Day's
mother be my mother too, and help me? But from no woman save my own
mother, hardly even from her, would I ask mediation with the uncle I had
loved and trusted all my life and with my whole heart. I had never known
father or mother, save as he had been father and mother and everybody to
me! What was I to do? Gladly would I have hurried to some desert place,
and there waited for the light I needed. That I was no longer in any
uncertainty as to the word that described my condition, did not, I found,
make it easy to use the word. "Perhaps," I argued, struggling in the
toils of my new liberty, "my uncle knows nothing of this kind of love,
and would be unable to understand me! Suppose I confessed to him what I
felt toward a man I had spoken to but once, and then only to tell him the
way to Dumbleton, would he not think me out of my mind?"
At length I bethought me that, so long as I did not know what to do, I
was not required to do anything; I must wait till I did know what to do.
But with the thought came suffering enough to be the wages of any sin
that, so far as I knew, I had ever committed. For the conviction awoke
that already the love that had hitherto been the chief joy of my being,
had begun to pale and fade. Was it possible I was ceasing to love my
uncle? What could any love be worth if mine should fail my uncle! Love
itself must be a mockery, and life but a ceaseless sliding down to the
death of indifference! Even if I never ceased to love him, it was just as
bad to love him less! Had he not been everything to me?--and this man,
what had he ever done for me? Doubtless we are to love even our enemies;
but are we to love them as tenderly as we love our friends? Or are we to
love the friend of yesterday, of whom we know nothing though we may
believe everything, as we love those who have taken all the trouble to
make true men and women of us? "What can be the matter with my soul?" I
said.
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