"The Deuse he is!" said Maverick, and his hand went to his pocket, which was always pretty full. "I say, Johns, don't peach on me, but I think I must have thrown that bat, (which Johns knew to be hardly possible, for he had only come up at the end of the row,) and I want you to get this money to him, to make those books good again. Will you do it, old fellow?"
This was the sort of character to win upon the quiet son of the Major. "If he were only more earnest," he used to say,—"if he could give up his trifling,—if he would only buckle down to serious study, as some of us do, what great things he might accomplish!" A common enough fancy among those of riper years,—as if all the outlets of a man's nerve-power could be dammed into what shape the possessor would!
Maverick was altogether his old self this night at the parsonage. Rachel listened admiringly, as he told of his travel and of his foreign experiences. He was the son of a merchant of an Eastern seaport who had been long engaged in the Mediterranean trade with a branch house at Marseilles; and thither Frank had gone two or three years after leaving college, to fill some subordinate post, and finally to work his way into a partnership, which he now held. Of course he had not lived there those seven or eight years last past without his visit to Paris; and his easy, careless way of describing what he had seen there in Napoleon's day—the fêtes, the processions, the display—was a kind of talk not often heard in a New England village, and which took a strong hold upon the imagination of Rachel.
"And to think," says the parson, "that such a people are wholly infidel!"
"Well, well, I don't know," says Maverick; "I think I have seen a good deal of faith in the Popish churches."
"Faith in images; faith in the Virgin; faith in mummery," says Johns, with a sigh. "'Tis always the scarlet woman of Babylon!"
"I know," says Maverick, smiling, "these things are not much to your taste; but we have our Protestant chapels, too."
"Not much better, I fear," says Johns. "They are sadly impregnated with the Genevese Socinianism."
This was about the time that the orthodox Louis Empaytaz was suffering the rebuke of the Swiss church authorities for his "Considerations upon the Divinity of Jesus Christ." Aside from this, all the parson's notions of French religion and of French philosophy were of the most aggravated degree of bitterness. That set of Voltaire, which the Major, his father, had once purchased, had not been without its fruit,—not legitimate, indeed, but most decided. The books so cautiously put out of sight—like all such—had caught the attention of the son; whereupon his mother had given him so terrible an account of French infidelity, and such a fearful story of Voltaire's dying remorse,—current in orthodox circles,—as had caught strong hold upon the mind of the boy. All Frenchmen he had learned to look upon as the children of Satan, and their language as the language of hell. With these sentiments very sincerely entertained, he regarded his poor friend as one living at the very door-posts of Pandemonium, and hoped, by God's mercy, to throw around him even now a little of the protecting grace which should keep him from utter destruction. But though this was uppermost in his mind, it did not forbid a grateful outflow of his old sympathies and expressions of interest in all that concerned his friend. It seemed to him that his easy refinement of manner, in such contrast with the ceremonious stiffness of the New England customs of speech, was but the sliming over of the Serpent's tongue, preparatory to a dreadful swallowing of soul and body; and the careless grace of talk, which so charmed the innocent Rachel, appeared to the exacting Puritan a token of the enslavement of his old friend to sense and the guile of this world.
Nine o'clock was the time for evening prayers at the parsonage, which under no circumstances were ever omitted; and as the little clock in the dining-room chimed the hour, Mr. Johns rose to lead the way from his study, where they had passed the evening.