Bressant Part 20

"It can't do any harm," was pa.s.sing through her mind. "If I'm to be his sister, he ought to like me. It's no use making him detest me. If he loves Sophie so much, what harm can it do for him to be pleased with my beauty? Besides, haven't I a right to my own good looks?"

She kissed her fingers to her reflection, and made a deep courtesy. As she did so, she caught sight of the little petal-less rose-stalk which had fallen out of her traveling-dress on to the floor. She picked it up, and, after turning it idly in her fingers for a moment, she yielded to a sudden fancy, and fastened it into the bosom of her dress; so that this symbol of a body from which the soul had departed formed the central and crowning ornament of the voluptuous and lovely woman.

"There!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed she, with a smile which did not part her lips, but seemed to draw her dark eyebrows a little closer together.

"Strange I'm so quiet!" she mused, as she walked slowly to the door.

"What an ordeal I have to go through! I must sit down with Sophie, and papa, and--him: listen to all the particulars, ask all the proper and necessary questions, smile and laugh; and it would be well, I suppose, to rally the lovers archly on the ardor of their affection, and the suddenness of the consummation. Better still, I can laughingly allude to my own prior claim--suggest that I feel hurt at being distanced and left out in the cold by that demure little younger sister of mine! Oh, yes!"

exclaimed Cornelia, clapping her hands together, "that will cap the climax; what fun!"

Here the tea-bell rang. Cornelia put her hand on the door-handle.

"Of course, n.o.body could help loving Sophie--such a dear, simple, good little thing! and why not he as well as any one else? and, of course, in that case, Sophie must think that she loved him back--thought it her duty, too, perhaps! n.o.body was to blame."

"But he was mine first!" she whispered to her heart, again and again, and she found a disastrous solace in each repet.i.tion. She flung open the door, and ran down-stairs with a light step, a smiling face, and a fierce, tight heart.

CHAPTER XXII.

LOCKED UP.

Bressant's health was now sufficiently established to warrant his moving back to Abbie's. Not that he was particularly anxious to go, but he had no pretext for staying, and his engagement to Sophie was a reason in etiquette why he should not. Accordingly, about a week after Cornelia's arrival, such of his books and other property as had been sent to him from the boarding-house were packed in a box, which was hoisted in to the back of the wagon; he and Professor Valeyon mounted the seat, and, with Dolly between the shafts, they set out for the village.

"I suppose you remember a talk I had with you the first evening you came here?" said the old gentleman, as they turned the corner in the road.

"Told you it would be work enough for a churchful of missionaries to make any thing out of you, in the way of a minister, and so on?"

"Very well; I remember the whole conversation," said Bressant, pushing up his beard into his mouth and biting it.

"Thanks to G.o.d--I can't take any credit to myself--you've been more changed than I ever expected to see you. You've found your heart and how to use it. That goes further toward fitting you for the ministry than all the divinity-books ever printed."

Bressant's hankering after the ministerial life was not so strong as it once had been; but he said nothing.

"You'll need means of support when you're married," resumed the professor. "A few months' hard study will qualify you to take charge of a parish. The next parish to this will be vacant before next spring. If I apply for it now, I may be able to give it you, with your wife, as a New-Year's gift."

"I thought of getting a place in New York. What could I do in a country parish?"

"Expensive, living in New York!" said the professor, with a glance of quiet scrutiny at his companion's profile. "Marriage won't be a good pecuniary investment for you, remember. Better begin safe. The village salary will be good enough."

Bressant communed with himself in silence a few moments, before replying:

"As my father's will stands, Mrs. Vanderplanck--I believe he owed some obligation or other to her--receives half the fortune, and I the other half. Are you certain that my marriage, and the disclosure it would bring about, will forfeit the whole of it?"

Professor Valeyon touched Dolly with the whip, and turned inward his white-bearded lips.

"All I can tell you about it," said he, "is this: when your mother married your father, all her property was settled upon her; so that it was only the event of her death, intestate, that could have given your father the right to will it away at all."

At this information, Bressant folded his arms, and, looking steadfastly before him, said not a word. A silence followed between the two, which lasted over half a mile. Dolly seemed to be in a meditative humor, likewise; she whisked her tail with an absorbed air, and once in a while shook her ears, or wagged her head, as though accepting or rejecting some hypothesis or proposition. Most likely, her problems found their solution in the manger that afternoon; but those of the professor and his companion received neither so early nor so satisfactory a settlement.

When they had entered upon the willow-stretch, where the trees had already scattered upon the ground their first tribute of narrow golden leaves, the younger man came to the end of his meditations, straightened himself in his seat, and spoke:

"Let it be as you said about the country parish; if you can get it for me, I'll be ready for it."

Professor Valeyon's face, which had been somewhat overcast, cleared beautifully; he appealed to Dolly's sympathies with a flick of the whip, to which she responded with a knowing shake of the head, and a refreshing increase of speed.

"That's well, my dear boy," said he. "I respect you."

"I'm not the only one concerned," continued Bressant, who still sat in the same position, with folded arms; "it involves about as much for Mrs.

Vanderplanck as for me. I shall have to consider that point, and attend to it first of all."

"To tell you the truth," returned Professor Valeyon, with an emphatic deliberation of manner, "I don't think you can give her any information that she's not possessed of already. She knows as much as you do, that's certain. You'll do well to begin business nearer home than at Mrs.

Vanderplanck's."

Bressant lifted one hand to his beard, which he twisted about unmercifully. "It's only since Cornelia came back that you have thought that," he said, at length, with sudden keenness.

The old gentleman nodded, and met steadily the rapid glance which the other gave him.

"At all events," the latter resumed presently, "she don't know that I know, and she don't know what I intend. It's not a pleasant business, altogether--understand? You know how I've been brought up. It isn't so easy for me to fall into the right sentiments as it might be for other men. And--I feel it to be a private matter; I ought to go about it alone, and in my own way. Now"--here he turned around, and changed his tone, watching the professor's countenance as he spoke, "are you willing to leave it entirely in my hands?--promise not to question me, nor to speak to me, nor to anybody else, until it's all settled?"

"More than willing, my dear boy! more than satisfied; you shall have a clear field, that's certain. I sha'n't do any thing--sha'n't say a word, meanwhile; shall wait with perfect confidence till you're ready to report, whenever and however you please."

"I should like to make you a present on my wedding-day, in return for the parish, you know. Will that be soon enough?" and the young man met the elder's eye with a sharp look of significance.

"No more fitting time, no more fitting time," replied Professor Valeyon.

The old gentleman's heart was full; he shifted the reins to his right hand, and laid his left upon Bressant's, which he pressed with much feeling. Perhaps it was of bad omen thus to seal a bargain with the left hand, but no misgivings of the sort troubled the professor. He felt more at ease than at any time since his pupil first sprang up the steps of the Parsonage-porch.

But Bressant, if he were a child in the world of the affections, was, in other respects, a man of exceptional shrewdness and comprehensive ability. Although he had never as yet turned his attention to business matters, he had every faculty and instinct required to make a successful business-man. When he found his own interests deeply at stake, he may have had more than one motive for wishing to secure to himself a clear field. But Professor Valeyon was still as simple-hearted a soul--as quick to trust wherever his sympathies dictated--as ever in his younger days.

Bressant did not intend to deceive him, but then he had no irrevocably settled plans. He was not one of those who follow blindfold the promptings of any principle, simply because it chances to be a lofty one. Although pa.s.sionate, and hot of blood, he could believe that the greatest good might be made not inconsistent with the greatest comfort.

He undoubtedly intended to do what honor, generosity, and his future father-in-law, urged him to do; but it was less from an abstract love of virtue, than from an overmastering unwillingness to give up Sophie (his affection for whom was the most deeply-seated necessity of his nature--a fact which must be borne in mind through all that follows), and also--this was likewise a consideration of the greatest weight; indeed, Sophie alone counted for more--also, from a very confident conviction that, after every thing had been accomplished, according to the highest dictates of truth, and justice, and all that--he would not, to all intents and purposes, lose his fortune after all; that, whatever might be the legal disposition of it, all the enjoyments and benefits that it could confer would still be his, with the additional grace of having acted in a most lofty and self-sacrificing spirit; that, in short, and to use a homely ill.u.s.tration, he would be able to give away his cake and eat it too.

After being safely landed at the boarding-house--Abbie was not at home at the moment--Bressant bade farewell to the professor, and, a.s.sisted by the fat Irish servant-girl, carried his box up to his room. It was neatly swept, dusted, and put in order; a bunch of fresh flowers upon the table; others, in pots, upon the window-sill. Their fragrance gave a delicate tone to the atmosphere of the room, and perhaps penetrated more nearly to Bressant's heart than an hour full of unanswerable arguments and exhortations. He turned to the fat servant, who stood smiling, and wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n.

"Who brought these flowers? Who arranged them here?"

"Sure, and wasn't it Abbie herself!" replied the functionary, giving her mistress her Christian name, with true democratic freedom. "More than that; isn't it herself has swept out the room every week, let alone dusting of it every day of her life! which is not mentioning that the flowers has been exchanged every day likewise, and fresh put in place of them, by reason that the old shouldn't fade; which is a fact unprecedented, and unbeknown in my experience, which have been in this house nine year come St. Patrick's day--G.o.d bless him!"

Having thus delivered herself of what had evidently been weighing on her mind for weeks past, the fat servant-girl stopped wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n (without help of which praiseworthy act she could no more have talked, than a donkey with a heavy stone tied to his tail can bray), and turning herself about, waddled toward the door. Bressant hesitated a moment, pa.s.sed his hand rapidly down over his face and beard, and then, catching open the door just as the fat servant-girl was closing it, he requested her to inform Abbie, when she came back, of his return, and tell her he would like to speak with her.

"I'll do it, sir; rest easy," was the encouraging reply. "Faith, and it's a handsome man he is, and a sweet, lovely look he has out of his eyes; leastways now, which is, maybe, more than could be said when first he came here, three months ago, and looked that cold and sharp at a body as might make one shiver like. It's likely his being going to marry Miss Sophie up to the Parsonage as has fetched a change in him; which, she's a dear good girl; and may they be happy--G.o.d bless the both of them!"

Thus soliloquizing, the fat servant-girl, ap.r.o.n in hand, descended the narrow stairs, and betook herself to the kitchen.

Bressant paced restlessly up and down his small room, stopping every minute or so to bend over the flower-pots in the window, or take a sniff from the bouquet on the table. His cheeks and forehead were flushed, and his eyes very brilliant. His lips worked incessantly against one another, and he held his hands now clasped behind his back, now thrust into the pockets of his coat. But there was certainly a n.o.ble and a gentle light upon his features, different from their usual expression of dazzling intellectual efficiency, different from the pa.s.sionate fire which Cornelia's presence had more than once caused to flicker over them, different even from the purer and deeper illumination which his love for Sophie sometimes kindled within him. A virtuous act stirs the soul by its own innate beauty, even when the motive is not all unselfish. It was probably the first time that precisely such a look had ever visited Bressant's face; and it was certainly a great pity that no one but a fat Irish servant-girl should have had the privilege of beholding it there.

Presently, as he stood facing the door, he saw the latch lifted. The moment had come. Involuntarily he caught hold of the back of the chair, and drew in his breath.

Pshaw! only the fat servant again. Bressant bit his lip, stamped his foot upon the floor, and frowned.