The Essential Julian Hawthorne Collection. Julian Hawthorne
fiction, and am resolved never in future to make an excursion into the crude and improbable regions of reality.
The End.
Footnotes
1. Dr. Forbes Rollinson's death occurred while these pages were in preparation. This is not the place to add my tribute of affection and appreciation to the many memoirs of him which have appeared in the public prints. My first acquaintance with him dates but little more than three years prior to his death; but the impression he produced upon me of cordiality, culture, and ability will remain with me while I live. He was a grand old gentleman of a school that is now bygone; a scholar of vast attainments, and a Christian in heart and life, if not in profession. Although he had far exceeded the ordinary span of life--he was born, I believe, in the last century--he showed few signs of physical, and none of mental infirmity; and his sudden and painless decease was quite unexpected.
I subjoin extracts from a letter written to me on the subject of the present narrative:
"WELLESLEY HOUSE, QUEEN'S GATE, W.
"MY DEAR H.: I must say I fail to perceive the force of your objections. What is fiction, at best, but an imitation of truth--and a pretty poor imitation, too, as a general thing?... You ought to be glad to be saved the trouble of inventing.... In the matter of love-making and adventure I have nothing to say, but scientific truths are not lightly to be tampered with. 'Round off the corners' by all means, if you think fit, but do not suffer your artistic proclivities to lead you into a misrepresentation of the essential facts.... The people are all dead, and the estate is broken up, so you need have no hesitation regarding names. Literary value aside, the thing would be worth nothing if the means of verifying it were withheld....
"Ever faithfully yours,
"June 3d, 1878. E. FORBES ROLLINSON."
2. Now also the late: _vide supra_.
3. 3. In July, 1867.
BRESSANT
A Novel
by
JULIAN HAWTHORNE
CONTENTS.
I.--HOW PROFESSOR VALEYON LOSES HIS HANDKERCHIEF
II.--SIGNS OF A THUNDER-SHOWER
III.--SOPHIE AND CORNELIA ENTER INTO A COVENANT
IV.--A BUSINESS TRANSACTION
V.--BRESSANT PICKS A TEA-ROSE
VI.--CORNELIA BEGINS TO UNDO A KNOT
VII.--PROFESSOR VALEYON MAKES A CALL
VIII.--GREAT EXPECTATIONS
IX.--THE DAGUERREOTYPE
X.--ONLY FOR TO-NIGHT!
XI.--EVERY LITTLE COUNTS
XII.--DOLLY ACTS AN IMPORTANT PART
XIII.--A KEEPSAKE
XIV.--NURSING
XV.--AN UNTIMELY REMINISCENCE
XVI.--PARTING AN ANCHOR
XVII.--SOPHIE'S CONFESSION
XVIII.--A FLANK MOVEMENT
XIX.--AN INTERMISSION
XX.--BRESSANT CONFIDES A SECRET TO THE FOUNTAIN
XXI.--PUTTING ON THE ARMOR
XXII.--LOCKED UP
XXIII.--ARMED NEUTRALITY
XXIV.--A BIT OF INSPIRATION
XXV.--ANOTHER INTERMISSION
XXVI.--BRESSANT TAKES A VACATION
XXVII.--FACT AND FANCY
XXVIII.--A DISAPPOINTMENT
XXIX.--FOUND
XXX.--LOST
XXXI.--MOTHER AND SON
XXXII.--WHERE TWO ROADS MEET
XXXIII.--TILL THE ELEVENTH HOUR
XXXIV.--THE HOUR AND THE MAN
CHAPTER I.
HOW PROFESSOR VALEYON LOSES HIS HANDKERCHIEF.
One warm afternoon in June--the warmest of the season thus far--Professor Valeyon sat, smoking a black clay pipe, upon the broad balcony, which extended all across the back of his house, and overlooked three acres of garden, inclosed by a solid stone-wall. All the doors in the house were open, and most of the windows, so that any one passing in the road might have looked up through the gabled porch and the passage-way, which divided the house, so to speak, into two parts, and seen the professor's brown-linen legs, and slippers down at the heel, projecting into view beyond the framework of the balcony-door. Indeed--for the professor was an elderly man, and, in many respects, a creature of habit--precisely this same phenomenon could have been observed on any fine afternoon during the summer, even to the exact amount of brown-linen leg visible.
Why the old gentleman's chair should always have been so placed as to allow a view of so much of his anatomy and no more is a question of too subtle and abstruse conditions to be solved here. One reason doubtless lay in the fact that, by craning forward over his knees, he could see down the passage-way, through the porch, and across the grass-plot which intervened between the house and the fence, to the road, thus commanding all approaches from that direction, while his outlook on either side, and in front, remained as good as from any other position whatsoever. To be sure, the result would have been more easily accomplished had the chair been moved two feet farther forward, but that would have made the professor too much a public spectacle, and, although by no means backward in appearing, at the fitting time, before his fellow-men, he enjoyed and required a certain amount of privacy.
Moreover, it was not toward the road that Professor Valeyon's eyes were most often turned. They generally wandered southward, over the ample garden, and across the long, winding valley, to the range of rough-backed hills, which abruptly invaded the farther horizon. It was a sufficiently varied and vigorous prospect, and one which years had endeared to the old gentleman, as if it were the features of a friend. Especially was he fond of looking at a certain open space, near the summit of a high, wooded hill, directly opposite. It was like an oasis among a desert of trees. Had it become overgrown, or had the surrounding timber been cut away, the professor would have taken it much to heart. A voluntary superstition of this kind is not uncommon in elderly gentlemen of more than ordinary intellectual power. It is a sort of half-playful revenge they wreak upon themselves for being so wise. Probably Professor Valeyon would have been at a loss to explain why he valued this small green spot so much; but, in times of doubt or trouble, be seemed to find help and relief in gazing at it.
The entire range of hills was covered with a dense and tangled timber-growth, save where the wood-cutters had cleared out a steep, rectangular space, and dotted it with pale-yellow lumber-piles, that looked as if nothing less than a miracle kept them from rolling over and over down to the bottom of the valley, or where the gray, irregular face of a precipice denied all foothold to the boldest roots. There was nothing smooth, swelling, or graceful, in the aspect of the range. They seemed, hills though they were, to be inspired with the souls of mountains, which were ever seeking to burst the narrow bounds that confined them. And, for his part, the professor liked them much better than if they had been mountains indeed. They gave an impression of greater energy and vitality, and were all the more comprehensible and lovable, because not too sublime and vast.
In another way, his garden afforded as much pleasure to the professor as his hills. From having planned and, in a great measure, made it himself, he took in it a peculiar pride and