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Bressant, a novel by Julian Hawthorne |
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Chapter 33. Till The Eleventh Hour |
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_ CHAPTER XXXIII. TILL THE ELEVENTH HOUR Her fruitless call for Bressant seemed quite to exhaust Sophie. For a long time afterward she hardly opened her mouth, except to swallow some hot black coffee. The professor sat, for the most part, with his finger on her pulse, his eyes looking more hollow and his forehead more deeply lined than ever before, but with no other signs of anxiety or suffering. Cornelia came in and out--a restless spirit. She awaited Sophie's recovery with no less of dread than of hope. Her life hung, as it were, upon her sister's. The moment in which Sophie recovered her faculties enough to think and speak would be the last that Cornelia could maintain her mask of honor and respectability, for Cornelia knew that Sophie was in possession of her secret; she had been up in her room, and the open window had told the story. It was a time of awful suspense. Cornelia wished there had been somebody there to talk with; even Bill Reynolds would have been welcome now. He, however, had departed long ago, having bethought himself that his horse was catching its death o' cold, standing out there with no rug on. She was entirely alone; she hardly dared to think, for fear something guilty should be generated in her mind; and, though every moment was pain, without stop or mitigation, every moment was inestimably precious, too; it was so much between her and revelation. She almost counted the seconds as they passed, yet rated them for dragging on so wearily. Every tick of the little ormolu clock marked away a large part of her life, and yet was wearisome to so much of it as remained. Sometimes she debated whether she could not anticipate the end by speaking out at once, of her own free-will; but no, short as her time was, she could not afford to lose the smallest fraction of it--no, she could not. Bethinking herself that her father would be lost to her after the revelation had taken place, Cornelia felt a consuming desire to enjoy his love to the fullest possible extent during the interval. She wanted him to call her his dear daughter--to hold her hand--to pat her check--to kiss her forehead with his rough, bristly lips--to tell her, in his gruff, kind voice, that she was a solace and a resource to him. The thousand various little ways in which he had testified his deep-lying affection--she had not noticed them or thought much of them, so long as she felt secure of always commanding them--with what different eyes she looked back upon them now. Oh! if they might all be lavished upon her during these last few remaining hours or minutes. Should she not go and sit down at his knee, and ask him to pet her and caress her? No; she would not steal the love for which her soul thirsted, even though he whom she robbed should not feel the loss. She had stripped him of much that would doubtless seem to him of far more worth and importance; but, when it came to taking, under false pretenses, a thing so sacred as her father's love, Cornelia drew back, and, spite of her great need, had the grace to make the sacrifice. Let it not be underrated: a woman who sees honor, reputation, and happiness slipping away from her, will struggle hardest of all for the little remaining scrap of love, and only feel wholly forlorn after that, too, has vanished away. At length, about daybreak or a little after, Sophie spoke, low, but very distinctly: "I'm going to sleep; don't wake me or disturb me;" and almost immediately sank into a profound slumber--so very profound, indeed, that it rather bore likeness to a trance. Yet, her pulse still beat regularly, though faintly, and at long intervals, and her breath went and came, though with a motion almost imperceptible to the eye. "Is it a good sign? Will she get well now?" asked Cornelia, as she and her father stood looking down at her. "She'll never get well, my dear," said Professor Valeyon, very quietly. "Her mind and body both have had too great a shock--far too great. More has happened than we know of yet, I suspect. But we shall hear, we shall hear. Yes, sleep is good for her: it'll make her comfortable. Her nerves will be the quieter." "O papa! papa! is our little Sophie going to die?" faltered Cornelia; and then she broke down completely. She had not fully grasped the idea until that moment; but the very tone in which her father spoke had the declaration of death in it. It was not his usual deep, gruff, forcible voice, shutting off abruptly at the end of his sentences, and beginning them as sharply. It had lost body and color, was thin, subdued, and monotonous. Professor Valeyon had changed from a lusty winter into a broken, infirm, and marrowless thaw. He stood and watched her weep for a long while, bending his eyes upon her from beneath their heavy, impending brows. Heavy and impending they were still, but the vitality--the sort of warm-hearted fierceness--of his look was gone--gone! A young and bitter grief, like Cornelia's, coming at a time of life when the feelings are so tender and their manifestation of pain so poignant--is terrible enough to see, God knows! but the dry-eyed anguish of the old, of those who no longer possess the latent, indefinite, all-powerful encouragement of the future to support them--who can breathe only the lifeless, cheerless air of the past--grief with them does not convulse: it saps, and chills, and crumbles away, without noise or any kind of demonstration. The sight does not terrify or harrow us, but it makes us sick at heart and tinges our thoughts with a gloomy stain, which rather sinks out of sight than is worn away. "Will you stay and watch with her, my dear?" said the old man, at last. "She'll sleep some hours, I think. I'll take a little sleep myself. Call me when she wakes." So Cornelia was left alone to watch her sleeping and dying sister. All the morning she sat by the bed, almost as motionless as Sophie herself. Her mind was like a surf-wave that breaks upon the shore, slips back, regathers itself, and undulates on, to break again. Begin where she would, she always ended on that bed, with its well-known face, set around with soft dark hair, always in the same position upon the pillow, which yielded beneath it in always the same creases and curves. By-and-by, wherever she turned, still she saw that face, with the pillow rising around it; and when she shut her eyes, there it was, growing, in the blackness, clearer the more she tried to avert her mind. It seemed to Cornelia--for time enters involuntarily into our thoughts upon all subjects--that the present order of things must have existed for a far longer period than a single night. How could the events of a few hours wear such deep and uneffaceable channels in human lives? But our souls have a chronology of their own, compared with the vividness and instantaneous workings of which, our bodies bear but a dull and lagging part. Sorrow and joy, which act upon the soul immediately, must labor long ere they can write themselves legibly and permanently upon our faces. Cornelia fell to wondering, too--as most people under the pressure of grief are prone to do--whether there were any sympathy or any connection between the world and the human beings who live upon it. Her eyes wandered hither and thither about the room, and found it almost startling in its unaltered naturalness. There was the same view of trees, road, and field, out of the window; and the same snow which had fallen before the tragedy, lay there now. Even in Sophie's face there was no adequate transformation. Indeed, being somewhat reddened and swollen by the reaction from freezing, a stranger might have supposed that she was tolerably stout and glowing with vitality. And Cornelia looked at her own hands, as they lay in her lap: they were as round and shapely as ever; and there, upon the smooth back of one, below the forefinger, was a white scar, where she had cut herself when a little girl. Moreover--Cornelia started as her eyes rested upon it, and the blood rose painfully to her face--there was a dark, discolored bruise, encircling one wrist: Bressant's last gift--an ominous betrothal ring! Thus several hours passed away, until, at length, Cornelia raised her eyes suddenly, and encountered those of Sophie, fixed upon her. What a look was that! At all times there was more to be seen in Sophie's eyes than in most women's; but now they were fathomless, and yet never more clear and simple. Cornelia read in them all and more than legions of words could have told her. There were visible the complete grasp and appreciation of Cornelia's and Bressant's crime; the realization of her own position between them; pity and sympathy for the sinners, too, were there; and love, not sisterly, nor quite human, for Sophie had already begun to put on immortality--but such a love as an angel might have felt, knowing the temptation and the punishment. Before that look Cornelia felt her own bitterness and anguish fade away, as a candle is obliterated by the sun. She saw in Sophie so much higher a capacity for feeling, so much profounder and more sublime an emotion, that she was ashamed of her own beside it. There was at once a comprehensiveness and a particularity in Sophie's gaze which, while humbling and abasing Cornelia, brought a comforting feeling that full justice, upon all points, had been done her in Sophie's mind. There was no lack of charity for her trials and temptations, no vindictiveness. Cornelia felt no impulse to plead her cause, because aware that all she could say would be anticipated in her sister's forgiveness. Nay, she almost wished there had been some bitterness and anger against which to contend. Perhaps it may be so with our souls in their judgment-day; God's mercy may outstrip the poor conjectures we have formed about it. He may see palliation for our sins, which we ourselves had not taken into account. After a few moments, Sophie beckoned Cornelia to come near, and, as the latter stood beside the bed, took her by the hand and smiled. "I've been all this time with Bressant," were her first words, spoken faintly, but with a quiet and serene assurance. Cornelia made no answer; indeed, she could not speak. Strange and incomprehensible as Sophie's assertion was, she did not think of doubting but that in some way it must be true. Sophie continued: "Before I went to sleep, I prayed God to send my spirit to him; and we have been together. Neelie, he is coming back!" "Coming back! Sophie, coming back! For what?" "Don't look so frightened, my darling. He will tell you why when he gets here. That will be to-morrow at noon." "O Sophie! Sophie! the day and hour of your marriage!" Cornelia sank upon her knees, and hid her face upon the edge of the bed. But Sophie let her hand wander over her head, with a soothing motion. "No, dear; that's all over, Neelie dear, you know. Not the day and hour of my marriage any more. Neelie, I want to ask you something." Cornelia lifted her head from the bedside; then, divining from Sophie's face, ere it was spoken, what her question was to be, faintness and terror seized upon her, and she clasped her hands over her eyes. The unexpectedness of Sophie's first awakening, and her subsequent strange speech concerning Bressant, had driven from Cornelia's head the matter which had monopolized her thoughts and fears before; and it now recurred to her with an effect almost as overwhelming as if the idea had been a new one. "I couldn't do it," said she, huskily; "it seemed worse than killing myself. I believe it would have killed me to have stood before him, with his eyes upon my face, and have told him--told him--" "Yes, dear, yes; it must not be you, Neelie. How is he? Does he seem well and cheerful?" "I don't know--I've hardly dared to look at him, or speak to him. He's been lying down, I believe, since you went to sleep." "Ask him to come to me," Sophie said, after a pause. "I will speak to him; I'll tell him; it will be best that I should do it; and you will trust me?" "O Sophie!" was all that Cornelia could say; but it expressed at least the fullness of her heart. What must be the love and tenderness that could undertake such a task as this! How great the trial for a nature delicate and shrinking, like Sophie's, to bear witness before their own father of her sister's sin against herself! But Sophie was as brave as she was feminine and delicate. Cornelia's gratitude, however, was mingled still with a despairing agony, and her life seemed to be escaping from her. If this cup might but pass! "He will not be to me as you are, Sophie. He will never look at me again." "Do not fear," replied Sophie, with her faint but incomparable smile. "If I can forgive you, surely he must. Go and call him, and then stay in your room till he comes to you." But Cornelia, as she left the room upon her heavy errand, shook her head, and drew a shivering breath. She knew her father would look upon the matter more from the world's point of view than Sophie did; and it was a curious example of the strength of the material element in Cornelia, that she more feared to meet her father's eye, whom she felt would understand that aspect of her disgrace, than Sophie's, who probably had a more acute and certainly a more exclusive perception of her spiritual accountability. As she was beginning to mount the stairs, she met her father already on his way down. He noticed the wretchedness depicted on her face, and, supposing it to be all on Sophie's account, did what he could to comfort her. "Don't despair, my child," quoth the old man, laying his hands on her shoulders. "Nothing is so hopeless that we mayn't trust in God to better it." The words seemed to apply so felicitously that Cornelia tried to think it a good omen sent from heaven. Then he bent over and kissed her forehead--perhaps before she was aware, perhaps not; but she took it, praying that it might prove a blessing to her hereafter, even if it were the last she were destined to receive. She passed on into her own room without speaking, and sat down there to wait. To wait! and for what, and how long? till her father came to her? But suppose he were not to come? She would stay there, perhaps, an hour--that would be long enough--yes, too long; but still let it be an hour; and then, he not coming, what should she do? Go to him? No, she would never dare, never presume to do that. What then? steal down-stairs, a guilty, hateful thing, softly open the door which would never open to her again, and run away through the snow? The world would be before her, but snow and ice would but faintly symbolize its coldness. Was it likely that heaven itself would yield her entrance after her father's door had closed upon her? But would not Sophie prevail, and turn his heart to forgiveness? Oh! but why was it not probable, and more than probable, that the argument would result the other way?--that her father, by a clear and stern representation of the real heinousness of her offense, would convince Sophie that Cornelia was entitled to nothing but condemnation? There would be nothing to urge against the justice of such a sentence--nothing. Perhaps Sophie's courage might fail her, or her strength give way, leaving the ugly story but half told, and then her father would come to her to learn the rest. What should she do then? How much more terrible to be obliged to tell him then, after having made up her mind that her sister was to take the burden off her shoulders, than it would have been before any such resource had presented itself! How much more awful to meet her father when aroused by suspicion and anger, and perhaps loathing, than to begin her confession while his face was as she had always seen it, when turned toward her--loving and tender! She could not sit still, at last, but rose up from her chair to walk the room--not from the old, restless energy, which needed physical exercise to keep it within bounds, for Cornelia was now white and faint, from exhaustion of mind and body, but from the tumult of pervading fear and delusive hope--the attention strained to catch some sound from below, and the dread lest it should never come. As the suspense grew more painful, the rapidity of her walk increased. She expected now, every moment, to catch herself shrieking aloud, or performing some mad action or other. How long had she been up there already? Was it an hour yet? It must be an hour. Oh! it was more. Was he never coming, then?--never? O God! was there no forgiveness? Cornelia's walk had gone on quickening until it was almost a run. She was circling round and round the room, like a wild animal--was growing dizzy and exhausted, but was afraid to stop: better her body should give way than her mind--and, all the time, her ears were alert for the slightest sound. She halted, wild-eyed and unsteady on her feet, her hand trembling at her lips. A step in the passage below, ascending the stairs slowly and heavily. Oh! did it come in mercy? She tried to draw a meaning from the sound--then dared not trust her inference. The steps had gained the landing now--were advancing along the entry toward her door. Did they bear a load of sorrow only, or of hate and condemnation likewise? They paused at her threshold--then there was a knock, thrice repeated--not loud, nor rapid, nor regular, nor precise--rather as one heart might knock for admittance to another. Cornelia tried to say "Come in," or to open the door, but could neither speak nor move. Iron bands seemed to be clasped around all her faculties of motion. Would he go away and leave her? The door opened, turning slowly and hesitatingly on its hinges, until it disclosed her father's venerable figure. His limbs seemed weak; his shoulders drooped; but Cornelia looked only at his face. His eyes were deep and compassionate. He held out his arms, which shook slightly but continually: "Come, my daughter," said he. She was his daughter still! She cried out, and, walking hurriedly to him, laid herself close against him, and he hugged her closer yet--poor, miserable, erring creature though she was. So the three were reunited--and not superficially, but more intimately and indissolubly than ever before. They would not be apart, but remained together in Bressant's room--Sophie on the bed, with an expression of divine contentment on her face, Cornelia and the professor sitting near. "Papa," said Sophie, as the afternoon came on, "I want to make my will." Cornelia caught her breath sharply, and, turning away her face, covered her eyes with her hand. Professor Valeyon's gray eyebrows gathered for a moment--then he steadied himself, and said, "Well, my dear." It was not a very intricate matter. The various little bequests were soon made and noted down as she requested. After all was disposed of, there was a little pause. "Neelie, dear," then said Sophie, turning her eyes full upon her, "I bequeath my love to you." Cornelia perceived the hidden significance in the words, and blushed so deep and warm that the tears were dried upon her cheeks. Sophie went on, before she could make any reply: "And I have something left for you, too, papa, though I know no one needs it less than you. But you may be called on for a great deal, so I bequeath you my charity. I haven't had it so very long myself." The professor bowed his head, and, the will being complete, he took off his spectacles, and wiped them with his handkerchief. "I was telling Neelie this morning, papa," resumed Sophie, after a while, "that I had been--that I'd had a dream that I was with Bressant; and I feel sure--though I suppose you'll think it nothing but a sick fancy of mine--that he will be here to-morrow noon." The professor looked at Sophie, startled and anxious; but her appearance was so composed, straight-forward, and full of faith, he could not think her wandering. "Do you know where he has been, my dear? or where he is now?" asked he, gently. "I cannot tell that. I knew and understood a great deal in my dream that I cannot remember now," she answered. "I only know that he will be here to-morrow, and, papa, and you, Neelie, whether you believe as I do or not, I want you to get ready to receive him. Let it be in this dear old room--I lying here as I am now, and you sitting so beside me. We'll wait for him to-morrow morning until twelve o'clock. If I should die before then, let my body stay here until noon, for I want him to see my face when he comes, so that he'll always remember how happy I looked. But if, after that little clock on the mantel-piece strikes twelve, still he isn't here, then you may do with me as you will. I shall not know nor mind." After this little speech, Sophie became very silent, being, in truth, too weak and worn out to speak or move, save at long, and ever longer, intervals. All that night, Professor Valeyon carried an aching and mistrustful heart; but Cornelia had a red spot in either cheek, never fading nor shifting. Sophie appeared to wander several times, murmuring something about darkness, and snow, and deadly weariness. A snow-storm had set in toward evening, and lasted until daybreak, a circumstance which seemed to cause Sophie considerable anxiety. By ten o'clock all the preparations were made according to Sophie's wish, and there was nothing to do but to wait. Cornelia sat brooding with folded arms, and the feverish spots on her cheeks. Occasionally she restlessly varied her position, seldom allowing her eyes to stray around the room, however, save that once in a while they sought Sophie's colorless, ethereal face, as a thirsty soul the water. The professor stood much at the window, and once or twice he imagined he caught a glimpse, somewhere down the road, of a darkly-clad woman's figure; but she never came nearer, and he decided it must be a hallucination of his fading eyes. Eleven o'clock struck from the little ormolu timepiece. A few moments afterward Sophie stirred slightly as she lay, and the professor and Cornelia listened breathlessly for what she would say. She lifted her heavy lids, and turned her eyes, a little dimmer now than heretofore, but steady and confident, first on her father, then on her sister. "Till noon--remember!" said she. Nothing more was heard, after that, but the hasty ticking of the little ormolu clock, as its hands traveled steadily around the circle. _ |
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