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THE MIRROR.
I woke the next morning in a strange bed, and for a long time could not
think how I came to be there. A maid appeared, and told me it was time to
get up. Greatly to my dislike, she would insist on dressing me. My
clothes looked very miserable, I remember, in consequence of what they
had gone through the night before. She was kind to me, and asked me a
great many questions, but paid no heed to my answers--a treatment to
which I had not been used: I think she must have been the lady's maid.
When I was ready, she took me to the housekeeper's room, where I had
bread and milk for breakfast. Several servants, men and women, came and
went, and I thought they all looked at me strangely. I concluded they had
no little girls in that house. Assuredly there was small favour for
children in it. In some houses the child is as a stranger; in others he
rules: neither such house is in the kingdom of heaven. I must have looked
a forlorn creature as I sat, or perched rather, on the old horsehair-sofa
in that dingy room. Nobody said more than a word or so to me. I wondered
what was going to be done with me, but I had long been able to wait for
what would come. At length, after, as it seemed, hours of weary waiting,
during which my heart grew sick with longing after my uncle, I was,
without a word of explanation, led through long passages into a room
which appeared enormous. There I was again left a long while--this time
alone. It was all white and gold, and had its walls nearly covered with
great mirrors from floor to ceiling, which, while it was indeed of great
size, was the cause of its looking so immeasurably large. But it was some
time before I discovered this, for I was not accustomed to mirrors.
Except the small one on my little dressing-table, and one still less on
Martha's, I had scarcely seen a mirror, and was not prepared for those
sheets of glass in narrow gold frames.
I went about, looking at one thing and another, but handling nothing: my
late secret had cured me of that. Weary at last, I dropped upon a low
chair, and would probably have soon fallen asleep, had not the door
opened, and some one come in. I could not see the door without turning,
and was too tired and sleepy to move. I sat still, staring, hardly
conscious, into the mirror in front of me. All at once I descried in it
my uncle--but only to see him grow white as death, and turn away, reeling
as if he would fall. The sight so bewildered me that, instead of rushing
to embrace him, I sat frozen. He clapped his hands to his eyes, steadied
himself, stood for a moment rigid, then came straight toward me. But, to
my added astonishment, he gave me no greeting, or showed any sign of joy
at having found me. Never before had he seen me for the first time any
day, without giving me a kiss; never before, it seemed to me, had he
spoken to me without a smile: I had been lost and was found, and he was
not glad! The strange reception fell on me like a numbing spell. I had
nothing to say, no impulse to move, no part in the present world. He
caught me up in his arms, hid his face upon me, knocked his shoulder
heavily against the door-post as he went from the room, walked straight
through the hall, and out of the house. I think no one saw us as we went;
I am sure neither of us saw any one. With long strides he walked down the
avenue, never turning his head. Not until we were on the moor, out of
sight of the house, did he stop. Then he set me down; and then first we
discovered that he had left his hat behind. For all his carrying of me,
and going so fast--and I must have been rather heavy--his face had no
colour in it.
"Shall I run and get it, uncle?" I said, as I saw him raise his hand to
his head and find no hat there to be taken off. "I should be back in a
minute!"
It was the first word spoken between us. "No, my little one," he
answered, wiping his forehead: his voice sounded far away, like that of
one speaking in a dream; "I can't let you out of my sight. I've been
wandering the moor all night looking for you!"
With that he caught me up again, and pressing his face to mine, walked
with me thus, for a long quarter of a mile, I should think. Oh how safe I
felt!--and how happy!--happy beyond smiling! I loved him before, but I
never knew before what it was to lose him and find him again.
"Tell me," he said at length.
I told him all, and he did not speak a word until my tale was finished.
"Were you very frightened," he then asked, "when you found you had lost
your way, and darkness was coming?"
"I was frightened, or I would not have gone to the lady. But I wish I had
staid on the moor for you to find me. I knew you would soon be out
looking for me. Until she came I comforted myself with thinking that
perhaps even then you were on the moor, and I might see you any moment."
"What else did you think of?"
"I thought that God was out on the moor, and if you were not there, he
would keep me company."
"Ah!" said my uncle, as if thinking to himself; "she but needs him the
more when I am with her!"
"Yes, of course!" I answered; "I need him then for you as well as for
myself."
"That is very true, my child!--Shall I tell you one thing I thought of
while looking for you?"
"Please, uncle."
"I thought how Jesus' father and mother must have felt when they were
looking for him."
"And they needn't have been so unhappy if they had thought who he
was--need they?"
"Certainly not. And I needn't have been so unhappy if I had thought who
you were. But I was terribly frightened, and there I was wrong."
"Who am I, uncle?"
"Another little one of the same father as he."
"Why were you frightened, uncle?"
"I was afraid of your being frightened."
"I hardly had time to be frightened before the lady came."
"Yes; you see I needn't have been so unhappy!"
My uncle always treated me as if I could understand him perfectly. This
came, I see now, from the essential childlikeness of his nature, and from
no educational theory.
"Sometimes," he went on, "I look all around me to see if Jesus is out
anywhere, but I have never seen him yet!"
"We shall see him one day, shan't we?" I said, craning round to look into
his eyes, which were my earthly paradise. Nor are they a whit less dear
to me, nay, they are dearer, that he has been in God's somewhere, that
is, the heavenly paradise, for many a year.
"I think so," he answered, with a sigh that seemed to swell like a
sea-wave against me, as I sat on his arm; "--I hope so. I live but for
that--and for one thing more."
There are some, I fancy, who would blame him for not being sure, and
bring text after text to prove that he ought to have been sure. But oh
those text-people! They look to me, not like the clay-sparrows that Jesus
made fly, but like bird-skins in a glass-case, stuffed with texts. The
doubt of a man like my uncle must be a far better thing than their
assurance!
"Would you have been frightened if you had met him on the moor last
night, little one?" he asked, after a pause.
"Oh, no, uncle!" I returned. "I should have thought it was you till I
came nearer, and then I should have known who it was! He wouldn't like a
big girl like me to be frightened at him--would he?"
"Indeed not!'" answered my uncle fervently; but again his words brought
with them a great sigh, and he said no more.
When we reached home, he gave me up to Martha, and went out again--nor
returned before I was in bed. But he came to my room, and waked me with a
kiss, which sent me faster asleep than before.
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