"Well, say, I guess she'd better be fetched home, first thing," said he, bestirring himself to arise from the chilly seat he had taken. "Lucky I happened along, too. Guess you was hoping I might, wasn't you? Well, you hoist her under the arms, and I'll hang on by the feet—ain't that it? and we'll have her into the sleigh in no time."
"Don't touch her!" said the other, fiercely. "Let her alone, you drunken fool!"
"Now, look here, Mr. Bressant," rejoined Bill Reynolds, resting his hands on his knees, and looking intently in Bressant's face, "I may not be rich and a swell, like you are; but I guess I'm an honest man, any way, as much as ever you be; and I ain't insulting nobody by helping take home a poor frozen girl. I don't care if she is engaged to you. You don't mean to keep her here till morning do you? and seeing she ain't married yet, I guess the right place for her to be in, is her father's house."
Perhaps it was the moonlight, glinting on Bill's immovable eye-glasses, that gave extraordinary impressiveness to his words; or it may have been Bressant's reflection, that this young country bumpkin, sullied with drink, coarse and ignorant though he was, would have probably found his sense of equality in no way diminished, had he known more of the facts to which the present catastrophe was a sequel; at all events, he made no further objections. His manner changed to an almost submissive humbleness, and, without more words, he helped Bill to place the insensible woman in the sleigh.
"That's the talk," remarked Mr. Reynolds, as he drew the sleigh-robe over her. "Now, then, Mr. Bressant, just you jump in and hold on to her, and I'll lead the horse along. We'll be there in half a shake."
"No," replied Bressant, after a mental conflict as violent as it was brief; "I'll lead the horse myself." The only pleasure now left to this young man was to insult and torture himself to the utmost of his ingenuity. He had forfeited all right to protect or care for Sophie, and it was with a savage satisfaction that he resigned it to Bill Reynolds, as being the worthier and better man. It was the quixoticism of self-degradation, but was doubtless not without some wholesome influence.
In three minutes more they were at the Parsonage-gate. They made a stretcher of the sleigh-robe, and carried Sophie in on it. The gate, flapping-to behind them, sounded like a fretful and querulous complaint. As they mounted the porch-steps, which creaked and crackled beneath their weight, the door was opened by Cornelia, in her travelling-dress. Her face expressed so vividly the unspeakable horror which she felt as her eyes rested on her sister's half-opened lids, that Bressant, seeing it, was stricken anew with the perception of his own misery. As Cornelia looked up from the pure and innocent features—which never had worn an awful and forbidding expression until now, when all power of expression was gone—her glance and Bressant's met; but, after a moment's encounter, both dropped their eyes, with an involuntary shudder. Their trial and sentence were condensed into so seemingly brief a space.
But Bill Reynolds neither dealt in nor appreciated such refinements upon the good old ways of communicating sentiments.
"Good-evening, Miss Valeyon," exclaimed he. "I guess we didn't expect to see one another again to-night. Pray don't imagine, miss, that I bear you any grudge. At times like this personal considerations don't count—not with me. I'll shake hands with you, Miss Valeyon, first chance I get, and we'll be just as much friends as ever we was before. That's the right way, I guess."
The door of the guest-chamber stood open, and the sleigh-robe, with its burden, was laid upon the bed whereon Bressant had spent so many weary days. Then the voice of the professor, who had been awakened by the noise and the sound of feet, was heard from the top of the stairs, demanding to know what was the matter.