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Bressant, a novel by Julian Hawthorne |
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Chapter 4. A Business Transaction |
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_ CHAPTER IV. A BUSINESS TRANSACTION Professor Valeyon led the way to the study, stood his cane in the corner, and placed a chair for his guest, in silence. "Just like his father!" said he to himself, as he repaired to the mantel-piece for his pipe; "not a bit of his mother about him. Who'd have thought so sickly a baby as they said he was, would have grown into such a giant?--Smoke?" he added, aloud. "You must talk loud to me--I'm deaf," said the young man, with his hand to his ear. "Pleasant thing in a pupil, that!" muttered the old gentleman, as he filled his pipe and lit it. "How it reminds one of his father--that bright questioning look, when he leans forward! One might know who he was by that and nothing else!" He sat down in his chair, and ruminated a moment. "Hardly expected you up here so soon after your loss," observed he, in as kindly a tone and manner as was comportable with speaking in a very loud key. "Loss! I've had no loss!" returned Bressant, with a look of perplexity. "Oh! you mean my father!" he exclaimed, suddenly, throwing his head back with a half-smile. He very seldom laughed aloud. "There was nothing to do. The funeral was the day before yesterday. I did all the business before then. Yesterday I packed up, and here I am!" "Death couldn't have been unexpected, I presume?" said the professor, on whom Bressant's manner made an impression of resignation to his loss rather too complete. "The hour of death can only be a matter of guess-work at any time," returned the young man. "My father had been expecting to die for some months past; but he'd been mistaken once or twice before, and I thought he might be this time. But he happened to guess right." "Filial way of talking, that," thought Professor Valeyon, rather taken aback. "Didn't get that from his father; he was soft spoken enough, in all conscience! Queer now, this matter of resemblance! there's a certain something in his style of speaking, and in the way he looks just after he has spoken, that reminds me of Mrs. Margaret. Deaf people are all something alike, though; and he's been with her a great deal, I suppose. Well, well! as to the way he spoke about his father, what looked like indifference may have been merely embarrassment, or an attempt to disguise feeling; or perhaps it was but a deaf man's peculiarity. At all events, it can do no harm to suppose so." "Were you with him during his last moments?" asked he. "Oh, yes! I saw him die," answered Bressant, nodding, and pulling his close-cut brown beard. Professor Valeyon smoked for a while in silence, occasionally casting puzzled and searching glances at the young man, who took up a book from the table--it happened to be a volume of Celestial Mechanics--and began to read it with great apparent interest. His face was an open and certainly not unpleasant one; very mobile, however, and vivid in its expressions; the eyebrows straight and delicate, and the eyes bright and powerful. The forehead was undeniably fine, prominently and capaciously developed. Nevertheless--and this was what puzzled the professor--there was a very evident lack of something in the face, in no way interfering with its intellectual aspect, but giving it, at times, an unnatural and even uncanny look. In meeting the young man's eyes, the old gentleman was ever and anon conscious of a disposition to recoil and shudder, and, at the same time, felt impelled, by what resembled a magnetic attraction, to gaze the harder. Did the very fact that some universal human characteristic was omitted from this person's nature endow him with an exceptional and peculiar power? There was an uncertainty, in talking and associating with him, as to what he would do or say; an ignorance of what might be his principles and points of view; an impossibility of supposing him governed by common laws. Such, at least, was the professor's fancy concerning him. But again, turning his eyes to his pipe, or out of the window, was it not fancy altogether? Beyond that he was unusually tall and broad across the shoulders, and of a very intelligent cast of features, what was there or was there not in this young man different from any other? He had the muffled irregular voice, and alert yet unimpressible manner, peculiar to deafness. But was there any thing more? The professor took another look at him. He was reading, and certainly there were no signs of any thing strange in his appearance, more than that, at such a time, he should be reading at all. It was when speaking of his father that the uncanny expression had been especially noticeable. "Suppose," said Professor Valeyon to himself, "we try him on another subject." "You've been educated at home, I understand," began he, from beneath his heavy eyebrows. "Oh, yes!" replied Bressant, shutting his book on his knee, and returning the professor's look with one of exceeding keenness and comprehensiveness. "Educated to develop faculties of body and mind, not according to the ordinary school and college system." He drew himself up, with an air of such marvelous intellectual and physical efficiency, that it seemed to the professor as if each one of his five senses might equal the whole capacity of a common man. And then it occurred to him that he remembered, many years ago, having heard some one mention a theory of education which aimed rather to give the man power in whatever direction he chose to exercise it, than to store his mind with greater or less quantities of particular forms of knowledge. The only faculty to be left uncultivated, according to this theory, was that of human love--this being considered destructive, or, at least, greatly prejudicial, to progress and efficiency in any other direction. The professor could not at the moment recall who it was had evolved this scheme, but it became involuntarily connected in his mind with Bressant's peculiarities. "According to the letter I received to-day, you come here to be trained to the ministry," resumed he. "Has all your previous education had this in view?" "The education would have been the same, understand, whatever the end was to be," explained the young man, with a shrewd smile in his sharp eyes. "I am as well prepared to study theology as if I had been aiming at it all my life; but I might take up engineering or medicine as well as that. About a year ago, I decided to become a minister." "And what led you to do that?" demanded the old gentleman, with rather a stern frown. He did not like the idea of approaching religion in other than a reverent and self-searching attitude. "My father first suggested it," replied Bressant, on whom the frown produced no sort of impression. "At the time, it surprised me, especially from him. Afterward, I concluded I could not do better. No one has such a chance to move the world as a minister. I thought of Christ, and Paul, and Luther, and many before and since. They were all ministers, and who had greater power? I felt I had the ability, and I decided that it was as a minister I could best use it." "But what are you going to use it for?" questioned the professor, settling his spectacles on his nose, and leaning across the table in his earnestness. "The men I have mentioned used theirs to invent, or confirm, or overthrow, religious sects, and perhaps they couldn't have done better in their age. Their names are as well known now as ever, and that's the best test. But I hope I may discover a better method. I shall have the advantage of their experience and mistakes. Perhaps I shall develop and carry out to its conclusion the dogma of Christianity. That would be well as a beginning." "Very well, that's certain!" assented the professor, dryly. "It's all I shall be able to give you any assistance in, too, so we needn't discuss what the next step will be. By-the-way, did you ever hear of doing any thing for the glory of God, and for the love of your fellow-men?" "Oh, yes! they're pass-words of the profession, and have their use," returned Bressant, with another of his keen smiles. "If you want to climb above the world, the rounds in your ladder must be made of common woods that everybody knows the names of. The Bible is full of such, and some of them are works of genius in themselves. After all, it is the people who must immortalize us, and we must feed them with what they are in the habit of eating." "What induced you to come here, sir?" asked the professor, abruptly. "I never should have come of myself," answered the young man, with entire frankness. "I never heard your name mentioned until less than a year ago. It was the first time my father was expecting to die. He told me you were a wise man, and learned besides; he had known you when you were young; you would have some interest in teaching me; he would feel more at ease to die, if he knew you were directing me. I thought it over, as I said, and decided to come. Understand, I knew of no one except you, and I didn't want to go to a theological school." "Humph!" grunted the professor, who was by no means well satisfied with the prospect, yet had reasons of his own for taking up the matter if possible. He smoked for a while longer, and Bressant resumed his book. "By-the-way, about this _incognito_ of yours," said the former at length, laying aside his pipe, and taking off his straw hat: he had forgotten to remove it on entering, and it had been oppressing him with a sense of vague inconvenience ever since. "What is the meaning of it? Do you mean to keep it strict? Is the idea you own?" "Oh, no! I heard nothing of it till after my father was dead. It was Mrs. Vanderplanck--she who wrote you the letter--who first spoke to me of it, and said he had desired it. I don't know what the necessity of it is, but it must be kept a strict secret. Should any one besides you know who I am, I stand in danger of losing my fortune." "Ah, ha! lose your fortune!" exclaimed the professor, frowning so portentously as to unseat his spectacles. "How does that happen, sir?" Bressant looked considerably amused at the old gentleman's evident emotion; the more as he saw no occasion for it. "I never had the curiosity to ask how," said he, pulling at his beard. "I shall run no risks with my fortune. I'm satisfied to know there might be danger; there's no difficulty in keeping silence about a name." Professor Valeyon rose from his chair and walked to the window. A mighty host of gray clouds, piled thickly one upon another, and torn and tunneled by feverish wind-gusts, were hastening swiftly and silently across the sky from the west. Beyond, where they were thickest and angriest, a yellowish, lurid tint was reflected against them. The valley darkened like a frowning face, and the summits of the western hills were blotted out of sight. A lightning-flash shivered brightly through the air, and then came the first growling, leaping, accumulating peal of thunder. A sudden, rustling breath swept through the garden, and, following it, in big, quick drops, and soon in an unintermittent myriad-footed tramp, the rustling, perpendicular down-pelting of the rain. In less than a minute, a gray, wet veil had been drawn across the farther side of the valley, hiding it from the professor's sight. Even the outer limits of the garden grew indistinct. The leaves of the trees bobbed ceaselessly up and down, and glistened and dripped; the shrubs and flowers seemed to lift themselves higher from the earth, and stretch out their green fingers to the plenteous shower. The tinkle of the fountain was quite obliterated, and the ordinarily smooth surface of the basin sprang upward in thousands of tiny pyramids, as if madly welcoming the impact of the rain-drops. Small cataracts tore in desperate haste down the slope of the garden-paths, laying bare in their pigmy fury the lower strata of rough gravel and pebbles. Upon the roof of the balcony was maintained an evenly sonorous monotone of drubbing, as if innumerable fairy carpenters were nailing on the shingles. The invalid water-spout had a hard time of it; it was racked, shaken, and bullied, and continually choked itself with the volubility of its fluent utterances, which were instantly swallowed up in the bottomless depths of the waste-barrel. A strong, cool, earthy odor rose from the garden, and was wafted past the professor's nostrils, and into the heated house. The moist brown flower-beds exhaled a fragrant thankfulness, and the grass-blades looked twice as green and twice as tall as before. Meanwhile the heavy, regular pulse of the thunder had been beating intermittently overhead, and bounding ponderously from hill-side to hill-side; and ever and anon the lightning had showed startlingly in dazzling zigzags through the omnipresent shadow. But now it seemed that there was a little less weight in the fall, and gloom in the air. The pervading freshness of the breeze made itself more unmistakably perceptible. The west began to lighten, and the rain and darkness drifted to the east. As for Professor Valeyon, if his thoughts had been in a tumult, like the elements, might they not become quiet again also? "After all," said the old gentleman to himself, "it's not the young fellow's fault. If his father was a heartless scoundrel, it doesn't follow that he knows it. Well, the man is dead--it can't be helped now, that's certain. But what a cunningly-contrived plot it is! Shuts my mouth by confiding to me the _incognito_ and sending me the son to educate; destroys the last hope of setting an old wrong right; takes advantage, for base ends, of the deepest feelings of human hearts: not to speak of preventing the young man himself from being party to a noble and generous action. Did ever man carry such a load down to the grave! "Suppose Margaret--no! it isn't likely she would know any thing about it. He wasn't the man to make confidants of women. She gave the message to the son, not knowing what it meant, probably. Why, he wouldn't have dared to tell her! And then inviting Cornelia--no, no! I've had some acquaintance with Margaret, and, with all her nonsense, I believe she's honest. Besides, what interest could she have to be otherwise? To be sure, she didn't give me the true reason for the _incognito_; but that's nothing; she's just the woman to tell a useless fib, and reserve the truth for important occasions only--or what she thinks such." The professor remained a while longer at the window, abstractedly staring at the drops which hastened after one another from the wet eaves. Suddenly he turned around, and walked up to the table, flapping his slipper-heels, and settling his spectacles, as he went. "Did any one ever speak to you of your mother, sir?" demanded he in the ear of the reading Bressant. "Confound the fellow!" passed at the same time through his mind; "does he think I'm a chair or a table?" "My mother?" repeated the young man, looking up, and appearing somewhat surprised at the idea of his ever having possessed the article. "Oh, yes! my father once told me she was dead. It was long ago. I'd almost forgotten it." "Told you she was dead, hey? Humph! just what I expected!" growled the old gentleman, who seemed, however, to become additionally wrathful at the intelligence. After a moment's scowl straight at his would-be pupil, he shuffled up to his chair, and sat solidly down in it. Bressant (to whom the professor had probably appeared to the full as peculiar as he to the professor), seeing signs of an approach to business in his action and attitude, tossed his book on the table, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and fixed his eyes directly upon the old gentleman's glasses. "You seem to be in the habit of speaking your own mind freely, sir," observed the latter; "and I shall do the same, on this occasion at least I'm going to accept you as a pupil, and shall do my best for you; but you must understand it's by no means on your own account I do it. As far as I have seen them, I don't like your principles, your beliefs, or your nature. You're the last man I should pick out for a minister, or for any other responsible position. In every respect, except intelligence and an unlimited confidence in yourself, you seem to me unfit to be trusted. In training you for the ministry, I shall do it with the hope--not the expectation--of instilling into you some true and useful ideas and elevated thoughts. If I succeed, I shall have done the work of a whole churchful of missionaries. If I fail, I shan't recommend you to be ordained. And never forget that you will be indebted for all this to some one you've never known, and who, I am at present happy to say, don't know you. Whether or not you'll ever become acquainted is known to God alone, and I'm very glad that the matter lies entirely in His hands. Now, sir, what have you to say?" Bressant, who had been looking steadily and curiously at the professor during the whole of this long speech, now passed his hand from his forehead down over his face and beard--a common trick of his--smiled meditatively, and said: "I'm glad you agree to take me. I don't care for your recommendation if I have your instruction. Shall we begin to-morrow?" There followed a discussion relative to hours, methods, and materials, which lasted very nearly until tea-time. Then, as there was still some rain falling, the professor extended to his pupil an invitation to supper, on his accepting which the old gentleman shuffled out into the entry, and called to Cornelia to come down and make the necessary preparations. _ |
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