"If I can enough curb myself, I shall wait for your answer, Monsieur; but it is necessary that I go yonder. Look for me; kiss our child for me. And if you ever prayed, Monsieur, I should say, pray for
"Votre amie,
"Julie."
The letter is of the nature of a revelation to Adèle; her doubts respecting Madame Arles vanish on the instant. The truth, as set forth in her mother's language, blazes upon her mind like a flame. She loves the grave none the less, but the mother by far the more. She, too, wishes to greet her amid the scenes which she has known so long. Nor is Maverick himself averse to this new disposition of affairs, if indeed he possessed any power (which he somewhat doubts) of readjusting it. Seeing the kindly intentions toward Adèle, and the tolerant feeling (to say the least) with which Mrs. Maverick will be met by these friends of the daughter, he trusts that the mother's interviews with the Doctor, and a knowledge of the kindly influences under which Adèle has grown up, may lessen the danger of a religious altercation between mother and child, which has been his great bugbear in view of their future association.
A man of the world, like Maverick, naturally takes this common-sense view of religious differences; why not compound matters, he thinks; and he hints as much quietly to the parson. The old gentleman's spirit is stirred to its depths by the intimation; like all earnest zealots, he recognizes one only unswerving rule of faith, and that the faith in which he has been reared. They who hold conflicting doctrines must yield,—yield absolutely,—or there is no safety for them. In his eye there was but one strait gate to the Celestial City, and that any wearing the furbelows of Rome should ever enter thereat could only come of God's exceeding mercy; for himself, it must always be a duty to cry aloud to such to strip themselves clean of their mummery, and do works "meet for repentance."
Adèle, after her first period of exultation over the recent news is passed, relapses—perhaps by reason of its excess—into something of her old vague doubt and apprehension of coming evil. The truth—if it be truth—is so strange!—so mysteriously strange that she shall indeed clasp her mother to her heart; the grave yonder is so real! and that fearful embrace in death so present to her! Or it may be an anticipation of the fearful spiritual estrangement that must ensue, and of which she seems to find confirmation in the earnest talk and gloomy forebodings of the Doctor.
Maverick effects a diversion by proposing a jaunt of travel, in which Rose shall be their companion. Adèle accepts the scheme with delight,—a delight, after all, which lies as much in the thought of watching the eager enjoyment of Rose as in any pleasant distractions of her own. The pleasure of Maverick is by no means so great as in that trip of a few years back. Then he had for companion an enthusiastic girl, to whom life was fresh, and all the clouds that seemed to rest upon it so shadowy, that each morning sun lifting among the mountains dispersed them utterly.
Now, Adèle showed the thoughtfulness of a woman,—her enthusiasms held in check by a more calm estimate of the life that opened before her,—her sportiveness overborne by a soberness, which, if it gave dignity, gave also a womanly gravity. Yet she did not lack filial devotion; she admired still that easy world-manner of his which had once called out her enthusiastic regard, but now queried in her secret heart if its acquisition had not involved cost of purity of conscience. She loved him too,—yes, she loved him; and her evening and morning kiss and embrace were reminders to him of a joy he might have won, but had not,—of a home peace that might have been his, but whose image now only lifted above his horizon like some splendid mirage crowded with floating fairy shapes, and like the mirage melted presently into idle vapor.
It was a novel experience for Maverick to find himself (as he did time and again upon this summer trip in New England) sandwiched, of a Sunday, between his two blooming companions and some sober-sided deacon, in the pew of a country meeting-house. How his friend Papiol would have stared! And the suggestion, coming to him with the buzz of a summer fly through the open windows, did not add to his devotional sentiment. Yet Maverick would follow gravely the scramble of the singers through the appointed hymn with a sober self-denial, counting the self-denial a virtue. We all make memoranda of the small religious virtues when the large ones are missing.
Upon the return to Ashfield there is found a new letter from Madam Maverick. She can restrain herself no longer. Under the advices of her brother, she will, with her maid, take the first safe ship leaving Marseilles for New York. She longs to bring Adèle with herself, by special consecration, under the guardianship of the Holy Virgin.