Maverick hurried his departure from the city; and Adèle, writing to Rose
to announce the programme of her journey, says only this much of
Reuben:--"We have of course seen R----, who was very attentive and kind.
He has grown tall,--taller, I should think, than Phil; and he is quite
well-looking and gentlemanly. I think he has a very good opinion of
himself."
The summer's travel offered a season of rare enjoyment to Adèle. The
lively sentiment of girlhood was not yet wholly gone, and the
thoughtfulness of womanhood was just beginning to tone, without
controlling, her sensibilities. The delicate attentions of Maverick were
more like those of a lover than of a father. Through his ever watchful
eyes, Adèle looked upon the beauties of Nature with a new halo on them.
How the water sparkled to her vision! How the days came and went like
golden dreams!
Ah, happy youth-time! The Hudson, Lake George, Saratoga, the Mountains,
the Beach,--to us old stagers, who have breasted the tide of so many
years, and flung off long ago all the iridescent sparkles of our
sentiment, these are only names of summer thronging-places. Upon the
river we watch the growth of the crops, or ask our neighbors about the
cost of our friend Faro's new country-seat; we lounge upon the piazzas
of the hotels, reading price-lists, or (if not too old) an editorial; we
complain of the windy currents upon the lake, and find our chiefest
pleasure in a trout boiled plain, with a dressing of Champagne sauce; we
linger at Fabian's on a sunny porch, talking politics with a rheumatic
old gentleman in his overcoat, while the youngsters go ambling through
the fir woods and up the mountains with shouts and laughter. Yet it was
not always thus. There were times in the lives of us old travellers--let
us say from sixteen to twenty--when the great river was a glorious
legend trailing its storied length through the Highlands; when in every
opening valley there lay purple shadows whereon we painted castles; when
the corridors and shaded walks of the "United States" were like a fairy
land, with flitting skirts and waving plumes, and some delicately gloved
hand beating its reveille upon the heart; and when every floating film
of mist along the sea, whether at Newport or Nahant, tenderly entreated
the fancy.
But we forget ourselves, and we forget Adèle. In her wild exuberance of
joy Maverick shares with a spirit that he had believed to be dead in him
utterly. And if he finds it necessary to check from time to time the
noisy effervescence of her pleasure, as he certainly does at the first,
he does it in the most tender and considerate way; and Adèle learns,
what many of her warm-hearted sisters never do learn, that a well-bred
control over our enthusiasms in no way diminishes the exquisiteness of
their savor.
Maverick should be something over fifty now, and his keenness of
observation in respect to feminine charms is not perhaps so great as it
once was; but even he cannot fail to see, with a pride that he makes no
great effort to conceal, the admiring looks that follow the lithe,
graceful figure of Adèle, wherever their journey may lead them. Nor,
indeed, were there any more comely toilettes for a young girl to be met
with anywhere than those which had been provided for the young traveller
under the advice of Mrs. Brindlock.
It may be true--what his friend Papiol had predicted--that Maverick will
be too proud of his child to keep her in a secluded corner of New
England. For his pride there is certainly abundant reason; and what
father does not love to see the child of whom he is proud admired?
Yet weeks had run by and Maverick had never once broached the question
of a return. The truth was, that the new experience was so charming and
so engrossing for him, the sweet, intelligent face ever at his side was
so full of eager wonder, and he so delightfully intent upon providing
new sources of pleasure and calling out again and again the gushes of
her girlish enthusiasm, that he shrunk instinctively from a decision in
which must be involved so largely her future happiness.