When that knowledge comes, it is as if a cloud had suddenly gathered
over the morning light; so dark a cloud, that there seems to be
no longer any sunshine behind it or above it. The character of our
individual beloved one having invested itself with all the attributes
of right,--that one friend being to us the symbol and representative of
whatever is good and true,--when he falls, the effect is almost as if
the sky fell with him, bringing down in chaotic ruin the columns
that upheld our faith. We struggle forth again, no doubt, bruised and
bewildered. We stare wildly about us, and discover--or, it may be, we
never make the discovery--that it was not actually the sky that has
tumbled down, but merely a frail structure of our own rearing, which
never rose higher than the housetops, and has fallen because we founded
it on nothing. But the crash, and the affright and trouble, are as
overwhelming, for the time, as if the catastrophe involved the whole
moral world. Remembering these things, let them suggest one generous
motive for walking heedfully amid the defilement of earthly ways! Let us
reflect, that the highest path is pointed out by the pure Ideal of those
who look up to us, and who, if we tread less loftily, may never look so
high again.
Hilda's situation was made infinitely more wretched by the necessity of
Confining all her trouble within her own consciousness. To this innocent
girl, holding the knowledge of Miriam's crime within her tender and
delicate soul, the effect was almost the same as if she herself had
participated in the guilt. Indeed, partaking the human nature of
those who could perpetrate such deeds, she felt her own spotlessness
impugnent.
Had there been but a single friend,--or not a friend, since friends were
no longer to be confided in, after Miriam had betrayed her trust,--but,
had there been any calm, wise mind, any sympathizing intelligence; or,
if not these, any dull, half-listening ear into which she might have
flung the dreadful secret, as into an echoless cavern, what a relief
would have ensued! But this awful loneliness! It enveloped her
whithersoever she went. It was a shadow in the sunshine of festal days;
a mist between her eyes and the pictures at which she strove to look; a
chill dungeon, which kept her in its gray twilight and fed her with its
unwholesome air, fit only for a criminal to breathe and pine in! She
could not escape from it. In the effort to do so, straying farther into
the intricate passages of our nature, she stumbled, ever and again, over
this deadly idea of mortal guilt.
Poor sufferer for another's sin! Poor wellspring of a virgin's heart,
into which a murdered corpse had casually fallen, and whence it could
not be drawn forth again, but lay there, day after day, night after
night, tainting its sweet atmosphere with the scent of crime and ugly
death!