Bressant: A Novel

by Julian Hawthorne

"Was this Southerner rich?"

"Very rich; and a dowry would go with the daughter enough to make them more than independent for the rest of their lives. Well, just about that time, the friend who had gone to Europe came back. He'd done well abroad, and-was qualified for a high position at home. He was engaged to marry a stylish, aristocratic girl, who was not, however, wealthy. But he seemed very glad to see the doctor, and the doctor certainly was to see him, and invited him to stay at his house a while, and he introduced him into the house of his intended wife."

Here the professor broke off from his story, and, getting up from his chair, he passed two or three times up and down the room; stopping at the window to pull a leaf from the extended branch of a cherry-tree growing outside, and again, by the empty fireplace, to roll the leaf up between his finger and thumb, and throw it upon the hearth. When he returned to the bedside, he dropped himself into his chair with the slow, inelastic heaviness of age.

"The fellow played him a scurvy trick," resumed he, presently. "Exactly what he said or did will never be known, but it was all he safely could to put his friend in a bad light. It was because he wanted the young lady for himself; he was ambitious, and needed her money to help him on. What he said made a good deal of impression on the father; but the daughter wouldn't believe it then—at any rate, she loved the doctor still, and would, as long as she knew he loved her."

"Why didn't the other manage to make her think he didn't?"

"Well, sir, he did manage it," returned the professor, compressing his white-bearded lips, and lowering his eyebrows. "He told the father some story of having met relations of his in Spain; told him the climate would cure him of all his ailments, without need of a physician, and persuaded him to make the journey at last. The doctor heard of it first by a note written by his intended father-in-law. It contained no request nor encouragement to accompany them—of course, the daughter was to go too; her father wouldn't separate from her. But the doctor's friend had not trusted only to that: he knew that the other's resolution never to leave his country was not likely to be broken, so he was quite secure."

"And the doctor knew nothing of how his friend was cheating him?"

"No, not then. Far from it; he showed him the letter, and asked him for advice. He never dreamed of doubting his constancy, either to himself or to the girl he was engaged to marry. His friend counseled him to write a letter to her he meant to make his wife, explaining his position, and asking her not to leave him. He would carry it to her, and advocate it himself, he said, and do all in his power to influence the father. The young doctor didn't altogether relish this course, nevertheless he trusted in his friend, wrote the letter, and gave it into his hands.

"He never saw his friend after that day. The next morning came an answer from the young lady—a cruel and cold rejection of him—repudiation of his love, and a doubt of his honor. It bewildered him, and, for a time, crushed him. Long afterward, he found out that she had never seen the letter he wrote, but a very different one, of his friend's concoction.

"Very soon afterward, they were gone—all three! and, before a year was passed, he heard that his friend and the daughter were married, and the father died of a fever contracted in Spain.