Bressant: Chapter 28

Chapter 28

A DISAPPOINTMENT.

There could not have been a better night for sleighing. The temperature
had risen considerably since the storm, and the snow, which had fallen
to the depth of a foot, was already packed down hard upon the road, so
that the runners seldom sank beneath the surface. Moreover, there was a
full moon, just pushing its deep orange circumference above the horizon.
It had chanced to come up just where a black skeleton forest stood out
against the sky, encouraging the fancy that it had somehow got entangled
in the branches, and had grown red in the face from struggling to get
out. But, ere the young people reached the scene of the entertainment,
the struggle was over; the perfect circle was calmly and radiantly
uplifting itself above the world, far beyond the reach of the
outstretched arms of the gnarled and black-limbed forest; yet did the
dark earth benefit by its defeat, in the chaste illumination which
descended upon its wintry countenance.

Mr. Reynolds was perfectly happy; it is pleasant to reflect how small an
amount of bliss can overflow some souls. Cornelia was brief but kind in
her answers to his turbid and confused pourings forth; not that she paid
heed to any thing the poor fellow said--she was only occasionally aware
of his presence. Her mind was revelling in dreams of heated and exalted
imagination; she was filled with inspiration, as with the rich,
palpitating blast of a mighty organ; but the tumultuous chorus of her
thoughts produced upon her an effect of magnetism which found its
expression in a gentle graciousness of words and manner.

She had made up her mind that the first person she should meet would be
Bressant; and, so full did she feel of victorious power, it seemed as
if, with scarcely a conscious effort, she could overbear and bring him
to her feet. Yes, and dictate the terms upon which she would consent to
receive his homage. What a pity that the key-notes of so few natures
correspond, at the critical moment, with our own; and that Providence
sees fit to forward, by even negative help, so small a proportion of our
superbly-conceived plans!

It was half-past eight when they drew up at the boarding-house door. No
sooner had Cornelia set foot within the threshold, and caught sight of
Abbie's face, than it was borne in upon her that Bressant was not there;
and the former, after questioning her about Sophie's non-appearance,
confirmed her fear. He had not come, nor was it now probable that he
would arrive before morning. It would have been useless to expect him by
the late train, due at half-past ten, since, to avail himself of that,
it would be necessary to make a difficult connection by walking two or
three miles from one railway to another.

After climbing to such a height, it was terrible to fall. Cornelia
had not allowed herself to anticipate the disaster, precisely because
it was so crashing. In a moment the great, rainbow-tinted bubble of her
hope and imagination had burst, leaving only a bitter and unpleasant
sense of the paltry and unclean materials--the soap-suds and
clay-pipe--wherewith it had been created.

Furthermore, the polite fictions which she had lubricated her conscience
withal, regarding her desires and intentions, were shown up at precisely
their true value, and a very discreditable spectacle they made. Nothing
is more exasperating after a failure than to be stared out of
countenance by the unworthy means we have employed. During her progress
up-stairs to the dressing-room, and brief stay there, Cornelia had ample
leisure to review her thoughts and deeds during the latter months of her
life. What a waste of time, opportunity, and emotion! It was a tragedy
of ridicule and a farce of profound pathos.

Her perception of these things was assisted by the depression which
reacted upon her previous excitement: it had an embarrassing way of
presenting, in the clearest colors, whatever in her conduct had been
most unwise and indefensible. She could have borne it easily had there
been as much as one stirring struggle for victory, even had the struggle
resulted in defeat. Her state of mind might have borne analogy to his
who, having deeply caroused overnight in celebration of some glorious
triumph, learned, upon coming to his racked and tortured senses the next
day, that it was a triumph for the other side.

Had the sense of despair been less overwhelming, had Cornelia been
merely disappointed, rage would have taken the place of depression, and
her thoughts would have run in far different channels. But there was no
hope: this was her last chance of all: hereafter a rampart would be
erected against her, which she neither was able nor dared to scale.
There was no element in her position that could make it endurable, and
yet there was no escape. She had not enough spirit of enterprise left to
return home at once, but yielded herself with torpid insensibility to
whoever chose to make a suggestion. She wonderingly speculated as to how
she had ever been able to originate an idea herself.

The evening dragged its slow length along, and dragged Cornelia with it.
To be where she was, was insupportable; but to go back to the Parsonage
was worse still; and the thought of the solitary drive thither with the
overflowing Mr. Reynolds filled her with a nauseating pain of
anticipation.

It could not have been far from midnight when she awoke to a sense of
being alone and not far from the side-door into the yard. Her
partner--whoever he was--had gone to get her some ice-cream or a cup of
coffee. Cornelia did not wait for his return, but walked quickly and
unobserved to the door, which stood a few inches ajar, opened it, passed
through, and stood in the unconfined air. The keen intensity of the
tonic made her nostrils ache, and her uncovered bosom heave. She
unbuttoned one of her gloves, and, taking some snow in her hand, pressed
it to her warm temples, and then let it drop shivering into her breast.

"It must feel like that to die, I suppose," thought she. "If I were
Sophie, now, that snow would be the death of me in two days: as it is, I
shall only have a cold in the head to-morrow. There seems to be no
reason in these things."

A dark figure turned the farther corner of the house, and came
ploughing through the snow immediately under the eaves, dragging one
hand along the clapboards as it came. The crunching of the snow caught
Cornelia's ears, and she turned and recognized the figure in half a
breath. The great height, the massive breadth, the easy, springing
tread--it was Bressant from head to foot. He was buttoned up in a short
pea-jacket, and there was a round fur cap on his head. As Cornelia
turned upon him, he stopped a moment, standing quite motionless, with
the fingers of one hand resting on the side of the house. Then he came
close up to her and grasped her wrist with his gloved hand.

"Where is Sophie?" demanded he in his rapid, muffled voice.

"She's ill: she caught cold: she's at home," answered Cornelia, who, at
the first recognition, had felt a kind of twang through all her nerves,
and was now trying to control the effects of the shock. There was
something queer in Bressant's manner--in the way he looked at her.

"But you came," rejoined he, stooping down and peering into her
beautiful, troubled face. He broke into a laugh, which terrified
Cornelia greatly, because he laughed so seldom. "One might know you'd
come. You thought I'd be here: you came to see me, and here I am. Will
Sophie get well?"

"Oh, yes! she was much better. When I left she had on
her--wedding-dress."

Bressant drew in his breath hissingly between his teeth, and his fingers
tightened a moment round Cornelia's wrist. The pain forced a sob from
her and turned her lips pale. He paid no attention to her, presently
dropped her wrist, and put his hands behind him, grinding the snow
beneath his heel, and looking down.

"Whom is she going to marry?" was his next question, asked without
raising his head.

"You!" exclaimed Cornelia, in astonishment and fear. The answer sprang
to her lips without forethought or reflection, so much had the strange
question startled her.

But he again stooped down and peered into her eyes, watching the effect
of his words on her as he spoke them.

"No, no! I am not he who promised to marry her. She wouldn't have me, if
I asked her: she don't know me. I'm going to marry some one else.
_She'll_ love me, no matter who I am. Shall I tell you her name?"

Cornelia could only shiver--shiver--with dry mouth and dilated eyes.
Bressant put his hand on her shoulder, and drew her forward a step or
two, so that the white moonlight fell upon her.

"Cornelia Valeyon is her name," said he, and then, as she remained
rigid, he bent forward, with a whispered laugh, and kissed her on the
face.

"There! now we belong to each other--a good match, aren't we? Quick!
now; run into the house, and get your things on. You must walk home with
me, and we'll arrange every thing. Go! I shall wait for you here."

She reentered the house, cold and dizzy, just as her partner arrived
with the coffee. She explained--what scarcely needed to be told--that
she felt faint: she must go up-stairs. In three minutes she had put her
satin-slippered feet into a pair of water-proof overshoes, pinned up
her trailing skirts, thrown on her long wadded mantle, with sleeves and
hood, and had got down-stairs again before "assistance" could arrive.
All the time, there was a burning and tingling where his lips had been,
but she would not put up her hand to touch the spot, and relieve the
sensation. It was, in a manner, sacred to her; albeit the sanctity was
largely mingled with bewilderment, remorse, and fear. When she came out,
Bressant was standing where she had left him, tossing a couple of
snow-balls from one hand to another. He dropped them as she approached,
and brushed the snow from his gloves. She took the arm he offered
her--timidly, and yet feeling that it was all in the world she had to
cling to. It was true--by that kiss she belonged to him, for it had made
her a traitor to all else on whom she had hitherto had a claim. Yet upon
how different a footing did they stand with one another from that which
she had prefigured to herself! This was he whom she was to have brought
vanquished to her feet! With one motion of his strong, masculine hand he
had swept away all her fine-spun cobwebs of opportunity and method, and
had laid his clutch upon the very marrow of her soul. But though she had
lost the command, she was party, if not principal, to the guilt. It was
he who had taken fire from her.

"You remember last summer," said he, "that night when an arch was in the
sky? We didn't understand one another then, and I didn't understand
myself. But, during the last day or two, I've been thinking it all over.
I've had too good an opinion of myself all along."

"What is it that you've been thinking?" asked Cornelia, feeling
repelled, and yet driven, by a piteous necessity, to know all the
contents, good or bad, of this heart which was her only possession.

"Of all that had been said or done this last half-year. There's nothing
you care for more than me, is there?" he demanded, concentrating the
greatest emphasis into the question.

"If you care for me--if I can be every thing to you"--Cornelia's voice
was broken and tossed upon the uncontrolled waves of fighting emotions,
and she could give little care to the form and manner of her speech.

"I love you--of course I love you!--what else is there for me to do? But
I've been all this time trying to find out what love was. I thought I
loved Sophie, you know."

Bressant's strange words and altered manner dismayed Cornelia. What was
the matter with him? She could not get it out of her head that some
awful event must have happened, but she knew not how to frame inquiries.
Bressant continued--a determined levity in his tone was yet occasionally
broken down by a stroke of feeling terribly real:

"I was a great fool--you should have told me; you knew more about it
than I did. It was my self-conceit--I thought nothing was too good for
me. When I saw you I thought you were the flower of the world, so I
wanted you. Well--you are--the flower of the world!"

"He does love me!" said Cornelia to herself, and she knew a momentary
pang of bliss which no consideration of honor or rectitude had power to
dull or diminish.

"But, afterward," he went on, his voice lowering for an instant, "I saw
an angel--something above all the flowers of this world--and I was fool
enough to imagine she would suit me better still. You never thought so,
did you, Cornelia?" he added, with a half laugh; "well--you should have
told me!"

How he dragged her up and down, and struck her where she was most
defenseless! Did he do it on purpose, or unconsciously?

"I mistook worship for love--that was the trouble, I fancy. Luckily, I
found out in time it won't do to love what is highest--it can only make
one mad. Love what you can understand--that's the way! See how wise I've
become."

Bressant's laugh affected Cornelia like a deadly drug. Her speech was
fettered, and she moved without her own will or guidance.

"I found out--just in time--that I needed more body and less soul--less
goodness and--more Cornelia!" he concluded, epigrammatically.

So this was her position. It could hardly be more humiliating. Yet how
could she rebel? for was not the yoke of her own manufacture? Indeed,
had she been put to it, she might have found it a difficult matter to
distinguish between the actual relation now subsisting between Bressant
and herself, and that which she had been, for months past, striving to
effect. He had met her half-way, that was all.

But surely it was only during this absence that this idea of abandoning
Sophie, and turning to herself, had occurred to him. Half as a question,
half as an exclamation, the words found their way through Cornelia's
twitching lips--

"What has happened to you since you went away?"

"Oh! since we love each other, there's no use talking about that at
present. If I had any idea of marrying Sophie, now, I should have to go
and tell her every thing. It's so convenient to be certain that
_nothing_ can change your love for me, Cornelia! No, no! I wouldn't be
so suspicious of you as to tell you now."

"When am I to know, then?" she asked, fearful of she knew not what.

"After we're married, there shall be a clearing up of it all. You'll be
much amused! By-the-way, I found out one queer thing--what my real name
is!"

"Your real name!"

"Yes--who I am; you know I said I wasn't the same who was engaged to
marry Sophie. Well, I'm not; he was a myth--there was no such person. I
always thought 'Bressant' was an _incognito_, didn't you? But it turns
out to be the only name I have! I hope you like it; do you think 'Mrs.
Bressant' sounds well?"

"What does all this mean? What are you going to do with me? Are you
making a sport of me?" cried Cornelia, clasping both hands over
Bressant's arm, in a passion of helplessness. Much as she loved life,
she would, at that moment, have died rather than feel that she was
ridiculed and deserted by him.

They had come to the brow of the hill on which the village stood,
overlooking the valley, which moon and snow together lit up into a sort
of phantom daylight. The moon hung aloft, directly above their heads,
and the narrow circumference of their shadows, lying close at their
feet, were mingled indistinguishably together. Cornelia, in the energy
of her appeal, had stopped walking, and the two stood, for a moment,
looking at one another. Seen from a few yards' distance, they would have
made a supremely beautiful and romantic picture.

The stately poise of Bressant's gigantic figure--the slight inclination
of his head and shoulders toward Cornelia--presented an ideal model for
a tender and protecting lover. She, in form and bearing, the incarnation
of earthly grace and symmetry, her lovely upturned face revealed in
deep, soft shadows and sweet, melting lights, her rounded fingers
interlaced across his arm, her bosom lifting and letting fall
irregularly the cloak that lay across it--what completer embodiment
could there be of happy, self-surrendering, trusting, young womanhood?
And what were the fitly-spoken words--the apples of gold in this picture
of silver?

"Cornelia," said Bressant, throwing aside the levity, as well as the
underlying passion, of his tone, and speaking with a slightly impatient
coldness, "don't you begin to be a fool as soon as I leave it off. You
may call what joins us together love, if you like, but it's not worth
getting excited about. You take me because you were jealous of Sophie,
and because you've compromised yourself. I take you because you're
beautiful to look at, and--because nobody else would have me! We shall
have plenty of money, which will help us along. But what is there in our
relations to make us either enthusiastic or miserable?--Come along!"

This was the consummation of Cornelia's passionate hopes and torturing
fears, of her dishonorable intriguing and reckless self-desecration. She
became very calm all of a sudden, and, without making any rejoinder, she
"came along" as he bade her, and they descended the hill.

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