Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/221

1866.] and, much to the horror of the good Doctor, insisted upon having a little cross inscribed upon its front. You have never told me, dear papa, if you received the long account I gave you of her sudden death, and how she died without ever telling me anything of herself,—though I believe it was in her mind to do so, at the last."

No, of a truth, such a letter had never been received by Maverick, and he cursed the mails royally for it, since it might have prevented the need of any such disclosure as he had made to his friend Johns. When the present missive of Adèle came to him, he was entering the brilliant Café de L'Orient at Marseilles, in company with his friend Papiol. The news staggered him for a moment.

"Papiol!" said he, "mon ami, Julie is dead!"

"Parbleu! And among your Puritans, yonder? She must have made a piquant story of it all!"

"Not a word, Papiol! She has kept by her promise bravely."

"Tant mieux: it will give you good appetite, mon ami."

For a moment the better nature of Maverick had been roused, and he turned a look of loathing upon the complacent Frenchman seated by him (which fortunately the stolid Papiol did not comprehend). For a moment, his thought ran back to a sunny hillside near to the old town of Arles, where lines of stunted, tawny olives crept down the fields,—where fig-trees showed their purple nodules of fruit,—where a bright-faced young peasant-girl, with a gay kerchief turbaned about her head with a coquettish tie, lay basking in the sunshine. He heard once more the trip of her voice warbling a Provençal song, while the great ruin of the Roman arène came once more to his vision, with its tufting shrubs and battered arches rising grim and gaunt into the soft Southern sky; the church-bells of the town poured their sweet jangle on his ear again, the murmur of distant voices came floating down the wind, and again the pretty Provençal song fluttered on the balmy air; the coquettish turban was in his eye, the plump, soft hand of the pretty Provençal girl in his grasp, and her glossy locks touched his burning cheek. So much, at least, that was Arcadian; and then (in his glowing memory still) the loves, the jealousies, the delusions, the concealments, the faithlessness, the desertion, the parting! And now,—now the chief actress in this drama that had touched him so nearly lay buried in a New England grave, with his own Adèle her solitary mourner!

"It was your friend the Doctor who gave the good woman absolution, I suppose," said Papiol, tapping his snuff-box, and gathering a huge pinch between thumb and finger.

"Not even that comfort, I suspect," said Maverick.

"Bah! pauvre femme!"

And the philosopher titillated his nostril until he sneezed again and again.

"And the Doctor," continued Papiol,—"does he suspect nothing?"

"Nothing. He has counselled me to make what amends I may by marrying—you know whom."

"Pardieu! he is a good innocent, that old friend of yours!"

"Better than you or I, Papiol."

"Cela va sans dire, mon ami. And la petite,—the little bright-eyes,—what of her?"

"She is unsuspicious, but hints at a little cloud that overshadows her domestic history, and tells her lover that it shall be cleared up before she will marry him, or any other."

"Ta, ta! It's an inquisitive sex, Maverick! I could never quite understand how Julie should have learned that her little one was still alive, and been able to trace her as she did. I think the death was set forth in the Gazette,—eh, Maverick?"

"It certainly was," said Maverick,—"honestly, for the child's good."

"Ha!—honestly,—bon! I beg pardon, mom ami."

And Papiol took snuff again.

"Set forth in the Gazette, en règle,