ANOTHER INTERMISSION.
It was something of a surprise to Bressant, after his interview with
Cornelia, that she still continued to avoid him. But, after what she had
said to him, to set his mind at rest regarding the spirit and manner of
their intercourse, she felt an intuition that it would be as well he
should believe that she herself was not over-anxious to be on any terms
with him whatever.
Still, he often saw her, and always carried away a charming impression
of what he saw. Once, she had mounted a chair in the library, and was in
the act of reaching down a book from a high shelf, when he entered
unexpectedly. She turned, caught his eye, and dimpled into a mischievous
smile. All day he could not drive the picture out of his head--the
bounteous, graceful form, the heavy, dark, lustreless hair, the
fascinating face, and the smile. He had but just left Sophie, yet the
fine chords she had struck in him were drowned in Cornelia's sensuous
melody.
Again, one day, coming into the house, he chanced to enter the parlor,
and there sat Cornelia, in an easy-chair, her feet stretched out upon a
stool, fast asleep. He came close up to her, and stood looking. What
artist could ever have hoped to reproduce the warmth, glow, and richness
of color and outline? He watched her, feeling it to be a stolen
pleasure, yet a nameless something, surging up within him, compelled
him to remain. In another moment--who can calculate a man's strength and
weakness?--he might have stooped to kiss her, with no brother's kiss!
But, in that moment, she awoke, and perhaps surprised his half-formed
purpose in his eyes.
She was too clear-headed to regret having awaked, for she saw that he
regretted it. And, because he did not venture, she being awake, to take
the kiss, she knew he was no brother, and knew not what it was to be
one. So she put on a look of annoyance, and told him petulantly to go
about his business. Off he went, and passed his hour with Sophie, who
was as lovely, as fresh, and as purely transparent as ever. But some
turbid element had been stirred in Bressant's depths, which spoiled his
enjoyment for that day, making him moody and silent.
Such little incidents--there were many of them--were far too simple and
natural to be the work of deliberation and forethought. But Cornelia was
disposed to use them, when they did occur, to her best possible
advantage, and therefore they acquired potency to affect Bressant. She
wished that to be, which he had not stamina enough to oppose: thus a
subtle bond was established between them, lending a significance to the
most ordinary actions, such as could never have been recognized between
indifferent persons.
This was all progress for Cornelia, and she well knew it, and yet she
was not at ease nor satisfied. She began to find out that it was no such
light matter to usurp the place of such a woman as Sophie, though the
latter was laboring under the great disadvantage of being ignorant of
the plot against her. In most cases, indeed, the attempt would have been
wellnigh hopeless, but Cornelia had two exceptionally powerful
allies--her own supreme beauty, and Bressant's untrained and
ill-regulated animal nature, which he had not yet learned to understand
and provide against. And there was another thing in her favor, too,
although she knew it not--the demoralizing effect upon the young man's
character--of his failure to fulfil his agreement with the professor.
The evils that are in us link themselves together to drag us down, their
essential quality being identical, whatever their particular
application.
Nevertheless, time went on, and November had stalked shivering away
before the frosty breath of December, and still Cornelia had
accomplished nothing definite; nay, she scarcely felt sufficiently sure
of her footing to attempt any thing. And what was it that she was to
attempt? On looking this question in the face, at close quarters--it
wanted less than four weeks now of that wedding-day which Cornelia had
promised herself should see no wedding!--when she found herself pressed
so peremptorily as this for an answer, it might be imagined that she
turned pale at what was before her. And, indeed, the prospect, viewed in
its best light, was discouraging and desperate enough. For at what price
to herself must success be bought, and at what sacrifice be enjoyed? She
must either lose, or deserve to lose, all that a woman ought to hold
most sacred and most dear--home, the esteem and love of friends, the
protection of truth, and, above all, and worst of all, her own
self-respect. All these in exchange for a baffled, angry, selfish man,
at whose mercy she would be, with only one word to speak in
self-defense and justification; and it was much to be feared that he
would, considering the circumstances, reject and scoff at even that. The
one word was--she loved him! and, if there be any redeeming virtue in
it, let her, in Heaven's name, have the benefit thereof. She can rely on
nothing else.
But Cornelia would not be disheartened. If she saw the rocks ahead,
against whose fatal shoulders she was being swept--if she heard, dinning
in her ears, the rush and roar of the headlong, irresistible rapids--if
her eyes could penetrate the void which opened darkly beyond--she only
nerved herself the more resolutely, her glance was all the firmer, her
determination the more unfaltering.
The peril in which she stood but kindled in her heart a fiery depth of
passion, such as overtopped and tamed the very terrors of her position.
Because she must lose the world to gain her end, that end was exalted,
in her thought, above a hundred worlds. The faculties of her soul,
which, in her time of innocence and indifference, had been dormant--half
alive--now sprang at once into an exalted, fierce vitality. The hour of
evil found Cornelia a creature of far higher powers and more vigorous
development than she could ever, under any other conditions, have
attained. She showed most gloriously and greatly, when illuminated by
that lurid light whose flame was fed by all that was most gentle,
womanly, and sweet within her. She looked nearest to a goddess, when she
needed but one step to be transformed into a demon.
In following out her psychological progress, we have necessarily
outstripped, to some extent, the sober pace of the narrative. It was
about the first of December that rumors began to be circulated in the
village of an approaching ball at Abbie's. It was to be the
grandest--the most complete in all its appointments--of any that ever
had been given there. It was looked upon, in advance, as the great event
of the year. Real, formal invitations were to be sent out, printed on a
fold of note-paper, with the blank left for the name, and
"R.S.V.P."--whatever that might mean--in the lower left-hand corner.
There were to be six pieces in the band; dancing was to be from eight to
four, instead of from seven to twelve, as heretofore; and the toilets,
it was further whispered, were to be exceptionally brilliant and
elaborate. Certain it was that dress-making might have been seen in
progress through the windows of any farm-house within ten miles; and at
the Parsonage no less than elsewhere.
Sophie had an exquisite taste in costume, though her ideas, if allowed
full liberty, were apt to produce something too fanciful and eccentric
to be fashionably legitimate. But, let a dress once be made up, and
happy she whose fortune it was to stand before Sophie and be touched
off. Some slight readjustment or addition she would make which no one
else could have thought of, but which would transform merely good or
pretty into unique and charming. Sophie had the masterly simplicity of
genius, but was generally more successful with others than with herself.
As for Cornelia, she knew how she ought to look; but how to effect what
she desired was sometimes beyond her ability. She had little faculty for
detail, relying on her sister to supplement this deficiency. She was
more of a conformist than was Sophie in regard to toilet matters;
and--an important virtue not invariable with young ladies--she always
could tell when she had on any thing becoming.
One December day, when a broad, pearl-gray sky was powdering the
motionless air with misty snow, the sisters sat together at their sewing
in what had been known, since his accident, as Bressant's room. There
was no stove; but a rustling, tapering fire was living its ardent,
yellow, wavering life upon the brick hearth, and four or five logs of
birch and elm were reddening and crackling into embers beneath its
intangible intensity. It made a grateful contrast to the soft, cold bank
of snow that lay, light and round, upon the outside sill and the
slighter ridges that sloped and clung along the narrow foothold of the
window-pane frames. Presently Cornelia got up from the low stool on
which she had been sitting, and, having slipped on the waist of her new
dress, invited Sophie's criticism with a courtesy.
"Dear me, Neelie!" exclaimed she, in gentle consternation, "are you
going to wear your corsage so low as that?"
"Yes, why not?" returned Cornelia, with a kind of defiance in her tone;
"it's the fashion, you know. Oh, I've seen them lower than that in New
York!"
"But there'll be nothing like it here, dear, I'm sure. Think how
frightened poor Bill Reynolds will be when he sees you."
Sophie looked up, expecting to see her sister smile; but she, having in
view the opinion of quite another person than Mr. Reynolds, remained
unusually grave.
"Don't mind me, dear," Sophie added, fearing she might have given
offense. "You know I'd rather see you look well than myself, especially
as I may not be here to see you another year."
She drew a long breath of happy regret, thinking of what was to follow
the next day but one after the ball.
Cornelia, looking into the fire, her pure, round chin resting on her
bent forefinger, started, as the same thought entered her mind. Was it
so near, though--that marriage? or would an eternity elapse ere Bressant
and Sophie called one another husband and wife?
"Are you glad the day comes so soon, Sophie?"
"Yes," answered she, with quiet simplicity. "A few weeks ago it
frightened me--it seemed so near; but not now. I love him much more than
I did--that's one reason. And he loves me more, I think."
"Loves you more! why? what makes you think so?" demanded Cornelia, a
frown quivering across her forehead.
"His manner tells me so: he's more subdued and gentle; almost sad,
indeed, sometimes. He's lived so much in his mind since we were engaged:
I can see it in his face, and hear it in his voice, even. He's not like
other men; I never want him to be; he has all that makes other men worth
any thing, and still is himself. He has the greatest and the warmest
heart that ever was; but when he first came here he had no idea how to
use it, nor even what it was for."
"And he's found out now, has he?"
"Yes--especially in the last few weeks. Before, he used sometimes to be
violent, almost--to lose command of himself; but he never does now."
"But doesn't he ever tell you that he loves you more than ever?"
"We understand each other," replied Sophie, with a slight touch of
reserve, for she thought she was being questioned further than was
entirely justifiable. "Nothing he could say would make me feel his love
more than I do."
Cornelia smiled to herself with secret derision; she imagined she could
give a more plausible reason for her sister's reticence. She took off
her "waist" and resumed her place upon the stool.
"What should you do, Sophie, supposing something occurred to prevent
your marriage?"
"Die an old maid," returned she: not treating the question seriously,
but as a piece of Cornelia's wanton idleness.
Cornelia began to laugh, but interrupted herself, half-way, with a sob.
She was seized by a fantasy that if Sophie died an old maid her sister
would have been the cause of it--would be a murderess! The sudden
jarring of this idea--tragical enough, even without the ghastly spice of
reality that there was about it--against the ludicrous element with
which tradition flavors the name of old maid--caught the young woman at
unawares, and threw her rudely out of her nervous control. It was a
result which could scarcely have happened, had she been less morbidly
and unnaturally excited and strained to begin with; as it was, it may
have been an outbreak which had long been brewing, and to which Sophie's
answer had but given the needful stimulus.
The sob was succeeded by a convulsion of painful laughter, that would
go on the more Cornelia tried to stop it. At last, in gasping for
breath, the laughter gave way to an outburst of tears and sobs, which
seemed, in comparison, to be a relief. But at the first intermission,
the discordant laughter came again: she hid her face in her hands, and
made wild efforts to control herself: she slipped from her stool, and
flung herself at full length upon the floor. Now, the paroxysms of
laughing and crying came together, her body was shaken, strained, and
convulsed in every part: she was breathless, flushed, and faint. But it
seemed as if nothing short of unconsciousness could bring cessation: the
sobs still tore their way out of her bosom, and the laughter came with a
terrible wrench that was more agonizing to hear than a groan.
Sophie had never seen Cornelia in hysterics before, and was tortured
with alarm and apprehension. She knew not what to do, for every attempt
she made to relieve her, seemed only to make her worse.
"Let me call papa--he must be somewhere in the house--he will know what
to do!" she said, at last, trembling and white.
"No! no!" cried Cornelia: and the shock of fear lest her father should
see her, overcame the grasp of the hysterical paroxysm. She half raised
herself on one arm, showing her face, red and disfigured, the veins on
the forehead standing out, full and throbbing. "Come back! come back!"
for Sophie had her hand on the door.
She returned, in compliance with her sister's demand, and knelt down
beside her on the floor. Cornelia let herself fall back, her head
resting on Sophie's knee, in a state of complete exhaustion. There she
lay, panting heavily; and a clammy pallor gradually took the place of
the deeply-stained flush. But the fit was over: by-and-by she sat up,
sullenly shunning Sophie's touch, and appearing to shrink even at the
sound of her voice. Finally, she rose inertly to her feet, attempting to
moisten her dry lips, walked once or twice aimlessly to and fro across
the room, and ended by sitting down again upon her stool, and taking up
her sewing.
"Are you all well again, dear?" asked Sophie, timidly.
"Better than ever," replied Cornelia, with a short laugh, which had no
trace of hysteria about it.
There was, however, a slight but decided change in her manner, which did
not pass away: a sort of hardness and impenetrability: and so
incorporated into her nature did these traits seem, that one would have
supposed they had always been there. Some unpleasant visitors take a
surprisingly short time to make themselves at home.
But Sophie, seeing that her sister soon recovered her usual appearance,
did not allow herself to be disturbed by any uncalled-for anxieties.
Love, at its best, has a tendency to absorb and preoccupy those whom it
inspires: if not selfish, it is of necessity self-sufficient and
exclusive. Sophie was too completely permeated with her happiness, to
admit of being long overshadowed by the ills of those less blessed than
herself. Not that she had lost the power to sympathize with misfortune,
but the sympathy was apt to be smiling rather than tearful. She was
alight with the chaste, translucent, wondering joy of a maiden before
her marriage: the delicate, pearl-tinted brightness that pales the
stars, before the reddening morning brings on the broader daylight.
She was not of those who, in fair weather, are on the lookout for rain:
she believed that God had plenty of sunshine, and was generous of it;
and that the possibilities of bliss were unlimited. She was not afraid
to be perfectly happy. A little sunny spot, in a valley, which no shadow
has crossed all day long, was like her: there seemed to be nothing in
her soul that needed shadow to set it right.
Cheerfulness was soon reestablished, therefore, so far as she was
concerned; and the remembrance of Cornelia's distracting seizure
presently yielded to the throng of light-footed thoughts that were ever
knocking for admittance at her heart's door. Once afterward, however,
the event was recalled to her memory, by the revelation of its cause.
Little that happens in our lives would seem trifling to us, could we but
trace it, forward or backward, to the end.