XLVII.
It was a mellow evening of later October. Mists hung in all the hollows of the hills. Within the orchard, where Adèle was strolling, a few golden apples still shone among the bronzed leaves. She saw Reuben coming swiftly through the garden; but his eager step faltered as he came near her. Even the serene look of girlhood has a power in it to make impassioned confidence waver, and enthusiasms suffer recoil. He meets her at last with an assumption of his every-day manner, which she cannot but see presently is underlaid with a tempest of struggling feeling to which he is a stranger. He has taken her hand and placed it in his arm,—a little coquettish device to which he was wont; but he keeps the little hand in his with a nervous clasp that is new, and that makes her tremble all the more when his speech grows impassioned, and the easy compliments of his past days of frolicsome humor take a depth of tone which make her heart thrill strangely. Meantime, they had come to the garden-end of the walk.
"It's late, Reuben, and I must go indoors," said she, with a quiet that she did not feel.
"We'll take one more turn, Adèle; you must." And her hand trembled in the eager clasp he fastened upon it.
Not once did it come into her mind that Reuben was to make a declaration of passion for her. She had feared only some burst of feeling in the direction of the spinster, or of the Doctor, which should compromise him even more seriously. When, therefore, he burst forth, as he did presently, with a passionate avowal of his love, she was overwhelmed with confusion.
"This is so sudden, so strange, Reuben! indeed it is!"
Tenderly as she may have felt toward him in days gone, and gratefully as she always felt, this sudden attempt to carry by storm the very citadel of her affections was not alone a surprise, but seemed like sacrilege. The mystery and doubt that overhung the relations between her own father and mother—and which she felt keenly—had made her regard with awe any possible marriage of her own, investing the thought of it with a terrible sanctity, and as something to be approached only with a reverent fear. If in this connection she had ever thought of Reuben, it was in those days when he seemed so earnest in the faith, and when their feelings were blent by some superhuman agency. But at his divergence into the paths of skepticism, it seemed to her simple and intense faith that thenceforth their pilgrimages must be wholly distinct: his—and she trembled at the thought of it—through some terrible maze of error, where she could not follow: and hers—by God's grace—straight to the city whose gates are of pearl.
When, therefore, she had replied to the passionate address of Reuben, "You must not talk thus," it was with a tear in her eye.
"It grieves you, then, Adèle?"
"Yes, it grieves me, Reuben. Our paths are different now"; and she bethought herself of her father's injunction, which seemed to make her duty still plainer, and forbade her to encourage that parley with her heart which—with her hand still fast in Reuben's, and his eyes beaming with a fierce heat upon her—she was beginning to entertain.
"Adèle, tell me, can I go on?"
"Indeed, indeed, you must not, Reuben!"—and withdrawing her hand suddenly, she passed it over brow and eyes, as if to rally her thoughts to measure the situation.
"You are weeping, Adèle?" said Reuben.
"No, not weeping," said she, dashing the merest film of mist from her eyes, "but so troubled!—so troubled!" And she looked yearningly, but vainly, in his face for that illumination which had belonged to his enthusiasm of the summer.
They walked for a moment in silence,—he, with a scowl upon his face. Seeing this, Adèle said plaintively,—
"It seems to me, Reuben, as if this might be only a solemn mockery of yours."
"You doubt me, then?" returned he like a flash.
"Do you not doubt yourself, Reuben? Have you never doubted yourself?" This with a glance that pierced him through.
"Good Heavens! are you turned preacher?" said he, bitterly. "Will you measure a heart by its dogmatic beliefs?"
"For shame, Reuben!"
And for a time both were silent. At last Adèle spoke again,—
"There is a sense of coming trouble that oppresses me strangely,—that tells me I must not listen to you, Reuben."
"I know it, Adèle; and it is for this I would cherish you, and protect you against all possible shame or indignities"——
"Shame! Indignities! What does this mean? What do you know, Reuben?"
Reuben blushed scarlet. His speech had outrun his discretion; but seizing her hand, and pressing it more tenderly than ever, he said,—
"Only this, Adèle: I see that a coolness has grown up toward you in the parsonage; the old prejudice against French blood may revive again; besides which, there is, you know, Adèle, that little family cloud"——
"Is this the old, kind Reuben, my brother, who reminds me of a trouble so shadowy I cannot fairly measure it?" And Adèle covered her face with her hands.
"Forgive me, Adèle, for God's sake!"
"There is a cloud, Reuben; thank you for the word," said Adèle, recovering herself; "and there is, I fear, an even darker cloud upon your faith. Until both are passed, I can never listen to such talk as you would urge upon me,—never! never!"
And there was a spirit in her words now that awed Reuben.
"Would you impute my unbelief to me as a crime, Adèle? Is this your Christian charity? Do you think that I enjoy this fierce wrestling with doubts? or, having them, would you bid me play false and conceal them? What if I am a final castaway, as your good books tell us some must be, would you make me a castaway before my time, and balk all my hopes in life? Is this your charity?"
"I would not,—you know I would not, Reuben."
"Listen to me, Adèle. If there be any hope of making my way out of this weary wrangle, it seems to me that it would be in the constant presence of your simple, exultant faith. Will you be my teacher, Adèle?"
"Teacher,—yes, with all my heart, Reuben."
"Then be mine," said he, seizing her hand again, "from this very hour!"
An instant she seemed to waver; then came over her the memory of her father's injunction,—the mystery, too, that overshadowed her own life.
"I cannot,—I cannot, Reuben!"
"Is this final?" said he, calmly.
"Final."
She sighed it rather than spoke aloud; the next instant she had slipped away through the shrubbery, with a swift, cruel rustle of her silken dress, toward the parsonage.
Reuben lingered in the orchard until he saw the light flashing through the muslin hangings of her window. She had gone early to her chamber. She had kissed the crucifix that was her mother's with a fervor that sprang as much from devotion as from sentiment. She had sobbed out her prayer, and with sobs had buried her sweet face in the pillow.
Could Reuben have seen or conceived all this, he might have acted differently.
As it was, he entered the Doctor's study an hour later, with the utmost apparent coolness.
"Well, father," said he, "I have offered marriage to your motherless and pious French protégée, and she declines."
"My poor son!" said the Doctor.
But his sympathy was not so much with any possible feeling of disappointment as with the chilling heartlessness and unbelief that seemed to boast themselves in his speech.
"It will be rather dull in Ashfield now, I fancy," continued Reuben, "and I shall slip off to New York to-morrow and take a new taste of the world."
And the Doctor (as if to himself) said despairingly, "'Whom He will He hardeneth.'"
"But father," said Reuben, (without notice of the old gentleman's ejaculation,) "don't let Aunt Eliza know of this,—not a word, or she will be fearfully cruel to the poor child."
There was a grave household in the parsonage next morning. Reuben rebelled in heart, in face, and in action against the tediously long prayer of the parson, though the old gentleman's spirit was writhing painfully in his pleadings. The aunt was more pious and austere than ever. Adèle, timid and shrinking, yet with a beautiful and a trustful illumination in her eye, that for days, and weeks, and months, lingered in the memory of the parson's son.
Later in the day Reuben went to make his adieus to the Elderkins. The old Squire was seated in his door busied with the "Weekly Courant," which had just come in.
"Aha, Master Reuben," (this was his old-fashioned way,) "you're looking for that lazy fellow, Phil, I suppose. You'll find him up-stairs with his cigar and his Spanish, I'll venture."
Reuben made his way up to Phil's chamber after the unceremonious manner to which he has been used in that hospitable home, while a snatch of a little songlet from Rose came floating after him along the stairs. It was very sweet. But what were sweet songlets to him now? It being a mild autumn day, Phil sat at the open window, from which he had many a time seen the old Doctor jogging past in his chaise, and sometimes the tall Almira picking her maidenly way along the walk with her green parasol daintily held aloft with thumb and two fingers, while from the lesser fingers dangled a little embroidered bag which was the wonder of all the school-girls. Other times, too, from this eyrie of his, he had seen Adèle tripping past, with Reuben beside her, and had wondered what their chat might be, while he had feasted his eyes upon her fair figure.
Yet Phil was by no means an idler; he had developed a great business shrewdness, and two or three times in the week drove over to a neighboring river-town to look after the shipments to the West Indies in which he was now interested in company with the Squire. But this had not forbidden a little cursory reading of a sentimental kind. There may have been a stray volume of Pelham upon his table, and a six-volume set of Byron in green and gold upon his limited book-shelf, (both of which were strongly disapproved of by Mrs. Elderkin, but tolerated by the Squire,)—besides which, there were certain Spanish ballads to which he had taken a great fancy since his late visit to Cuba.
Reuben was always a welcome visitor, and was presently in full flow of talk, and puffing nervously at one of Phil's choice Havanas (which in that day were true to their titles).
"I'm off, Phil," said Reuben at last, breaking in upon his host's ecstasy over a ballad he had been reciting, with what he counted the true Castilian magniloquence.
"Off where?" said Phil.
"Off for the city. I'm weary of this do-nothing life,—weary of the town, weary of the good people."
"There's nothing you care for, then, in Ashfield?" said Phil. And at that moment a little burst of the singing of Rose came floating up the stair,—so sweet! so sweet!
"Care for? Yes," said Reuben, "but they are all so good! so devilish good!"—and he puffed at his cigar with a nervous violence. It was not often that such an approach to profanity sullied the lips of Reuben, and Phil noted it with surprise.
"I thought there would have been at least one magnet that would have kept you here," said Phil.
"What magnet, pray?" says Reuben,—somewhat calm again.
"There she goes," says Phil, looking out of the window. And at the moment Adèle tripped by, with the old Doctor walking gravely at her side.
"Humph!" said Reuben, with a composure that was feigned, "she's too much of a Puritan for me, Phil: or rather, I'm too little of a Puritan for her."
Philip looked at his companion keenly. And Reuben, looking back at him as keenly, said, after a silence of a few moments,—
"I don't think you'll ever marry her either, Phil."
"Marry!" said Phil, with a deep, honest blush,—"who talks of that?"
"You, in your heart, Phil. Do you think I am blind? Do you think I have not seen that you have loved her, Phil, ever since you knew what it was to love a woman? Do you think, that, as a boy, you ever imposed upon me with your talk about that handsome Suke Boody, the tavern-keeper's daughter? Good Heavens! Phil, I think there were never two men in the world who talked their thoughts plainly to each other! Do you think I do not know that you have played the shy lover, because with your big heart you have yielded to what you counted a prior claim of mine,—because Adèle was one of us at the parsonage?"
"In such affairs," said Phil, with some constraint and not a little wounded pride, "I don't think men are apt to recognize prior claims."
Reuben replied only by a faint sardonic smile.
"You're a good fellow, Phil, but you won't marry her."
"Of course, then, you know why," said Phil, with something very like a sneer.
"Certainly," said Reuben. "Because you can't affront the world, because you are bound by its conventionalities and respectabilities, as I am not. I spurn them."
"Respectabilities!" said Phil, in amazement. "What does this mean? Just now she was a Puritan."
"It means, Phil," (and here Reuben reflected a moment or two, puffing with savage energy,) "it means what I can't wholly explain to you. You know her French blood; you know all the prejudices against the faith in which she was reared; you know she has an instinct and will of her own. In short, Phil, I don't think you'll ever marry her; but if you can, you may."
"May!" said Phil, whose pride was now touched to the quick. "And what authority have you, pray?"
"The authority of one who has loved her," said Reuben, with a fierce, quick tone, and dashing his half-burnt cigar from the window; "the authority of one who, if he had chosen to perjure himself and profess a faith which he could not entertain, and wear sanctimonious airs, might have won her heart."
"I don't believe it!" said Phil, with a great burst of voice. "There's no hypocrisy could win Adèle."
Reuben paced up and down the chamber, then came and took the hand of his old friend:—
"Phil, you're a noble-hearted fellow. I never thought any one could convict me of injustice to Adèle. You have done it. I hope you'll always defend her; and whatever may betide, I hope your mother and Rose will always befriend her. She may need it."
Again there was a little burst of song from below, and it lingered upon the ear of Reuben long after he had left the Elderkin homestead.
The next day he was gone,—to try his new taste of the world.