University of Virginia Library

42. XLII.

IN the summer of 1840 the Doctor received a letter
from Maverick which overwhelmed him with consternation;
and its revelations, we doubt not, will prove
as great a surprise to our readers.

“My good friend Johns,” he wrote, “I owe you a
debt of gratitude which I can never repay; you have
shown such fatherly interest in my dear child, — you
have so guided and guarded her, — you have so abundantly
filled the place which, though it was my duty, I
had never the worthiness to fill, that I have no words
to thank you. And now you have crowned all by giving
her that serene trust” —

“Not I! not I!” says the Doctor to himself, —
“only God's mercy, — God's infinite mercy!” — and
he continues, “that serene trust in Heaven which will
support her under all trials. Poor child, she will need
it all!”

“And that this man,” pursues the Doctor meditatively,
“who thinks so wisely, should be given over still
to the things of this world!”

“I hear still further, — from what sources it will be

unnecessary for me now to explain, — that a close intimacy
has grown up latterly between your son Reuben
and my dear Adèle, and that this intimacy has provoked
village rumors of the possibility of some nearer
tie. These rumors may be, perhaps, wholly untrue; I
hope to Heaven they are, and my informant may have
exaggerated only chance reports. But the knowledge
of them, vague as they are, has stimulated me to a task
which I ought far sooner to have accomplished, and
which, as a man of honor, I can no longer defer. I
know that you think lightly of any promptings to duty
which spring only from a sense of honor; and before
you shall have finished my letter I fear that you will be
tempted to deny me any claim to the title. Indeed, it
has been the fear of forfeiting altogether your regard
that has kept me thus far silent, and has caused me to
delay, from year to year, that full explanation which I
can no longer with any propriety or justice withhold.

“I go back to the time when I first paid you a visit
at your parsonage. I never shall forget the cheery
joyousness of that little family scene at your fireside,
the winning modesty and womanliness of your lost
Rachel, and the serenity and peace that lay about your
household. It was to me, fresh from the vices of
Europe, like some charming Christian idyl, in whose
atmosphere I felt myself not only an alien, but a profane
intruder; for, at that very time, I was bound by

one of those criminal liaisons to which so many strangers
on the Continent are victims. Your household
and your conversation prompted a hope and a struggle
for better things. But, my dear Johns, the struggle
was against a whole atmosphere of vice. And it was
only when I had broken free of entanglement, that I
learned, with a dreary pang, that I was the father of
a child, — my poor, dear Adèle!”

The Doctor crumpled the letter in his hand, and
smote upon his forehead. Never, in his whole life, had
he known such strange revulsion of feeling. With
returning calmness he smooths the letter upon his desk,
and continues: —

“I expect your condemnation, of course; yet listen
to my story throughout. That child I might have left
to the tender mercies of the world, might have ignored
it, and possibly forgotten its existence. Many a man,
with fewer stains on his conscience than I have, would
have done this, and met the world and old friends
cheerily. But then the memory of you and of your
teachings somehow kindled in me what I counted a
worthier purpose. I vowed that the child should, if
possible, lead a guileless life, and should no way suffer,
so far as human efforts could prevent, for the sins of
the parents. The mother assented, with what I counted
a guilty willingness, to my design, and I placed her
secretly under the charge of the old godmother of
whom Adèle must often have spoken.

“But I was no way content that she should grow up
under French influences, and to the future knowledge
(inevitable in these scenes) of the ignominy of her
birth. And if that knowledge were ever to come, I
could think of no associations more fitted to make her
character stanch to bear it than those that belong to the
rigid and self-denying virtues which are taught in a
New England parish. Is it strange that I recurred
at once to your kindness, Johns? Is it strange that
I threw the poor child upon your charity?

“It is true, I used deceit, — true that I did not
frankly reveal the truth; but see how much was at
stake! I knew in what odium such trespasses were
held in the serenity of your little towns; I knew, that,
if you, with Spartan courage, should propose acceptance
of the office, your family would reject it. I knew that
your love of truth would be incapable of the concealments
or subterfuges which might be needed to protect
the poor child from the tongue of scandal. In short, I
was not willing to take the risk of a repulse. `Such
deceit as there may be,' I said, `is my own. My friend
Johns can never impute it as a sin to Adèle.' I am
sure you will not now. Again, I felt that I was using
deceit (if you will allow me to say it) in a good cause,
and that you yourself, when once the shock of discovery
should be past, could never reprimand yourself for your
faithful teachings to an erring child, but must count

her, in your secret heart, only another of the wandering
lambs which it was your duty and pleasure to lead into
the true fold. Had she come to you avowedly as the
child of sin, with all the father's and mother's guilt
reeking upon her innocent head, could you have secured
to her, my dear Johns, that care and consideration
and devotion which have at last ripened her Christian
character, and made her proof against slander?”

Here the Doctor threw down the letter again, and
paced up and down the room.

“The child of sin! the child of sin! Who could
have thought it? Yet does not Maverick reason true?
Does not Beelzebub at times reason true? Adaly! my
poor, poor Adaly!”

“It seemed to me,” the letter continued, “that there
might possibly be no need that either you or my poor
child should ever know the whole truth in this matter;
and I pray (with your leave) that it may be kept from
her even now. You will understand, perhaps, from
what I have said, why my visits have been more rare
than a fatherly feeling would seem to demand: to tell
truth, I have feared the familiar questionings of her
prattling girlhood. Mature years shrink from perilous
inquiry, I think, with an instinct which does not belong
to the freshness of youth.

“But from your ears, in view of the rumors that
have come to my hearing, I could not keep the knowledge

longer. I cannot, my dear Johns, read your heart,
and say whether or not you will revolt at the idea of
any possible family tie between your son and my poor
Adèle. But whatever aspect such possibility may present
to your mind, I can regard it only with horror. If
I have deceived you, the deceit shall reach no such
harm as this. Whatever your Christian forgiveness or
your love for Adèle (and I know she is capable of winning
your love) may suggest, I can never consent that
any stain should be carried upon your family record by
any instrumentality of mine. I must beg, therefore,
that, if the rumor be true, you use all practicable
means, even to the use of your parental authority, in
discountenancing and forbidding such intimacy. If
necessary to this end, and Reuben be still resident at
the parsonage, I pray you to place Adèle with Mrs.
Brindlock, or other proper person, until such time as
I am able to come and take her once more under my
own protection.

“If you were a more worldly man, my dear Johns,
I should hope to win your heartier coöperation in my
views by telling you that recent business misfortunes
have placed my whole estate in peril, so that it is extremely
doubtful if Adèle will have any ultimate moneyed
dependence beyond the pittance which I have
placed in trust for her in your hands. Should it be necessary,
in furtherance of the objects I have named, to

make communication of the disclosures in this letter to
your son or to Miss Johns, you have my full liberty to
do so. Farther than this, I trust you may not find it
necessary to make known the facts so harmful to the
prospects and peace of my innocent child.

“I have thus made a clean breast to you, my dear
Johns, and await your scorching condemnation. But
let not any portion of it, I pray, be visited upon poor
Adèle. I know with what wrathful eyes you, from
your New England stand-point, are accustomed to look
upon such wickedness; and I know, too, that you are
sometimes disposed to `visit the sins of the fathers
upon the children'; but I beg that your anathemas may
all rest where they belong, upon my head, and that you
will spare the motherless girl you have taught to love
you.”

Up and down the study the Doctor paced, with a
feverish, restless step, which in all the history of the
parsonage had never been heard in it before.

“Such untruth!” is his exclamation. “Yet no,
there has been no positive untruth; the deception he
admits.”

But the great fact comes back upon his thought, that
the child of sin and shame is with him. All his old
distrust and hatred of the French are revived on the
instant; the stain of their iniquities is thrust upon his
serene and quiet household. And yet what a sweet

face, what a confiding nature God has given to this
creature conceived in sin! In his simplicity, the good
Doctor would have fancied that some mark of Cain
should be fixed on the poor child.

Again, the Doctor had somewhere in his heart a little
of the old family pride. The spinster had ministered
to it, coyly indeed by word, but always by manner and
conduct. How it would have shocked the stout Major,
or his good mother, even, to know that he had thus
fondled and fostered the vagrant offspring of iniquity
upon his hearth! A still larger and worthier pride the
Doctor cherished in his own dignity, — so long the honored
pastor of Ashfield, — so long the esteemed guide
of this people in paths of piety.

What if it should appear, that, during almost the entire
period of his holy ministrations, he had, as would
seem, colluded with an old acquaintance of his youth —
a brazen reprobate — to shield him from the shame of
his own misdeeds, and to cover with the mantle of respectability
and with all the pastoral dignities this
French-speaking child, who, under God, was the seal
of the father's iniquities?

As he paced back and forth, there was a timid knock
at the door; and in a moment more, Adèle, blooming
with health, and radiant with hope, stood before him.
Her face had never beamed with a more wondrous
frankness and sweetness.