"My heart is all yours, papa,--only why do you never come and take it?
So many, many years that I have not seen you!
"Yes, I like Ashfield still; it is almost a home to me now, you know.
New Papa is very kind, but just as grave and stiff as at the first. I
know he loves me, but he never tells me so. I don't believe he ever told
Reuben so. But when I sing some song that he loves to hear, I see a
little quirk by his temple, and a glistening in his eye, as he thanks
me, that tells it plain enough; and most of all when he prays, as he
sometimes does after talking to me very gravely, with his arm tight
clasped around me, oh, I am sure that he loves me!--and indeed, and
indeed, I love him back again!
"It was funny what you said of Reuben; for you must know that he is
living in the city now, and happens upon us here sometimes with a very
grand air,--as fine, I dare say, as the people about Marseilles. But I
don't think I like him any better; I don't know if I like him as well.
Miss Eliza is, of course, very proud of him, as she always was."
As the nicer observing faculties of his child develop,--of which, ample
traces appear in her letters,--Maverick begs her to detail to him as
fully as she can all the little events of her every-day life. He has an
eagerness, which only an absent parent can feel, to know how his pet is
received by those about her; and would supply himself, so far as he may,
with a full picture of the scenes amid which his child is growing up.
Sheet after sheet of this simple, girlish narrative of hers Maverick
delights himself with, as he sits upon his balcony, after business
hours, looking down upon the harbor of Marseilles.
"After morning prayers, which are very early, you know, Esther places
the smoking dishes on the table, and New Papa asks a blessing,--always.
Then he says, 'I hope Adaly has not forgotten her text of yesterday.'
And I repeat it to him. Such a quantity of texts as I can repeat now!
Then Aunt Eliza says, 'I hope, too, that Adele will make no mistake in
her "Paradise Lost" to-day. Are you sure you've not forgotten that
lesson in the parsing, child?' Indeed, papa, I can parse almost any page
in the book.
"'I think,' says New Papa, appealing to Miss Eliza, 'that Larkin may
grease the wheels of the chaise this morning, and, if it should be fair,
I will make a visit or two at the north end of the town; and I think
Adaly would like to go with me.'
"'Yes, dearly, New Papa,' I say,--which is very true.
"And Miss Eliza says, very gravely, 'I am perfectly willing, Doctor.'
"After breakfast is over, Miss Eliza will sometimes walk with me a short
way down the street, and will say to me, 'Hold yourself erect, Adele;
walk trimly.' _She_ walks very trimly. Then we pass by the Hapgood
house, which is one of the grand houses; and I know the old Miss
Hapgoods are looking through the blinds at us, though they never show
themselves until they have taken out their curl-papers in the afternoon.
"Dame Tourtelot isn't so shy; and we see her great, gaunt figure in a
broad sun-bonnet, stooping down with her trowel, at work among the
flower-patches before her door; and Miss Almira is reading at an upper
window, in pink muslin. And when the Dame hears us, she lifts herself
straight, sets her old flapping bonnet as square as she can, and stares
through her spectacles until she has made us out; then says,--
"'Good mornin', Miss Johns. You're 'arly this mornin'.'
"'Quite early,' says Miss Eliza. 'Your flowers are looking nicely, Mrs.
Tourtelot.'
"'Well, the pi'nys is blowed pretty good. Wouldn't Adeel like a pi'ny?'
"It's a great red monster of a flower, papa; but I thank her for it, and
put it in my belt. Then the Dame goes on to tell how she has shifted the
striped grass, and how the bouncing-Bets are spreading, and where she
means to put her nasturtiums the next year, and brandishes her trowel,
as the brigands in the story-books brandish their swords.
"And Miss Eliza says, 'Almira is at her reading, I see.'
"'Dear me!' says the Dame, glancing up; 'she's always a-readin'. What
with novils and histories, she's injurin' her health, Miss Johns, as
sure as you're alive.'
"Then, as we set off again,--the Dame calling out some last word, and
brandishing her trowel over the fence,--old Squire Elderkin comes
swinging up the street with the 'Courant' in his hand; and he lifts his
hat, and says, 'Good morning to you, Miss Johns; and how is the little
French lady this morning? Bright as ever, I see,' (for he doesn't wait
to be answered,)--'a peony in her belt, and two roses in her cheeks.'
Yet my cheeks are not very red, papa; but it's his way....
"After school, I go for the drive with the Doctor, which I enjoy very
much. I ask him about all the flowers along the way, and he tells me
everything, and I have learned the names of all the birds; and it is
much better, I think, than learning at school. And he always says, 'It's
God's infinite love, my child, that has given us all these beautiful
things, and these songsters that choir His praises.' When I hear him say
it, I believe it, papa. I am very sure that the priest who came to see
godmother was not a better man than he is.
"Then, very often, he lifts my hand in his, and says, 'Adaly, my dear,
God is very good to us, sinners though we are. We cannot tell His
meaning always, but we may be very sure that He has only a good meaning.
You do not know it, Adaly, but there was once a dear one, whom I loved
perhaps too well;--she was the mother of my poor Reuben; God only knows
how I loved her! But He took her from me.'--Oh, how the hand of New Papa
griped on mine, when he said this!--'He took her from me, my child; He
has carried her to His home. He is just. Learn to love Him, Adaly. The
love we give to Him we can carry with us always. He does not die and
leave us. He is everywhere. The birds are messengers of His, when they
sing; the flowers you love come from His bounty: oh, Adaly, can you not,
will you not, love Him?'
"'I do! I do!' I said.
"He looked me full in the face, (I shall never forget how he looked,)
'Ah, Adaly, is this a fantasy of yours,' said he, 'or is it true? Could
you give up the world and all its charms, could you forego the
admiration and the love of all others, if only He who is the Saviour of
us all would smile upon you?'
"I felt I could,--I felt I could, papa.
"But then, directly after, he repeated to me some of those dreary things
I had been used to hear in the Catechism week after week. I was _so_
sorry he repeated them, for they seemed to give a change to all my
thought. I am _sure_ I was trustful before, when he talked to me so
earnestly; but when he repeated only what I had learned over and over,
every Saturday night, then I am afraid my faith drooped.
_"'Don't_ tell me that, New Papa,' said I, 'it is so old; talk to me as
you _were_ talking.'
"And then the Doctor looked at me with the keenest eyes I ever saw, and
said,--
"'My child, are you right, and are the Doctors wrong?'
"'Is it the Catechism that you call the Doctors?' said I.
"'Yes,' said he.
"'But were they better men than you, New Papa?'
"'All men alike, Adaly, all struggling toward the truth,--all wearying
themselves to interpret it in such way that the world may accept it, and
praise God who has given us His Son a sacrifice, by whom, and whom only,
we may be saved.' And at this he took my hand and said, 'Adaly, trust
Him!'
"By this time" (for Adele's letter is a true transcript of a day) "we
have reached the door of some one of his people to whom he is to pay a
visit. The blinds are all closed, and nothing seems to be stirring but a
gray cat that is prowling about under the lilac bushes. Dobbins is
hitched to the post, and the Doctor pounds away at the big knocker.
Presently two or three white-headed children come peeping around the
bushes, and rush away to tell who has come. After a little the stout
mistress opens the door, and wipes her fingers on her apron, and shakes
hands, and bounces into the keeping-room to throw up the window and open
the blinds, and dusts off the great rocking-chair for the Doctor, and
keeps saying all the while that they are 'very back'ard with the spring
work, and she really had no time to slick up,' and asks after Miss Eliza
and Reuben, and the Tourtelots, and all the people on the street, so
fast that I wonder she can keep her breath; and the Doctor looks so
calm, and has no time to say anything yet. Then she looks at me, 'Sissy
is looking well,' says she, and dashes out to bring in a great plate of
gingerbread, which I never like at all, and say, 'No.' But she says, 'It
won't hurt ye; it a'n't p'ison, child.' So I find I must eat a little;
and while I sit mumbling it, the Doctor and she talk on about a great
deal I don't understand, and I am glad when she bounces up again, and
says, 'Sis would like to get some posies, p'raps,' and leads me out of
doors. 'There's lalocs, child, and flower-de-luce: pick what you want.'
"So I go wandering among the beds along the garden, with the bees
humming round me; and there are great tufts of blue-bell, and
spider-wort, and moss-pink; and the white-haired grandchildren come and
put their faces to the paling, looking at me through the bars like
animals in a cage; and if I beckon to them, they glance at each other,
and dash away."
Thus much of Adele's account. But there are three or four more visits to
complete the parson's day. Possibly he comes upon some member of his
flock in the field, when he draws up Dobbins to the fence, and his
parishioner, spying the old chaise, leaves his team to blow a moment
while he strides forward with his long ox-goad in hand, and, seating
himself upon a stump within easy earshot, says,--
"Good mornin', Doctor."
And the parson, in his kindly way, "Good morning, Mr. Pettibone. Your
family pretty well?"
"Waael, middlin', Doctor,--only middlin'. Miss Pettibone is a-havin'
faint-ish spells along back; complains o' pain in her side."
"Sorry, sorry," says the good man: and then, "Your team is looking
pretty well, Mr. Pettibone."
"Waael, only tol'able, Doctor. That nigh ox, what with spring work an'
grass feed is gittin' kind o' thin in the flesh. Any news abaout,
Doctor?"
"Not that I learn, Mr. Pettibone. We're having fine growing weather for
your crops."
"Waael, only tol'able, Doctor. You see, arter them heavy spring rains,
the sun has kind o' baked the graound; the seed don't seem to start
well. I don't know as you remember, but in '29, along in the spring, we
had jist sich a spell o' wet, an' corn hung back that season amazin'ly."
"Well, Mr. Pettibone, we must hope for the best: it's all in God's
hands."
"Waael, I s'pose it is, Doctor,--I s'pose it is." And he makes a cut at
a clover-head with the lash upon his ox-goad; then--as if in
recognition of the change of subject--he says,--
"Any more talk on the street abaout repairin' the ruff o' the
meetin'-house, Doctor?"
At sundown, all visits being paid, they go jogging into town again,--the
Doctor silent by this time, and thinking of his sermon, Dobbins is tied
always at the same post,--always the hitch-rein buckled in the third
hole from the end.
After tea, perhaps, Phil and Rose come sauntering by, and ask if Adele
will go up 'to the house'? Which request, if Miss Eliza meet it with a
nod of approval, puts Adele by their side: Rose, with a beautiful
recklessness common to New England girls of that day, wearing her hat
drooping half down her neck, and baring her clear forehead to the
falling night-dews. Phil, with a pebble in his hand, makes a feint of
throwing into a flock of goslings that are waddling disturbedly after a
pair of staid old geese, but is arrested by Rose's prompt "Behave,
Phil!"
The Squire is reading his paper by the evening lamp, but cannot forbear
a greeting to Adele:--
"Ah, here we are again! and how is Madamoizel?" (this is the Squire's
style of French,)--"and has she brought me the peony? Phil would have
given his head for it,--eh, Phil?"
Rose is so bright, and glowing, and happy!
Mrs. Elderkin in her rocking-chair, with her gray hair carefully plaited
under the white lace cap whose broad strings fall on either shoulder, is
a picture of motherly dignity. Her pleasant "Good evening, Adele," would
alone have paid the warm-hearted exile for her walk.
Then follow games, chat, and an occasional noisy joke from the Squire,
until the nine o'clock town-bell gives warning, and Adele wends homeward
under convoy of the gallant Phil.
"Good night, Adele!"
"Good night, Phil!"
Only this at the gate. Then the Doctor's evening prayer; and after
it,--in the quiet chamber, where her sweet head lay upon the
pillow,--dreams. With recollections more barren than those of most of
her years, of any early home, Adele still dreamed as hopefully as any of
a home to come.