one or two
memorable occasions in the past, but was scarcely in the mood to do so
this evening. As she looked at him, now, she wondered how she ever had.
What a difference there is in men I and even more in the way we regard
them at different times. Bressant, simply by being himself, had
annihilated all such small claims to social life as Bill Reynolds ever
possessed.

"I'm not dancing to-night, thank you," said Cornelia; but she smiled so
as wellnigh to heal the wound her words inflicted. "What makes you so
late?"

Now, the fact was that Mr. Reynolds had been weak enough to allow
himself to be drawn into conversation with some friends near the
entrance of the hotel possessing the bar-room with the spittoons and
colored prints already alluded to; and, being the Fourth of July, which,
like many other days, comes but once a year, and a "dry night," as his
friends assured him, he had further given evidence of lack of stamina by
accepting an invitation to "take a damp," When he had finally succeeded
in making his escape, he was conscious that it was in a tolerably damp
condition; and it had occurred to him, as a brilliant idea, to put his
head beneath the pump by way of freshening up his wits. The effect had
been, for the moment, undoubtedly clarifying, and he made his entrance
into Abbie's with a great deal of confidence; more, perhaps, than was
entirely warrantable; for the muddy whisky was still circulating in his
blood, and the light, the close, hot air, and the excitement
within-doors, were rapidly undoing the good work which the pump had
accomplished. It was probably a dim suspicion that such was the case,
which made him hesitate, and stick his hands in his pockets, and screw
his boot-heel into the floor, when Cornelia asked him why he was so
late. But the question had been asked in pure idleness, and not with any
interest or purpose to elicit a reply. The next minute she relieved him
from his embarrassment by speaking again.

"Would you mind doing me a favor, Bill?"

It seemed to Bill that, for the sake of hearing his Christian name from
her lips, he would be willing to forswear all else that made life most
dear--Havana cigars and muddy whisky included; and he was proceeding
with impressive gravity to make a statement to that effect, when
Cornelia once more interrupted him.

"Thank you; I was sure you would. You're always so kind! You see I'm
obliged to go home now, but papa will want to stay to supper, probably,
or to play backgammon, and, of course, I shall leave him the wagon.
Now, I want you to promise to see that Dolly is properly harnessed
before he starts--will you? You know that man they have here isn't
always quite sober, especially when it's Fourth of July, or any thing of
that sort; and papa is getting old."

"Yes, Miss Valeyon. I'll attend to it. I'll fix the old gentleman up,
like he was my own father. And you're just right about that fellow
that's around here; _I_ wouldn't trust him. Why--" Bill was on the point
of mentioning that he had made one of the convivial party that evening,
but checked himself in time, and looked particularly profound.

Cornelia had probably had more than one motive in making her request of
Bill Reynolds. She wanted to avoid being urged to dance, by keeping his
mind otherwise employed; she enjoyed the amusement of making him imagine
that he was of some consequence and importance to her; and, lastly, she
was very willing that all this should concur with some possible benefit
to her father. Of Bill's irresponsible condition she had of course no
suspicion; indeed, he might have been far worse, with impunity, as far
as she was concerned. It takes considerable practice to detect the
effects of liquor, except when very excessive; and Cornelia had no such
training.

"And," added she, as she saw Bressant making his way toward her, with
unmistakable signs on his face of having been successful in his errand,
"and suppose you go now, and find out when papa leaves, so as to be sure
to be on hand."

It was very neatly managed, on the whole; and Cornelia, as she put on
her shoes, and drew the hood around her face, congratulated herself on
her tact and readiness. Yet she felt a little uneasiness, assignable to
no particular cause, and upon no definite subject; it may have been
nothing more than some slight qualms of conscience at having so deluded
her unfortunate admirer. As she came down from the ladies'
dressing-room, she felt a strong impulse to go and kiss her papa
good-by; but reflecting that Bill would probably be with him, and that
she would see him at any rate before she went to bed, she thought better
of it; and, taking Bressant's arm--he was waiting her at the foot of the
stairs--she signified her readiness to start.

"When did papa say he was coming?" asked she, as they moved through the
passage-way to the door.

"He was playing backgammon; he said he should be through in ten minutes;
he would probably overtake us before we got to the Parsonage," replied
the young man.

"I hope he'll be all safe!" said Cornelia, half to herself, the vague
feeling of uneasiness still working within her.

At the door they were met by Abbie, who bade them good-night, with the
same expression upon her lips and in her eyes that she had worn when
presenting them to one another early in the evening.

"Take good care of each other, my children," said she, as they passed
out; but her tone was so low as to be audible to Cornelia alone.




CHAPTER XII.

DOLLY ACTS AN IMPORTANT PART.


The faintest of breezes wafted in the young people's faces as they
descended the wooden steps of the boarding-house and passed along the
dark, deserted sidewalk of the village street. The noisy dance was soon
left at a distance; how extravagant and unnatural it seemed in
comparison with the deep, sweet night in which they were losing
themselves!

The brightness of the stars, and the wavering peaks and jagged edges of
the northern lights, brought out the shadows of the uneven hills, and
revealed the winding length of downy mist which kept the stream in the
valley warm. Such was the stillness, and the subdued tone of the
landscape, that it seemed unreal--the phantom of a world which had lost
its sunshine, and was mourning for it in gentle melancholy.

The sense of the solitude around them brought the young man and woman
closer to one another. For enjoyment to be, mortally speaking, perfect,
it needs that a soft and dreamy element of sadness should be added to
it; and this was given by the gracious influence of the night. The
darkness, too, encouraged the germs of that mutual reliance,
hopefulness, and trust, which combine to build up the more vital and
profound relations of life. There is a magic mystery and power in it,
which we can laugh at in the sunshine, but whose reality, at times,
forces itself upon us mightily.

As Bressant trod onward, with the warm and lovely woman living and
moving at his side, and clinging to his arm with a dainty pressure, just
perceptible enough to make him wish it were a little closer--it entered
his mind to marvel at the tender change that seemed to have come over
familiar things.

"I've walked often in the night, before," observed he, looking around
him, and then at Cornelia; "on the same road, too; but it never made me
feel as now. It is beautiful." He used the word with a doubtful
intonation, as if unaccustomed to it, and not quite sure whether he were
applying it correctly.

"You speak as if you didn't know what you were talking about!" said
Cornelia, with a round, melodious laugh. "Did you never see or care for
any thing beautiful before this evening?"

"You remember that night in the garden?" asked Bressant, abruptly. "I've
learned a great deal since then. I couldn't understand it at the moment;
I wasn't prepared for it--understand? but I know now--it was beauty--I
saw it and felt it--and it drove me out of myself."

Cornelia was thrilled, half with fear and half with delight. Bressant
spoke with an almost fierce sincerity and earnestness of conviction,
that quite overbore the shield of playful incredulity which woman
instinctively raises on such occasions; they seemed to have crossed, at
one step, the pale of conventionalities; and, sweet and alluring as the
outer wilderness may be, it is wilderness still, and full of sudden
precipices. Besides, the very energy and impetuosity which the young man
showed, suggested the apprehension that the power of his newly-awakened
emotions was greater than his ability to control and manage them.

But beauty, as he understood it, was something of deeper and wider
significance than that generally accepted. It was all, in mankind and
nature, that appeals to and gratifies the senses and sensuous emotions.
Cornelia had been the door through which he had passed into a
consciousness of its existence; the fragrant pass leading to the mighty
valley. Unfortunately neither he nor she was in a position to comprehend
this fact: she was no metaphysical casuist, and never imagined but that
he would find the end, as well as the beginning of his newly-opened
world in her; and he, dizzied by the tumult and novelty of the vision,
was naturally disposed to attribute most value and importance to the
only element in it of which he had as yet taken any real and definite
cognizance.

"What a strange, one-sided life you must have had!" Cornelia remarked,
after they had walked a little way in silence. "Don't you think you'll
be happier for having found the other side out?"

Bressant started, and did not immediately reply. Thus far he had looked
upon this unexpected enlargement of feeling as merely a temporary
episode, after all; not any thing permanently to affect the
predetermined course and conduct of his life. The idea that it was to
round out and perfect his existence--that he was to find his highest
happiness in it--had never for a moment occurred to him. He did not
believe it possible that it could coexist with lofty aims and strenuous
effort; it was a weakness--a delicious one--but still a weakness, and
ultimately to be trampled under foot.

But Cornelia had taken the ground that it was the half of life--not only
that, but the better and more desirable half. For the first time it
dawned upon the young man, that he might be obliged to decide between
following out the high and ascetic ambition which had guided his life
thus far, and abandoning, or at least lowering it, to take in that other
part of which Cornelia was the incarnation. The prospect drove the blood
to his heart and left him pale. He would not entertain it yet. Had he
not promised himself to let this one night go by?

"It would be a very sweet happiness, if I were sure of finding it," said
he; and Cornelia, turning this answer over in her foolish heart, made a
great deal out of it, and was thankful for the darkness that veiled her
face. But Bressant was hardly far advanced enough in the art of
affection to make a graceful use of double meanings; and most likely
Cornelia might have spared herself the blush.

Nevertheless, the young man was more deeply involved than he suspected.
That magnetic sympathy could not otherwise have existed between him and
his companion. The music could not have sounded through her sense to
his, nor her whisper have penetrated the barrier of his infirmity,
unless something akin to love had been the interpreter and guide; and
not a one-sided something, either.

On they walked, with the feeling of intimacy and mutual contentment
growing stronger at every moment. The ground was full of ruts and
inequalities, and ever and anon a misstep or an overbalance would cause
them involuntarily to tighten their hold upon each other;
involuntarily, but with a secret sensation of pleasure that made them
hope there were more rough places farther on. They did their best to
keep up a desultory conversation, perhaps, because they wished to spare
each other the embarrassment which silence would have caused, in leaving
the pleasant condition of affairs without a veil. When this kind of
thing first begins to be realized between young people, the enjoyment
takes on a more delicate flavor from a pretended ignoring of it.

It is beautiful to imagine them thus placed in a situation to which both
were strangers, knowing not what new delight the next moment might bring
forth. There was an element of childlikeness and innocence about it, the
more pleasing to behold in proportion as they were elevated in mind or
organization above the average of mankind.

A woman who loves thinks first of the man who has her heart; while he,
as a general rule, is primarily concerned with himself. If Bressant
wished Cornelia to be happy and loving, it was in order that he himself
might thereby be incited to greater love and happiness; but, had her
pleasure been, independent of his own, he would not have troubled
himself about it. To her, on the other hand, Bressant's well-being would
have been paramount to her own, and to be preserved, if need were, at
its sacrifice.

Even a perception, on her part, of this selfishness in him, would not
have alienated her. Selfishness in him she loves does not chill, but
augments, a woman's affection. Cornelia, already inclined to allow her
companion every thing, would have seen nothing unbecoming in his being
of the same mind himself. He could scarcely value himself so high as
she.

Meanwhile Professor Valeyon, having won his game of backgammon, hunted
up his hat, made his adieux, and went to the shed for his wagon. He
perceived a figure apparently busy in buckling Dolly between the shafts,
and, supposing it to be the ostler, called to him to know whether every
thing was ready.

"All serene, Profess'r Valeyon," responded the voice of Mr. Reynolds, as
he led Dolly--who seemed rather restive--out into the yard. "Here you
are, all fixed! I done it for you, in style. Jump in, and I'll give you
the reins."

"Is this the reason you were asking me what time I should start, Bill?"
inquired the old gentleman, as he mounted to his seat. "Very kind of
you: sure she's all right?"

"Well, I ought to know something about harnessing a mare by this time, I
guess!" responded Bill, with a good deal of dignity, as he handed up the
reins. "Well, well I no doubt--no doubt! I'm accustomed to oversee it
myself, that's all.--Steady, Dolly! Good-night."

"Good-night, Profess'r Valeyon," said Bill, who, in harnessing the mare
had managed, with intoxicated ingenuity, so to twist one of the buckles
of the head-gear, that every time the reins were tightened, the sharp
tongue was driven in under her jaw-bone. The wagon rattled off at an
unusual speed; there was no need for a whip, and the professor
congratulated himself upon the fine condition of his steed.

"Hasn't shown such speed for years," muttered he, admiringly. "If I'd
only been a horse-jockey, now, I could have made a fortune out of her!
Points all superb--only wants a little training."

They had now descended the hill on which stood the village, and were
flying along the level stretch between the willow-trees. The wheels
crunched swiftly and smoothly along the ruts, or, striking sharply
against a stone, made the old wagon bounce and creak. Dolly was putting
her best foot foremost, and her ears were laid back close to her head:
though that, by reason of the darkness, Professor Valeyon could not see.
He and Dolly had travelled this road in company so often, however, and
every turn and dip was so well known to him, that it never would have
occurred to him to feel any anxiety. Beyond keeping a firm hold of the
reins, he let the mare have her own way.

In a few minutes the willow stretch was passed, and they began to
stretch with vigorous swing up the slope. Dolly's haunches were visible,
working below in the darkness, and occasionally a spark of fire was
struck from the rock by her hoof. Really she was doing well to-night. As
they topped the brow of the slope, the professor tightened the reins a
little. It wouldn't do to let the old mare overwork herself. But,
instead of slackening her pace, she sprang forward more swiftly than
ever.

"That's odd!" murmured the old gentleman. "Can any thing be the matter,
I wonder?" and he gave another steady pull on the reins. The wagon was
jerked forward with such a wrench as almost to throw him backward. There
was no doubt that something was the matter, now.

By this time they were within a quarter of a mile of the Parsonage, and
rapidly approaching the sharp bend around the rocky spur of the hill.
Dolly's skimming hind-legs spurned the road faster and faster, and the
fences flickered by in a terrible hurry. They whisked around the curve
with a sharp, grating sound of the wheels on the rock, and the Parsonage
lay but a short distance ahead. Suddenly a white object seemed to rise
out of the road not more than a hundred yards in advance. Dolly, with
the bit caught vigorously between her teeth, stretched her neck and head
out and ran. Professor Valeyon, bracing himself with his feet against
the dash-board, leaned back with his whole weight and sawed the reins
right and left. When within a few yards of the white object--which
seemed to have fluttered back to one side of the road--his right rein
broke: he lost his balance and fell over backward into the bottom of the
waggon, while Dolly, quite unrestrained, dashed on madly.

The professor had just made up his mind that he stood very little chance
of seeing Abbie or his daughters again, when he felt the onward rush
suddenly modified. There were a pawing and snorting, an irregular jerk
or two, and then a dead stop. The old gentleman picked himself up and
descended to the ground uninjured beyond a few slight bruises.

Cornelia and Bressant had been pacing the latter part of their way
slowly, there being a disinclination on both their parts to come to the
end of it. But they had passed the bend, and were within a few rods of
the Parsonage, before Cornelia pressed her companion's arm, paused,
listened, and said:

"I think I hear him coming: yes! that's Dolly--but how fast she's
going!"

As they stood, arm-in-arm, Bressant was between Cornelia and the
approaching vehicle: but, when it swung around the corner, she stepped
forward, thus bringing her white dress suddenly into view. At the same
moment the velocity of the wagon was much increased, and, as it came
upon them, both saw the figure on the seat, easily recognizable as the
professor, fall over backward. Bressant, who had been busy freeing the
guard of his watch, handed it to Cornelia, at the same time pressing her
back to one side. He then stepped forward in silence, half facing up the
road.

Cornelia remained motionless, her hands drawn up beneath her chin: and
while she drew a single trembling breath, and the busy watch ticked away
five seconds, the whole act passed before her eyes. She saw Bressant
standing, lightly erect, near the centre of the road, could discern his
darkly-clad, well-knit figure, seemingly gigantic in the gloom: his head
turned toward the on-rushing mare, one foot a little advanced, his arms
partly raised, and bent: remarked what a marvelous mingling of grace and
power was in his form and bearing: as the watch ticked again, she saw
him spring forward and upward, grasping and dragging down both reins in
his hands: another tick--he was dashed against Dolly's shoulder, and his
body swung around along the shaft, but without loosening his hold upon
the reins: tick, tick, tick, the mare's headway was slackened; the
dragging at the bit of that great weight was more than she could carry;
tick, tick, tick, she staggered on a few paces, trailing Bressant along
the road; tick, tick, she came to a panting, trembling stand-still;
Bressant let go the reins, but, instead of rising to his feet, he
dropped loosely to the earth and lay there; tick--the five seconds were
up, and Cornelia drew her second breath.

By the time the professor had scrambled out of the wagon and got around
to the scene of action, he found the mysterious white figure--his own
daughter--kneeling in the road beside a prostrate something he knew must
be Bressant.

"Father, is he dead?" she asked, in a broken, horror-stricken voice.

The old gentleman was too much concerned to reply. Had this been a
narrower nature he might have been aggrieved at Cornelia's ignoring his
own late deadly peril in her anxiety for the young man. But he would
have done her wrong; her heart had stood still for him till she had seen
his safety assured; then it had gone out in gratitude, admiration, and
tender solicitude, for the man who had shown unfaltering and desperate
determination in saving him.

Having backed Dolly--who was standing, quite subdued, with hanging head
and heaving sides--away from the body, Professor Valeyon stooped down to
make an examination. He had begun life as a surgeon, and was well
skilled in the science. He cautiously unbuttoned the closely-fitting
coat.

"Stop! let me alone! let me alone!--will you?" growled Bressant,
speaking thickly and disjointedly, like one just recovering from a
fainting-fit, but with unmistakable signs of ill-temper.

"Thank God! you're alive, my boy," said the professor, too much relieved
to notice the tone. "Cornelia, my dear, run to the house, and get
Michael and the wheelbarrow.--Any bones broken, do you think?" he
continued, carefully pursuing his investigations the while.

"No, nothing! can't you let me lie here alone?" was the sulky reply.
But, as the other's hand happened to press lightly in the vicinity of
the chest, Bressant drew a quick, gasping breath, and could not control
a spasm of pain.

"Don't touch there--it's where the shaft struck me," said he, in a voice
that was no more than a whisper, but as sullen as if he had been the
victim of some unpardonable wrong. There was a trace of mortification in
it, too, such as might have been caused by detection in a disgraceful
act.

"Never saw any thing like this in him, before," said the professor to
himself. "Badly injured, too, I'm afraid: collar-bone broken, at any
rate. Ah! there's the wheelbarrow, and Neelie with some cushions. Now,
Michael, take hold of him carefully, and help me lift him in." But
Bressant, as he felt the first touch, opened wide his half-closed eyes,
and looked around savagely.

"Keep your hands off me," whispered he, in a menacing tone; "if I must
go into the house, I'll walk in myself."

"Nonsense! you're crazy! 'walk in?'" cried the professor.

Bressant said no more, but, with an effort that forced a groan, he
rolled over on his face, and thence raised himself to a kneeling
posture. He paused so a moment, and then, by another spasmodic
movement, succeeded in gaining his feet. He had been twice kicked in his
right leg, and the pain was wellnigh insupportable. He stood balancing
himself unsteadily.

"Let me help you," said Cornelia, coming to his side. But he took no
notice of her, not even turning his eyes upon her. He staggered blindly
along the road to the gate; it gave way before him with a reluctant
rattle, and closed with an ill-tempered clap as he passed through.
Swaying from side to side of the marble walk, he at last reached the
porch. In trying to ascend the steps, he stumbled, and pitched forward
in a heavy fall.

"There!--confound his obstinacy! he's fainted," muttered the professor,
with an awful frown, while the tears ran down his cheeks. "Here,
Michael, help me carry him in before he comes to."




CHAPTER XIII.

A KEEPSAKE.


Bressant's collar-bone was broken; there were two severe bruises on his
leg, though it had escaped fracture; his body in several places was
marked with dark contusions, and there was a cut in the back of his
head, where he had fallen against a stone. The professor set the
collar-bone--a harrowing piece of work, there being no anesthetics at
hand--and attended to the other hurts, the patient all the while
preserving a dogged and moody silence, and avoiding the eyes of whoever
looked at him.

"Can't understand it," said the old gentleman to himself; "the fellow
acts like a wild-beast as regards his appreciation of human sympathy, in
spite of his refined intellect and cultivation. A wounded animal has the
same instinct to crawl away, and suffer in private."

When brought into the house, Bressant had been laid in the spare room
adjoining the professor's study. After he had done all he could for his
comfort, the warm-hearted old gentleman, being overcome with fatigue,
retired to rest; the patient lay sullenly quiet, wishing it were day,
and, again, wishing day would never come: at length the composing
draught which had been given him took effect, and he sank heavily into
sleep.

It was broad daylight when he awoke, and stared feverishly around him.
The room was a pleasant one, facing the north and east, and the morning
sun came cheerfully in through the open windows, slanting down the
walls, and brightening on the carpet. It was a great improvement upon
his rather gloomy room at the boarding-house, and he could not but feel
it so. A small ormolu clock ticked rapidly upon the mantel-piece, the
swing of the gilded pendulum being visible beneath. Bressant watched it
with idle interest. He felt so weak, in mind and body, that the clock
seemed company just fitted for his comprehension.

The door opened by-and-by, and Cornelia's smiling face peeped in,
looking the sweeter for an expression of tender anxiety. Seeing that he
was awake, her eyes took on an extra sparkle, and she advanced a step
into the room, still clinging with one hand to the door-knob, however,
as if afraid to lose its support.

"You feel a little better, don't you? Is that mattress comfortable? I'm
going to bring you your breakfast in a few minutes."

Bressant only grew red and bit his mustache for answer. He would gladly
have covered himself up out of sight, but he could not move hand or
foot.

Cornelia had in her mind a little speech she meant to deliver to
Bressant, on the subject of the previous night's event, but, at the
critical moment, she felt her courage forsaking her. The topic was so
weighty--and then she shrank from speaking out what was in her head,
perhaps because her auditor was there as well as her sentiments. Still,
she felt she ought to try.

"Mr. Bressant," began she, with a kindling look, "Mr. Bressant, I--"
here her voice faltered; "oh! you don't know--I can never tell you--I
can never forget what you did last night!" This was the end of the great
speech.

Bressant became still more red and uncomfortable. "I made a fool of
myself last night," said he, dejectedly. "I wish you hadn't been there;
if I'd known what a piece of work--"

"But you saved my papa's life!" interrupted Cornelia, in a blaze.

The young man looked as if struck with a new idea. It seemed as if he
had not before thought of looking upon the professor as an independent
quantity in the affair. The whole episode had presented itself to him as
a difficult problem which he was to solve. The accident to himself had
been an imperfection in the solution, of which he was deeply ashamed.
But he was somewhat consoled by the reflection that the old gentleman
had really needed preservation on his own account.

"That does make it better," said he, half to himself, with the first
approach to good-humor he had shown since his misfortune.

Cornelia still remained glowing in the door-way, turning the latch
backward and forward, not knowing what more to say, and yet unwilling to
say nothing more. She did not at all comprehend Bressant's attitude, and
therefore admired him all the more. What she could not understand in him
was, of course, beyond her scope.

"You may think nothing of it, but I know I--I know we do--I can't say
what I want to, and I'm not going to try any more; but I'm sure you
know--or, at least, you'll find out some time--in some other way, you
know."

Bressant could not hear all this, nor would he have known what it meant,
if he had; but he could see that Cornelia was kindly disposed toward
him, and was conscious of great pleasure in looking at her, and thought,
if she were to touch him, he would get well. He said nothing, however,
and presently his bodily pain caused him to sigh and close his eyes
wearily. Cornelia immediately kissed her soft fingers to him twice, and
then vanished from the room, looking more like a blush than a tea rose.
Before long she returned with the sick man's breakfast on a tray.

"Do you like to be nursed?" asked she, as she put the tray on a table,
and moved it up to the bedside.

"No!" said Bressant, emphatically, and with an intonation of great
surprise.

"Oh! why not?" faltered Cornelia, quite taken aback.

"I hate disabled people; they're monstrosities, and had better not be at
all. I wouldn't nurse them."

"You think there's no pleasure in doing things for people who cannot
help themselves?" demanded Cornelia, indignantly.

"There can be no pleasure in nursing," reiterated he. "It might be very
pleasant to be nursed--by any one who is beautiful--if one did not need
the nursing!"

Cornelia was becoming so accustomed to Bressant's undisguised manners
that she forgot to be disturbed by this guileless compliment. Many hours
afterward, when she was alone in her chamber, the words recurred to her,
devoid of the version his manner had given them, and then they brought
the blood gently to her cheeks.

"You're very foolish," said she, as she poured out some tea, and cut up
a mutton-chop into mouthfuls. "Now, you have to drink this tea, though
you wouldn't the last time I poured you out a cup; and I'll give you
your chop. Open your mouth."

So the athlete of the day before was obliged to submit to having his
tea-cup carried to his lips and tipped for him by a woman, and the chop
administered bit by bit on a fork. It was very degrading; but once in a
while Cornelia accidentally touched him, or her face, lit up by interest
in her occupation, came so near his own that he felt warm and thrilled,
and went near to admit it was worth all the broken bones in the world,
and the sacrifice of pride accompanying them.

Ere breakfast was over, Professor Valeyon entered with his slippers, his
pipe, and a remarkably benevolent expression for one of such impending
eyebrows.

"Well, my boy," said he--ever since the accident he had addressed
Bressant thus--"you look in a better humor with yourself this morning.
You'll be well used to this room before you leave it," he continued,
with kindly gravity, as he felt his patient's pulse. "You'll know all
about the number and relative position of the bars and bunches of
flowers on the wall-paper opposite, and how many feet and

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