The Flight of the Shadow | Page 8

I grew aware--so
gradually that at length I seemed to have known it from the first--that
the soul of my uncle was harassed with an undying trouble, that some
worm lay among the very roots of his life. What change could ever
dispel such a sadness as I often saw in that chair! Now and then he
would sit there for hours, an open book in his hand perhaps, at which
he cast never a glance, all unaware of the eyes of the small maiden
fixed upon him, with a whole world of sympathy behind them. I
suspect, however, as I believe I have said, that Martha Moon, in her
silence, had pierced the heart of the mystery, though she knew nothing.
One practical lesson given me now and then in varying form by my
uncle, I at length, one day, suddenly and involuntarily associated with
the darkness that haunted him. In substance it was this: "Never, my
little one, hide anything from those that love you. Never let anything
that makes itself a nest in your heart, grow into a secret, for then at
once it will begin to eat a hole in it." He would so often say the kind of
thing, that I seemed to know when it was coming. But I had heard it as
a thing of course, never realizing its truth, and listening to it only
because he whom I loved said it.
I see with my mind's eye the fine small head and large eyes so far
above me, as we sit beside each other at the deal table. He looked down
on me like a bird of prey. His hair--gray, Martha told me, before he was
thirty--was tufted out a little, like ruffled feathers, on each side. But the
eyes were not those of an eagle; they were a dove's eyes.
"A secret, little one, is a mole that burrows," said my uncle.
The moment of insight was come. A voice seemed suddenly to say
within me, "He has a secret; it is biting his heart!" My affection, my
devotion, my sacred concern for him, as suddenly swelled to twice their
size. It was as if a God were in pain, and I could not help him. I had no

desire to learn his secret; I only yearned heart and soul to comfort him.
Before long, I had a secret myself for half a day: ever after, I shared so
in the trouble of his secret, that I seemed myself to possess or rather to
be possessed by one--such a secret that I did not myself know it.
But in truth I had a secret then; for the moment I knew that he had a
secret, his secret--the outward fact of its existence, I mean--was my
secret. And besides this secret of his, I had then a secret of my own. For
I knew that my uncle had a secret, and he did not know that I knew.
Therewith came, of course, the question--Ought I to tell him? At once,
by the instinct of love, I saw that to tell him would put him in a great
difficulty. He might wish me never to let any one else know of it, and
how could he say so when he had been constantly warning me to let
nothing grow to a secret in my heart? As to telling Martha Moon, much
as I loved her, much as I knew she loved my uncle, and sure as I was
that anything concerning him was as sacred to her as to me, I dared not
commit such a breach of confidence as even to think in her presence
that my uncle had a secret. From that hour I had recurrent fits of a
morbid terror at the very idea of a secret--as if a secret were in itself a
treacherous, poisonous guest, that ate away the life of its host.
But to return, my half-day-secret came in this wise.

CHAPTER V
.
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