Bressant by Julian Hawthorne

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you Professor Valeyon?" he asked.

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

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

"I'm Bressant," said he.

CHAPTER III.

SOPHIE AND CORNELIA ENTER INTO A COVENANT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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