Again the young man turned to the window, and, raising the sash, he secured it by the little button used for the purpose, and leaned out into the snow-storm. The flakes fell and melted upon his face, and caught in his bushy beard, and rested lightly upon his twisted hair. They flew into his eyes, and made little drifts upon the collar of his coat and in the folds of his sleeves. He gazed up toward the dull, gray cloud whence they came, and presently, out of the confusion, and carelessness, and morbid impatience of his heart, he put forth a prayer that some awfully stirring event might come to pass; let a sword pass through his life! let him be smitten down and trampled upon! let his mind be continually occupied with the extreme of active, living suffering! let there be no cessation till the end! He could accept it and exult in it; but to live on as he was living now was to walk open-eyed into insanity. Rather than that, he would commit some capital crime, and subject himself to the penalty. Let God take at least so much pity upon him, and grant him physical agony!
It is not often that our prayers are answered, nor, when they are, does the answer come in the form our expectations shaped. Occasionally, however--and then, perhaps, with a promptness and completeness that force us to a realization of how extravagant and senseless our desires are--does fulfillment come upon us.
As Bressant's strange petition went up through the storm, a sleigh came along from the direction of the railway-station. It was nothing but a cart on runners, and painted a dingy, grayish blue; it was loaded with a dozen tin milk-cans much defaced by hard usage, each one stopped with an enormous cork. The driver was clad in an overcoat which once had been dark brown or black, but had worn to a greenish yellow, except where the collar turned up around the throat, and showed the original color. His head and most of his face were enveloped in a knit woolen comforter, and mittens of the same make and material protected his hands. His legs were wrapped up in a gray horse-blanket. He was whitened here and there with snow, and snow was packed between the necks of the milk-cans. He drove directly toward the boarding-house, and he and Bressant caught sight of one another at the same moment.
"Hallo!" called the stranger; "you're Bressant, I guess, ain't you? I've got something for you." Here he drew up beneath the window. "You see, I was down to the depot getting some milk aboard the up-train, and Davis, the telegraph-man, came up and asked me, 'Bill Reynolds, are you going up to Abbie's? 'cause,' says he, 'here's a telegraph has come for the student up there--him that's going to marry Sophie Valeyon--and our boy he's down with the influenza,' says he. 'I'm you're man!' says I, 'let's have it!' and here 'tis," added Mr. Reynolds, producing a yellow envelope from the bottom of his overcoat pocket.
Bressant had heard little or nothing of the explanation volunteered by the bearer of the message, but he at once recognized the yellow telegraph-envelope, and comprehended the rest. But, ere he could leave the window to go down and receive it, he saw the fat servant-girl, who had witnessed the scene from the parlor, run down to the front-gate, sinking above her ankles at every step, take the envelope from Bill's mittened paw, exchange a word and a grin with him, and then return, carefully stepping into the holes she had made going out.
Bill gave a nod of good-will to Bressant's window--for Bressant was no longer there--whipped up his nag, and jingled off with his milk-cans. In another minute the fat servant-girl, after stamping the remains of the snow off her shoes upon the door-mat, opened the door, and introduced the dispatch and her own smiling physiognomy. Bressant snatched the former, and shut the door in the latter, before the hand-wiping and haranguing had time to begin.
Before opening the envelope, he stood up at his full height, and filled his lungs with a long, profound breath; then emitted it suddenly in a sort of deep, short growl, and took his seat at the table. He tore open the end of the envelope, pulled out the inclosure, which was an ordinary printed telegraph-blank, filled in with three lines of writing, as follows: "Been very ill come on at once at once must hear all no alternative" in the scrawly and unpunctuated chirography peculiar to written telegrams. The name signed was "M. Vauderp." Bressant read the message, and afterward carefully perused the printing, even down to the name of the printer's firm, which was given in very small type at the bottom of the paper. Then he glanced over the writing once more, and returned the paper to the envelope.
"At once, at once!" muttered he; "that's the only way of writing italics in telegraphy, I suppose. Well, I'll go at once; it's ten now; there's a train at half-past."
He unlocked a drawer in his table, and took from it a purse, which he put in his pocket. He buttoned a pea-jacket across his broad chest, pressed a round fur-cap on to his handsome head, took a pair of thick gloves from the mantel-piece, and walked away without giving one backward glance.
The snow blew and drifted through the open window into the empty room; the few remaining flowers were hustled from their stalks; the red eye of the stove grew dimmer and dimmer, and finally faded into darkness, and the colored drawing of the patent derrick broke loose at another corner, and flapped and fluttered against the wall in crazy exultation.
CHAPTER XXVII.
FACT AND FANCY.
The snow-storm continued all that afternoon. The customary hour for Bressant's visit to the Parsonage went by, and he did not appear. The professor smoked two extra pipes, and spent half an hour looking out across the valley trying to discern the open spot upon the top of the hill. Finally, the early twilight set in, and he returned to his chair, but felt no impulse to light a lamp and take up a book. He sat tilted back, pulling Shakespeare's nose with meditative fingers. A gloom gradually settled over the room, withdrawing one after another of the familiar objects around him from the old gentleman's sight; it even seemed to creep into his heart, and create a vague uneasiness there. He tried to shake it off, telling himself that he was the happiest and most fortunate old fellow alive; that every thing was coming out just as he had hoped and prayed it might; that one daughter, with the man of her choice, would be just far enough removed from his fireside to give piquancy to the frequent visits he should receive from her; while the other would still, for a time, continue to pour out sunshine in the house, and redouble her love for him by way of compensating for what he should miss in Sophie's absence. And then the professor built an airier and a fairer castle still: beneath it lay the heavy clouds of suffering, barren effort, and hope deferred; its sunlit walls were hewn of solid faith; the banner which floated over the battlements was woven with white threads of truth; over the arched entrance-gate was written "Constancy." Yet, fair and lofty as the castle was, the building-materials were taken from no less homely edifices than the village boarding-house and his own Parsonage!
By-and-by, however, the vision faded, or else the clouds upon which it was built rose up and hid it. The professor, returning to himself, found that he was now surrounded with thick darkness, and, strive as he would, he could paint no fancies upon it which did not partake more or less of the character of the background. Sophie seemed to have lost the steady cheer of her aspect; she was pale and fragile, and every moment took away yet more of earthly substance, till scarcely any thing but the faint lustre of her face and form remained. Then, all at once, the features which had heretofore been only sad, changed into an expression of horror and torture and despair; and, while the professor, himself aghast, strained his old eyes to make out more clearly the half-indistinguishable image, it vanished quite away. But, at the last moment, it had spoken--at least, the lips bad moved as if in speech, though no sound had reached the professor's ears; yet he fancied he had caught a glimmering of the purport. He pressed his hands over his forehead to shut out the thought, and wondered no longer at the expression upon Sophie's face.
Then Cornelia moved across the hollow blackness of the room. She was sunshiny no longer, but morose and stern; her eyebrows were drawn together; a secret defiance was in her tigerish eyes; her lips were set, yet seemed, ever and anon, as she turned her face aside, to tremble with a passionate yearning. As he gazed, she disappeared, but the professor had a feeling that she was still concealed somewhere in the darkness. And, at last, she came again--she, or something that looked like her. The old gentleman shivered and recoiled, as though a snow-drift had somehow blown into his warm, old heart. Was it his daughter who looked with