Bressant Part 32

But Cornelia, as she left the room upon her heavy errand, shook her head, and drew a shivering breath. She knew her father would look upon the matter more from the world's point of view than Sophie did; and it was a curious example of the strength of the material element in Cornelia, that she more feared to meet her father's eye, whom she felt would understand that aspect of her disgrace, than Sophie's, who probably had a more acute and certainly a more exclusive perception of her spiritual accountability.

As she was beginning to mount the stairs, she met her father already on his way down. He noticed the wretchedness depicted on her face, and, supposing it to be all on Sophie's account, did what he could to comfort her.

"Don't despair, my child," quoth the old man, laying his hands on her shoulders. "Nothing is so hopeless that we mayn't trust in G.o.d to better it."

The words seemed to apply so felicitously that Cornelia tried to think it a good omen sent from heaven. Then he bent over and kissed her forehead--perhaps before she was aware, perhaps not; but she took it, praying that it might prove a blessing to her hereafter, even if it were the last she were destined to receive. She pa.s.sed on into her own room without speaking, and sat down there to wait.

To wait! and for what, and how long? till her father came to her? But suppose he were not to come? She would stay there, perhaps, an hour--that would be long enough--yes, too long; but still let it be an hour; and then, he not coming, what should she do? Go to him? No, she would never dare, never presume to do that. What then? steal down-stairs, a guilty, hateful thing, softly open the door which would never open to her again, and run away through the snow? The world would be before her, but snow and ice would but faintly symbolize its coldness. Was it likely that heaven itself would yield her entrance after her father's door had closed upon her?

But would not Sophie prevail, and turn his heart to forgiveness? Oh!

but why was it not probable, and more than probable, that the argument would result the other way?--that her father, by a clear and stern representation of the real heinousness of her offense, would convince Sophie that Cornelia was ent.i.tled to nothing but condemnation?

There would be nothing to urge against the justice of such a sentence--nothing.

Perhaps Sophie's courage might fail her, or her strength give way, leaving the ugly story but half told, and then her father would come to her to learn the rest. What should she do then? How much more terrible to be obliged to tell him then, after having made up her mind that her sister was to take the burden off her shoulders, than it would have been before any such resource had presented itself! How much more awful to meet her father when aroused by suspicion and anger, and perhaps loathing, than to begin her confession while his face was as she had always seen it, when turned toward her--loving and tender!

She could not sit still, at last, but rose up from her chair to walk the room--not from the old, restless energy, which needed physical exercise to keep it within bounds, for Cornelia was now white and faint, from exhaustion of mind and body, but from the tumult of pervading fear and delusive hope--the attention strained to catch some sound from below, and the dread lest it should never come. As the suspense grew more painful, the rapidity of her walk increased.

She expected now, every moment, to catch herself shrieking aloud, or performing some mad action or other. How long had she been up there already? Was it an hour yet? It must be an hour. Oh! it was more. Was he never coming, then?--never? O G.o.d! was there no forgiveness? Cornelia's walk had gone on quickening until it was almost a run. She was circling round and round the room, like a wild animal--was growing dizzy and exhausted, but was afraid to stop: better her body should give way than her mind--and, all the time, her ears were alert for the slightest sound.

She halted, wild-eyed and unsteady on her feet, her hand trembling at her lips. A step in the pa.s.sage below, ascending the stairs slowly and heavily. Oh! did it come in mercy? She tried to draw a meaning from the sound--then dared not trust her inference. The steps had gained the landing now--were advancing along the entry toward her door. Did they bear a load of sorrow only, or of hate and condemnation likewise?

They paused at her threshold--then there was a knock, thrice repeated--not loud, nor rapid, nor regular, nor precise--rather as one heart might knock for admittance to another. Cornelia tried to say "Come in," or to open the door, but could neither speak nor move. Iron bands seemed to be clasped around all her faculties of motion. Would he go away and leave her?

The door opened, turning slowly and hesitatingly on its hinges, until it disclosed her father's venerable figure. His limbs seemed weak; his shoulders drooped; but Cornelia looked only at his face. His eyes were deep and compa.s.sionate. He held out his arms, which shook slightly but continually: "Come, my daughter," said he.

She was his daughter still! She cried out, and, walking hurriedly to him, laid herself close against him, and he hugged her closer yet--poor, miserable, erring creature though she was.

So the three were reunited--and not superficially, but more intimately and indissolubly than ever before. They would not be apart, but remained together in Bressant's room--Sophie on the bed, with an expression of divine contentment on her face, Cornelia and the professor sitting near.

"Papa," said Sophie, as the afternoon came on, "I want to make my will."

Cornelia caught her breath sharply, and, turning away her face, covered her eyes with her hand. Professor Valeyon's gray eyebrows gathered for a moment--then he steadied himself, and said, "Well, my dear."

It was not a very intricate matter. The various little bequests were soon made and noted down as she requested. After all was disposed of, there was a little pause.

"Neelie, dear," then said Sophie, turning her eyes full upon her, "I bequeath my love to you."

Cornelia perceived the hidden significance in the words, and blushed so deep and warm that the tears were dried upon her cheeks. Sophie went on, before she could make any reply:

"And I have something left for you, too, papa, though I know no one needs it less than you. But you may be called on for a great deal, so I bequeath you my charity. I haven't had it so very long myself."

The professor bowed his head, and, the will being complete, he took off his spectacles, and wiped them with his handkerchief.

"I was telling Neelie this morning, papa," resumed Sophie, after a while, "that I had been--that I'd had a dream that I was with Bressant; and I feel sure--though I suppose you'll think it nothing but a sick fancy of mine--that he will be here to-morrow noon."

The professor looked at Sophie, startled and anxious; but her appearance was so composed, straight-forward, and full of faith, he could not think her wandering.

"Do you know where he has been, my dear? or where he is now?" asked he, gently.

"I cannot tell that. I knew and understood a great deal in my dream that I cannot remember now," she answered. "I only know that he will be here to-morrow, and, papa, and you, Neelie, whether you believe as I do or not, I want you to get ready to receive him. Let it be in this dear old room--I lying here as I am now, and you sitting so beside me. We'll wait for him to-morrow morning until twelve o'clock. If I should die before then, let my body stay here until noon, for I want him to see my face when he comes, so that he'll always remember how happy I looked. But if, after that little clock on the mantel-piece strikes twelve, still he isn't here, then you may do with me as you will. I shall not know nor mind."

After this little speech, Sophie became very silent, being, in truth, too weak and worn out to speak or move, save at long, and ever longer, intervals. All that night, Professor Valeyon carried an aching and mistrustful heart; but Cornelia had a red spot in either cheek, never fading nor shifting. Sophie appeared to wander several times, murmuring something about darkness, and snow, and deadly weariness. A snow-storm had set in toward evening, and lasted until daybreak, a circ.u.mstance which seemed to cause Sophie considerable anxiety.

By ten o'clock all the preparations were made according to Sophie's wish, and there was nothing to do but to wait. Cornelia sat brooding with folded arms, and the feverish spots on her cheeks. Occasionally she restlessly varied her position, seldom allowing her eyes to stray around the room, however, save that once in a while they sought Sophie's colorless, ethereal face, as a thirsty soul the water. The professor stood much at the window, and once or twice he imagined he caught a glimpse, somewhere down the road, of a darkly-clad woman's figure; but she never came nearer, and he decided it must be a hallucination of his fading eyes.

Eleven o'clock struck from the little ormolu timepiece. A few moments afterward Sophie stirred slightly as she lay, and the professor and Cornelia listened breathlessly for what she would say.

She lifted her heavy lids, and turned her eyes, a little dimmer now than heretofore, but steady and confident, first on her father, then on her sister.

"Till noon--remember!" said she.

Nothing more was heard, after that, but the hasty ticking of the little ormolu clock, as its hands traveled steadily around the circle.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

THE HOUR AND THE MAN.

Bressant jumped on to the platform of the newly-arrived train. The cars were pretty full; but, coming at last to a vacant seat by the side of a clean-shaven gentleman with a straight, hard mouth, and a glossy-brown wig, curling smoothly inward all around the edge, he dropped into it without ceremony.

The train left the depot and hurried away over the road which Bressant had just traversed in the opposite direction. He sat with his arms folded, appearing to take no notice of any thing, and his neighbor with the wig read the latest edition of a New-York paper with stern attention, occasionally altering the position of his stove-pipe hat on his head. By-and-by, the conductor, a small, precise man, with a dark-blue coat, cap to match, a neatly-trimmed sandy beard, shaved upper lip, and an utterance as distinct and clippy as the holes his steel punch made in the tickets, came along upon his rounds.

Bressant put his hands into his pockets, and discovered, with some consternation, that he had but a comparatively small amount of money left; his newly-accepted poverty was certainly losing no time in making itself felt. However, such as it was, he handed it to the conductor, and inquired how near it would take him to his proposed destination.

"Eighty-one miles, rail," responded the official, as he took and clipped the ticket of the gentleman with the newspaper; "comes shorter by road, seventy-four to seventy-five," and he proceeded down the aisle, snapping up tickets on one side or the other, as a hen does grains of corn.

Bressant covered his eyes with his hand, and amused himself by performing a little sum in mental arithmetic. The amount of money he had given the conductor represented a distance which it would take a certain length of time--say four hours--to traverse. It was now four o'clock in the afternoon, and consequently would be eight before that distance was accomplished. From eight o'clock Sat.u.r.day night, till twelve o'clock Sunday noon, was sixteen hours, and in sixteen hours he must travel, on foot, and through the snow, seventy-five miles of unknown roads.

"Four and a half miles an hour, and nothing to eat since breakfast,"

said Bressant to himself. He took his hand from his eyes, and pa.s.sed it down his face to his beard, which he twisted and turned unmercifully.

"It's lucky it isn't any more," remarked he, philosophically.

In the course of half an hour or so, the straight-mouthed gentleman, having finished the last column of his paper, folded it up into the smallest possible compa.s.s, and handed it politely to Bressant. The latter accepted it abstractedly, and, opening one fold, read the first paragraph which presented itself, his interest increasing as he proceeded. It was in the column of latest local news, and, after bewailing, in choice language, the frightful prevalence, even among the highest aristocracy, of opium-eating and kindred indulgences, it went on to particularize the sad case of an esteemed lady, of great wealth and high connections, widow of a scion of one of our oldest families, who, having unwisely yielded herself, during many years past, to an inordinate use of morphine, as an antidote to nervous disorder, had, on the previous evening, in a temporary paroxysm of madness, succeeded in taking her own life. "No other cause can be a.s.signed for the rash act,"

pursued the paragraph, "Mrs. V---- being, in all other respects than as regarded this unfortunate weakness, blessed beyond the average. She was at the moment, it is understood, contemplating immediate departure for a lengthened sojourn in Europe, taking with her an only son, a young man of fine attainments, and a recent graduate of one of our first theological seminaries, who desired to seek, among the European capitals, at once for the recreation and culture, which the arduous preparation for and the enlightened prosecution of his exalted calling rendered respectively necessary and desirable. It is not known whether this sad casualty will cause him to relinquish his design."

After finishing this paragraph, which discreetly suppressed any further personality than to remark that the deceased bore one of those quaint old Knickerbocker surnames which are in New York synonymous with _haut ton_ and gentility, Bressant folded up the paper, and, resting his arms upon the back of the seat in front of him, made them a pillow for his forehead. This position he maintained so long, that his neighbor with the wig came to the conclusion that he must be either asleep or drunk; and, by way of arriving at some solution of the question, abstracted from his hand the rolled-up newspaper which protruded out of it. At this the young man roused himself, and presently turned to him of the wig, and thanked him for his loan with an earnestness which appeared to him, under the circ.u.mstances, rather uncalled for. He began to doubt the prudence of sitting next to so large a man, of so singular a behavior, and took advantage of the next vacancy that occurred to shift his quarters, carrying the newspaper with him.

Darkness had fallen, and the lighted interior of the crowded car had duplicated itself, through the medium of the gla.s.s window-pane, upon the black vacancy without, long before the train halted at the station which marked the boundary of Bressant's riding privilege. He got out, and was immediately smitten in the face by the cold, impalpable fingers of a thick falling snow-storm.

A bobbing lantern, carried by an invisible man, was all that came to welcome him. He walked into the waiting-room, which was lighted by a lamp with a dirty tin reflector behind it, and was furnished with a few well-worn chairs, painted gray, and polished by use; a couple of spittoons, and a pyramidal stove containing the ashes of the day's fire.

The plaster walls were ornamented by many-colored railway cards, and by a fly-spotted and dusty map. A clock was fastened over the door.

He turned to the man with the lantern (who was standing in the door-way, looking as if he rather suspected Bressant contemplated stealing some of the valuables of the place), and asked him whether he could tell him the nearest road to his destination. After considerable questioning and delay, the man finally announced his entire ignorance in the matter; and Bressant was just about to make him a sharp rejoinder, when his eyes happened to fall upon the map. He stepped up to it, and found it to be of the State in which they were.

By the aid of the lantern, and a good deal of dusting, he finally discovered the spot in which he then stood, and managed to trace out a doubtful line of road, between that and the place whither he was bound.

There seemed to be few cross-roads, however, and such as there were he rapidly noted in his memory. In one place the road ran off in a kind of loop, to pa.s.s through an outlying village, and, by making a cross-cut at that point, he might save himself five or six miles. But since, on calculation, he found it would be at least six o'clock in the morning before he got to the loop in question, he decided not to risk abandoning, in the state he would then be in, the beaten track for any such problematical advantage.