"Ah, ha! lose your fortune!" exclaimed the professor, frowning so portentously as to unseat his spectacles. "How does that happen, sir?"
Bressant looked considerably amused at the old gentleman's evident emotion; the more as he saw no occasion for it. "I never had the curiosity to ask how," said he, pulling at his beard. "I shall run no risks with my fortune. I'm satisfied to know there might be danger; there's no difficulty in keeping silence about a name."
Professor Valeyon rose from his chair and walked to the window. A mighty host of gray clouds, piled thickly one upon another, and torn and tunneled by feverish wind-gusts, were hastening swiftly and silently across the sky from the west. Beyond, where they were thickest and angriest, a yellowish, lurid tint was reflected against them. The valley darkened like a frowning face, and the summits of the western hills were blotted out of sight. A lightning-flash shivered brightly through the air, and then came the first growling, leaping, accumulating peal of thunder. A sudden, rustling breath swept through the garden, and, following it, in big, quick drops, and soon in an unintermittent myriad-footed tramp, the rustling, perpendicular down-pelting of the rain.
In less than a minute, a gray, wet veil had been drawn across the farther side of the valley, hiding it from the professor's sight. Even the outer limits of the garden grew indistinct. The leaves of the trees bobbed ceaselessly up and down, and glistened and dripped; the shrubs and flowers seemed to lift themselves higher from the earth, and stretch out their green fingers to the plenteous shower. The tinkle of the fountain was quite obliterated, and the ordinarily smooth surface of the basin sprang upward in thousands of tiny pyramids, as if madly welcoming the impact of the rain-drops. Small cataracts tore in desperate haste down the slope of the garden-paths, laying bare in their pigmy fury the lower strata of rough gravel and pebbles. Upon the roof of the balcony was maintained an evenly sonorous monotone of drubbing, as if innumerable fairy carpenters were nailing on the shingles. The invalid water-spout had a hard time of it; it was racked, shaken, and bullied, and continually choked itself with the volubility of its fluent utterances, which were instantly swallowed up in the bottomless depths of the waste-barrel. A strong, cool, earthy odor rose from the garden, and was wafted past the professor's nostrils, and into the heated house. The moist brown flower-beds exhaled a fragrant thankfulness, and the grass-blades looked twice as green and twice as tall as before. Meanwhile the heavy, regular pulse of the thunder had been beating intermittently overhead, and bounding ponderously from hill-side to hill-side; and ever and anon the lightning had showed startlingly in dazzling zigzags through the omnipresent shadow. But now it seemed that there was a little less weight in the fall, and gloom in the air. The pervading freshness of the breeze made itself more unmistakably perceptible. The west began to lighten, and the rain and darkness drifted to the east. As for Professor Valeyon, if his thoughts had been in a tumult, like the elements, might they not become quiet again also?
"After all," said the old gentleman to himself, "it's not the young fellow's fault. If his father was a heartless scoundrel, it doesn't follow that he knows it. Well, the man is dead—it can't be helped now, that's certain. But what a cunningly-contrived plot it is! Shuts my mouth by confiding to me the incognito and sending me the son to educate; destroys the last hope of setting an old wrong right; takes advantage, for base ends, of the deepest feelings of human hearts: not to speak of preventing the young man himself from being party to a noble and generous action. Did ever man carry such a load down to the grave!
"Suppose Margaret—no! it isn't likely she would know any thing about it. He wasn't the man to make confidants of women. She gave the message to the son, not knowing what it meant, probably. Why, he wouldn't have dared to tell her! And then inviting Cornelia—no, no! I've had some acquaintance with Margaret, and, with all her nonsense, I believe she's honest. Besides, what interest could she have to be otherwise? To be sure, she didn't give me the true reason for the incognito; but that's nothing; she's just the woman to tell a useless fib, and reserve the truth for important occasions only—or what she thinks such."
The professor remained a while longer at the window, abstractedly staring at the drops which hastened after one another from the wet eaves. Suddenly he turned around, and walked up to the table, flapping his slipper-heels, and settling his spectacles, as he went.
"Did any one ever speak to you of your mother, sir?" demanded he in the ear of the reading Bressant. "Confound the fellow!" passed at the same time through his mind; "does he think I'm a chair or a table?"
"My mother?" repeated the young man, looking up, and appearing somewhat surprised at the idea of his ever having possessed the article. "Oh, yes! my father once told me she was dead. It was long ago. I'd almost forgotten it."
"Told you she was dead, hey? Humph! just what I expected!" growled the old gentleman, who seemed, however, to become additionally wrathful at the intelligence. After a moment's scowl straight at his would-be pupil, he shuffled up to his chair, and sat solidly down in it. Bressant (to whom the professor had probably appeared to the full as peculiar as he to the professor), seeing signs of an approach to business in his action and attitude, tossed his book on the table, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and fixed his eyes directly upon the old gentleman's glasses.