Bressant Part 18

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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion: 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 G.o.d, which is His already. All of me, except that, is love for you."

"G.o.d 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."

Bressant rose to his feet, and made a gesture with his arms in the air, as if striving by a physical act to regain the mental force and equilibrium which Sophie had so unexpectedly overthrown. The mighty strength and untamed vehemence of the man's nature were exhibited in the movement. Sophie saw, in the vision of a moment, on how wild and stormy a sea she had embarked, and for a moment, perhaps, she quailed at the sight. But again her great love brought back the flush of dauntless courage, and her trembling ceased. She became aware, at that critical moment, that she was the stronger of the two; and Bressant probably felt it also. He had put forth all his power in a pa.s.sionate and convulsive effort to prevail over the soul of this delicate girl, and he had been worsted in the brief, silent struggle. He did not need to look in her clear eyes to know it.

His love must have been strong, indeed; for it stood the test of the defeat. He sat down again, and after an almost imperceptible hesitation, he held out his hand toward her. She put her own in it, with its pressure, soft and delicately strong.

"I can't reason about these things--I can only feel," said he. "You can look into my heart if you will. Don't give me up: you can help me to see it all as you do. Isn't it your duty, Sophie, if you love me?"

"Oh! I will pray for you, my darling," she answered, almost sobbing in the tenderness of her great heart, and laying her head upon his broad shoulder. "I would not lose your love for all the world; but I feared you might be led to something--something that would prevent your loving either G.o.d or me. Promise me something, dear: if you are ever in trouble or danger, and I'm not with you, come to me! No harm can reach us when we're together. You need me, and I you."

"I promise," replied Bressant.

In the short silence that followed, Sophie heard, though Bressant could not, a quick, excited, warbling voice calling her again and again by name. She released herself from her lover's hold, and sprang up with a cry of delight.

Bressant, surprised and defrauded, was about to remonstrate; but ere the words came, he saw Cornelia appear upon the balcony, and he sank back and held his peace.

CHAPTER XX.

BRESSANT CONFIDES A SECRET TO THE FOUNTAIN.

Sophie went flitting up the garden-path toward the house, and in a moment more the sisters were in one another's arms. Bressant, glad of the concealment afforded by the shrubbery, remained gazing moodily at the fountain, his head on his hand. The two girls entered the house, and sat down in the professor's study, where the old gentleman (who had been the first to meet Cornelia) sat enclouding himself with smoke, but betraying no other symptom of his huge delight.

"But how came you to get here so soon, you dear darling?" said Sophie, looking with lighted eyes at her sister. "We thought it would be a week at least."

"Oh, bless your heart, I couldn't wait, you know. So awfully tired I got of seeing new things and people. Dear me!"--and Cornelia threw herself back in her chair and uplifted her gloved hands in a little gesture of ineffability--"you would never imagine what a bore society is, after all."

The professor, from his cloud, cast, un.o.bserved, a glance of quiet scrutiny at his daughter. A certain jaunty embroidery of tone and manner struck him at once--she wasn't quite the same simple little woman who had gone to New York two months ago. Well, well, they would wear off, perhaps, these little affectations; and then, too, it was not to be expected of her that she'd be a girl all her life. They all must needs pa.s.s through this stage to something better--or worse: all women of pith and pa.s.sion like Cornelia.

"How did you leave Aunt Margaret?" inquired he.

"Oh, _desolee_, because I would go away," replied Cornelia, with a very pretty laugh. "She vowed she could have spared me much better six weeks earlier; for, you see, after I'd learned the ropes, and how to take care of myself, I became, as she expressed it, 'such a dear, sweet, _invaluable_ little _attachee_.'"

Sophie laughed at the comical air with which her sister repeated the sentence; yet, when her laugh was gone, there remained a slight shadow of disappointment. She, too, was unwillingly aware of some alteration.

"Is she such a grand lady as you expected?" asked she.

"Oh, my dear, grandeur's a humbug, let me tell you. Gracious! by the time I'd been there a week, I could put it on as well as anybody. Aunt Margaret, she was no end of a swell, and all that; but, as for grandeur!--And she was such an odd old thing. Sometimes I seemed to like her, and sometimes she almost made me faint. Once in a while I thought she was trying to pump me about something; though, to be sure, there was nothing in me to be pumped. I told her about Abbie, for one thing, as much as I knew, and she seemed awfully interested--it was put on, I suppose, very likely; and yet she really did seem to mean it. I remember she couldn't get over my forgetting Abbie's last name: she even told me to mention it the first time I wrote to her. So queer of the old person."

"No necessity for you to write, my dear," observed the professor at this point. "I've been intending to do it myself for some time, and I'll thank her for her hospitality, and so forth."

Cornelia nodded, yawned, and then allowed her eyes to wander around the room.

"How nice and cozy and home-like every thing does look! And so small.

Why, I should almost believe I was looking through the small end of the telescope, or something."

"New York houses are so big, I suppose?" said Sophie.

"Gracious, dear!" exclaimed Cornelia, laughing again. "Why, the very cupboards are bigger than this whole house. It'll take me ever so long to get over being afraid to knock my head against something when I stand up."

"You can sit out-doors until the weather gets too cold," observed the professor. "The sky is as high here as in New York, isn't it?"

Cornelia ignored this remark with admirable self-poise. "Aunt Margaret was asking a good deal about Mr. Bressant, too," said she. "She said she'd only heard about him from you, papa; but I thought, sometimes, she must be fibbing. Once in a while, you know, she acted just as if she had forgotten having said she didn't know him. However, that's absurd, of course. By-the-way, where is he? Here still?"

"Oh, yes. O Neelie dear, I have such news to tell you. But--yes, he's out there by the fountain, I believe. Go out and speak to him, and then come up to my room and hear the secret."

"All right, I'll be there directly;" and, springing from her chair with a sudden overflow of animal spirits, drowning out the small growth of affectation, the beautiful woman danced out upon the balcony, and down the steps. Sophie went to her chamber, and the professor remained in his study to indulge his own thoughts, which, by the way, appeared to be neither light nor agreeable.

As Cornelia neared the fountain, her steps grew more staid. The cl.u.s.tering shrubbery hid Bressant from sight until she was close upon him. She thought, perhaps, in the few moments that pa.s.sed as she walked down the path, of that other time when she had picked her way, in his company, between the rain-besprinkled shrubs. Here was the same tea-rose bush, and hardly a flower left upon it. Yes, here was one, full-blown, to be sure, and ready to fall to pieces; but still, perhaps he would smile and remember when he saw it in her bosom; or perhaps--and Cornelia smiled secretly to herself at the thought--perhaps he needed no reminder. He was sitting by the fountain now. What more likely than that he was thinking over that first strange scene that had been enacted between them there? Dear fellow! how he would start and redden with pleasure when he saw her appear, in flesh and blood, in the midst of his reverie! Cornelia blushed; but some of the loose petals of the overblown rose in her bosom became detached, and floated earthward.

All at once her heart began to beat so as to incommode her: she was uncertain whether she was pale or red. It seemed to require all her courage to get over the last few steps of garden-path that brought her into view. What was it? A premonition? Now she saw him, as he sat with his legs crossed, his head resting on his hand, turned away from her, staring moodily before him.

He did not look up until Cornelia stood almost beside him; then, become aware of her presence, he leaped suddenly to his feet, and towered before her, one hand grasping the fantastically-curved limb which ornamented the back of the rustic seat.

In the s.p.a.ce that intervened while Cornelia, startled at his abrupt movement, remained motionless in front of him, the piece of branch which his hand held parted with a sharp crack. It broke the pause, and Cornelia laughed.

"You seem to be recovering your strength pretty well, if you can break the limb of a tree short off just by laying your hand upon it! How do you do? Aren't you glad to see me?" and she held out her hand with a frankness not all real, for she felt a secret misgiving, and an undefined fear.