Читать книгу The Essential Julian Hawthorne Collection - Julian Hawthorne - Страница 5

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

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 inches it is from the window-frame to the room-corner, and which pane of glass is the crookedest, and how much higher one post of your bedstead is than the other; and plenty more things of that kind. And, to tell you the truth, my boy, I don't believe a course of such studies, by way of variety, will do you any harm. Now, let's look at this collar-bone of yours.--O Cornelia! you'd better be finishing your packing, hadn't you?" he added, to his daughter, who was leaning on the back of his chair, sympathizing with the sick man to her heart's content. She walked obediently to the door, but, before she disappeared, turned and sent back a smile charged with all the warmth of her ardent, womanly nature. Bressant got the whole benefit of it; and it lingered with him most of the morning.

"How long must I be here?" inquired he, after Cornelia was gone.

"Three months at least," replied the surgeon; "more if you worry yourself about it."

"Three months!" repeated the young man, aghast. "What's to become of my studies? I can't hold a book; I can't write; I had to have my breakfast fed to me this morning," continued he, biting his mustache and looking away. The professor smiled thoughtfully.

"I have hopes," said he, "that you'll know more about Divinity when you come out of this room than you did before you went into it. We'll see when the time comes."

"I've found out already that my bones are like other men's," remarked Bressant, with a sigh.

"So much the better," returned the old man. "You never would have learned that out of your Hebrew Lexicon. The best way to reach this young fellow's soul is through his body," declared he, silently, to the bandage he was preparing for the broken head. "This is nothing but a blessing in disguise." But he had too much tact to carry the conversation further, and presently left his patient alone to digest his breakfast and the lesson it had inculcated.

This was Cornelia's last day at home; she was to take the eight-o'clock train next morning to the city. The young lady's mood was unequal: sometimes she drooped; anon would break forth into much talk and merriment, which would evaporate almost as quickly as the froth of champagne. This was her first departure from home, and the ease, freedom, and beloved old ways of home-life, assumed more of their true value in her eyes. She had acquired a sentiment of awe for Aunt Margaret's grandeur. She would be obliged to sleep in corsets and high-heeled shoes; everybody would be going through the figures of a stately minuet all day long.

Then she began to feel in advance the wrench of separating from those with whom her life had been spent, and from one other in whose company she had lived more--so it seemed to her--than in all the years since she ceased to be a child. Bressant was very prominent in her thoughts; nor could she be blamed for this, for the short acquaintance bad been emphasized by a disproportional number of memorable events: First, there was the thunder-storm evening by the fountain; afterward, the dance at Abbie's; and, following in quick succession, the celestial arch, the walk homeward, and the catastrophe in which he had borne the chief part. Besides, he was so different from common men.

"So perfectly natural and unaffected," she argued to herself. "He means all he says; of course I shouldn't let him say such things to me as he does if it weren't so; but it would be affectation in me to object to it as it is!"--a most plausible deduction, by-the-way, but dangerous to act upon. To persuade herself that, because he was an exceptional sort of person, his plain way of talking to her was justifiable, was to establish a secret understanding between him and herself, which placed her at a disadvantage to begin with; and unreservedly to accept compliments, even ingenuous ones, was to indulge in a luxury that must ultimately render callous her moral sensitiveness and refinement.

On the other hand, her toleration would be almost certain to have a bad effect upon Bressant, no matter how sincere and well-meaning he might be at the outset. A man is apt to know when he has power over a woman; and, although he may have no expectation of it, nor wish to use it, yet, as time goes on and accustoms him to the idea, he must have strong principles or cold blood who does not finally yield to temptation. Plain speaking, where pleasant things are said, is smelling poisonous flowers for both parties.

A steady fall of rain set in during the night, and made the morning of departure gray. Blurred clouds rested helplessly on the backs of the hills, and wept themselves into the wet valley without seeming to grow less lugubrious for the indulgence. There was no wind; trees and plants stood up and were soaked in passive resignation. The weather-beaten boards of the barn were drenched black, except a small place right under the eaves, which looked as if it had been painted a light gray. When the covered wagon was brought around to the gate, it speedily acquired a brilliant coat of varnish; Dolly's bay suit was streaked and discolored, and the reins, thrown over her back, got all wet and uncomfortable.

Michael now came for Cornelia's trunk--a ponderous structure packed within an inch of its existence. Cornelia stood at the head of the stairs and saw it go thump! thump! thump! down to the bottom, and then scrape unwillingly over the oil-cloth to the door. Such a heavy-hearted old trunk as it was! Then she walked to the hall-window, and watched its further journey along the glistening marble causeway, which dimly reflected its square ponderosity, and the tugging Michael behind it.

Now the gate had to be pulled open; the rasp of its rattle and sharpness of its flap were somewhat impaired by the wet, but it managed to give the trunk a parting kick as it went out, as much as to say the house was well rid of it.

"Cornelia!" called the Professor from down-stairs, "you've just five minutes to say good-by in. Get through and come along!"

She passed through Sophie's open door; her sister held out her arms, her eyes overflowing with tears, but smiling with the strange perversity that possesses some people on these occasions. Cornelia was troubled with no such misplaced self-dental; she threw herself impatiently down by Sophie, and sobbed with all her might. Possibly it was more than one regret that found utterance then.

"You'll be all well and walking about when I come back, won't you dear?" said she, at last, in a shaking voice.

"I shall get well thinking what a splendid time you're having, darling."

"Sophie--will you be quite the same to me when I come back?"

"Why, Neelie, dear, what a question! I shall always be the same to you."

"But I feel as if there were going to be something--that something was going to come between us;" and Cornelia began to droop like a flower under an icy wind. "You never could hate me, could you, Sophie?"

"Hate you! Neelie! What makes you speak so, dear? I have no misgivings."

"Oh! I don't know--I don't know! it must be because I'm wicked!"

"_You_ wicked, my darling sister! Come," said Sophie, with an earnest smile, "think only of how much we love each other; let the misgivings go."

"Yes, we do love each other now, don't we? Whatever happens we'll always remember that. Good-by, Sophie!" said Cornelia, with a strong hug and a long kiss.

"Good-by, dear Neelie!"

Cornelia ran down-stairs; her papa had just gone out to the wagon; she went into Bressant's room, and walked quickly up to the bedside.

"Here's your watch," said she. "I've kept it all safe, and wound it up and every thing." She had also slept with it under her pillow, and worn it all day in her bosom, but that she did not mention. She laid it down on the table as she spoke.

"Have you a watch?" asked Bressant.

"I had one, but it did not go very long. It was very small and pretty though;" this is the short and pathetic history of most ladies' watches.

"I'd like you to take something of mine with you that you can see and hear and touch: will you keep this watch?" asked he, fixing his eyes upon her. There was no time to deliberate; there was nothing she would like so much; she snatched it up without a word and stuck it into her belt.

"Good-by!" said she, holding out her hand. Bressant took it, not without difficulty.

"I wish you were going to stay," said he, gloomily, "I should be more happy to have you here, than ashamed to need your help."

Cornelia's eyes fell, and there was a tremulousness on her lips that might mean either smiles or tears. "You'll be glad to see me when I come back, then, and you are well?"

"You'll be like a beautiful morning when you come," returned he, with a touch of that picturesqueness that sounded so quaintly coming from him. All this time he had retained her hand, and now, looking her in the eyes, he drew it with painful effort toward his lips. Cornelia's heart beat so she could scarcely stand, and her mind was in a confusion, but she did not withdraw her hand. Perhaps because he was so pale and helpless; perhaps the old argument--"it's his way--he don't know it isn't customary;" perhaps--for this also must have a place--perhaps from a fear lest he should make no attempt to regain it. She felt his bearded lips press against it. At the touch, a sudden weakness, a self-pitying sensation, came over her, and the tears started to her eyes.

"No one ever did that before to me," she said, almost plaintively, for he had spoken no justifying words, and she was balancing between a remorseful timidity and a timid exultation.

"It's the first kiss I ever gave," said he, and his own voice vibrated. "Are you angry? it shall be the last if you are."

"Oh, I'm not angry," faltered poor Cornelia; and then she felt, or seemed to feel, a force drawing her down--scarcely perceptible, yet strong as death. She bent her lovely glowing face, with its tearful eyes and fragrant breath, close down to Bressant's.

At that very moment, or even an incalculable instant before, the professor's voice was heard calling loudly from without:

"Come--come! be quick! you'll be too late!"

She rose and fled from the room; but it was too late, indeed.

CHAPTER XIV.

NURSING.

After seeing Cornelia off, Professor Valeyon bethought himself of Abbie; she must be wondering what had become of her late boarder, and he resolved to stop at the house, and give her an account of the accident. He had got some distance beyond the boarding-house when the idea occurred to him. Just as he was about to head Dolly round in the opposite direction, he discerned a figure beyond, beneath an umbrella, which looked very much like the person he was seeking. He drove on, and in a few minutes overtook her.

"Going up to the Parsonage?" cried the old gentleman, getting gallantly down into the mud. "Here, jump up into-the wagon; I want to tell you about your--boarder."

"He--there's nothing the matter with him, of course?" said Abbie, with a short laugh. She was looking very pale, and as if she had not slept much of late. "No, don't drive mo to the Parsonage; take me home, if you please, Professor Valeyon. Well, about Mr. Bressant?"

"Doing very well now; he was pretty seriously hurt." And he went on to give a short account of what had happened, which Abbie did not interrupt by word or gesture; she sat with her head bent, and her lips working against each other.

"It's quite certain he'll recover?" she asked, when all was told.

"As certain," quoth the professor, non-committally, "as any thing in surgery can be."

"It wouldn't be safe to move him, of course?"

"Not till he's a good deal better; you see, the collar-bone--"

"Yes, I'll take your word for it," said Abbie, very pale. "Well, I'm glad he's in such good hands. If I had him he wouldn't be comfortable; I should be sure to do him more harm than good; it's better as it is; much better."

She spoke in an inward tone, looking vacantly out into the rain, and fumbling with the handle of her umbrella.

"But you'll come up and see him once in a while, at the Parsonage?"

Abbie shook her head. "No, no, Professor Valeyon; why should I? Do you suppose he wants to see me? do you suppose he's thought of me once since he went away? It would be a strange thing for an educated, intellectual, wealthy young man like him to do, wouldn't it?" asked Abbie, with a smile.

The professor's eyes met hers for a moment, and then she looked away. Presently she spoke again:

"I'd a great deal rather leave this world as I've lived in it, for the last twenty years and more, than run any risk of making a blunder. I don't want things to change, Professor Valeyon; but if they do, it musn't be through any act of mine, or yours either."

By this time they had arrived at the boarding-house; and the old gentleman, having seen Abbie safely in to the door, drove homeward, frowning all the way, and at intervals shaking his head slowly. When he got home, he shut himself into his study, and there paced restlessly backward and forward, and stared out of the window across the valley. That open spot on the hill-top seemed to afford little or no enlightenment or satisfaction; and when he sat down to his solitary dinner, the frown had not yet cleared away.

The next day the rain was over, and a cart was sent up to the parsonage, containing Bressant's books, and such other of his belongings as he would be likely to need during his illness; and, accompanying them, a note from Abbie, expressing her regret at his misfortune, and her hopes that he would return to his rooms at her house as soon as his health was sufficiently reestablished. The young man heard the note read, and congratulated himself, as he closed his eyes with a yawn, that he was not under his quondam landlady's ministrations.

But even the best circumstances could do little to lighten the insufferable tediousness of his confinement. Probably, however, such changes and modifications as may have been in progress in his nature, attained quicker and easier development by reason of his physical prostration. The alteration in his bodily habits and conditions paved the way for an analogous moral and mental process. The powers of a man are never annihilated; if dormant in one direction, they will be active in another; and thus Bressant's passions, naturally deep and violent, being denied legitimate outlet, had given vigor, endurance, and heat of purpose, to the prosecution of his intellectual exercises. But, as soon as these elements of his nature found their proper channels, they rushed onward with far more dash and fervor than if they had never been dammed or deflected.

The combined effect upon the young man of the companionship of a beautiful woman and his own broken bones, had been to make him feel and ponder on the nature of her power over him. The name of love was of course familiar to him, but he could hardly as yet, perhaps, grasp the full significance of the sentiment. Like other forms of knowledge, it must be approached by natural gradations. Here, if nowhere else, Bressant's life of purely intellectual activity was a disadvantage. His stand-points and views were artificial, speculative, and material. Love cannot be reduced to a formula, and then relinquished; nor is it ever safe to use, as pattern for an untried work, the plan whereby something else was accomplished. Life has need of many methods.

Nearly a week of musing and speculation had passed over the young man's head, when one day, as he was feeling unusually disconsolate, and wishing for unattainable things--Cornelia among others--he became aware, through some subtle channel of sensation, that somebody was standing in the door-way. He was lying in such a position that he could not see the door, so, after waiting a few moments, he exclaimed, with an invalid's irritability:

"Come in--or shut the door!"

"I'll come in, if you please," answered an amused voice, which, though soft and low, possessed a penetrating quality which made it easily audible to the deaf man. He had never heard it before; but either because of this quality, or for some other more occult reason, he conceived a most decided liking for it.

It's owner now became visible. She was a delicate-looking girl, with a pale, conch-shell complexion, brown hair as fine as silk, and pleasant, serene, gray eyes. She was dressed very simply in white, with a blue band across her hair, and a blue scarf and sash around throat and waist. Her face, though showing signs of quiet strength, and of a self-confidence which was the flower of maidenly modesty and innocence, was not beautiful according to any recognized standard. Bressant, from his intuitive perception of form and proportion, was aware of this. The forehead was too high, the nose irregular, the mouth lacked the perfect curve, and the teeth, though white and even, were not small enough for beauty.

Nevertheless, Bressant was at once impressed with the young girl's presence. It was as if an ethereal cloud--such as that which, shone through by white sunlight, was just floating past the window--had eddied unexpectedly into his chamber, cooling and quieting him with the freshness of its heavenly vapor. Her eyes met his with a simple directness which made his glance waver, though he was not given to humility. Something, whereof neither science nor philosophy can take cognizance, seemed to emanate from her, elevating while it humbled him.

"If I'd known who you were, I--I shouldn't have asked you to shut the door!" said he, in an apologetic tone quite new to him.

"And how do you know who I am?" inquired the vision, with a refreshing smile.

"I meant, what sort of a person you were; but you must be Miss Sophie: only I thought she was ill."

"I am Miss Sophie, but I'm not to be thought ill any more. One invalid in the house is enough. I'm going to nurse you, and, since I'm well, you may be twice as ill as ever, if you choose."

"Well!" said Bressant, quite resignedly. He was becoming a very respectable patient.

"In what way do you want to be taken care of?" resumed the nurse with a cheerful, business-like gravity which was at once becoming and piquant.

"Stay here and talk; I like to hear your voice: and you look so cool and pleasant."

Very few people could oppose this young man in any thing; he knew so well what he wanted, and demanded it so uncompromisingly. But Sophie's sense of fitness and propriety was as sound and impenetrable as adamant, and scarcely to be affected by any human will or consideration. She felt there was something not quite right in his manner and in the nature of his demand; and, being in the habit of making people conform to her ideas, rather than the reverse, she at once determined to correct him.

"If there's any thing you wish me to read to you, I'll do it. I didn't come to sit down and talk to you; but, if you like my voice, you can have more pleasure from it in that way."

"It would be no use for you to read: I couldn't understand--I couldn't attend to your voice and the book at the same time."

"We'd better wait, then," said Sophie, turning her clear, gray eyes upon him with an expression of demure satire. "By-and-by, perhaps, it won't have such a distracting effect upon you--when you come to know me better. If not, I must keep away altogether."

Bressant's forehead grew red with sudden temper. He felt reproved, but was not prepared to acknowledge that he had merited it.

"You're very generous of your voice!" exclaimed he, resentfully. "It's your fault, not mine, that it's agreeable. You're not so kind as your tone is."

"I don't mean to be unkind," said she, more gently, looking down. "You don't seem to see the difference between unkindness and--what I said."

"What is the difference?" demanded he, taking her up.

Sophie paused a few moments, compassionating this great, willful boy, and wondering what she could do for him. He had saved her father's life, thereby imperilling his own, and disabling himself, and she could not but admire and thank him for it. But his manner puzzled and annoyed her, and was an obstacle in the way of her would-be helpfulness.

"You wouldn't ask that question, I think, if you'd had sisters, or a mother," she said, at last. "I suppose you've lived only with men. But you must learn how to treat young women from your own sense of what is delicate and true."

Bressant stared and was silent: and Sophie herself was surprised at the authoritative tone she was assuming toward a bearded man whom she had never met before. But it was impossible to associate with Bressant without either yielding to him, or, at least, behaving differently from at other times, in one way or another. He was a magnet that drew from people things unsuspected by themselves.

The pause was finally broken by the young man's accepting the situation with a grace, and even docility, which was nearly too much for Sophie's gravity.

"If you'll read, I will listen and understand it: you'd better try the Bible. I have a great deal of work to do upon that, still: you'll find one on the table by the window."

She got the book, with whose contents she was considerably better acquainted than was the divinity student, and sat down to read, marveling at the oddness of the situation; while he lay apparently absorbed in the cracks on the ceiling. By degrees--for having carried her point she could not help being more gracious--she began to allow a little embroidery of conversation to weave itself about the sacred text She spoke to Bressant about such simple and ordinary matters as went to make up her life--the books she had read, the people she knew, the country round about, a few of her more inward thoughts. He listened, and said no more than enough to show he was attentive; sometimes making her laugh by the shrewdness of his questions, and the quaintness of his remarks.

But he said nothing more to bring a grave look into the eyes of his young nurse; and she, finding him so gentle and boyish, and withal manly and profound, chatted on with more confidence and freedom; and, being gifted with fineness and accuracy of observation, and a clear flow and order of language and ideas, made talking a delight and a profit.

There was nothing formal or didactic about Sophie, and her talk rippled forth as naturally and spontaneously as a brook trickles over its brown stones, or the over-hanging willows whisper in the wind. There was in it the unwearied and unweariable freshness of nature. And Sophie's vein of humor was as fine and pungent as the aroma of a lemon: it touched her words now and then, and made their flavor all the more acceptable.

So Bressant gained his end at last, though he had yielded it; and this fact was not lost upon the trained keenness of his observation. After his nurse was gone, he lay with closed eyes, and a general sensation of comfort, until he fell asleep. Quiet dreams came to him, such as children have sometimes, but grown-up people seldom. Everywhere he seemed to follow a cool, white cloud. But where was Cornelia?

CHAPTER XV.

AN UNTIMELY REMINISCENCE.

In spite of nursing and a very strong constitution, Bressant's recovery was slow. The fact was, his mind was restless and disturbed, and produced a fever in his blood. Large and powerful as he was, his physical was largely dependent on his mental well-being, as must always be the case with persons well organized throughout. He would never have been so muscular and healthy had his life not been an undisturbed and self-complacent one. These questions of the heart and emotions were not salutary to his body, however beneficial otherwise.

At the same time, no one is quite himself who is ill, and doubtless Bressant would have escaped many of his difficulties, and solved others with comparatively little trouble, if his faculties had not been untuned by illness. While he was more open to the influx of all these novel ideas and problems, he was less able to deal with and dispose of them. So the professor, while encouraged by the observation of his apparent progress in the direction of human feeling and emotional warmth, was concerned to find him falling off in recuperative power.

Sophie was largely to blame for it. Bressant was getting to depend too much upon her society. He brightened when she came in, and was gloomy when she went out. He liked to talk and argue with her; to dash waves of logic, impetuous but subtle, against the rock of her pure intuitions and steady consistency. He was careful not to go too far; though, indeed, she usually had the best of the encounter. Of course his knowledge and trained faculties far surpassed Sophie's simple acquirements and modest learning; but she had a marvelous penetration in seeing a fallacy, even when she knew not how to expose it; and she mercilessly pricked many of the conceited bubbles of his understanding.

Doubtless she would have noticed the too prominent position which she had come to occupy in the invalid's horizon, had not her eyes, so clear to see every thing else, been blinded by the fact that he, also, was grown to be of altogether too much importance to her. She never for a moment imagined that any thing but an abstract and ideal scheme for benefiting Bressant was actuating her in her intercourse with him. She proposed to educate him in pure beliefs and true aspirations; to show him that there was more in life than can be mathematically proved. But that she could derive other than an immaterial and impersonal enjoyment from it--oh, no!

This was quixotic and unpractical, if nothing worse. What other means of imparting spiritual knowledge could a young girl like Sophie have, than to exhibit to her pupil the structure and workings of her own soul? But this could not be done with impunity; neither was Bressant a cup, to be emptied and then refilled with a purer substance. Young men and women with exalted and ideal views about each other, cannot do better than to keep out of one another's way. Unless they are prepared to mingle a great deal of what is earthly with their dreams, they will be apt, sooner or later, to have a rude awakening.

The conceit of her ideal crusade against Bressant's shortcomings blinded Sophie to what she could not otherwise have helped seeing--that she enjoyed his companionship for its own immediate sake. She had, perhaps, more direct and simple strength of character than he; but he made up in other ways for the lack of it. Besides, he had not taken measures to obstruct the natural keenness of his vision, and therefore saw, with comparative clearness, how the land lay; an immense advantage over Sophie, of course. But when he came to analyzing and classifying what he saw, he found his intelligence at fault. That little episode with Cornelia was the only bit of experience he had to fall back upon; and that was more of a puzzle than an assistance to him.

Matters went on thus for about six weeks, at which time Bressant was still confined to his room, although decidedly convalescent. It had seemed to him for some time past that a crisis would soon be reached in his relations with Sophie, but what the upshot of it would be he could not conjecture. He only felt that at present something was concealed--that there were explanations and confessions to be made, which would have the effect of putting his young nurse and himself upon more open and intimate terms. He looked forward to this culmination with impatience, and yet with anxiety. One morning, when they had been reading Spenser's "Faerie Queene," Cornelia's weekly letter was brought in, and subsequently the conversation turned upon her.

"I used to think she was much more beautiful than you," remarked Bressant, thoughtfully, twisting and turning the palm-leaf fan he held in his hands. "I don't think, now, that I knew what beauty was," he added, concentrating his straight eyebrows upon Sophie, in a scrutinizing look.

"No one could be more beautiful than Neelie," said Sophie, with gentle emphasis. "What has made you change your opinion?" As she spoke, she closed the book on her lap, and leaned her cheek upon her hand. Some of the sunshine fell upon her white dress, but left her face in shadow. It struck Bressant, however, that the clear morning light which filled the room emanated from her eyes rather than from the sunshine.

"I don't know that I have changed my opinion," said he, looking down again at the fan; "I learn new things every day, that's all. Do you ever think about yourself?"

"I suppose I do, sometimes; nobody can help being conscious of themselves once in a while."

"About what you are, compared with other people, I mean."

"There's nothing peculiar about me; still, I may be different, in some ways, from other people," answered Sophie, with simplicity.

"I can judge better about that than you; there was some use in deafness, and being alone, and thinking only of fame, and such things."

"What use?" asked Sophie, leaning forward, with interest, for he had never spoken about his former life before.

"The same way that a man who never drinks has a more delicate sense of taste than a drunkard," returned Bressant, apparently pleased with his simile. "I've seen so little of women, that I can taste you more correctly than if I had seen a great many. Understand?"

Sophie did not answer, being somewhat thrown out by this new way of looking at the matter. There seemed to be some reason in it, too.

"If I'd associated with other people, I shouldn't have been sensitive enough to recognize you when we met; no one except me can know you or feel you," continued he, following out his idea.

Sophie began to feel a vague misgiving. What did this mean? What was going to be the end of it? Ought she to allow it to go on? And yet--most likely it meant nothing; it was only one of his queer fancies that he was elaborating. There did not seem to be any thing suspicious in his manner.

"It wasn't easy even for me," he resumed, throwing another glance at her; she sat with her eyes cast down, so that he could observe her with impunity. "It would have been impossible unless you had helped me to it. You have taught me yourself, even more than I have studied you."

Sophie started, and a look of terror, bewilderment, and passionate repudiation, lightened in her eyes. How dared he--how could he, say that? how so falsely misrepresent her actions, and misinterpret her purposes? Her mind went staggering back over the past, seeking for means of self-justification and defense. She had only meant to benefit him--to amplify and soften his character--to inspire him with more ideal views and aims; and to do this she had--what? Sophie paused, and shuddered. Could it, after all, be true? Had she, forgetful of maidenly modesty and reserve, opened to this man's eyes her secret soul? invited him into the privacy of her heart, to criticise and handle it?--invited him!--brought forward, and pressed upon his notice, the thoughts and impulses which she should scarcely have whispered even to herself? Had she done this?

"You have taught me that there is no one like you in the world," said Bressant. His voice sounded strangely to her, coming across such an abyss of shame, remorse, and dismay. Did he know the bitter satire his words conveyed? Sophie's face was hidden in her hands. She dared not think what might come next.

"Is it nothing to you to know that you are more to me than any thing else?" demanded he, and his tone was becoming husky and unsteady. The passion that had been smouldering within him so long, unsuspected in its intensity even by himself, was now beginning to be-stir itself, and shoot forth jets of flame. "Why have you let yourself be with me--why have you made yourself necessary to me--if I was nothing to you?"

Sophie, in the extreme depths of her degradation and abasement, became all at once quiet and composed. She lifted her face, pale, and smitten with suffering, from her hands, and, folding them in her lap, looked at Bressant calmly, because she understood herself at last, and felt that the time for hiding her head in shame had gone by.

"You have _not_ been nothing to me," said she, "though I didn't know it before, or, rather, I _would_ not. I had an idea that I was leading you up to higher things, as an angel might, and all the time I was making use of God's truth and recommendation, as it were, to gratify and shield my own selfishness and--" here her voice sank, and her lips quivered, and grew dry, but she waited, and struggled, and finally went on--"and immodesty. I don't know why I should tell you this--except that I've told you every thing else, and this may save you from some of the wrong the rest has done you. But the most of it must remain irreparable." A long sigh quivered up from Sophie's heart, and quivered down again, like a pebble sinking through the water. Such a sigh, in a woman, is the sign of what can scarcely come twice in a lifetime.

"I don't understand any thing about that; I don't want to!" exclaimed Bressant, with an impetuous gesture. "What you've done seems to have been better than what you meant to do, at any rate. You've made yourself every thing to me. Say that I am as much to you, and what more do we need? Say it! say it!" and, in the vehemence of his appeal, the sick man half raised himself from his bed.

"I cannot! I cannot!" said Sophie, in a low, penetrating voice of suffering. "If you were the lowest of all men, I could not. I came to you in the guise of an angel, and what I have done, what woman is there that would not blush at it? It may not be too late to save you--"

"Stop!" cried Bressant, with an accent of hoarse, masculine command, such as she could not gainsay. "It is too late!--I will not be saved! Look in my eyes, Sophie Valeyon, and tell me the name of what you see there!"

Her sad, gray eyes, stern to herself, but tender and soft to him, as a cloud ready to melt in rain-drops, met his, which were alight with all the fire that an aroused and passionate spirit could kindle in them. She saw what she had never beheld before indeed, but the meaning of which no woman ever yet mistook. It was her work--the assurance of her disgrace--the offspring of her self-seeking and unwomanly behavior; and yet, as she looked, the blood rose gradually to her pale cheeks, and stained them with a deeper and yet deeper spot of red; her glance caught a spark from his, and her fragile and drooping figure seemed to dilate and grow stately, as if inspired by some burst of glorious music. Bressant, in the mid-whirl and heat of his emotion, fell back upon the pillow, whence he had partly raised himself, trembling from head to foot.

"Is it love?" he said, in a smothered tone that was scarcely more than a whisper. He was beaten down and overawed by the might and grandeur of the passion which, growing in his own breast, had become a giant that swayed and swept all things before it.

"Yes--love!" said Sophie, in a voice like the soft ring of a silver trumpet. Her heart was steadied and strengthened by what mastered him. "Love--it is above every thing else. It has brought me down so low--perhaps, through God's mercy, it is the path by which I may rise again. You will guide me, dear?"

And, with a gesture of divine humility, she put her hand in his, and looked down, with the smile brightening mistily in her eyes.

At that moment--recalled, perhaps, by a chance similarity in position, gesture, or expression--came over him, like a sudden chill and darkness, the memory of his last interview with Cornelia.

CHAPTER XVI.

PARTING AN ANCHOR.

Cornelia, upon her arrival in New York, had been met at the station by an emissary of Aunt Margaret, and conducted to a country-seat some distance up the river. Four or five young ladies were already assembled there, and as many young gentlemen came up on afternoon trains, and availed themselves of Aunt Margaret's hospitality, until business called them to the city again the nest morning, except that on Saturdays they brought an extra change or two of raiment, to tide them over the blessed rest of Sunday.

"I've been so _ill_, my love--how sweet and fresh you _do_ look! Give your auntie a kiss--there. _Oh_! you naughty girl, how jealous all the girls will be of those _eyes_ of yours!--so ill--_such_ dreadful sick-headaches--oh, yes! I'm a _great_ sufferer, dear, a great _sufferer_--but no one, hardly, knows it. I tell _you_, you know, dear, because you are my own darling little Cornelia. Oh! those sweet _eyes_! So ill--so _unable_, you know, to be _up_ and _doing_--to be as I should wish to be--as I once _was_--as you are now, you--splendid--creature--you! Now you _must_ let me speak my heart out to you, dear; it's my nature to do it, and I _can't_ restrain, it--foolish I know, but I always _was_ so foolish! oh dear! well--Ah! there's the first bell already. Let me show you your room, darling. As I was going to say, I've been so indisposed that I've been obliged to pet myself up a little here, before starting on our _tour_, you know, but in a week I mean to be well again--I _will_ be. Oh! I have immense _resolution_, dear Neelie--_immense_ fortitude, where those I love are concerned. There, this is your little nest--now _one_ more kiss. Oh! those sweet _lips_! Remember you sit by me at dinner."

"What a funny old woman Aunt Margaret is!" said Cornelia to herself, after she had closed the door of her chamber. "Such a queer voice--goes away up high, and then away down low, all in the same sentence. And what a small head for such a tall woman! and she's so thin! I do hope she won't go on kissing me so much with her big mouth! how fast she does twist it about! and then her front teeth stick out so! and she keeps shoving that great black ear-trumpet at me, whenever she thinks I want to speak; and her eyes are as pale and watery as they can be, and they look all around you and never at you. Well, it's very mean of me to criticise the old thing so; she's as kind as she can be. I wonder whether she knows Mr. Bressant; her manner reminds me sometimes of him; in a horrid way, of course, but--poor fellow! what is he doing now, I'd like to know!" Here Cornelia's meditations became very profound and private indeed; she, meanwhile, in her material capacity, making such alterations and improvements in her personal appearance as were necessary to prepare herself for the table.

Every few minutes--oftener than any circumstances could have warranted--she pulled a handsome gold watch out of her belt and consulted it. She did not, to be sure, seem solely anxious to know the hour; she bent down and examined the enameled face minutely; watched the second-hand make its tiny circuit; pressed the smooth crystal against her cheek; listened to the ceaseless beating of its little golden heart. That golden heart, it seemed to her, was a connecting link between Bressant's and her own. He had set it going, and it should be her care that it never stopped; for at the hour in which it ran down--such was Cornelia's superstitious idea--some lamentable misfortune would surely come to pass.

The dinner-bell sounded; she put her watch back into her belt, bestowing a loving little pat upon it, by way of temporary adieu. Then, feeling pretty hungry, she ran down the broad, soft-carpeted stairs, with their wide mahogany banisters--she would have sat upon the latter and slid down if she had dared--and entering the dining-room, which was furnished throughout with yellow oak, even to the polished floor, she took her place by her hostess's side. She had already been presented to the fashionable guests who sat around the ample table, and a good deal of the awe which she had felt in anticipation, had begun to ooze away. Although much was said that was unintelligible to her, she could see that this was not the result of intellectual deficiency on her part, but merely of an ignorance of the ground on which the conversation was founded. As Cornelia stole glances at the faces, pretty or pretentious, of the young ladies, or at the mustaches, whiskers, or carefully-parted hair of the young gentlemen, it did not seem to her that she could call herself essentially the inferior of any one of them. As to what they thought of her, she could only conjecture; but the gentlemen were extravagantly polite--according to her primitive ideas of that much-abused virtue--and the ladies were smiling, full of pretty attitudes, small questions, and accentuated comments. No one of them, nor of the young men either, seemed to be very hungry; but Cornelia had her usual unexceptionable appetite, and ate stoutly to satisfy it; she even tasted a glass of Italian wine at dessert, upon the assurance of Aunt Margaret that "she must--_really_ must--it would never do to come to New York without learning how to drink wine, you know;" and upon the word of the young gentleman who sat next to her that it wouldn't hurt her a bit--all wines were medicinal--Italian wines especially so; and so, indeed, it proved, for Cornelia thought she had never felt so genial a glow of sparkling life in her veins. She was good-natured enough to laugh at any thing, and brilliant enough to make anybody else laugh; and the evening passed away most pleasantly.

But Cornelia was no fool, to be made a butt of; and her personality was too vigorous, her individuality too strong, not to make an impression and way of its own wherever she was. The young ladies tried in vain to patronize her: they had not the requisite capital in themselves; and the young gentlemen soon gave up the attempt to make fun of her; her vitality was too much for them, and they were, moreover, disconcerted by her beauty. Miss Valeyon, however, was new to the world, and her curiosity and vanity had large, unsatisfied appetites. To have been patronized and made fun of would have done her little or no harm; but in gratifying these appetites she might do a good deal of harm to herself.

When the young gentlemen were in town, or in the smoking-room, the young ladies were of course thrown upon their own resources, and generally drifted together in little groups, to talk in low tones or in loud, to laugh or to whisper. Cornelia, who soon got upon terms of companionship with one or two members of these conclaves, could hardly do otherwise than occasionally join the meetings. At first she found little or nothing of interest to herself in what they talked about.

The discussion of dress, to be sure, was something, and she found she had much to learn even there. Then there was a great deal to be said about sociables, and theatres, and sets, and fellows; and there was also more or less conversation, carried on in a low tone that occasionally descended to a whisper, which, beyond that it seemed to have reference to marriage and kindred matters, was for the most part Greek to Cornelia. A kind of metaphor was used which the country-bred minister's daughter could not elucidate, nor could she comprehend how young ladies, unmarried as she herself was, could know so much about things which marriage alone is supposed to reveal.

Once or twice she had requested an explanation of some of these obscure points, but her request had been met, first by a dead silence, then by a laugh, and an inquiry whether she had no young married friends, and also whether she had ever read the works of Paul Fval, Dumas, and Balzac--all of which gave her little enlightenment, but taught her to keep her mouth shut, and open her eyes and ears wider.

One day when "Aunt Margaret" had invited her to a _tte--tte_ in the boudoir, it occurred to Cornelia, in the wisdom of her heart, to take advantage of the opportunity to introduce the subject. She was a widow: was very good-natured; would be sure not to laugh at her, and could hardly help knowing as much as the young ladies knew.

"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Vanderplanck, as Cornelia entered, "such a relief--such a _refreshment_ to look at that sweet face of yours! There! I must have my _kiss_, you know. Yes, I was just thinking of you, my love--so longing to have a quiet _chat_ with you--your dear father!--such a _grand_ man he is! _such genius_! Oh! _I_ was his devoted. Tell me all about him, and that sweet _home_ of yours, and _dear_ little Sophie, too. Oh! I was so shocked, so terrified, to hear of her illness; and--let me see!--oh, yes, and that new pupil your papa has--Mr. Bressant--_how_ is he? _does_ he behave well? _is_ he pleasant? _do_ you see much of him? _does_ he keep himself quiet?--such a--"

"Why! how did you know about him?" interrupted Cornelia, into Mrs. Vanderplanck's ever-ready ear-trumpet. "Is he a relation of yours, or any thing?"

Aunt Margaret stopped short, and pressed her thin, wide lips together. She had never imagined but that Professor Valeyon had told his daughters through whose immediate instrumentality it was that Bressant made his appearance at the Parsonage; but finding, from Cornelia's questions, that this was not so, she bethought herself that it might be well for her young guest to remain in ignorance, at least for the present. It was not too late, and, after a scarcely-perceptible pause, she made answer:

"It was in your dear papa's _answer_ to my invitation, my love. Oh! so shocked I was dear little Sophie couldn't come--lay awake _all_ that night with a headache--yes, _indeed_!--when he _wrote_ to me, you know--such a dear, noble letter it _was_, too! Oh! I read it over a dozen--_twenty_ times at least!--he mentioned this new pupil of his--seemed interested in him--of course I _can't_ help being interested in whatever interests any of you dear ones, you know--he mentioned his strange name and all--it _is_ a strange name, isn't it, love?"

"It isn't his real name," interposed Cornelia; "nobody except papa knows who he is. It's just like one of those ancient names, you know--the Christian name and the surname in one."

"Oh, yes, I see--so odd, isn't it?--such a _mystery_, and all that--yes--so that's how I came to speak of him, I suppose. One gets _ideas_ of a person that way sometimes, don't you know, though they may never have actually _seen_ them at all? Oh! when I was a _young_ thing, I was just full of those--_ideals, I_ used to call them--oh, you know all about it, I _dare_ say!"

"He met with a very serious accident just before I came away," said Cornelia to the ear-trumpet; "he stopped Dolly--our horse--she was running away with papa in the wagon. He saved papa beautifully, but he was dreadfully hurt--his collar-bone was broken, and he was kicked, and almost killed. He's at our house now, and papa's taking care of him."

At this information Aunt Margaret became very white, or rather bloodless, in the face. She allowed the ear-trumpet to hang by its silver chain from her neck, and, reaching out her hand to a recess in the writing-table at which she sat, she drew forth a small ebony box, set in silver, and carved all over with little figures in bass-relief. Opening it, she took out a few grains of some dark substance which the box contained, and slipped them eagerly into her large mouth, Cornelia watched her out of the corner of her eyes, and, being a physician's daughter, she drew her own conclusions.

"Ho, ho! that's where your sick-headaches, and yellow complexion, and nervousness, and weak eyes, come from, is it? You'd better look out! that's morphine, or opium, or some such thing, I know; and papa says that old ladies like you, who use such drugs, are liable to get insane after a while, and I shouldn't be a bit surprised if you were to become insane, Aunt Margaret!"

This agreeable prophecy, being confined solely to Cornelia's thoughts, was naturally inaudible to Mrs. Vanderplanck. She murmured something about her doctor having prescribed medicine to be taken at that hour, and then, the medicine appearing to have an immediate and salutary effect, she found her color and her voice again, and took up the conversation.

"Shocking! oh, shocking! _so_ sad for the poor young man--no father--no--no mother there to care for him. He _it_ an orphan, is he not?--no relatives, I suppose--no one who _belongs_ to him, poor boy! Dear, dear!--but he's _not_ fatally injured, is he?--not fatally?"

"Oh, no," replied Cornelia, whose opinion of Aunt Margaret's character was much improved by this evidently sincere sympathy in the suffering of some one she had never seen--"oh, no; papa says he'll be all well in three months."

"And he's staying at your house, and under your dear father's care?"

"Yes, he is now. Before his accident he was boarding at Abbie's, down in the village. She would have been very kind to him, of course, but I suppose he'd rather be at our house, because papa can always be at hand."

While Cornelia was delivering this into the black ear-trumpet, she turned her eyes away from Aunt Margaret's face, being in truth somewhat embarrassed at talking so much about the man who had her heart. Consequently she did not observe the expression which crossed her companion's face at her mention of the modest name of the boarding-house keeper. Her features seemed to contract and sharpen, and there was positively a glitter in her watery eyes, seemingly mingled of consternation, astonishment, and hatred. In another moment the expression had passed away, or was softened into one of nervous alarm and anxiety; and even this, when she spoke, was wellnigh effaced.

"Certainly--yes, _certainly_! your dear father--_what_ a wise man he is! he _has_ such a profound knowledge of medicine and surgery--all those things--so prudent, so careful! Still, a woman is a treasure, you know--a good, sensible, efficient woman is a _host_--oh, yes, in a sick-room. This boarding-house keeper, now--she's just such a person, I _dare_ say--elderly, sober, experienced--a married woman, probably, with a large family, no doubt? Abbie, Abbie! what _did_ you say her last name was, my love?"

Cornelia was so much amused at the idea of Abbie's being a married woman with a large family that she did not observe how Aunt Margaret, awaiting her answer, was all in a tremble. If she had not been laughing, she could scarcely have helped seeing how the ear-trumpet shook as it was presented to her.

"Oh, no," said she, "she's not married, Aunt Margaret--at least not now, though I believe she's a widow, or something of that kind, you know--and she hasn't any children at all! As to her other name, I don't know it, and I believe hardly any one does. You see, she's one of that queer sort of people; she's very quiet, and always grave, and nobody knows much about her, except that she's very good, and has lived in the village for twenty years and more. I believe, though, papa has met her before, or knows something about her in some way; but he never says any thing to us on the subject."

This was all that could be got out of Cornelia upon the topic of Abbie, and Mrs. Vanderplauck was obliged to swallow whatever uneasiness, curiosity, or misgiving she may have felt. In the midst of an exhortation to her young guest to repeat her visit daily to the boudoir, and regale her auntie with anecdotes of the dear old, interesting people in the village, Abbie and all, some one of the young ladies knocked at the door, and hurried Miss Valeyon off, without her having asked, as she had intended, for an explanation of the puzzling, metaphorical allusions.

Mrs. Vanderplanck, left to herself, rocked backward and forward in her chair, with her hands clasped over her forehead, much in the way that an insane person might have done.

"Who'd have thought it! who'd have thought it! In the very village--in the very house--of all places in the world!--in the very house!--and he laid up--can't be moved--can't be taken away. Why didn't I know?--why didn't I find out?--careless--stupid--thoughtless! Curse the woman! couldn't I have imagined that she'd never be far away from her dear professor--and we sent him there--we hid him away--we disguised his name--college was too public for him--let him finish his education in the country--and then we could escape away--to Germany--France--anywhere--and carry all the money with us--all the money!--half for me, and half for him!--and what'll become of it now? Curse the woman! I knew she couldn't be dead. But she sha'n't have the money--no! she sha'n't, she sha'n't!

"Is it possible, now?--could it be that that girl was deceiving me? Did she know the woman's name, after all?--no, no! she hasn't the face for it--no hypocrite in her yet--not yet, not yet! Well, but what if it's all a mistake?--Why not a mistake? why not?--tell me that! Plenty of women called Abbie, aren't there? Why shouldn't this be one of them--one of the others? No, but the professor had known her before--oh, yes!--known her before! and there's only one Abbie that the professor knew before! Curse her--curse her!

"Well, what if she is there? how will she know _him_? The professor won't tell her--he can't--he dare not tell her!--for I made him promise he wouldn't, and I've got his promise, written down--written down!--Ah! that was smart--that was smart! Yes, but the boy looks like his father!--that'll betray him!--she'll know him by that--know him? well, just as bad--yes, and worse too, in the end--worse! Oh! curse her!

"Never mind. I know how to manage. If the worst comes to the worst, I know what to do! And I must write to him--not now--as soon as he's well--he must come away. Even if it should turn out all a mistake, he must come away!--I'll write to him, as soon as he's well, that he must come away. And I'll question Cornelia again--ah! she's a handsome girl!--it's well I got her up here, out of the way!--I'll find out more from her. It may be a mistake, after all--it may, it may!"

While Aunt Margaret, sitting in her boudoir, thus took doubtful and disconnected counsel with herself, Cornelia was left to manage her little difficulties as best she might. Being tolerably quick in observing, and putting things together, and unwilling to trust to intuitive judgments of what was safe or unsafe in the moral atmosphere, she set to work with all her wits, and not without some measure of success, to fathom the secrets of the tantalizing freemasonry which piqued her curiosity. By listening to all that was said, laughing when others laughed, keeping silent when she was puzzled, comparing results and drawing deductions, she presently began to understand a good deal more than she had bargained for, was considerably shocked and disgusted, and perhaps felt desirous to unlearn what she had learned.

But this was not so easy. Things she would willingly have forgotten seemed, for that very reason, to stick in her memory--nay, in some moods of mind, to appear less entirely objectionable than in others. She had little opportunity for solitude--to bethink herself where she stood, and how she came there. During the daytime, there were the young ladies, here, there, and everywhere; there could be no seclusion. In the afternoons and evenings some admiring, soft-voiced young gentleman was always at her side, offering her his arm on the faintest pretext, or attempting to put it round her waist on no pretext at all; who always found it more convenient to murmur in her ear, than to speak out from a reasonable distance; whose hands were always getting into proximity with hers, and often attempting to clasp them; whose eyes were forever expressing something earnest or arch, pleading or romantic--though precisely what, his lingering utterance scarcely tried to define; who never could "see the harm" of these and many other peculiarities of behavior; and, indeed it was not very easy to argue about them, although the young gentlemen never shrank from the dispute, and never failed to have on hand an inexhaustible assortment of syllogisms to combat any remonstrance that might be advanced withal; while at the worst they could always be surprised and hurt if their conduct were called into question. Well, they appeared to be refined and high-bred. Compare them with Bill Reynolds! And the flattery of their attention, and the preference they gave her over the other girls, were not entirely lost upon Cornelia.

In the absence of both gentlemen and ladies, there, on an easily-accessible shelf in the library, were those works of Dumas, Fval, and the rest, to which Cornelia's attention had been indirectly invited. She had a sound knowledge of the French language, and an ardent love of fiction, and beyond question the books were of absorbing interest.

At first, indeed, Cornelia, as she read, would ever and anon blush, and look around apprehensively, for fear there should be an observer somewhere; and this, too, at passages which a week before she would have passed over without noticing, because not understanding them. If any one appeared, she hid the book away in the folds of her dress, or under the sofa-cushion, and put on the air of having just awakened from a nap. By-and-by, however, when she had become a little used to the tone of the works, and had asked herself, what were the books put there for, unless to be read, she plucked up courage, as her young friends would have said--albeit angels might have wept at it--and overcame her notions so far as to be able to take down from its shelf and become deeply interested in one of the Frenchiest of the set, while three or four people were sitting in the library!

A triumph that! Howbeit, when she went to bed that night there was a persistent pain of dry unhappiness in her heart, and a self-contemptuous feeling, which she tried to get the better of by calling it _ennui_. But in time a kind of hardness, at once flexible and impenetrable, began to encase her, rendering her course more easy, less liable to embarrassment, more self-confident than before.

At length a crisis was brought on by the attempt of the boldest of her admirers to kiss her. She repelled him passionately, facing him with gleaming eyes, and lips white with anger and disgust. He was surprised, at first--then angry; but she spoke to him in a way that cowed, and finally almost made him ashamed of himself. He even went so far, afterward, as to try to knock a fellow down for speaking disrespectfully of "Neelie." For her own part, she locked herself into her room, and cried tempestuously for half an hour; then she spent a still longer time in lying with her heated face upon the pillow, reviewing the incidents of her life since Bressant had entered into it. He was the superior of any man she had met before or since: she was sure of it now; it could no longer be called the infatuation of inexperience. She took herself well to task for the recent laxity and imprudence of her conduct; did not spare to cut where the flesh was tender; and resolved never again to lay herself open to blame.

This was very well, but the mood was too strained and exalted to be depended upon. Cornelia got up from the disordered bed, put it to rights again, washed her stained face carefully, rearranged her hair, and went down-stairs. All that afternoon she was cold, grave, and reserved; inquiries after her health met with a chilling answer, and her friends wisely concluded to leave her malady, whatever it were, to the cure of time. As dinner progressed, Cornelia began to thaw: when Mr. Grumblow, the member of Congress, requested her, with solemn and oppressive courtesy, to do him the honor of taking a glass of wine with him, she responded graciously; and as the toasts circulated, she first looked upon her ideal resolves with good-humored tolerance, and then they escaped her memory altogether. She became once more lively and sparkling, and carried on what she imagined was a very brilliant conversation with two or three people at once. By the time she was ready to retire, she had practised anew the whole list of her lately-abrogated accomplishments; and she wound up by picking the French novel out of the corner into which she had disdainfully thrown it twelve hours before, reading it in bed until she fell asleep, and dreaming that she was its heroine. And yet she had not forgotten to wind up Bressant's watch, and put it in its usual place under her pillow.

It might seem strange that his memory should not have kept her beyond the reach of deleterious influences. But a young girl's love is any thing but a preservative, if it shall yield her, in any aspect, other than such pure and delicate thoughts as she would not scruple to whisper in her mother's ear, or to ask God's blessing on at night. Should there be any circumstance or incident, however seemingly trifling and unimportant, in her reminiscences, which nevertheless keeps recurring to the mind with a slight twinge of regret--a feeling that it would have been just as well had it never happened--then is love a dangerous companion. Gradually does the trifling spot grow upon her; in trying to justify it, she succeeds only in lowering the whole idea of love to its level; and this once accomplished, in all future intercourse with her lover she must be undefended by the shield of her maidenly integrity. And not all men are great enough not to presume on woman's weakness, even though it be that woman, to assert whose honor and purity they would risk their lives against the world.

Some such quality of earthiness Cornelia may have felt in the course of her acquaintance with Bressant, preventing her love from ennobling and elevating her. Alas! if it were so. If she cannot draw a high inspiration from the affection which must be her loftiest sentiment, what shall be her safeguard, and who her champion?

In the course of ten days or a fortnight, Aunt Margaret announced that the condition of her head would admit of traveling, and the long-expected tour began. But the more important consequences of Cornelia's fashionable experiences had already taken place.

CHAPTER XVII.

SOPHIE'S CONFESSION.

Sophie did not stay long in the invalid's room after the awakening they had undergone with respect to one another. She went instinctively to her father's study, and, entering the open door, kissed the old man ere he was well aware of her presence. He took her affectionately upon his knee, and hugged her up to him with homely tenderness.

"My precious little daughter!" quoth he; "what would your old father do without you?"

"Am I so much to you, papa?" asked she, with her cheek resting upon his shoulder.

"Very much--very much, Sophie: too much, perhaps; for I don't see how I could bear to lose you."

"Do you mean to have me die, papa?"

"How is your sick boy getting along?" returned the professor, clearing his throat, and not seeming to hear his daughter's words.

Sophie caught a breath, and paled a little at the thought of the news she had to tell about the sick boy. Her father had just told her she was precious to him, and she felt that to be married might involve a separation virtually as complete as that of death, and perhaps harder to bear. But, again, she needed his sympathy and approval: and, sooner or later, he must hear the truth. She was not, perhaps, aware that etiquette should have closed her lips upon the subject until after Bressant had spoken to the professor; at all events, she had no intention of delegating or postponing her confidence.

"He seemed quite well when I left him. I have been having a--talk with him, papa."

"He begins to show the effects of being talked to by you, my dear. You're a wise little woman in some ways, that's certain! and have done him good in more ways than one," said papa, with parental complacency.

Sophie shrank at this, remembering how lately she had fed herself with the same idea. She had learned a great deal about herself since discovering how little of herself she knew.

"He is a--man!" said she, trying to throw into the word an expression of its best and loftiest meaning. "I can do very little to help him."

"Hope to see him a man some day, my dear," returned the professor, gathering his eyebrows. "Has a great many faults at present. Why, in some respects, he's as ignorant and inexperienced as a child. Very one-sided affair still, I fear, that soul of his!"

"One-sided, papa?"

"Yes: don't believe it would carry him very far toward heaven, as it is now," said the old gentleman, whose severity of judgment was cultivated in this instance as a preservative against possible disappointment. "He needs melting in a crucible."

"What does that mean?"

"If you weren't a wise little woman, as I said, I shouldn't be talking about my pupil's character and management with you, my dear. But I can trust you as well as if you were forty;" and here he gave her another little hug, which made Sophie feel like a receiver of stolen goods. "Well, now, theorizing won't do a young fellow like that much good. He needs something real--that he can take hold of, and that'll take hold of him. You and I can't give it him--not more than an impetus in the right direction, at any rate. But the only thing that can make his future tolerably secure--make it safe to count upon him (or upon any other man, for that matter), is for him to fall heartily and soundly in love, in the old-fashioned way, and with a strong-hearted, worthy woman."

"O papa! do you really think marriage will help him to be greater and better?"

"It's the only thing for him, my dear," said Professor Valeyon; and, although he was looking his guilty little daughter straight in the face, and at such short range, too, this would-be sharp-sighted old man of wisdom never thought to ask himself why she blushed so. "As soon as he gets well again, I must see to getting him somewhere where he can have a chance to profit by what we have done for him."

"Papa," said Sophie, sitting up, and stroking the old gentleman's white beard, "you don't know how happy it makes me to hear you think that to love and to be loved will be good for him."

"So anxious to get rid of him, eh?"

"No; oh! papa, don't you see? it's because--because I _never_ want to get rid of him!" and Sophie, catching her father suddenly around the neck, hid her face in his linen coat-collar.

The professor, his features discharged of all expression, sat stone-still, looking straight before him. Had Death been embracing him, instead of his daughter, he could hardly have been struck more motionless. Existence, spiritual as well as physical, seemed for a space to have come to a stand-still.

By-and-by, startled at his silence, Sophie raised her head and looked at him with alarmed eyes. With an effort, he turned his face toward her, and smiled as naturally as though his mouth had been frozen.

"I'm an old man, you see, my dear: a surprise like this makes me feel it," he made shift to say, in an uncertain voice. "So--you're engaged to each other?"

"We're waiting for you to say we may be, papa."

"It is right--it is just!" said the professor, solemnly, though still with a sluggish utterance. "I sought to glorify God to the end of mine own glorification, and lo! He hath taken from me my own heart's blood!" Swept off his feet by the profundity of his emotion, the ministerial form of speech, so long disused, rose naturally to the old man's lips.

But presently, the paralyzing effect of the shock beginning to wear off, he drew a few long breaths, and found himself growing very hot. He took out his handkerchief and wiped away the perspiration that had gathered on his forehead. Then he took his little daughter strongly yet tremblingly to his heart, and kissed her more than once.

"God bless you! my darling--my Sophie--you're my Sophie still, if you are in love with that--great overgrown rascal. I'm a fool--an old fool! Well--and how long has this been going on between you, my darling?"

Sophie's heart, which, in the passionate tumult of her recent interview with her lover, had remained so steady and unfaltering, began now to beat with such violence as to impede her utterance and visibly to shake her. She was resolved to show herself to her father even as she was.

"I hardly can say how long, papa--I think--I think it must have been a--a long time--at least, on my side. Oh! I have been so false--so false to myself, and so unwomanly! I have courted him, papa--_I_, papa--think of it! I've thrown myself in his way, and--and made him interested in me; and talked to him about things that--no one but his mother, or you, should have done. Poor fellow!--I've forced myself upon him, papa. I took advantage of his illness and helplessness, and pretended all the time I was thinking only of his spiritual welfare, and--and not of--of any thing else. That was the wickedest part. And yet, somehow, I deceived myself too--or, rather, I wouldn't see the truth: and I didn't know--papa, I really believe I didn't know that I--loved him, till he--till he began to speak of it; then it seemed suddenly to fill all my heart, as if it had always lived there. For I succeeded, papa: I've won his love, and, oh! he loves me so! he loves me so! and so I've found my punishment in my happiness. God is so just and good. The happier his love makes me, you see, the more I shall be humbled to think how it became mine. It is well for me, for I was proud and reserved and full of self-conceit. And you really think it will not hurt him to love me, and to have me love him, papa?"

"Stuff and nonsense!" growled the old gentleman, testily; "hurt him!"

But the professor was really a very wise man, in spite of his occasional blindness; and he refrained from showing Sophie the exaggeration and distortion which marked the view she took of her conduct. He saw it would involve lowering the high integrity of her ideal conceptions respecting delicacy and honor--hardly worth while, merely for the sake of explaining the distinction between a trifling piece of self-deception and mistaken vanity, and the severe and unrelenting sentence which Sophie had passed upon herself. Meanwhile, every word she had uttered had been an indirect, but none the less telling blow upon a sore place in his own conscience. It was long since Professor Valeyon had stood so low in his own self-esteem.

They sat awhile in silence, Sophie nestling up to her father as if seeking protection from the very love that had come to her; and he sighed, and sighed again, and coughed, and pulled his nose and his beard, and finally blew his nose. Then, depositing Sophie upon her feet, he got slowly up, stretched himself, and went for his pipe.

"Run off, my dear. Go up in your room, or out in the garden, or somewhere. I must be alone a little while, you know; must think it all over, and see how things stand. Besides, I must step in and see this fellow who's going to rob me of my daughter, and tell him what I think of him. Come, off with you!"

"You'll be happy about it--you'll forgive us, won't you, papa?" she said, turning at the door.

The old gentleman shuffled heavily up to her, and kissed her on the forehead.

"God bless you, and God's will be done, my darling!" said he; but at that moment he could say no more.

An hour afterward, however, when the professor knocked the ashes out of his second pipe, and laid his hand upon the latch of Bressant's door, the expression upon his strongly-cut features was neither gloomy nor severe. There was a look in his eyes of benignant sweetness, all the more impressive because it made one wonder how it could find a place beneath such stern eyebrows and so deeply lined a forehead. But, cutting off an offending right hand, although a bitter piece of work enough for the time being, may, in its after-effect, work as gracious a miracle in an older and more forbidding gentleman even than Professor Valeyon.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A FLANK MOVEMENT.

Bressant was lying comfortably upon his bed with his eyes closed; no one would have imagined there had been any outburst or convulsion of passion in his mental or emotional organism. He breathed easily; there was a pale tint of red in his cheeks, above his close, brown beard; his forehead was slightly moist, and his pulse, on which the surgeon laid his finger with professional instinct, beat quietly and regularly. In entering upon the world of love, all marks of wounds received upon the journey seemed to have passed away.

He opened his eyes at the professor's touch, and fixed them upon the old gentleman in such a serene stare of untroubled complacency as one sometimes receives from a baby nine months old.

"Well, sir"--the professor, from some subtle delicacy of feeling respecting the prospective change in their relationship, adopted this form of address in preference to that more paternal one he had been in the habit of using since Bressant's accident--"well, sir, how do you find yourself now?"

"Much better; I shall soon be well now. I feel differently from ever before--very light and full here," said the young man, indicating the region of his heart.

"I've seen Sophie," observed Professor Valeyon, after a somewhat long silence, which Bressant, who had calmly closed his eyes again, showed no intention of breaking.

"Sophie and I love each other," responded he, meditatively, and rather to himself than to the father. The latter could not but feel some surprise at the untroubled confidence the young man's manner displayed. Before he could put his thought into fitting words, the other spoke again.

"I've been thinking, I should like to marry her."

"You'd like to marry her?" repeated the old gentleman, with a mixture of sternness and astonishment, his forehead reddening. "What else do you suppose I expected, sir?"

Bressant turned over on his side, and regarded him with some curiosity.

"Do all people who love each other, or because they love each other, marry?" demanded he.

For a moment, the professor seemed to suspect some latent satire in this question; but the young man's face convinced him to the contrary.

"In many marriages, there's little love--true love--on either side; that's certain," said he, passing his hand down his face, and looking grave. "But marriage was ordained for none but lovers."

"The reason I want to be married to Sophie is because I love her so much I couldn't live without her," resumed Bressant, as if stating some unusual circumstance.

"Humph!" ejaculated the professor, partly amused and partly puzzled.

Bressant rubbed his forehead, and fingered his beard awhile, and then continued:

"We've been reading poetry lately, and romances, and such things. I used to think they were nonsense--good for nothing; because they came out so beautifully, and represented love to be so great an element in the world. But now I see they were not good enough; they are much below the truth; I mean to write poetry and romances myself!"

This tickled Professor Valeyon so much, that he burst out in a most genuine laugh. The intellectual animal of two or three months before seemed to have laid aside all claims to what his brain had won for him, and to be beginning existence over again with a new object and new materials. And had Bressant indeed been a child, the succession of his ideas and impulses could hardly have been more primitive and natural.

"What's to become of our Hebrew and history, if you turn poet?" inquired the old gentleman, still chuckling.

Bressant turned his head away and closed his eyes wearily. "I don't want any thing more to do with that," said he. "Love is study enough, and work enough, for a lifetime. Mathematics, and logic, and philosophy--all those things have nothing to do with love, and couldn't help me in it. It's outside of every thing else: it has laws of its own: I'm just beginning to learn them."

"A professional lover! well, as long as you recognize the sufficiency of one object in your studies, you might do worse, that's certain. But you can't make a living out of it, my boy."

"I don't need money, I have enough; if I hadn't, money-making is for men without hearts; but mine is bigger than my head; I must give myself up to it."

"That won't do," returned the professor, shaking his head. "Lovers must earn their bread-and-butter as well as people with brains. Besides," here his face and tone became serious, "there's one thing we've both forgotten. This matter of your false name--you can't be married as Bressant, you know: and if the tenure of your property depends, as you said, on preserving the _incognito_, I have reason to believe that you stand an excellent chance of losing every cent of it, the moment the minister has pronounced your real name."

"No matter!" said the young man, with an impatient movement, as if to dismiss an unprofitable subject. "I shall have Sophie; my father's will can't deprive me of her. I don't want to be famous, nor to have a great reputation--except with her."

The old man was touched at this devotion, unreasonable and impracticable though it was. He laid his hand kindly on the invalid's big shoulder.

"I don't say but that a wife's a good exchange for the world, my boy; I'm glad you should feel it, too. But when you marry her, you promise to support her, as long as you have strength and health to do it. It's a natural and necessary consequence of your love for her"--and here the professor paused a moment to marvel at the position in which he found himself--stating the first axioms of life to such a man as this pupil of his; "and you should be unwilling to take her, as I certainly should be to give her, on any other terms. If your hands are empty, you must at any rate be able to show that they won't always continue so."

"Well, but I don't want to think about that just now; I can be a farmer, or a clerk; I can make a living with my body, if I can't with my mind; and I can write to Mrs. Vanderplanck, some time, and find out just how things are."

"Very well--very well! or perhaps I'd better write to her myself--well--and as long as you are on your back, there'll be no use in troubling you with business--that's certain! And perhaps things may turn out better than they look, in the end."

As Professor Valeyon pronounced this latter sentence, he smiled to himself pleasantly and mysteriously. He seemed to fancy he had stronger grounds for believing in a happy issue, than, for some reason, he was at liberty to disclose. And the smile lingered about the corners of his mouth and eyes, as if the issue in question were to be of that peculiarly harmonious kind usually supposed to be reserved for the themes of poems, or the conclusions of novels.

"I never was interested to hear of the every-day lives of men who have loved, and wanted to make their way in the world; for I never expected I should be such a man. Now, I'm sorry; it would have been useful to me, wouldn't it?"

"Perhaps it might," responded the old gentleman, musing at the change in the attitude of the young man's mind--once so self-sufficient and assertive, now so dependent and inexperienced. "Very few lives are bare and empty enough not to teach one something worth knowing. I know the events of one man's life," he added, after a few moments of thoughtful consideration; "perhaps it might lead to some good, if I were to tell them to yon."

"Did he marry a woman he loved?" demanded Bressant.

"You can judge better of that when you hear what happened before his marriage," returned the professor, apparently a little put out by the abruptness of the question. "He made several mistakes in life; most of them because he didn't pay respect enough to circumstances; thought that to adhere to fixed principles was the whole duty of a man: nothing to be allowed to the accidents of life, or to the various and unaccountable natures of men, their uncertainty, fallibility, and so on. One of the first resolutions he made--and he's never broken it, for when he grew wise enough to do so, the opportunity had gone by forever--was never to leave his native country. He wanted to prove to himself, and to everybody else whom it might concern, that a man of fair abilities might become learned and wise, without ever helping himself to the good things that lay beyond the shadow of his native flag. 'The majority of people have to live where they are born,' was his argument; 'I'll be their representative.' Well, that would seem all well enough; but it stood in his way twice--each time lost him an opportunity that has never come again--the opportunity to be distinguished, and perhaps great; and the opportunity to have a happy home, and a luxurious one. It was better for him, no doubt, that his life was a hard and disappointed one, instead of--as it might have been; he's had blessings enough, that's certain; but he has much to regret, too; the more, because the ill effects of a man's folly and willfulness fall upon his friends quite as often, and sometimes more heavily, than upon himself.

"He was a poor man in college, and an orphan. The property of his family had been lost in the War of 1812; from then till he was twenty-one, he had followed a dozen trades, and saved a couple of hundred dollars; and he'd picked up book-learning enough to enter the sophomore class. The first thing he did was to make a friend; he loved him with his whole heart; thought nothing was too good for him, and so on. He and his friend led the class for three years; and up to the time of the last examination, he was first and his friend second. In the examination they sat side by side; one question the friend couldn't answer; the other wrote it out for him; after the examination the two papers were found to be alike in the answer to that question, and the friend was summoned before the faculty, and asked if he had copied it. He denied it--said it had been copied from him; so he took the first rank in graduating, and the other was dropped several places."

"What became of their friendship after that?" inquired Bressant.

"He I'm telling you of never knew any thing of what his friend had done till long afterward. Well, the faculty and some of the wealthy patrons of the university determined to send the first scholar abroad, to finish his education: he accepted the offer eagerly, and sailed for Europe, without bidding his friend good-by. Afterward, the faculty made the same offer to him, on the consideration that he had stood so well, during his course, until the examination. But he declined it: it was contrary to his principle of never leaving his country."

"What sort of a man was the friend?" asked Bressant, who was paying close attention, with his hand at his ear.

"Clever, with a winning manner, and fine-looking; had a pleasant, easy voice; never lost his temper that I know of." The professor paused, perhaps to arrange his ideas, ere he went on. "The man I'm telling you of left the college-yard with as much of the world before him as lies between the fifteenth and twenty-fifth parallels of latitude, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He'd made up his mind to be a physician; and in a year he was qualified to enter the hospital; worked there four years, and, by the time he was twenty-nine, he had an office of his own and a good practice.

"At last, he fell in love with a beautiful woman; she was the daughter of one of his patients--a Southerner with a little Spanish blood in him. The young doctor had--under Providence--saved the man's life; and, since he himself came of a good family--none better--and had a respectable income, there wasn't much difficulty in arranging the match. The only condition was, that the father should never be out of reach of his daughter, as long as he lived."

"Was this Southerner rich?"

"Very rich; and a dowry would go with the daughter enough to make them more than independent for the rest of their lives. Well, just about that time, the friend who had gone to Europe came back. He'd done well abroad, and-was qualified for a high position at home. He was engaged to marry a stylish, aristocratic girl, who was not, however, wealthy. But he seemed very glad to see the doctor, and the doctor certainly was to see him, and invited him to stay at his house a while, and he introduced him into the house of his intended wife."

Here the professor broke off from his story, and, getting up from his chair, he passed two or three times up and down the room; stopping at the window to pull a leaf from the extended branch of a cherry-tree growing outside, and again, by the empty fireplace, to roll the leaf up between his finger and thumb, and throw it upon the hearth. When he returned to the bedside, he dropped himself into his chair with the slow, inelastic heaviness of age.

"The fellow played him a scurvy trick," resumed he, presently. "Exactly what he said or did will never be known, but it was all he safely could to put his friend in a bad light. It was because he wanted the young lady for himself; he was ambitious, and needed her money to help him on. What he said made a good deal of impression on the father; but the daughter wouldn't believe it then--at any rate, she loved the doctor still, and would, as long as she knew he loved her."

"Why didn't the other manage to make her think he didn't?"

"Well, sir, he did manage it," returned the professor, compressing his white-bearded lips, and lowering his eyebrows. "He told the father some story of having met relations of his in Spain; told him the climate would cure him of all his ailments, without need of a physician, and persuaded him to make the journey at last. The doctor heard of it first by a note written by his intended father-in-law. It contained no request nor encouragement to accompany them--of course, the daughter was to go too; her father wouldn't separate from her. But the doctor's friend had not trusted only to that: he knew that the other's resolution never to leave his country was not likely to be broken, so he was quite secure."

"And the doctor knew nothing of how his friend was cheating him?"

"No, not then. Far from it; he showed him the letter, and asked him for advice. He never dreamed of doubting his constancy, either to himself or to the girl he was engaged to marry. His friend counseled him to write a letter to her he meant to make his wife, explaining his position, and asking her not to leave him. He would carry it to her, and advocate it himself, he said, and do all in his power to influence the father. The young doctor didn't altogether relish this course, nevertheless he trusted in his friend, wrote the letter, and gave it into his hands.

"He never saw his friend after that day. The next morning came an answer from the young lady--a cruel and cold rejection of him--repudiation of his love, and a doubt of his honor. It bewildered him, and, for a time, crushed him. Long afterward, he found out that she had never seen the letter he wrote, but a very different one, of his friend's concoction.

"Very soon afterward, they were gone--all three! and, before a year was passed, he heard that his friend and the daughter were married, and the father died of a fever contracted in Spain.

"He tried to go on as usual for several months, but it was no use. At last, he left his practice, and all his connections, and wandered over the United States--through towns and wildernesses. He rode across the plains on a mustang; clambered through the gorges of the Rocky Mountains; saw the tide come in through the Golden Gate at San Francisco. He pushed north as far as Canada, and thence came down the Mississippi to New Orleans. From there he crossed to the Pacific coast again, and lived to find himself a second time in San Francisco. He didn't stay there long, but struck overland, slanting southward, and, in four or five months, appeared at Charleston, South Carolina. So he worked up the Atlantic coast to New York. By the time he got there, he was older and wiser, and strengthened, body and mind, by a rough experience. He resolved to travel no more; but, as yet, it was not in his power to feel happy.

"Much had happened in his absence. His friend, after living three or four years with his wife in Europe, was separated from her--not, however, by a regular divorce--and she had disappeared, and had not since been heard of. It was reported that she was dead. She had left with her husband a son, two or three years old, at that time a sickly little fellow, scarcely expected to live. It was supposed that the mother had discovered that it was her money, and not herself, that her husband cared for, and, perhaps, too, may have imagined him to be still thinking of his first love, who, indeed, was said to have in some way fomented the quarrel between them, though how, or to what end, was never known. She, by-the-way, after an absence of some years from New York, suddenly reappeared there, and married a wealthy old Knickerbocker, who died not long afterward, and left her his property. She became eminent in society, and was intimate with all the most distinguished people. Her former lover returned from Europe, with his little son, and, I believe, settled somewhere in the neighborhood of New York. They met, and, I understand, came to be on very friendly terms with one another, but the conditions of their lives would have prevented the possibility of marriage, even had they desired it.

"Well, it was before the old Knickerbocker's death that he I am telling you of first arrived in the city. He gave up medicine, and devoted himself to other studies; and, in the course of a few years, he found himself occupying the chairs of History and of Science at the University of New York. He also paid some attention to politics, and became, for a while, a person of really considerable renown and distinction. He was respected by the most influential persons in the city. Among the rest, he became acquainted with the widow--as she was by this time--of the Knickerbocker--and she showed him every kindness and attention. But he did her the injustice of not believing her kindness genuine; he imagined that she cared for nothing but fashion and display, and was polite to him only because she thought he would add a little to her drawing-rooms. At length, a sudden weariness of his mode of life coming over him, he resigned his public positions, and his professorships, and took lodgings in the family of a poor clergyman in Boston. While there, he took up the study of divinity, and, before long, was fully qualified for ordination. But, at this time, he fell, all at once, dangerously ill, and lay at death's door.

"He owed his life to the care that the daughter of the clergyman took of him. She was a sweet, gentle girl, a good deal younger than he; but she grew to love him--perhaps because she had saved him from death. When he recovered, they were married, and found a great deal of happiness; there was no more passionate love, for him, of course; but he could feel gratitude, and tenderness, and a steady and deep affection. They had two children, and when they were five or six years old, the parents moved to the country, and took a house in an out-of-the-way village."

"Is that all?" demanded Bressant, eying the professor's face with great intentness.

"There's not much more. One of the first persons the minister--such he was now--met, on his entrance into the village, was the woman he had loved first--the wife of his false friend--she whom he had long believed dead. She had settled, several years before, in this place, whither he had unawares followed her. In an interview--the first for nearly half a lifetime--all the old errors and falsehoods were cleared up. She told him how her husband's heartlessness and insolent indifference had made her leave him; and how, for the sake of her son, and partly also out of pride, she had made no attempt to repossess herself of the fortune with which she had endowed her husband at their marriage. The hardest of all had been to leave her son, whom she loved with her whole heart; but he was sickly, and she dared not expose him to the chances of privation and hardship, such as she expected to endure. With some three thousand dollars in her pocket, she had come to America, and since then had never heard a word of those she had left, nor had they of her.

"About three years after his arrival, the minister's wife died. He took his two children, and went with them to New York, where they staid nearly a year; and the widow of the old Knickerbocker found them out, and was as cordial as ever. But finally the minister decided to return to his country dwelling, and there he still remains."

As Professor Valeyon concluded, he looked toward his auditor, having been conscious, especially during the latter part of the narrative, of the peculiar magnetic sensation which the steady glance of the young man's eyes produced.

But at the same moment, Bressant turned his head away, and closed his eyes, as if wearied by the strain which had been imposed upon his attention. The old gentleman presently arose, and, after a moment's hesitation, he apparently decided not to disturb or rouse his patient any further. He could wait until another time for whatever discussion yet remained. So he betook himself quietly to the door.

He had nearly closed it when, thinking he heard a sudden call or exclamation from within, he hastily reopened it, and looked into the room. But the invalid showed no signs of having spoken. His position was slightly changed, indeed, but his eyes were still closed, and his face turned somewhat away from the door.

"I must have been mistaken," said Professor Valeyon, as he shut himself into the study. He walked to the table, and, resting one hand upon it, stood for several moments with his head bent forward, thinking. As he raised it, a sigh escaped him; nor was his countenance so serene as it had been half an hour before.

CHAPTER XIX.

AN INTERMISSION.

Bressant's recovery was now very rapid, as he had himself foretold. The wedding was finally fixed for New-Year's Day at noon. They were to be married at the Parsonage; afterward they might go South for two or three months, but it was understood that they would return to the village before settling permanently anywhere.

"If there isn't room for us here, we can board at Abbie's; it would be very pleasant, wouldn't it?" said Sophie; but Bressant made no rejoinder.

Professor Valeyon was getting on well beneath the weight of his prospective loss. He indulged in as many comforting reflections as he could. Cornelia would still be with him, and he loved her as much in one way as Sophie in another. He seemed to think, too, that the bride and groom would probably settle somewhere in the neighborhood. Again, he felt a greater natural affection for Bressant than for any other young man; what son-in-law, after all, would he have preferred to have? And there may have been additional considerations equally pleasant in the contemplation.

Sophie was in her element; the loveliness and richness of her character came out like a sweet, sustaining perfume. In love, all her faculties found their fullest exercise. There was no doubt nor darkness in her soul. Without looking upon her lover as an angel, she saw in him the grand possibilities which human nature still possesses, and felt that she might aid them somewhat to develop and flourish.

As for Bressant, originally the least inclined of any of the circle to be pensive and sombre, he now seemed occasionally to contend with shadows of some kind. He was far from being habitually gloomy, but his moods were not to be depended upon; sometimes a turn of the conversation would seem to alter him; sometimes a word which he himself might utter; sometimes a silence, which found him light-hearted, would leave him troubled and restless. Sophie, so strong and trustful was her happiness, never suspected that any thing more than the fretting of his sickness was responsible for this, and, indeed, thought little about it at all; for, after all, what was it compared to the full tide which swept them both along in such an overmastering harmony?

Within a week from the day of the engagement, a letter came from Cornelia, speaking of her desire to be at home again, and further intimating that she meant to return in a month at farthest. She did not write with as much liveliness and light-heartedness as usual. Sophie read the letter aloud to Bressant and her father as they sat in the former's room on a cool August afternoon.

"How surprised she will be to hear what has been going on!" said Sophie, looking for Bressant to sympathize with her smile. "I'll write to her this evening and tell her all about it." She paused to imagine Cornelia's delight, astonishment, and playful dismay on learning that her younger sister, whom nobody ever suspected of such a thing, was going to be married, and to "that deaf creature," too, whom they had discussed so freely only two months or so before. "She must know before anybody," said Sophie; and the professor, as he rubbed his spectacles, grunted in approval.

But Bressant chewed his mustache, and said, hastily, the blood reddening his face: "No, no! wait--wait till she comes back. She can know it first, still; but you had better tell her with words. You can see, with your own eyes, then, how--how it pleases her."

"Yes, that is true," said Sophie, half reluctantly. "Well?"

Bressant lay silent, with a peering, concentrated look in his eyes, his brows slightly contracted. He must have had an intuitive foreboding that this matter of the two sisters would cause some difficulty, but he could hardly as yet have had a distinct understanding of what jealousy meant.

Howbeit, the lovers grew every day more intimate. In the earlier days of her intercourse with him Sophie had felt an involuntary shrinking from she knew not what, but this had been entirely overcome, partly by habit, partly from an unconscious resolve on her part not to yield to it. The quick, intelligent sympathy of her nature discerned and interpreted the germs of new ideas and impulses which were struggling into life in Bressant's mind; she translated to him his better part, and warmed it with a flood of celestial sunshine.

But the sun which makes flowers bloom brings forth weeds as well, and it would not be strange if this awakening of Bressant's dormant faculties should have also brought some evil to the surface which else might never have seen the light.

In the course of another week or so the invalid had so far improved as to be able to leave his room, and make short excursions about the house, and on to the balcony. The feverish and morbid symptoms faded away, and the indulgence of a Titanic appetite began to bring back the broad, firm muscles to arms, legs, and body. He felt the returning exhilaration of boundless vitality and restless vigor which had distinguished him before his accident.

The summer was now something overworn; the sultry dregs of August were ever and anon stirred by the cool finger of September. The leaves, losing the green strength of their blood, changed color and fluttered, wavering earthward from the boughs whereon they had spent so many sociable months. The surrounding hills seen from the parsonage-balcony took on subtle changes of tint; the patches of pine and evergreen showed out more and more distinctly; the over-ripe grass in the valley lay in lines of fragrant haycocks.

Every day, in the garden, a greater number of red and yellow leaves drifted about the paths, or scattered themselves over the flower-beds, or floated on the surface of the fountain-basin. Little brown birds hopped backward and forward among the twigs, with quick, jerking tails and sideway, speculative heads; or upon the ground, pecking at it here and there with their little bills, as if under the impression that it was summer's grave, and they might chance to dig her up again. But once in a while they got discouraged, and took a sudden, rustling flight to the roof-tree of the barn, seemingly half inclined to continue on indefinitely southward. Then, a reluctance to leave the old place coming over them, they would dip back again on their elastic little wings, to hop and peck anew.

Bressant and Sophie were sitting one afternoon--it was in the first days of September, and within less than a week of the time when they might begin to expect Cornelia--upon the little rustic bench beside the fountain. Their conversation had filtered softly into silence, and only the flop-flop of the weak-backed little spout continued to prattle to the stillness.

"I don't like it!" exclaimed Bressant, stirring his foot impatiently. "I'd rather put my whole life into one strong, resistless shooting upward, even if it lasted only a minute."

"The poor little fountain is happy enough," said well-balanced Sophie.

"To do any thing there must sometimes be a heat and fury in the blood; or a whirl and passion in the brain. Volcanoes reveal the earth's heart!" returned he, sententiously.

"They're very objectionable things though," suggested Sophie, arching her eyebrows.

"They make beautiful mountains, whole islands, sometimes; in a man, they show what stuff is in him. It would be better to commit a deadly crime than to dribble out a life like that fountain's!"

"Even to speak of sin's bringing forth good, is a fearful and wicked thing," said Sophie; and, although tears rose to her eyes, her voice was almost stern. "But you don't know what you say: only think, and you will shudder at it."

But Bressant was perverse. "I think any thing is better than to be torpid. I'd rather know I could never hope for happiness hereafter, than not have blood enough really to hope or despair at all."

"Why do you speak so?" asked Sophie, with a look of pain in her grave little face. "Do you fear any such torpor in your own life? My love, this hasn't always been so."

"I feel too much in me to manage, sometimes," said he, leaning forward on his knees, and working in the sanded path with his foot. "I'm not accustomed to myself yet: it will come all right, later. My health and strength, too, so soon after my weakness--they intoxicate me, I think."

Sophie looked at his broad back and dark curly head, and brown, short beard, as he sat thus beside her, and she grew pale, and sighed, "It isn't right, dear," said she, shaking her head. "There is a quiet and deep strength--not demonstrative--that is better than any passion: it is less striking, I suppose, but it recognizes more a Power greater than any we have."

"It's true--what you say always is true!" responded Bressant, throwing himself back in the seat. "Sophie," he added, without turning his eyes upon her, "if I shouldn't turn out all you wish, you won't stop loving me?"

"I couldn't, I think, if I tried," replied she; and there was more of regret than of satisfaction in her tone as she said it. "Or, if I could, it would tear me all to pieces; and there would be nothing left but my love to God, which is His already. All of me, except that, is love for you."

"God and heaven seem unreal--unsubstantial, at any rate--compared with you," said Bressant, striking his hand heavily upon the arm of the rustic bench. "My love for you is greater than for them!"

"Oh, stop! hush!" cried Sophie, flinching back as if she had received a mortal thrust. The light of indignation and repulse in her gray eyes was awful to Bressant, and his own dropped beneath it. "Have you no respect for your soul?" she continued, presently. "How long would such love last? in what would it end? it would not be love--it would be the deadliest kind of hate."