"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