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Bressant, a novel by Julian Hawthorne |
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Chapter 15. An Untimely Reminiscence |
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_ CHAPTER XV. AN UNTIMELY REMINISCENCE In spite of nursing and a very strong constitution, Bressant's recovery was slow. The fact was, his mind was restless and disturbed, and produced a fever in his blood. Large and powerful as he was, his physical was largely dependent on his mental well-being, as must always be the case with persons well organized throughout. He would never have been so muscular and healthy had his life not been an undisturbed and self-complacent one. These questions of the heart and emotions were not salutary to his body, however beneficial otherwise. At the same time, no one is quite himself who is ill, and doubtless Bressant would have escaped many of his difficulties, and solved others with comparatively little trouble, if his faculties had not been untuned by illness. While he was more open to the influx of all these novel ideas and problems, he was less able to deal with and dispose of them. So the professor, while encouraged by the observation of his apparent progress in the direction of human feeling and emotional warmth, was concerned to find him falling off in recuperative power. Sophie was largely to blame for it. Bressant was getting to depend too much upon her society. He brightened when she came in, and was gloomy when she went out. He liked to talk and argue with her; to dash waves of logic, impetuous but subtle, against the rock of her pure intuitions and steady consistency. He was careful not to go too far; though, indeed, she usually had the best of the encounter. Of course his knowledge and trained faculties far surpassed Sophie's simple acquirements and modest learning; but she had a marvelous penetration in seeing a fallacy, even when she knew not how to expose it; and she mercilessly pricked many of the conceited bubbles of his understanding. Doubtless she would have noticed the too prominent position which she had come to occupy in the invalid's horizon, had not her eyes, so clear to see every thing else, been blinded by the fact that he, also, was grown to be of altogether too much importance to her. She never for a moment imagined that any thing but an abstract and ideal scheme for benefiting Bressant was actuating her in her intercourse with him. She proposed to educate him in pure beliefs and true aspirations; to show him that there was more in life than can be mathematically proved. But that she could derive other than an immaterial and impersonal enjoyment from it--oh, no! This was quixotic and unpractical, if nothing worse. What other means of imparting spiritual knowledge could a young girl like Sophie have, than to exhibit to her pupil the structure and workings of her own soul? But this could not be done with impunity; neither was Bressant a cup, to be emptied and then refilled with a purer substance. Young men and women with exalted and ideal views about each other, cannot do better than to keep out of one another's way. Unless they are prepared to mingle a great deal of what is earthly with their dreams, they will be apt, sooner or later, to have a rude awakening. The conceit of her ideal crusade against Bressant's shortcomings blinded Sophie to what she could not otherwise have helped seeing--that she enjoyed his companionship for its own immediate sake. She had, perhaps, more direct and simple strength of character than he; but he made up in other ways for the lack of it. Besides, he had not taken measures to obstruct the natural keenness of his vision, and therefore saw, with comparative clearness, how the land lay; an immense advantage over Sophie, of course. But when he came to analyzing and classifying what he saw, he found his intelligence at fault. That little episode with Cornelia was the only bit of experience he had to fall back upon; and that was more of a puzzle than an assistance to him. Matters went on thus for about six weeks, at which time Bressant was still confined to his room, although decidedly convalescent. It had seemed to him for some time past that a crisis would soon be reached in his relations with Sophie, but what the upshot of it would be he could not conjecture. He only felt that at present something was concealed--that there were explanations and confessions to be made, which would have the effect of putting his young nurse and himself upon more open and intimate terms. He looked forward to this culmination with impatience, and yet with anxiety. One morning, when they had been reading Spenser's "Faerie Queene," Cornelia's weekly letter was brought in, and subsequently the conversation turned upon her. "I used to think she was much more beautiful than you," remarked Bressant, thoughtfully, twisting and turning the palm-leaf fan he held in his hands. "I don't think, now, that I knew what beauty was," he added, concentrating his straight eyebrows upon Sophie, in a scrutinizing look. "No one could be more beautiful than Neelie," said Sophie, with gentle emphasis. "What has made you change your opinion?" As she spoke, she closed the book on her lap, and leaned her cheek upon her hand. Some of the sunshine fell upon her white dress, but left her face in shadow. It struck Bressant, however, that the clear morning light which filled the room emanated from her eyes rather than from the sunshine. "I don't know that I have changed my opinion," said he, looking down again at the fan; "I learn new things every day, that's all. Do you ever think about yourself?" "I suppose I do, sometimes; nobody can help being conscious of themselves once in a while." "About what you are, compared with other people, I mean." "There's nothing peculiar about me; still, I may be different, in some ways, from other people," answered Sophie, with simplicity. "I can judge better about that than you; there was some use in deafness, and being alone, and thinking only of fame, and such things." "What use?" asked Sophie, leaning forward, with interest, for he had never spoken about his former life before. "The same way that a man who never drinks has a more delicate sense of taste than a drunkard," returned Bressant, apparently pleased with his simile. "I've seen so little of women, that I can taste you more correctly than if I had seen a great many. Understand?" Sophie did not answer, being somewhat thrown out by this new way of looking at the matter. There seemed to be some reason in it, too. "If I'd associated with other people, I shouldn't have been sensitive enough to recognize you when we met; no one except me can know you or feel you," continued he, following out his idea. Sophie began to feel a vague misgiving. What did this mean? What was going to be the end of it? Ought she to allow it to go on? And yet--most likely it meant nothing; it was only one of his queer fancies that he was elaborating. There did not seem to be any thing suspicious in his manner. "It wasn't easy even for me," he resumed, throwing another glance at her; she sat with her eyes cast down, so that he could observe her with impunity. "It would have been impossible unless you had helped me to it. You have taught me yourself, even more than I have studied you." Sophie started, and a look of terror, bewilderment, and passionate repudiation, lightened in her eyes. How dared he--how could he, say that? how so falsely misrepresent her actions, and misinterpret her purposes? Her mind went staggering back over the past, seeking for means of self-justification and defense. She had only meant to benefit him--to amplify and soften his character--to inspire him with more ideal views and aims; and to do this she had--what? Sophie paused, and shuddered. Could it, after all, be true? Had she, forgetful of maidenly modesty and reserve, opened to this man's eyes her secret soul? invited him into the privacy of her heart, to criticise and handle it?--invited him!--brought forward, and pressed upon his notice, the thoughts and impulses which she should scarcely have whispered even to herself? Had she done this? "You have taught me that there is no one like you in the world," said Bressant. His voice sounded strangely to her, coming across such an abyss of shame, remorse, and dismay. Did he know the bitter satire his words conveyed? Sophie's face was hidden in her hands. She dared not think what might come next. "Is it nothing to you to know that you are more to me than any thing else?" demanded he, and his tone was becoming husky and unsteady. The passion that had been smouldering within him so long, unsuspected in its intensity even by himself, was now beginning to be-stir itself, and shoot forth jets of flame. "Why have you let yourself be with me--why have you made yourself necessary to me--if I was nothing to you?" Sophie, in the extreme depths of her degradation and abasement, became all at once quiet and composed. She lifted her face, pale, and smitten with suffering, from her hands, and, folding them in her lap, looked at Bressant calmly, because she understood herself at last, and felt that the time for hiding her head in shame had gone by. "You have _not_ been nothing to me," said she, "though I didn't know it before, or, rather, I _would_ not. I had an idea that I was leading you up to higher things, as an angel might, and all the time I was making use of God's truth and recommendation, as it were, to gratify and shield my own selfishness and--" here her voice sank, and her lips quivered, and grew dry, but she waited, and struggled, and finally went on--"and immodesty. I don't know why I should tell you this--except that I've told you every thing else, and this may save you from some of the wrong the rest has done you. But the most of it must remain irreparable." A long sigh quivered up from Sophie's heart, and quivered down again, like a pebble sinking through the water. Such a sigh, in a woman, is the sign of what can scarcely come twice in a lifetime. "I don't understand any thing about that; I don't want to!" exclaimed Bressant, with an impetuous gesture. "What you've done seems to have been better than what you meant to do, at any rate. You've made yourself every thing to me. Say that I am as much to you, and what more do we need? Say it! say it!" and, in the vehemence of his appeal, the sick man half raised himself from his bed. "I cannot! I cannot!" said Sophie, in a low, penetrating voice of suffering. "If you were the lowest of all men, I could not. I came to you in the guise of an angel, and what I have done, what woman is there that would not blush at it? It may not be too late to save you--" "Stop!" cried Bressant, with an accent of hoarse, masculine command, such as she could not gainsay. "It is too late!--I will not be saved! Look in my eyes, Sophie Valeyon, and tell me the name of what you see there!" Her sad, gray eyes, stern to herself, but tender and soft to him, as a cloud ready to melt in rain-drops, met his, which were alight with all the fire that an aroused and passionate spirit could kindle in them. She saw what she had never beheld before indeed, but the meaning of which no woman ever yet mistook. It was her work--the assurance of her disgrace--the offspring of her self-seeking and unwomanly behavior; and yet, as she looked, the blood rose gradually to her pale cheeks, and stained them with a deeper and yet deeper spot of red; her glance caught a spark from his, and her fragile and drooping figure seemed to dilate and grow stately, as if inspired by some burst of glorious music. Bressant, in the mid-whirl and heat of his emotion, fell back upon the pillow, whence he had partly raised himself, trembling from head to foot. "Is it love?" he said, in a smothered tone that was scarcely more than a whisper. He was beaten down and overawed by the might and grandeur of the passion which, growing in his own breast, had become a giant that swayed and swept all things before it. "Yes--love!" said Sophie, in a voice like the soft ring of a silver trumpet. Her heart was steadied and strengthened by what mastered him. "Love--it is above every thing else. It has brought me down so low--perhaps, through God's mercy, it is the path by which I may rise again. You will guide me, dear?" And, with a gesture of divine humility, she put her hand in his, and looked down, with the smile brightening mistily in her eyes. At that moment--recalled, perhaps, by a chance similarity in position, gesture, or expression--came over him, like a sudden chill and darkness, the memory of his last interview with Cornelia. _ |
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