University of Virginia Library

63. LXIII.

REUBEN had heard latterly very little of domestic
affairs at Ashfield. He knew scarce more of
the family relations of Adèle than was covered by that
confidential announcement of the parson's which had
so set on fire his generous zeal. The spinster, indeed,
in one of her later letters had hinted, in a roundabout
manner, that Adèle's family misfortunes were not looking
so badly as they once did, — that the poor girl
(she believed) felt tenderly still toward her old playmate,
— and that Mr. Maverick was, beyond all question,
a gentleman of very easy fortune. But Reuben
was not in a mood to be caught by any chaff administered
by his most respectable aunt. If, indeed, he
had known all, — if that hearty burst of Adèle's gratitude
had come to him, — if he could once have met
her with the old freedom of manner, — ah! then —
then —

But no; he thinks of her now as one under social
blight, which he would have lifted or borne with her
had not her religious squeamishness forbidden. He
tries to forget what was most charming in her, and has
succeeded passably well.

“I suppose she is still modeling her heroes on the
Catechism,” he thought, “and Phil will very likely pass
muster.”

The name of Madame Maverick as attaching to their
fellow-passenger — which came to his ear for the first
time on the second day out from port — considerably
startled him. Madame Maverick is, he learns, on her
way to join her husband and child in America. But
he is by no means disposed to entertain a very exalted
respect for any claimant of such name and title. He
finds, indeed, the prejudices of his education (so he
calls them) asserting themselves with a fiery heat;
and most of all he is astounded by the artfully arranged
religious drapery with which this poor woman
— as it appears to him — seeks to cover her shortcomings.
He had brought away from the atmosphere
of the old cathedrals a certain quickened religious
sentiment, by the aid of which he had grown into a
respect, not only for the Romish faith, but for Christian
faith of whatever degree. And now he encountered
what seemed to him its gross prostitution. The
old Doctor then was right: this Popish form of
heathenism was but a device of Satan, — a scarlet
covering of iniquity. Yet, in losing respect for one
form of faith, he found himself losing respect for all.
It was easy for him to match the present hypocrisy
with hypocrisies that he had seen of old.

Meantime, the good ship Meteor was skirting the
shores of Spain, and had made a good hundred leagues
of her voyage before Reuben had ventured to make
himself known as the old schoolmate and friend of
the child whom Madame Maverick was on her way to
greet after so many years of separation. The truth
was, that Reuben, his first disgust being overcome,
could not shake off the influence of something attractive
and winning in the manner of Madame Maverick.
In her step and in her lithe figure he saw the step and
figure of Adèle. All her orisons and aves, which she
failed not to murmur each morning and evening, were
reminders of the earnest faith of her poor child. It
is impossible to treat her with disrespect. Nay, it is
impossible, — as Reuben begins to associate more intimately
the figure and the voice of this quiet lady with
his memories of another and a younger one, — quite
impossible, that he should not feel his whole chivalrous
nature stirred in him, and become prodigal of attentions.
If there were hypocrisy, it somehow cheated
him into reverence.

The lady is, of course, astounded at Reuben's disclosure
to her. “Mon Dieu! you, then, are the son
of that good priest of whom I have heard so much!
And you are Puritan? I would not have thought that.
They love the vanities of the world then,” — and her
eye flashed over the well-appointed dress of Reuben,

who felt half an inclination to hide, if it had been
possible, the cluster of gairish charms which hung at
his watch-chain. “You have shown great kindness to
my child, Monsieur. I thank you with my whole
heart.”

“She is very charming, Madame,” said Reuben, in an
easy, dégagé manner, which, to tell truth, he put on to
cover a little embarrassing revival of his old sentiment.

Madame Maverick looked at him keenly. “Describe
her to me, if you will be so good, Monsieur.”

Whereupon Reuben ran on, — jauntily, at first, as
if it had been a ballet-girl of San Carlo whose picture
he was making out; but his old hearty warmth declared
itself by degrees; and his admiration and his
tenderness gave such warm color to his language as it
might have shown if her little gloved hand had been
shivering even then in his own passionate clasp. And
as he closed, with a great glow upon his face, Madame
Maverick burst forth, —

“Mon Dieu, how I love her! Yet is it not a thing
astonishing that I should ask you, a stranger, Monsieur,
how my own child is looking? Culpa mea! culpa
mea!” and she clutched at her rosary, and mumbled
an ave, with her eyes lifted and streaming tears.

Reuben looked upon her in wonder, amazed at the
depth of her emotion. Could this be all hypocrisy?

“Tenez!” said she, recovering herself, and reading,

as it were, his doubts. “You count these” (lifting
her rosary) “baubles yonder, and our prayers pagan
prayers; my husband has told me, and that she, Adèle,
is taught thus, and that the Bon Dieu has forsaken
our Holy Church, — that He comes near now only to
your — what shall I call them? — meeting-houses?
Tell me, Monsieur, does Adèle think this?”

“I think,” said Reuben, “that your daughter would
have charity for any religious faith which was earnest.”

“Charity! Mon Dieu! Charity for sins, charity for
failings, — yes, I ask it; but for my faith! No, Monsieur,
no — no — a thousand times, no!”

“This is real,” thought Reuben.

“Tell me, Monsieur,” continued she, with a heat of
language that excited his admiration, “what is it you
believe there? What is the horror against which your
New England teachers would warn my poor Adèle?
May the Blessed Virgin be near her!”

Whereupon, Reuben undertook to lay down the
grounds of distrust in which he had been educated;
not, surely, with the fervor or the logical sequence
which the old Doctor would have given to the same,
but yet inveighing in good set terms against the vain
ceremonials, the idolatries, the mummeries, the confessional,
the empty absolution; and summing up all
with the formula (may be he had heard the Doctor
use the same language) that the piety of the Romanist

was not so much a deep religious conviction of the
truth, as a sentiment.

“Sentiment!” exclaims Madame Maverick. “What
else? What but love of the good God?”

But not so much by her talk as by the everyday
sight of her serene, unfaltering devotion is Reuben won
into a deep respect for her faith.

Those are rare days and rare nights for him, as the
good ship Meteor slips down past the shores of Spain
to the Straits, — days all sunny, nights moonlit. To
the right, — not discernible, but he knows they are
there, — the swelling hills of Catalonia and of Andalusia,
the marvelous Moorish ruins, the murmurs of
the Guadalquivir; to the left, a broad sweep of burnished
sea, on which, late into the night, the moon
pours a stream of molten silver, that comes rocking
and widening toward him, and vanishes in the shadow
of the ship. The cruise has been a splendid venture
for him, — twenty-five thousand at the least. And
as he paces the decks, — in the view only of the silent
man at the wheel and of the silent stars, — he forecasts
the palaces he will build. The feeble Doctor
shall have ease and every luxury; he will be gracious
in his charities; he will astonish the old people by his
affluence; he will live —

Just here, he spies a female figure stealing from the
companion-way, and gliding beyond the shelter of the

wheel-house. Half concealed as he chances to be in
the shadow of the rigging, he sees her fall upon her
knees, and, with head uplifted, cross her hands upon
her bosom. 'T is a short prayer, and the instant after
she glides below.

“Good God! what trust!” — it is an ejaculatory
prayer of Reuben's, rather than an oath. And with it,
swift as the wind, comes a dreary sense of unrest.
The palaces he had built vanish. The stars blink upon
him kindly, and from their wondrous depths challenge
his thought. The sea swashes idly against the floating
ship. He too afloat, — afloat. Whither bound?
Yearning still for a belief on which he may repose.
And he bethinks himself, — does it lie somewhere
under the harsh and dogmatic utterances of the Ashfield
pulpit? At the thought, he recalls the weary
iteration of cumbersome formulas, that passed through
his brain like leaden plummets, and the swift lashings
of rebuke, if he but reached over for a single worldly
floweret, blooming beside the narrow path; and yet,
— and yet, from the leaden atmosphere of that past,
saintly faces beam upon him, — a mother's, Adèle's, —
nay, the kindly fixed gray eyes of the old Doctor glow
upon him with a fire that must have been kindled with
truth.

Does it lie in the melodious aves, and under the
robes of Rome? The sordid friars, with their shaven

pates, grin at him; some Rabelais head of a priest in
the confessional-stall leers at him with mockery: and
yet the golden letters of the great dome gleam again
with their blazing legend, and the figure of the Magdalen
yonder has just now murmured, in tones that
must surely have reached a gracious ear, —
Is the truth between? Is it in both? Is it real?
And if real, why may not the same lips declare it
under the cathedral or the meeting-house roof? Why
not — in God's name — charity?