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."
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 passionate 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 God 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.