Adèle sat toying for a moment with the rosary upon her fingers, looking down; then, seeing that woe-begone expression that had fastened upon the face of her companion, she sprang up, kissed her forehead, and, restoring thus—as she knew she could do—a cheeriness to her manner, resumed her lesson.
But from this time forth she showed an eagerness to unriddle, so far as she might, the mystery of that faith which the Doctor clothed in his ponderous discourses,—weighed down and oppressed by his prolixity, and confounded by doctrines she could not comprehend, yet recognizing, under all, his serene trust, and gratefully conscious of his tender regard and constant watchfulness. But, more than all, it was a subject of confusion to her, that the prim and austere Miss Eliza, whose pride and selfishness her keen eye could not fail to see, should be possessed of a truer faith than the poor stranger whose gentleness, and suffering so patiently borne, seemed in a measure to Christianize and dignify character. And if she dropped a hint of these doubts, as she sometimes did, in the ear of the motherly Mrs. Elderkin, that good woman took her hand tenderly,—"My dear Adèle, we are all imperfect; but God sees with other eyes than ours. Trust Him,—trust Him above all, Adèle!"
Yes, she trusts Him,—she knows she trusts Him. Why not? Whom else to trust? No tender motherly care and guidance; the father, by these years of absence, made almost a stranger. The low voice of her native land, that comes to her ear with a charming flow from the lips of her new teacher, never to speak of her doubts or questionings; the constrained love of the Doctor, her New Papa, framing itself, whenever it touches upon the deeper motives of her nature, in stark formulas of speech, that blind and confound her; the spinster sister talking kindly, but commending the tie of her hat-ribbons in the same tone with which she urges adherence to some cumbrous enunciation of doctrine. And Adèle cherishes her little friendships (most of all with Rose); not alive as yet to any tenderer and stronger passion that shall engross her, and make or mar her life; swinging her reticule, as in the days gone by, under the trees that embower the village street; loving the bloom, the verdure, the singing of the birds, but with every month now—as she begins to fathom the abyss of life with her own thought—grown more serious. It is always thus: the girl we toyed with yesterday with our inanities of speech is to-morrow, by some sudden reach of womanly thought, another creature,—out of range, and so alert, that, if we would conquer her, we must bring up our heaviest siege-trains.
XXXII.
In the summer of 1837, Maverick, who had continued eminently successful, determined to sail for America, and to make good his promise of a visit to the Doctor and Adèle. It may appear somewhat inexplicable that a father should have deferred to so late a day the occasion of meeting and greeting an only child. That his attachment was strong, his letters, full of expressions of affection, had abundantly shown; but the engrossments of business had been unceasing, and he had met them with that American abandonment of other thought, which, while it insures special success, is too apt to make shipwreck of all besides. He was living, moreover, without experience of those tender family ties which ripen a man's domestic affections, and make the absence of a child—most of all, an only child—a daily burden.
Maverick shows no more appearance of age than when we saw him ten years since, placing his little offering of flowers upon the breakfast-table of poor Rachel,—an excellently well-preserved man,—dressed always in that close conformity to the existing mode which of itself gives a young air,—brushing his hair sedulously so as to cover the growing spot of baldness,—regulating all his table indulgences with the same precision with which he governs his business,—using all the appliances of flesh-brushes and salt-baths to baffle any insidious ailment,—a strong, hale, cheery man, who would have ranked by a score (judging from his exterior) younger than the Doctor. In our time the clerical fraternity are putting a somewhat wiser valuation upon those aids to firm muscle and good digestion which forty years ago in New England their brethren gave over contemptuously to men of the world. What fearful, pinching dyspepsias, what weak, trembling knees and aching sides have been carried into pulpits, and have been strained to the propagation of spiritual doctrine, under the absurd belief that these bodies of ours were not given us to be cherished! As if a Gabriel would not need clean limbs and a firm hand in a grapple with the ministers of misrule!
Shall we look for a moment at the French home which Maverick is leaving? A compact country-house of yellow stone upon a niche of the hills that overlook the blue Bay of Lyons; a green arbor over the walk leading to the door; clumps of pittosporum and of jessamine, with two or three straggling fig-trees, within the inclosure; a billiard-room and salle-à-manger upon the ground-floor, and au premier a salon, opening, by its long, heavily draped windows, upon a balcony shielded with striped awning. Here on many an evening, when the night wind comes in from the sea, Maverick lounges sipping at his demi-tasse, whiffing at a fragrant Havana, (imported to order,) and chatting with some friend he has driven out from the stifling streets of Marseilles about the business chances of the morrow. A tall, agile Alsatian woman, with a gilt crucifix about her neck, and a great deal of the peasant beauty still in her face, glides into the salon from time to time, acting apparently in the capacity of mistress of the establishment—respectfully courteous to Maverick and his friend, yet showing something more than the usual familiarity of a dependent housekeeper.
The friend who sits with him enjoying the night breeze and those rare Havanas is an open-faced, middle-aged companion of the city, with whom Maverick has sometimes gone to a bourgeois home near to Montauban, where a wrinkle-faced old Frenchman in velvet skull-cap—the father of his friend—has received him with profound obeisance, brought out for him his best cru of St. Peray, and bored him with long stories of the times of 1798, in which he was a participant. Yet the home-scenes there, with the wrinkled old father and the stately mamma for partners at whist or boston, have been grateful to Maverick, as reminders of other home-scenes long passed out of reach; and he has opened his heart to this son of the house.
"Monsieur Papiol," (it is the Alsatian woman who is addressing the friend of Maverick,) "ask, then, why it is Monsieur Frank is going to America."
"Ah, Lucille, do you not know, then, there is a certain Puritan belle he goes to look after?"