Bressant Part 13

"If I'd known who you were, I--I shouldn't have asked you to shut the door!" said he, in an apologetic tone quite new to him.

"And how do you know who I am?" inquired the vision, with a refres.h.i.+ng smile.

"I meant, what sort of a person you were; but you must be Miss Sophie: only I thought she was ill."

"I am Miss Sophie, but I'm not to be thought ill any more. One invalid in the house is enough. I'm going to nurse you, and, since I'm well, you may be twice as ill as ever, if you choose."

"Well!" said Bressant, quite resignedly. He was becoming a very respectable patient.

"In what way do you want to be taken care of?" resumed the nurse with a cheerful, business-like gravity which was at once becoming and piquant.

"Stay here and talk; I like to hear your voice: and you look so cool and pleasant."

Very few people could oppose this young man in any thing; he knew so well what he wanted, and demanded it so uncompromisingly. But Sophie's sense of fitness and propriety was as sound and impenetrable as adamant, and scarcely to be affected by any human will or consideration. She felt there was something not quite right in his manner and in the nature of his demand; and, being in the habit of making people conform to her ideas, rather than the reverse, she at once determined to correct him.

"If there's any thing you wish me to read to you, I'll do it. I didn't come to sit down and talk to you; but, if you like my voice, you can have more pleasure from it in that way."

"It would be no use for you to read: I couldn't understand--I couldn't attend to your voice and the book at the same time."

"We'd better wait, then," said Sophie, turning her clear, gray eyes upon him with an expression of demure satire. "By-and-by, perhaps, it won't have such a distracting effect upon you--when you come to know me better. If not, I must keep away altogether."

Bressant's forehead grew red with sudden temper. He felt reproved, but was not prepared to acknowledge that he had merited it.

"You're very generous of your voice!" exclaimed he, resentfully. "It's your fault, not mine, that it's agreeable. You're not so kind as your tone is."

"I don't mean to be unkind," said she, more gently, looking down. "You don't seem to see the difference between unkindness and--what I said."

"What is the difference?" demanded he, taking her up.

Sophie paused a few moments, compa.s.sionating this great, willful boy, and wondering what she could do for him. He had saved her father's life, thereby imperilling his own, and disabling himself, and she could not but admire and thank him for it. But his manner puzzled and annoyed her, and was an obstacle in the way of her would-be helpfulness.

"You wouldn't ask that question, I think, if you'd had sisters, or a mother," she said, at last. "I suppose you've lived only with men. But you must learn how to treat young women from your own sense of what is delicate and true."

Bressant stared and was silent: and Sophie herself was surprised at the authoritative tone she was a.s.suming toward a bearded man whom she had never met before. But it was impossible to a.s.sociate with Bressant without either yielding to him, or, at least, behaving differently from at other times, in one way or another. He was a magnet that drew from people things unsuspected by themselves.

The pause was finally broken by the young man's accepting the situation with a grace, and even docility, which was nearly too much for Sophie's gravity.

"If you'll read, I will listen and understand it: you'd better try the Bible. I have a great deal of work to do upon that, still: you'll find one on the table by the window."

She got the book, with whose contents she was considerably better acquainted than was the divinity student, and sat down to read, marveling at the oddness of the situation; while he lay apparently absorbed in the cracks on the ceiling. By degrees--for having carried her point she could not help being more gracious--she began to allow a little embroidery of conversation to weave itself about the sacred text She spoke to Bressant about such simple and ordinary matters as went to make up her life--the books she had read, the people she knew, the country round about, a few of her more inward thoughts. He listened, and said no more than enough to show he was attentive; sometimes making her laugh by the shrewdness of his questions, and the quaintness of his remarks.

But he said nothing more to bring a grave look into the eyes of his young nurse; and she, finding him so gentle and boyish, and withal manly and profound, chatted on with more confidence and freedom; and, being gifted with fineness and accuracy of observation, and a clear flow and order of language and ideas, made talking a delight and a profit.

There was nothing formal or didactic about Sophie, and her talk rippled forth as naturally and spontaneously as a brook trickles over its brown stones, or the over-hanging willows whisper in the wind. There was in it the unwearied and unweariable freshness of nature. And Sophie's vein of humor was as fine and pungent as the aroma of a lemon: it touched her words now and then, and made their flavor all the more acceptable.

So Bressant gained his end at last, though he had yielded it; and this fact was not lost upon the trained keenness of his observation. After his nurse was gone, he lay with closed eyes, and a general sensation of comfort, until he fell asleep. Quiet dreams came to him, such as children have sometimes, but grown-up people seldom. Everywhere he seemed to follow a cool, white cloud. But where was Cornelia?

CHAPTER XV.

AN UNTIMELY REMINISCENCE.

In spite of nursing and a very strong const.i.tution, 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 surpa.s.sed 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 a.n.a.lyzing and cla.s.sifying 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 a.s.sistance 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 suns.h.i.+ne.

"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; n.o.body 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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sionate 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?