XXII.
Meantime, Adèle is making friends in Ashfield and in the parsonage. The irrepressible buoyancy of her character cannot be kept under even by the severity of conduct which belongs to the home of the Doctor. If she yields rigid obedience to all the laws of the household, as she is taught to do, her vivacity sparkles all the more in those short intervals of time when the laws are silent. There is something in this beaming mirth of hers which the Doctor loves, though he struggles against the love. He shuts his door fast, that the snatches of some profane song from her little lips (with him all French songs are profane) may not come in to disturb him; but as her voice rises cheerily, higher and higher, in the summer dusk, he catches himself lending a profane ear; the blitheness, the sweetness, the mellowness of her tones win upon his dreary solitude; there is something softer in them than in the measured vocables of sister Eliza; it brings a souvenir of the girlish Rachel, and his memory floats back upon the strains of the new singer, to the days when that dear voice filled his heart; and he thinks—thanking Adaly for the thought—she is singing with the angels now!
But the spinster, who has no ear for music, in the midst of such a carol, will cry out in sharp tones from her chamber, "Adèle, Adèle, not so loud, child! you will disturb the Doctor!"
Even then Adèle has her resource in the garden and the orchard, where she never tires of wandering up and down,—and never wandering there but some fragment of a song breaks from her lips.
From time to time the Doctor summons her to his study to have serious talk with her. She has, indeed, shared the Saturday-night instruction in the Catechism, in company with Reuben, and being quick at words, no matter how long they may be, she has learned it all; and Reuben and she dash through "what is required" and "what is forbidden" and "the reasons annexed" like a pair of prancing horses, kept diligently in hand by that excellent whip, Miss Johns. But the study has not wrought that gravity in the mind of the child which the good parson had hoped for; the seed, he fears, has fallen upon stony places. He therefore, as we have said, summons her from time to time to his study.
And Adèle comes, always at the first summons, with a tripping step, and, with a little coquettish adjustment of her dress and hair, flings herself into the big chair before him,—
"Now, New Papa, here I am!"
"Ah, Adaly! I wish, child, that you could be more serious than you are."
"Serious! ha! ha!"—(she sees a look of pain on the face of the Doctor,) "but I will be,—I am"; and with great effort she throws a most unnatural expression of repose into her face.
"You are a good girl, Adaly; but this is not the seriousness I want to find in you. I want you to feel, my child, that you are walking on the brink of a precipice,—that your heart is desperately wicked."
"Oh, no, New Papa! you don't think I'm desperately wicked?"—and she says it with a charming eagerness of manner.
"Yes, desperately wicked, Adaly,—leaning to the things of this world, and not fastening your affections on things above, on the realities beyond the grave."
"But all that is so far away, New Papa!"
"Not so far as you think, child; they may come to-day."
Adèle is sobered in earnest now, and tosses her little feet back and forth, in an agony of apprehension.
The Doctor continues,—
"To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts"; and the sentiment and utterance are so like to the usual ones of the pulpit, that Adèle takes courage again.
The little girl has a profound respect for the Doctor; his calmness, his equanimity, his persistent zeal in his work, would alone provoke it. But she sees, furthermore,—what she does not see always in "Aunt Eliza,"—a dignity of character that is proof against all irritating humors; then, too, he has appeared to Adèle a very pattern of justice. She had taken exceptions, indeed, when, on one or two rare occasions, he had reached down the birch rod which lay upon the same hooks with the sword of Major Johns, in the study, and had called in Reuben for extraordinary discipline; but the boy's manifest acquiescence in the affair when his cool moments came next morning, and the melancholy air of kindness with which the Doctor went in to kiss him a goodnight, after such regimen, kept alive her faith in the unvarying justice of the parson. Therefore she tried hard to torture her poor little heart into a feeling of its own blackness, (for that it was very black she had the good man's averment,) she listened gravely to all he had to urge, and when he had fairly overburdened her with the enumeration of her wicked, worldly appetites, she could only say, with a burst of emotion,—
"Well, but, New Papa, the good God will forgive me."
"Yes, Adaly, yes,—I trust so, if forgiveness be sought in fear and trembling. But remember, 'When God created man, he entered into a covenant of life with him upon condition of perfect obedience.'"
This brings back to poor Adèle the drudgery of the Saturday's Catechism, associated with the sharp correctives of Aunt Eliza; and she can only offer a pleading kiss to the Doctor, and ask plaintively,—
"May I go now?"
"One moment, Adaly,"—and he makes her kneel beside him, while he prays, fervently, passionately, drawing her frail little figure to himself, even as he prays, as if he would carry her with him in his arms into the celestial presence.
The boy Reuben, too, has had his seasons of this closet struggle; but they are rarer now; the lad has shrewdly learned to adjust himself to all the requirements of such occasions. He has put on a leaden acquiescence in the Doctor's theories, whether with regard to sanctification or redemption, that is most disheartening to the parson. Does any question of the Doctor's, by any catch-word, suggest an answer from the "Shorter Catechism" as applicable, Reuben is ready with it on the instant.
Does the Doctor ask,—
"Do you know, my son, the sinfulness of the estate in which you are living?"
"Sinfulness of the estate whereunto man fell?" says Reuben, briskly.
"Know it like a book:—'Consists in the guilt of Adam's first sin the want of original righteousness and the corruption of his whole nature which is commonly called original sin together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.' There's a wasp on your shoulder, father,—there's two of 'em; I'll kill em."
No wonder the good Doctor is disheartened, and trusts more and more, in respect to his boy, to the silent influences of the Spirit.
Adèle has no open quarrels with Miss Johns; she is obedient; she, too, has fallen under the influence of that magnetic voice, and accepts the orders and the commendations conveyed by it as if they were utterances of Fate. Yet, with her childish instincts, she has formed a very fair estimate of the character of Miss Eliza; it is doubtful even if she has not fathomed it in certain directions more correctly and profoundly than the grave Doctor. She sees clearly that the spinster's unvarying solicitude in regard to the dress and appearance of "dear Adèle" is due more to that hard pride of character which she nurses every day of her life than to any tenderness for the little stranger. For at the hands of her old godmother and of her father Adèle has known what real tenderness was. It is a lesson children never unlearn.
"Adèle, my dear, you look charmingly to-day, with that pink bow in your hair. Do you know, I think pink is becoming to you, my child?"
And Adèle listens with a composed smile, not unwilling to be admired. What girl of—any age is? But the admiration of Miss Johns does not touch her; it never calls a tear to her eye.
In the bright belt-buckle, in the big leg-of-mutton sleeves, in the glittering brooch containing coils of the Johns' hair, in the jaunty walk and authoritative air of the spinster, the quick, keen eye of Adèle sees something more than the meek Christian teacher and friend. It is a sin in her to see it, perhaps; but she cannot help it.
Miss Johns has not succeeded in exciting the jealousy of Reuben,—at least, not in the manner she had hoped. Her influence over him is clearly on the wane. He sees, indeed, her exaggerated devotion to the little stranger,—which serves, in her presence, at least, to call out all his indifference. Yet even this, Adèle, with her girlish instinct, seems to understand, too, and bears the boy no grudge in consequence of it. Nay, when he has received some special administration of the parson's discipline, she allows her sympathy to find play in a tender word or two that touch Reuben more than he dares to show.
And when they meet down the orchard, away from the lynx eye of Aunt Eliza, there are rare apples far out upon overhanging limbs that he can pluck, by dint of venturous climbing, for her; and as he sees through the boughs her delicate figure tripping through the grass, and lingers to watch it, there comes a thought that she must be the Amanda of the story, and not Rose,—and he, perched in the apple-tree, a glowing Mortimer.