Part 31 (1/2)
”When does the next train go through here in the opposite direction?”
”We're just awaiting for one to come along and give us the track--and there she is now,” returned the conductor, as he took his departure.
The whistle screamed malevolently, and, with a jerk and a rattle, the car began to move off. Bressant rose suddenly from his seat, walked quickly along the aisle to the door, pa.s.sed through to the platform, grasped the iron bal.u.s.trade with one hand, and swung himself lightly to the ground. The whistle screamed again like a disappointed fiend.
”Guess that young man was up late last night,” remarked the conductor to the brakeman; ”a powerful sound sleep he was in, anyhow.”
”Off on a spree to New York, most like,” responded the brakeman, tightening his dirty-brown tippet around his neck, ”and thought better of it at the last minute.”
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
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 pa.s.sed, 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 sc.r.a.p 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 l.u.s.ty 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, G.o.d 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 sh.o.r.e, 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.