The Essential Julian Hawthorne Collection. Julian Hawthorne
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"At least you will think so," he added, looking half playful and half wistful.
Cornelia brought her lips into a pout, all ready to say, "what?" but did not say it, and gazed at her father with round, interrogating eyes.
"You'd be very glad to go away and leave me, of course," continued the professor, assuming an air of studied unconcern.
"Papa!" exclaimed the young lady, with an emphatic intonation of affection, indignation, and bewilderment.
"What! not be glad to go to New York, and to all the fashionable watering-places, and be introduced to all the best society?" queried the old gentleman, in hypocritical astonishment.
"Papa!" again exclaimed the young lady; but this time in a tone which the tumult of delight, anticipation, and a fear lest there should be a mistake somewhere, softened almost into a whisper. She had risen from the arm of the chair to her feet, and stood with her hands clasped together beneath her chin.
The professor laughed a short and rather unnatural laugh. "I thought you wouldn't be obstinate about it, when you came to think it over," said he, dryly. He folded up his spectacles and put them back in his waistcoat pocket with, unusual elaboration of manner. "So you would really like to have a change, would you? Well, I trust you will not be disappointed in your expectations of society and watering-places. At all events, you may learn to appreciate home more!" Here the professor laughed again, as if he considered it a joke.
Cornelia was too much entranced by the new idea to have any notion of what he was talking about; she was already hundreds of miles away, living in stately houses, driving in magnificent carriages, sweeping in gorgeous silks and laces through gilded and illuminated ballrooms, and listening to courtly compliments from handsome and immaculate gentlemen. But when, presently, her scattered faculties began to return to a more normal state, an unquenchable curiosity to know how the miracle was to be worked, seized upon her. She dropped on her knees beside her father's chair, took his hand in both of hers, and looked up in his face.
"But how is it to be, papa, dear? I mean, whom am I to go with? and when am I to go?--dear me, I haven't a thing to wear! Shall I have time to get any thing ready? Isn't Sophie invited too? How strange it all seems! I can hardly realize it, somehow. From whom is the letter?"
"Can you remember when you were about nine years old?" inquired the professor.
"I don't know, I am sure," replied Cornelia, in some surprise at the irrelevancy of the question. "Nothing particular. Oh! I know! we were in New York!" said she, beginning to see some connection, and breaking into a smile.
"Do you remember seeing a lady there," continued the professor, talking and looking straight at nothing, "who made a great deal of you and Sophie, and asked you to call her Aunt Margaret?"
"Oh--I believe--I do--," said Cornelia, slowly; "I think I didn't like her much, because she was deaf or something, and talked in such a high voice. She wasn't really our aunt, was she? Did she write the letter?"
"Yes, she did, my dear, and invites you and Sophie to spend the summer with her. You don't dislike her so much as to refuse, I suppose, do you?"
"O papa!" exclaimed his daughter, deprecatingly; for the old gentleman had spoken rather in a tone of reproof. "I'm sure she's as kind and good as she can be; I was only telling what I especially remembered about her, you know. How did she come to think of us after so long?"
"I used to know her quite well, long before you were born, my dear," replied the professor, tapping with his fingers on the arm of the chair; "and at that time I should not have been surprised at her offering me any kindness. I _am_ surprised now," he added, with a good deal of feeling; "she's a better friend than I thought."
Cornelia remained silent for several moments, because, not in the least comprehending what sort of ground her papa was walking on, she feared that the questions and remarks she was anxious to advance might jar with his mood. At length, a sufficient time having elapsed to warrant, in her opinion, the introduction of intelligible topics, she looked up and spoke again.
"How soon, papa--how soon did you say--am I to go?"
"First of July, Aunt Margaret says. Will that give you time enough to make yourself fine?"
"Now, papa, you're making fun of me," exclaimed the young lady, delighted that he should be in the humor to do so, yet speaking in that semi-reproachful tone which ladies sometimes adopt when the other sex makes their costume the object of remark, "I can make myself as fine as I can be by that time, of course! But how is it about Sophie? Won't she be able to go too?"
Papa shook his head, and combed his bristly white beard with his fingers. "Sophie has been very ill," said he; "it wouldn't be safe to have her go anywhere this summer. We can't take too much care of her. Typhoid pneumonia is a dangerous thing, and though she's on the way to recovery now, she might easily relapse. And then," added the old gentleman, in a more inward tone, "she would recover no more."
Although he mumbled this sentence to himself, Cornelia caught his meaning, more, probably, from his manner than from any thing she heard; and being of an emotional and warmly-tender disposition, she began to cry. She loved her sister very much; and something must also be allowed to the fact that, having a great happiness in prospect for herself, she could afford to expend more sympathy on those less fortunate. As for the professor, he, for a second time that afternoon, gave evidence of possessing disgracefully little control over himself. He began another fruitless search after his handkerchief, and finally asked Cornelia, with some heat, whether she knew what had become of it.
"Why, it's on your head, papa!" warbled she, brightly changing a laugh for her tears; and papa, putting up his hand in great confusion, and finding that it was indeed so, laughed also, and this time in a perfectly natural manner; but he blew his nose very resoundingly, for all that.
The atmosphere being serene once more, the joy of the future became again strong in Cornelia's heart, and coupled with it, an earnest longing to disburden herself to some one, and who but her sister should be her confidant? So she rose from her knees, and picked up her brown straw hat, which, in the excitement, had fallen to the floor.
"Is there any thing you'd like to do, papa dear?" asked she, laying her forefinger caressingly upon his bald head. "Because if there isn't, I, I should like--I think I'd better go to Sophie."
Professor Valeyon nodded his head, being in truth desirous of taking solitary counsel with himself. The letter contained a good deal more than the invitation he had communicated to Cornelia, and he could not feel at ease until he had more thoroughly analyzed and digested it. So when his daughter had vanished through the door, with a smile and a kiss of the hand, he mounted his spectacles again, and spread the letter open on his knee.
After reading a while in silence, he spoke; though his voice was audible only to his own mental ears.
"There was a time," said he, "when I wouldn't have believed I could ever hear the news of that man's death, and take it so quietly! And now he sends me his son!--as it were bequeaths him to me. Can it be as a hostage for forgiveness, though so late? or is it merely because he knew I could not but feel a vital interest in the boy, and would instruct and treat him as my own? He was a shrewd judge of human nature--and yet, I must not judge him harshly now."
Here Professor Valeyon happened again to catch sight of his slipper, and interrupted his soliloquy to extend his stockinged toe, fork it toward himself, and having, with some trouble, got it right side uppermost, to put it on. And then he referred once more to the letter.
"I should like to know whether he was aware that Abbie was here, or that she was alive at all! Margaret says nothing about it in her letter. If he did, of course he must have written to her, or, if he was determined to die as for these last twenty years and more he has lived, he would never _knowingly_ have sent the boy where she was, on any consideration. Well, well, I can easily find out how that is, from either Abbie or the boy. By-the-way, I wonder whether this _incognito_