XLV.
We left Miss Eliza Johns in her chamber, swaying back and forth in her rocking-chair, and resolutely confronting the dire news which the Doctor had communicated. What was to be done? Never had so serious a problem been presented to her for solution. There were both worldly and religious motives, as the spinster reckoned them, for plucking out of her heart all the growing tenderness which she had begun to feel toward Adèle; and the sudden discomfiture of that engaging, ambitious scheme which she had fondled so long prompted a feeling of resentment which was even worse than worldly.
How would you have treated the matter, Madam? Would your Christian charities have shrunk from the ordeal? But whatever might have been the other sins of the spinster, there was in her no disposition to shrink from the conclusions to which her logic of propriety and respectability might lead. Adèle was to be discarded, but not suddenly. All her art must be employed to disabuse Reuben of any lingering tenderness. The Doctor's old prejudice against French blood must be worked to its utmost. But there must be no violent clamor,—above all, no disclosure of the humiliating truth. Maverick (the false man!) must be instructed that it would be agreeable to the Johns family—nay, that their sense of dignity demanded—that he should reclaim his child at an early day. On this last score, it might be necessary, indeed, to practise very adroit management with the Doctor; but for the rest, she had the amplest confidence in her own activity and discretion.
She was not the woman to sleep upon her plans, when once they were decided on; and she had no sooner forecast her programme than she took advantage of the lingering twilight to arrange her toilette for a call upon the Elderkins. Of course she led off the Doctor in her trail. The spinster's "marching orders," as he jocularly termed them, the good man was as incapable of resisting as if he had been twenty years a husband.
In a few swift words she unfolded her design.
"And now, Benjamin, don't, pray, let your sentiment get the better of you, in regard to this French girl. Think of the proprieties in the case, Benjamin,—the proprieties,"—which she enforced by a little shake of her forefinger.
Whenever it came to a question of the "proprieties," the Doctor was conscious of his weakness. What, indeed, could the poor man know about the proprieties, as set forth by Miss Johns, that he should presume to argue against them? What, indeed, can any man do, when a woman bases herself on the "proprieties"?
It was summer weather, and the windows of the hospitable Elderkin mansion were wide open. As the Doctor and spinster drew near, little gusts of cheery music came out to greet their ears. For, at this time, Miss Almira had her rival pianos about the village; and the pretty Rose had been taught a deft way of touching the "first-class" instrument, which the kind-hearted Squire had bestowed upon her. And, if it must be told, little sparkling waltzes had from time to time waked the parlor solitude, and the kind Mistress Elderkin had winked at little furtive parlor-dances on the part of Rose and Adèle,—they had so charmed the old Squire, and set all his blood (as he said, with a gallant kiss upon the brow of Mrs. Elderkin) flowing in the old school-boy currents. Now it happened upon this very evening, that the Squire, though past seventy now, was in the humor to see a good old-fashioned frolic, and, Rose rattling off some crazy waltz, Phil, at a hint from the old gentleman, had taken possession of Adèle, and was showing off with a good deal of grace, and more spirit, the dancing-steps of which he had had experience with the Spanish señoritas.
Dame Tourtelot, who chanced to be present, wore a long face, which (it is conceivable) the hearty old Squire enjoyed as much as the dancing. But Mrs. Elderkin must have looked with a warm maternal pride upon the fine athletic figure of her boy, as he went twirling down the floor, with that graceful figure of Adèle.
Upon the very midst of it, however, the Doctor and Miss Johns came like a cloud. The fingers of Rose rested idly on the keys. Adèle, who was gay beyond her wont, alone of all the company could not give over her light-heartedness on the instant: so she makes away to greet the Doctor,—Miss Johns standing horrified.
"New Papa, you have surprised us. Phil was showing me some new steps. Do you think it very, very wrong?"
"Adaly! Adaly!"
"Ah, you dear old man, it isn't wrong;—say it isn't wrong."
By this time the Squire has come forward.
"Ah, Doctor, young folks will be young folks; but I think you won't have a quarrel with Mrs. Elderkin yonder. My dear," (addressing Mrs. Elderkin,) "you must set this matter right with the Doctor. We must keep our young people in his good books."
"The good books are not kept by me, Squire," said the parson.
Reuben, who had been loitering about Rose, and who, to do him justice, had seen Phil's gallant attention to Adèle without one spark of jealousy, was specially interested in this interruption of the festivities. In his present state of mind, he was most eager to know how far the evening's hilarity would be imputed as a sin to the new convert, and how far religious severities (if she met any) would control the ardor of Adèle. The Doctor's face softened, even while he talked with the charming errant,—Reuben observed that; but with Aunt Eliza the case was different. Never had he seen such a threatening darkness in her face.
"We have interrupted a ball, I fear," she said to the hostess, in a tone which was as virulent as a masculine oath.
"Oh! no! no!" said Mrs. Elderkin. "Indeed, now, you must not scold Adèle too much; 't was only a bit of the Squire's foolery."
"Oh, certainly not; she is quite her own mistress. I should be very sorry to consider myself responsible for all her tastes."
Reuben, hearing this, felt his heart leap toward Adèle in a way which the spinster's praises had never provoked.
Dame Tourtelot here says, in her most aggravating manner,—
"I think she dances beautiful, Miss Johns. She dooz yer credit, upon my word she dooz."
And thereupon there followed a somewhat lively altercation between those two sedate ladies,—in the course of which a good deal of stinging mockery was covered with unctuous compliment. But the spinster did not lose sight of her chief aim, to wit, the refusal of all responsibility as attaching to the conduct of Adèle, and a most decided intimation that the rumors which associated her name with Reuben were unfounded, and were likely to prove altogether false.
This last hint was a revelation to the gossipping Dame; there had been trouble, then, at the parsonage; things were clearly not upon their old footing. Was it Adèle? Was it Reuben? Yet never had either shown greater cheer than on this very night. But the Dame none the less eagerly had communicated her story, before the evening closed, to Mrs. Elderkin,—who received it doubtingly,—to Rose, who heard it with wonder and a pretty confusion,—and to the old Squire, who said only, "Pooh! pooh! it's a lover's quarrel; we shall be all straight to-morrow."
Adèle, by her own choice, was convoyed home, when the evening was over, by the good Doctor, and had not only teased him into pardon of her wild mirth, before they had reached the parsonage-gate, but had kindled in him a glow of tenderness that made him utterly forgetful of the terrible news of the day. Reuben and the spinster, as they followed, talked of Rose; never had Aunt Eliza spoken so warmly of her charms; but before him was tripping along, in the moonlight, the graceful figure of Adèle, clinging to the old gentleman's arm, and it is doubtful if his eye did not feast more upon that vision than his ear upon the new praises of the spinster.
Yet, for all that, Rose was really charming. The young gentlemen, it would seem, hardly knew his own heart; and he had a wondrous dream that night. There was a church, (such as he had seen in the city,) and a delicately gloved hand, which lay nestling in his; and Mr. Maverick, oddly enough, appeared to give away a bride, and all waited only for the ceremony, which the Doctor (with his old white hat and cane) refused to perform; whereat Phil's voice was heard bursting out in a great laugh; and the face of Rose, too, appeared; but it was only as a saint upon a painted window. And yet the face of the saint upon the window was more distinct than anything in his dream.
The next morning found Miss Eliza harsh and cold. Even the constrained smile with which she had been used to qualify her "good morning" for Adèle was wanting; and when the family prayers were said, in which the good Doctor had pleaded, with unction, that the Christian grace of charity might reign in all hearts, the poor girl had sidled up to Miss Eliza, and put her hand in the spinster's,—
"You think our little frolic last night to be very wrong, I dare say?"
"Oh, no," said the spinster. "I dare say Mr. Maverick and your French relatives would approve."
It was not so much the language as the tone which smote on poor Adèle, and brought the tears welling into her eyes.
Reuben, seeing it all, and forgetful of the good parson's plea, gnawed his lip to keep back certain very harsh utterances.
"Don't think of it, Ady," said he, watching his chance a little later; "the old lady is in one of her blue moods to-day."
"Do you think I did wrong, Reuben?" said Adèle, earnestly.
"I? Wrong, Adèle? Pray, what should I have to say about the right or wrong? and I think the old ladies are beginning to think I have no clear idea of the difference between them."
"You have, Reuben! you have! And, Reuben," (more tenderly,) "I have promised solemnly to live as you thought a little while ago that you would live. And if I were to break my promise, Reuben, I know that you would never renew yours."
"I believe you are speaking God's truth, Adèle," said he.
The summer months passed by, and for Adèle the little table at the parsonage had become as bleak and cheerless as the autumn. Miss Johns maintained the rigid severity of manner, with which she had undertaken to treat the outcast child, with a constancy that would have done credit to a worthier intent. Even the good Doctor was unconsciously oppressed by it, and by the spinster's insistence upon the due proprieties was weaned away from his old tenderness of speech; but every morning and every evening his voice trembled with emotion as he prayed for God's grace and mercy to descend upon all sinners and outcasts.
He had written to Maverick, advising him of the great grief which his confession had caused him, and imploring him to make what reparation he yet might do, by uniting in the holy bonds of matrimony with the erring mother of his child. He had further advised him that his apprehensions with regard to Reuben were, so far as was known, groundless. He further wrote,—"Upon consultation with Miss Johns, who is still at the head of our little household, I am constrained to ask that you take as early a time as may be convenient to relieve her of the further care of your daughter. Age is beginning to tell somewhat upon my sister; and the embarrassment of her position with respect to Adèle is a source, I believe, of great mental distress."
All which the good Doctor honestly believed,—upon Miss Eliza's averment,—and in his own honest way he assured his friend, that, though his sins were as scarlet, he should still implore Heaven in his favor, and should part from Adèle—whenever the parting might come—with real grief, and with an outpouring of his heart.
As for Reuben, a wanton levity had come over him in those latter days of summer that galled the poor Doctor to the quick, and that strangely perplexed the observant spinster. It was not the mischievous spirit of his boyhood revived again, but a cold, passionless, determined levity, such as men wear who have secret griefs to conceal. He talked in a free and easy way about the Doctor's Sunday discourses, that fairly shocked the old people of the parish; rumor said that he had passed some unhallowed jokes with the stolid Deacon Tourtelot about his official duties; and it was further reported that he had talked open infidelity with a young physician who had recently established himself in Ashfield, and who plumed himself—until his tardy practice taught him better—upon certain arrogant physiological notions with regard to death and disease that were quite unbiblical. Long ago the Doctor had given over open expostulation; every such talk seemed to evoke a new and more airy and more adventurous demon in the backslidden Reuben. The good man half feared to cast his eye over the books he might be reading. If it were Voltaire, if it were Hume, he feared lest his rebuke and anathema should give a more appetizing zest.
But he prayed—ah, how he prayed! with the dead Rachel in his thought—as if (and this surely cannot be Popishly wicked)—as if she, too, in some sphere far remote, might with angel voice add tender entreaty to the prayer, whose burden, morning after morning and night after night, was the name and the hope of her boy.
And Adèle? Well, Reuben pitied Adèle,—pitied her subjection to the iron frowns of Miss Eliza; and almost the only earnest words he spoke in those days were little quiet words of good cheer for the French girl. And when Miss Eliza whispered him, as she did, that the poor child's fortune was gone, and her future insecure, Reuben, with a brave sort of antagonism, made his words of cheer and good-feeling even more frequent than ever. But about his passing and kindly attentions to Adèle there was that air of gay mockery which overlaid his whole life, and which neither invited nor admitted of any profound acknowledgement. His kindest words—and some of them, so far as mere language went, were exuberantly tender—were met always by a half-saddened air of thankfulness and a little restrained pressure of the hand, as if Adèle had said,—"Not in earnest yet, Reuben! Earnest in nothing!"