the cabinet, facing me in the distance. The first thing, I think, that I grew conscious of, was dreariness. There was nothing interesting anywhere. What should I do? There was nothing to do, nothing to think about, not a book worth reading. Story was suddenly dried up at its fountain. Life was a plain without water-brooks. If the sky was not “a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours,” it was nothing better than a canopy of gray and blue. By degrees my thought settled on what I had done, and in a moment I realized it as it was—a vile thing, and I had lost my life for it! This is the nearest I can come to the expression of what I felt. I was simply in despair. I had done wrong, and the world had closed in upon me; the sky had come down and was crushing me! The lid of my coffin was closed! I should come no more out!
But deliverance came speedily—and in how lovely a way! Into my thought, not into the room, came my uncle! Present to my deepest consciousness, he stood tall, loving, beautiful, sad. I read no rebuke in his countenance, only sorrow that I had sinned, and sympathy with my suffering because of my sin. Then first I knew that I had wronged him in looking into his drawer; then first I saw it was his being that made the thing I had done an evil thing. If the drawer had been nobody’s, there would have been no wrong in looking into it! And what made it so very bad was that my uncle was so good to me!
With the discovery came a rush of gladsome relief. Strange to say, with the clearer perception of the greatness of the wrong I had done, came the gladness of redemption. It was almost a pure joy to find that it was against my uncle, my own uncle, that I had sinned! That joy was the first gleam through a darkness that had seemed settled on my soul for ever. But a brighter followed; for thus spake the truth within me: “The thing is in your uncle’s hands; he is the lord of the wrong you have done; it is to him it makes you a debtor:—he loves you, and will forgive you. Of course he will! He cannot make undone what is done, but he will comfort you, and find some way of setting things right. There must be some way! I cannot be doomed to be a contemptible child to all eternity! It is so easy to go wrong, and so hard to get right! He must help me!”
I sat the rest of the day alone in that solitary room, away from Martha and Rover and everybody. I would that even now in my old age I waited for God as then I waited for my uncle! If only he would come, that I might pour out the story of my fall, for I had sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression!—only I was worse, for neither serpent nor wife had tempted me!
At tea-time Martha came to find me. I would not go with her. She would bring me my tea, she said. I would not have any tea. With a look like that she sometimes cast on my uncle, she left me. Dear Martha! she had the lovely gift of leaving alone. That evening there was no tea in the house; Martha did not have any.
With the conceit peculiar to repentance and humiliation, I took a curious satisfaction in being hard on myself. I could have taken my meal tolerably well: with the new hope in my uncle as my saviour, came comfort enough for the natural process of getting hungry, and desiring food; but with common, indeed vulgar foolishness, my own righteousness in taking vengeance on my fault was a satisfaction to me. I did not then see the presumption of the sinner’s taking vengeance on her own fault, did not see that I had no right to do that. For how should a thing defiled punish? With all my great joy in the discovery that the fault was against my uncle, I forgot that therefore I was in his jurisdiction, that he only had to deal with it, he alone could punish, as he alone could forgive it.
It was the end of August, and the night stole swiftly upon the day. It began to grow very dusk, but I would not stir. I and the cabinet kept each other dismal company while the gloom deepened into night. Nor did the night part us, for I and the cabinet filled all the darkness. Had my uncle remained the whole night away, I believe I should have sat till he came. But, happily both for my mental suffering and my bodily endurance, he returned sooner than many a time. I heard the house-door open. I knew he would come to the study before going to his bedroom, and my heart gave a bound of awe-filled eagerness. I knew also that Martha never spoke to him when he returned from one of his late rambles, and that he would not know I was there: long before she died Martha knew how grateful he was for her delicate consideration. Martha Moon was not one of this world’s ladies; but there is a country where the social question is not, “Is she a lady?” but, “How much of a woman is she?” Martha’s name must, I think, stand well up in the book of life.
My uncle, then, approached his room without knowing there was a live kernel to the dark that filled it. I hearkened to every nearer step as he came up the stair, along the corridor, and up the short final ascent to the door of the study. I had crept from my place to the middle of the room, and, without a thought of consequences, stood waiting the arrival through the dark, of my deliverer from the dark. I did not know that many a man who would face a battery calmly, will spring a yard aside if a yelping cur dart at him.
My uncle opened the door, and closed it behind him. His lamp and matches stood ready on his table: it was my part to see they were there. With a sigh, which seemed to seek me in the darkness and find me, he came forward through it. I caught him round the legs, and clung to him. He gave a great gasp and a smothered cry, staggered, and nearly fell.
“My God!” he murmured.
“Uncle! uncle!” I cried, in greater terror than he; “it’s only Orbie! It’s only your little one!”
“Oh! it’s only my little one, is it?” he rejoined, at once recovering his equanimity, and not for a moment losing the temper so ready, like nervous cat, to spring from most of us when startled.
He caught me up in his arms, and held me to his heart. I could feel it beat against my little person.
“Uncle! uncle!” I cried again. “Don’t! Don’t!”
“Did I hurt you, my little one?” he said, and relaxing his embrace, held me more gently, but did not set me down.
“No, no!” I answered. “But I’ve got a secret, and you mustn’t kiss me till it is gone. I wish there was a swine to send it into!”
“Give it to me, little one. I will treat it better than a swine would.”
“But it mustn’t be treated, uncle! It might come again!”
“There is no fear of that, my child! As soon as a secret is told, it is dead. It is a secret no longer.”
“Will it be dead, uncle?” I returned. “—But it will be there, all the same, when it is dead—an ugly thing. It will only put off its cloak, and show itself!”
“All secrets are not ugly things when their cloaks are off. The cloak may be the ugly thing, and nothing else.”
He stood in the dark, holding me in his arms. But the clouds had cleared off a little, and though there was no moon, I could see the dim blue of the sky-lights, and a little shine from the gray of his hair.
“But mine is an ugly thing,” I said, “and I hate it. Please let me put it out of my mouth. Perhaps then it will go dead.”
“Out with it, little one.”
“Put me down, please,” I returned.
He walked to the old chest under the gable-window, seated himself on it, and set me down beside him. I slipped from the chest, and knelt on the floor at his feet, a little way in front of him. I did not touch him, and all was again quite dark about us.
I told him my story from beginning to end, along with a great part of my meditations while hesitating to do the deed. I felt very choky, but forced my way through, talking with a throat that did not seem my own, and sending out a voice I seemed never to have heard before. The moment I ceased, a sound like a sob came out of the darkness. Was it possible my big uncle was crying? Then indeed there was no hope for me! He was horrified at my wickedness,
