"Will you stay and watch with her, my dear?" said the old man, at last.
"She'll sleep some hours, I think. I'll take a little sleep myself. Call
me when she wakes."
So Cornelia was left alone to watch her sleeping and dying sister. All
the morning she sat by the bed, almost as motionless as Sophie herself.
Her mind was like a surf-wave that breaks upon the shore, slips back,
regathers itself, and undulates on, to break again. Begin where she
would, she always ended on that bed, with its well-known face, set
around with soft dark hair, always in the same position upon the pillow,
which yielded beneath it in always the same creases and curves.
By-and-by, wherever she turned, still she saw that face, with the pillow
rising around it; and when she shut her eyes, there it was, growing, in
the blackness, clearer the more she tried to avert her mind.
It seemed to Cornelia--for time enters involuntarily into our thoughts
upon all subjects--that the present order of things must have existed
for a far longer period than a single night. How could the events of a
few hours wear such deep and uneffaceable channels in human lives? But
our souls have a chronology of their own, compared with the vividness
and instantaneous workings of which, our bodies bear but a dull and
lagging part. Sorrow and joy, which act upon the soul immediately, must
labor long ere they can write themselves legibly and permanently upon
our faces.
Cornelia fell to wondering, too--as most people under the pressure of
grief are prone to do--whether there were any sympathy or any connection
between the world and the human beings who live upon it. Her eyes
wandered hither and thither about the room, and found it almost
startling in its unaltered naturalness. There was the same view of
trees, road, and field, out of the window; and the same snow which had
fallen before the tragedy, lay there now. Even in Sophie's face there
was no adequate transformation. Indeed, being somewhat reddened and
swollen by the reaction from freezing, a stranger might have supposed
that she was tolerably stout and glowing with vitality. And Cornelia
looked at her own hands, as they lay in her lap: they were as round and
shapely as ever; and there, upon the smooth back of one, below the
forefinger, was a white scar, where she had cut herself when a little
girl. Moreover--Cornelia started as her eyes rested upon it, and the
blood rose painfully to her face--there was a dark, discolored bruise,
encircling one wrist: Bressant's last gift--an ominous betrothal ring!
Thus several hours passed away, until, at length, Cornelia raised her
eyes suddenly, and encountered those of Sophie, fixed upon her.
What a look was that! At all times there was more to be seen in Sophie's
eyes than in most women's; but now they were fathomless, and yet never
more clear and simple. Cornelia read in them all and more than legions
of words could have told her. There were visible the complete grasp and
appreciation of Cornelia's and Bressant's crime; the realization of her
own position between them; pity and sympathy for the sinners, too, were
there; and love, not sisterly, nor quite human, for Sophie had already
begun to put on immortality--but such a love as an angel might have
felt, knowing the temptation and the punishment. Before that look
Cornelia felt her own bitterness and anguish fade away, as a candle is
obliterated by the sun. She saw in Sophie so much higher a capacity for
feeling, so much profounder and more sublime an emotion, that she was
ashamed of her own beside it.