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MY FIRST SECRET.
I was one morning with my uncle in his room. Lessons were over, and I was
reading a marvellous story in one of my favourite annuals: my uncle had
so taught me from infancy the right handling of books, that he would have
trusted me with the most valuable in his possession. I do not know how
old I was, but that is no matter; man or woman is aged according to the
development of the conscience. Looking up, I saw him stooping over an
open drawer in a cabinet behind the door. I sat on the great chest under
the gable-window, and was away from him the whole length of the room. He
had never told me not to look at him, had never seemed to object to the
presence of my eyes on anything he did, and as a matter of course I sat
observing him, partly because I had never seen any portion of that
cabinet open. He turned towards the sky-light near him, and held up
between him and it a small something, of which I could just see that it
was red, and shone in the light. Then he turned hurriedly, threw it in
the drawer, and went straight out, leaving the drawer open. I knew I had
lost his company for the day.
The moment he was gone, the phantasm of the pretty thing he had been
looking at so intently, came back to me. Somehow I seemed to understand
that I had no right to know what it was, seeing my uncle had not shown it
me! At the same time I had no law to guide me. He had never said I was
not to look at this or that in the room. If he had, even if the cabinet
had not been mentioned, I do not think I should have offended; but that
does not make the fault less. For which is the more guilty--the man who
knows there is a law against doing a certain thing and does it, or the
man who feels an authority in the depth of his nature forbidding the
thing, and yet does it? Surely the latter is greatly the more guilty.
I rose, and went to the cabinet. But when the contents of the drawer
began to show themselves as I drew near, "I closed my lids, and kept them
close," until I had seated myself on the floor, with my back to the
cabinet, and the drawer projecting over my head like the shelf of a
bracket over its supporting figure. I could touch it with the top of my
head by straightening my back. How long I sat there motionless, I cannot
say, but it seems in retrospect at least a week, such a multitude of
thinkings went through my mind. The logical discussion of a thing that
has to be done, a thing awaiting action and not decision--the experiment,
that is, whether the duty or the temptation has the more to say for
itself, is one of the straight roads to the pit. Similarly, there are
multitudes who lose their lives pondering what they ought to believe,
while something lies at their door waiting to be done, and rendering it
impossible for him who makes it wait, ever to know what to believe. Only
a pure heart can understand, and a pure heart is one that sends out ready
hands. I knew perfectly well what I ought to do--namely, to shut that
drawer with the back of my head, then get up and do something, and forget
the shining stone I had seen betwixt my uncle's finger and thumb; yet
there I sat debating whether I was not at liberty to do in my uncle's
room what he had not told me not to do.
I will not weary my reader with any further description of the evil path
by which I arrived at the evil act. To myself it is pain even now to tell
that I got on my feet, saw a blaze of shining things, banged-to the
drawer, and knew that Eve had eaten the apple. The eyes of my
consciousness were opened to the evil in me, through the evil done by me.
Evil seemed now a part of myself, so that nevermore should I get rid of
it. It may be easy for one regarding it from afar, through the telescope
only of a book, to exclaim, "Such a little thing!" but it was I who did
it, and not another! it was I, and only I, who could know what I had
done, and it was not a little thing! That peep into my uncle's drawer
lies in my soul the type of sin. Never have I done anything wrong with
such a clear assurance that I was doing wrong, as when I did the thing I
had taken most pains to reason out as right.
Like one stunned by an electric shock, I had neither feeling nor care
left for anything. I walked to the end of the long room, as far as I
could go from the scene of my crime, and sat down on the great chest,
with my coffin, 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, and very sorry to have to give me up! I
howled like a wild beast.
"Please, uncle, will you kill me!" I cried, through a riot of sobs that
came from me like potatoes from a sack.
"Yes, yes, I will kill you, my darling!" he answered, "--this way! this
way!" and stretching out his arms he found me in the dark, drew me to
him, and covered my face with kisses.
"Now," he resumed, "I've killed you alive again, and the ugly secret is
dead, and will never come to life any more. And I think, besides, we have
killed the hen that lays the egg-secrets!"
He rose with me in his arms, set me down on the chest, lighted his lamp,
and carried it to the cabinet. Then he returned, and taking me by the
hand, led me to it, opened wide the drawer of offence, lifted me, and
held me so that I could see well into it. The light flashed in a hundred
glories of colour from a multitude of cut but unset stones that lay loose
in it. I soon learned that most of them were of small money-value, but
their beauty was none the less entrancing. There were stones of price
among them, however, and these were the first he taught me, because they
were the most beautiful. My fault had opened a new source of delight: my
stone-lesson was now one of the great pleasures of the week. In after
years I saw in it the richness of God not content with setting right what
is wrong, but making from it a gain: he will not have his children the
worse for the wrong they have done! We shall lose nothing by it: he is
our father! For the hurting sand-grain, he gives his oyster a pearl.
"There," said my uncle, "you may look at them as often as you please;
only mind you put every one back as soon as you have satisfied your eyes
with it. You must not put one in your pocket, or carry it about in your
hand."
Then he set me down, saying,
"Now you must go to bed, and dream about the pretty things. I will tell
you a lot of stories about them afterward."
We had a way of calling any kind of statement a story.
I never cared to ask how it was that, seeing all the same I had done the
wrong thing, the whole weight of it was gone from me. So utterly was it
gone, that I did not even inquire whether I ought so to let it pass from
me. It was nowhere. In the fire of my uncle's love to me and mine to him,
the thing vanished. It was annihilated. Should I not be a creature
unworthy of life, if, now in my old age, I, who had such an uncle in my
childhood, did not with my very life believe in God?
I have wondered whether, if my father had lived to bring me up instead of
my uncle, I should have been very different; but the useless speculation
has only driven me to believe that the relations on the surface of life
are but the symbols of far deeper ties, which may exist without those
correspondent external ones. At the same time, now that, being old, I
naturally think of the coming change, I feel that, when I see my father,
I shall have a different feeling for him just because he is my father,
although my uncle did all the fatherly toward me. But we need not trouble
ourselves about our hearts, and all their varying hues and shades of
feeling. Truth is at the root of all existence, therefore everything must
come right if only we are obedient to the truth; and right is the deepest
satisfaction of every creature as well as of God. I wait in confidence.
If things be not as we think, they will both arouse and satisfy a better
think, making us glad they are not as we expected.
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