Bressant

He remarked the wide discrepancies between what he had proposed and what

he had accomplished. How insignificant circumstances had effected

momentous results! He saw how, whenever failure and dishonor had

filtered in, it was where weakness, self-indulgence, or untruthfulness,

had left an opening. He saw how one wrong had been a sure and easy path

to another, until in the end he had groveled face downward in the mire.

His mind turned on the two women between whom his path had lain: how

highly he had aimed, and how low he had fallen! How enviable would have

been his fate had he consistently kept to either! for each had been

peerless in her way. How despicable was his position having greedily

grasped at both! And now the one was dying, and the other degraded like

himself. A worthy record that!

One was dying: yes, that he knew, and felt that upon his speed and

resolution did it depend whether in this world he might hope for the

blessing of forgiveness from her lips. The thought urged him on,

like an ever-fretting spur. He butted yet more swiftly into the

darkness and against the reeling snow-flakes, and the road lay in

steadily-lengthening stretches behind him. She was waiting for him--that

he felt--and was striving, with all her kind and loving might, to hold

herself in life until he came. God help him, then, to be there at the

appointed hour!

And Cornelia? Of her he ventured not much to think. She was, perchance,

the key whereby, for her and for himself, this dark riddle should

hereafter be resolved. As Adam might labor for redemption only with his

sin about his neck, so they, out of the fabric woven of their disgrace,

must seek to fashion garments in which worthily to appear at heaven's

gates.

As his mind rambled thus, he came to the outskirts of a long, wooded

tract, which--for the map, as he had seen it at the railway-station, was

clearly marked out in his memory, from the beginning to the end of his

route--he knew was upward of ten miles from his starting-point; and, as

near as he could judge (his watch, lying at the bottom of the

fountain-basin in the Parsonage-garden, had never been replaced), it

must be rather more than half-past nine o'clock. He maintained the same

long, swinging trot, as unfalteringly as ever, though, perhaps, a trifle

less springily than at first. The footing was deep and heavy, the thick

fir-trees having kept the snow from being blown off the road, as in

more exposed situations. Bressant was wet to his skin, for the

temperature had risen, and the flakes melted as fast as they fell. Most

of his glow and vigor remained, however, and he was no whit disheartened

or doubtful. But the sky bent darkly over him, and the tall trees shut

out all but a strip even of the scanty light that came thence. The moon

would not rise for hours yet.