University of Virginia Library

40. XL.

IT would lead us far too widely from the simple order
of our narrative to detail the early history of
Madame Arles; and although the knowledge of it
might serve in some degree to explain the peculiar interest
which that poor woman has shown in the motherless
Adèle, we choose rather to leave the matter unexplained,
and to regard the invalid enthusiast as one
whose sympathies have fastened in a strange way upon
the exiled French girl, and grow all the stronger by
the difficulties in the way of their full expression.

Madame Arles did not forego either her solicitude
or the persistence of her inquiry under the harsh rebuff
of the Doctor. Again and again, after nightfall,
he saw her figure flitting back and forth upon the
street, over against Adèle's window; and the good man
perplexed himself vainly with a hundred queries as to
what such strange conduct could mean. The village
physician, too, had been addressed by this anxious lady
with a tumult of questionings; and the old gentleman
— upon whose sympathies the eager inquirer had won
an easier approach than upon those of the severe parson

— had taken hearty satisfaction in assuring her, within
a few days after the night interview we have detailed,
that the poor girl was mending, was out of danger, in
fact, and would be presently in a condition to report for
herself.

After this, and through the long convalescence,
Madame Arles was seen more rarely upon the village
street. Yet the town gossips were busy with the character
and habits of the “foreign lady.” Her devotion
to the little child of the outcast Boody woman was
most searchingly discussed at all the tea-tables of the
place; and it was special object of scandal, that the
foreign lady, neglectful of the Sabbath ministrations
of the parson, was frequently to be seen wandering
about the fields in “meeting-time,” attended very likely
by that poor wee thing of a child, upon whose head
the good people all visited, with terrible frowns, the
sins of the parents. No woman, of whatever condition,
could maintain a good reputation in Ashfield
under such circumstances. Dame Tourtelot enjoyed a
good sharp fling at the “trollop.”

“I allers said she was a bad woman,” submitted the
stout Dame; and her audience (consisting of the Deacon
and Miss Almira) would have had no more thought
of questioning the implied decision than of cutting
down the meeting-house steeple.

“And I 'm afeard,” continued the Dame, “that

Adeel is n't much better; she keeps a crucifix in her
chamber! — need n't to look at me, Tourtelot! — Miss
Johns told me all about it, and I don't think the parson
should allow it. I think you oughter speak to the parson,
Tourtelot.”

The good Deacon scratched his head, over the left
ear, in a deprecating manner.

“And I 've heerd this Miss Arles has been a-writin'
to Mr. Maverick, Adeel's father, — need n't to look at
me, Tourtelot! — the postmaster told me; and she 's
been receivin' furren letters, — filled with Popery, I
ha'n't a doubt.”

In short, the poor woman bore a most execrable
reputation; and Doctor Johns, good as he was, took
rather a secret pride in such startling confirmation of
his theories in respect to French character. He wrote
to his friend Maverick, informing him that his suspicions
in regard to Madame Arles were, he feared, “only
too well founded. Her neglect of Sabbath ordinances,
her unhallowed associations, her extreme violence of
language, (which was on a signal occasion uttered in
my hearing,) have satisfied me that your distrust was
only too reasonable. I shall guard Adaly from all further
intercourse with extreme care.”

Indeed, Miss Eliza and the Doctor (the latter from
the best of motives) had scrupulously kept from Adèle
all knowledge of Madame Arles's impatient and angry

solicitude during her illness. And when Adèle, on
those first sunny days of her convalescence, learned
incidentally that her countrywoman was still a resident
of the village, it pained her grievously to think that
she had heard no tender message from her during all
that weary interval of sickness, and she was more than
half inclined (though she did not say this) to adopt
the harshest judgments of the spinster. There was
not a visitor at the parsonage, indeed, but, if the name
were mentioned, sneered at the dark - faced, lonely
woman, who was living such a godless life, and associating,
as if from sheer bravado, with those who were
under the ban of all the reputable people of Ashfield.

When, therefore, Adèle, on one of her early walks
with Reuben, after her recovery was fully established,
encountered, in a remote part of the village, Madame
Arles, trailing after her the little child of shame, —
and yet darting toward the French girl, at first sight,
with her old effusion, — Adèle met her coolly, so coolly,
indeed, that the poor woman was overcome, and, hurrying
the little child after her, disappeared with a
look of wretchedness upon her face that haunted Adèle
for weeks and months. Thereafter very little was seen
of Madame Arles upon the principal street of the
village; and her avoidance of the family of the parsonage
was as studied and resolute as either the Doctor

or Miss Eliza could have desired. A moment of
chilling indifference on the part of Adèle had worked
stronger repulse than all the harsh rebuffs of the
elder people; but of this the kind-hearted French
girl was no way conscious: yet she was painfully conscious
of a shadowy figure that still, from time to time,
stole after her in her twilight walks, and that, if she
turned upon it, shrank stealthily from observation.
There was a mystery about the whole matter which
oppressed the poor girl with a sense of terror. She
could not doubt that the interest of her old teacher in
herself had been a kindly one; but whatever it might
have been, that interest was now so furtive, and affected
such concealment, that she was half led to entertain
the cruellest suspicions of Miss Eliza, who did
not fail to enlarge upon the godlessness of the stranger's
life, and to set before Adèle the thousand alluring
deceits by which Satan sought to win souls to
himself.

Rumor, one day, brought the story, that the foreign
woman, who had been the subject of so much village
scandal, lay ill, and was fast failing; and on hearing
this, Adèle would have broken away from all the parsonage
restraints, to offer what consolations she could:
nor would the good Doctor have repelled her; but the
rumor, if not false, was, in his view, grossly exaggerated;
since, on the Sunday previous only, some officious

member of his parish had reported the Frenchwoman
as strolling over the hills, decoying with her
that little child of her fellow-lodger, which she had
tricked out in the remnants of her French finery, and
was thus wantoning throughout the holy hours of service.

A few days later, however, the Doctor came in with
a serious and perplexed air; he laid his cane and hat
upon the little table within the door, and summoned
Adèle to the study.

“Adaly, my child,” said he, “this unfortunate countrywoman
of yours is really failing fast. I learn as
much from the physician. She has sent a request to
see you. She says that she has an important message,
a dying message, to give you.”

A strange tremor ran over the frame of Adèle.

“I fear, my child, that she is still bound to her idolatries;
she has asked that you bring to her the little
bauble of a rosary, which, I trust, Adaly, you have
learned to regard as a vanity.”

“Yet I have it still, New Papa; she shall have it;”
and she turned to go.

“My child, I cannot bear that you should go as the
messenger of a false faith, and to carry to her, as it
were, the seal of her idolatries. You shall follow her
wishes, Adaly; but I must attend you, my child, were
it only to protest against such vanities, and to declare

to her, if it be not too late, the truth as it is in the
Gospel.”

Adèle was only too willing; for she was impressed
with a vague terror at thought of this interview, and of
its possible revelations; and they set off presently in
company. It was a chilly day of later autumn. Only
a few scattered, tawny remnants of the summer verdure
were hanging upon the village trees, and great
rows of the dead and fallen leaves were heaped here
and there athwart the path, where some high wall kept
them clear of the winds; and as the walkers tramped
through them, they made a ghostly rustle, and whole
platoons of them were set astir to drift again until some
new eddy caught and stranded them in other heaps.
Adèle, more and more disturbed in mind, said, —

“It 's such a dreary day, New Papa!”

“Is it the thought that one you know may lie dying
now makes it dreary, my child?”

“Partly that, I dare say,” returned Adèle; “and
then the wind so tosses about these dead leaves. I
wish it were always spring.”

“There is a country,” said the parson, “where spring
reigns eternal. I hope you may, find it Adaly; I hope
your poor countrywoman may find it; but I fear, I fear.”

“Is it, then, so dreadful to be a Romanist?”

“It is dreadful, Adaly, to doubt the free grace of
God, — dreadful to trust in any offices of men, or in

tithes of mint and anise and cumin, — dreadful to look
anywhere for absolution from sin but in the blood of
the Lamb. I have a conviction, my child,” continued
he, in a tone even more serious, “that the poor woman
has not lived a pure life before God, or even before the
world. Even at this supreme moment of her life, if it
be such, I should be unwilling to trust you alone with
her, Adaly.”

Adèle, trembling, — partly with the chilling wind,
and partly with an ill-defined terror of — she knew not
what, — nestled more closely to the side of the old
gentleman; and he, taking her little hand in his, as
tenderly as a lover might have done, said, —

“Adaly, at least your trust in God is firm, is it not?”

“It is! it is!” said she.

The house, as we have said, lay far out upon the
river-road, within a strip of ill-tended garden-ground,
surrounded by a rocky pasture. A solitary white-oak
stood in the line of straggling wall that separated garden
from pasture, and showed still a great crown of leaves
blanched by the frosts, and shivering in the wind. An
artemisia, with blackened stalks, nodded its draggled
yellow blossoms at one angle of the house, while a little
company of barn-door fowls stood closely grouped
under the southern lea, with heads close drawn upon
their breasts, idling and winking in the sunshine.

The young mother of the vagrant little one who had

attracted latterly so much of the solitary woman's regard
received them with an awkward welcome.

“Miss Arles is poorly, to-day,” she said, “and she 's
flighty. She keeps Arthur” (the child) “with her.
You hear how she 's a-chatterin' now.” (The door of
her chamber stood half open.) “Arty seems to understand
her. I 'm sure I don't.”

Nor, indeed, did the Doctor, to whose ear a torrent
of rapid French speech was like the gibberish of demons.
He never doubted 't was full of wickedness.
Not so Adèle. There were sweet sounds to her ear in
that swift flow of Provençal speech, — tender, endearing
epithets, that seemed like the echo of music heard
long ago, — pleasant banter of words that had the
rhythm of the old godmother's talk.

“Ah, you 're a gay one! Now — put on your velvet
cap — so. We 'll find a bride for you some day, —
some day, when you 're a tall, proud man. Who 's your
father, Arty? Pah! it 's nothing. You 'll make somebody's
heart ache all the same, — eh, Arty, boy?”

“Do you understand her, Miss Maverick?” says the
mother.

“Not wholly,” said Adèle; and the two visitors
stepped in noiselessly.

The child, bedizened with finery, was standing upon
the bed where the sick woman lay, with a long feather
from the cock's tail waving from his cap. Madame

Arles, with the hot flush of the fever upon her,
looked — saving the thinness — as she might have
looked twenty years before. And as her flashing eye
caught the new comers, her voice broke out wildly
again, —

“Here 's the bride, and here 's the priest! Where 's
the groom? Where 's the groom? Where 's the groom,
I say?”

The violence of her manner made poor Adèle
shiver.

The boy laughed as he saw it, and said, —

“She 's afraid! I'm not afraid.”

“Oh, no!” said the crazed woman, turning on him.
“You 're a man, Arty: men are not afraid, — you
wanton, you wild one! Where 's the groom?” said
she again, addressing the Doctor, fiercely.

“My good woman,” says the old gentleman, “we
have come to offer you the consolations that are only
to be found in the Gospel of Christ.”

“Pah! you 're a false priest!”—defiantly. “Where 's
the groom?”

And Adèle, hoping to pacify the poor woman, draws
from her reticule the little rosary, and, holding it before
the eyes of the sufferer, says, timidly, —

“My dear Madam, it is I, — Adèle; I have brought
what you asked of me; I have come to comfort you.”

And the woman, over whose face there ran instantly

a marvelous change, snatched the rosary, and pressed
it convulsively to her lips; then, looking for a moment
yearningly, with that strange double gaze of hers, upon
the face of Adèle, she sprang toward her, and, wreathing
her arms about her, drew her fast upon her
bosom, —

“Ma fille! ma pauvre fille!”

The boy slipped down from the bed, — his little importance
being over, — and was gone. The Doctor's
lips moved in silent prayer for five minutes or more,
wholly undisturbed, while the twain were locked in that
embrace. Then the old gentleman, stooping, said, —

“Adaly, will she listen to me now?”

And Adèle, turning a frightened face to him, whispered,
—

“She 's sleeping; unclasp her hands; she holds me
tightly.”

The Doctor, with tremulous fingers, does her bidding.

Adèle, still whispering, says, —

“She 's calm now; she 'll talk with us when she
wakes, New Papa.”

“My poor child,” said the Doctor, solemnly, and with
a full voice, “she 'll never wake again.”

And Adèle, turning, — in a maze of terror, as she
thought of that death-clasp, — saw that her eyes had
fallen open, — open, and fixed, and lusterless. So

quietly Death had come upon his errand, and accomplished
it, and gone; while without, the fowls, undisturbed,
were still blinking idly in the sunshine under
the lea of the wall, and the yellow chrysanthemums
were fluttering in the wind.