University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.
THE CONFESSION.

The morning came, but brought no comfort. Mrs. Ginniss
had crept up stairs, and, throwing herself upon the bed,
had fallen asleep with the tears still trickling down her honest
face; but to Teddy's haggard eyes no sleep had come,
and he had only changed his position by stretching himself
upon the floor beside the box, his head upon his arm, his
aching eyeballs still shaping in the darkness the form and
features of the little sister whom he had sullenly resolved
was lost to him forever as a punishment for his fault in concealing
her.

“If I'd brought her back,” thought he again and again,
“they'd have let me get seeing her once in a while; they
couldn't have refused me so much; and maybe some day I'd
have been a gentleman, and could have talked with her free
and equal. But now she's lost to them and to me; and, when
I tell the master, he'll call me a mean thief and a liar, and

a rascal every way, and he'll never look at me again; and
mother” —

Then he would wander away into dreary speculation upon
what his mother would say when the truth was made known
to her, and she found the boy on whom she had lavished
her love and pride dishonored and discarded by the master
to whom he owed so much, and whose patronage she
had taken such pains to secure for him; and then, like the
weary burden of a never-ending song, would come again
the thought, —

“But if I'd brought her back at the first!”

The bitter growth of the night, however, had borne fruit
in a resolution firm as it was painful; and, when Teddy came
up stairs to make himself fit to go to the office, he was able
to say some words of comfort to his mother, assuring her
that no blame to her could come of what had happened, and
that it was possible the child might yet be found, as he
should warn those of her loss who could use surer means to
search for her than any at their command.

“An' is it the perlice ye're manin'?” asked Mrs. Ginniss.
“Sure it's little they'd heed the loss o' poor folks
like us, or look for one little child that's missin', whin there's
more nor enough uv 'em to the fore in ivery poor man's

house. But niver a one like ours, Teddy b'y, — niver
another purty darlint like her that's gone.”

Teddy made no reply to this, but, hastily swallowing some
food, took his hat, and left the room.

Upon the stairs he met the landlord, who, followed by a
furniture-broker, entered the room of the organ-grinder.
Going in after them, Teddy learned, in answer to his eager
questions, that the broker had, early in the morning of the
previous day, received a visit from the Italian, who, announcing
that he had no further use for the furniture, paid what
was owing for the rent of it, and made a bargain for a box he
was about to leave behind him; but, as to his subsequent
movements, the man had no information to give, nor could
even judge whether he intended leaving the city, or only the
house.

Thanking him for the information, Teddy went drearily on
his way, more hopelessly convinced than ever that Giovanni
had deliberately stolen the child, and absconded with her.

“Well,” muttered he, “all I've got to do now is to tell the
master, and take what I'll get. If he finds the little — no:
she's none of that, nor ever was — if he finds her, and takes
her home to them that lost her, I'll be content, if it's to
prison, or to sweeping the streets, or to be a slave in the
South, he sends me.”

Arrived at the office, Teddy faithfully performed his morning
duties, and then seated himself to wait for Mr. Barlow,
who was again occupying Mr. Burroughs's office during that
gentleman's absence in the West. While arranging upon his
table some papers he was to copy, Teddy suddenly remembered
that other morning, now nearly a year ago, when Mr.
Burroughs had laid upon this very table the picture and advertisement
of the lost child; and all the months of guilty
hesitation and concealment that since had passed seemed to
roll back upon the boy's heart, crushing it into the very dust.
He threw down the pen he had just taken up, and laid his
head upon his folded arms, groaning aloud, —

“Oh! if I had told him then! if I had just told him that
morning!”

The door of the office opened quickly; and Mr. Barlow, a
grave and reserved young man, who had never taken much
notice of Teddy, entered, and, as he passed to the inner room,
glanced with some curiosity at the boy, whose emotion was
not to be quite concealed.

“If you please, sir” —

“Well, Teddy?”

“I should like to send a letter to Mr. Burroughs.”

“Do you mean a letter from yourself?”

“Yes, sir.”

A slight smile crossed Mr. Barlow's face, as he replied a
little sneeringly, —

“I am afraid your business will have to wait till Mr.
Burroughs's return, my boy.”

“Don't you be sending him letters, sir?”

“I have; but, when I heard from him yesterday, he
was about leaving Cincinnati, and gave me no further
address. He will be at home in a day or two.”

Mr. Barlow passed on, and Teddy stooped over his work,
but to so little purpose, that, on submitting it for inspection,
he received a sharp reproof for his negligence, and an order
to do the whole afresh.

“What a Quixotism of Burroughs's to try to educate this
stupid fellow!” muttered Mr. Barlow to a friend who lounged
beside his table; and Teddy, hearing the criticism upon his
patron, felt an added weight fall upon his own conscience.

“They laugh at him because I'm stupid, and I'm stupid
because I'm thinking of what I've done. It's good that
they'll soon be shut of me altogether. Maybe I can sweep
the crossings, or clean the gutters,” thought poor miserable
Teddy, bending afresh to his task.

Mr. Burroughs did not come so soon as expected; and Mr.

Barlow became quite impatient of the constant inquiries
addressed to him by Teddy as to the probable movements of
his master. At last, about noon of Friday, he walked
into the office, looking more cheerful and like his old self
than he had been since the heavy sorrow had fallen upon the
household so near to his heart.

Mr. Barlow greeted him heartily, and, calling him into the
inner office, closed the door; while Teddy remained without,
his heart beating with a sick hard throb, a tingling pain
creeping from his brain to the ends of his icy fingers, and his
whole frame trembling with agitation.

It was no light task that he had set himself; and so
he well knew. To stand before the man he loved and reverenced
before all men, and say to him that he had been for
months deliberately deceiving and injuring him and his; to
confess that he had not once, but persistently, refused the
only chance ever offered him of repaying, in some measure,
the kindness and generosity of his patron; to acknowledge
himself selfish, deceitful, mean, and, more than these, ungrateful,
— oh! it was no light task that the boy had set
himself; and yet his resolution never faltered.

Great acts are only great in the light of the actor's previous
history and training; and perhaps the atonement

Teddy now contemplated was for him as heroic as that of
the martyred bishop who held the hand that had signed the
recantation steadily in the flame until it was consumed.

The door of the office opened, and the two gentlemen
were passing out together, when Teddy started up, —

“If you please, sir, might I speak with you by yourself?”

“Oh, yes! Teddy has been very anxious for an interview
with you all the week. I will go on, and expect you down
there presently,” said Mr. Barlow.

“Yes, in two minutes. Come in here, Teddy, and let us
hear what you have to say.”

Mr. Burroughs threw himself into the chair he had just
quitted, and stirred the fire, saying good-humoredly, —

“Out with it, my boy! What's amiss?”

Teddy, standing beside the table, one clammy hand grasping
the edge of it, seemed to feel the floor heave beneath his
feet, and the whole room to reel and swim before his eyes.
His tongue seemed paralyzed, his lips quivered, his voice came
to his own ears strange and hollow; but still he struggled
on, resolute to reach the worst.

“It's about the little girl that was lost, sir, — your little
cousin Antoinette.”

“'Toinette Legrange!” cried Mr. Burroughs, his face
suddenly growing earnest as he turned it upon the boy, and
asked, —

“What is it? Have you heard of her?”

“Yes, sir. I found her in the street the night she was
lost. She was dressed in poor clothes, and her hair was
cut off. I didn't know who she was; and I took her home
to my mother, and asked her to keep her for my little
sister, because I never got one, and always wanted her.
Then she was sick; and one day you told me she was
lost, and showed me the picture and the piece in the paper;
and I knew it was her. Then I thought she was going
to die, and I waited to know; and, when she got better, I
waited a while longer; and at last she was well, and I
couldn't bear to part with her” —

“But she is safe now?” interrupted Mr. Burroughs,
his look of stern reproach mingling with a sudden hope.

“No, sir: she's lost!”

“What!”

Teddy's white lips tried again and again before they
could form the words, —

“She's lost again, sir! She went out walking with Jovarny,

that's an organ-grinder, last Monday morning; and
he has taken her off.”

“You miserable fellow! You had better have killed
as well as stolen her!” exclaimed Mr. Burroughs.

Teddy clung to the table, and reeled as if a physical blow
had fallen upon him. It was the first time in the four
years they had spent together that his master had spoken
to him in anger, and now, —

“Five days ago! And what have you done in that
time towards looking for her?” asked Mr. Burroughs
sternly.

“Nothing, sir. I wanted to write to you, but couldn't
get any direction.”

“And why didn't you tell Mr. Barlow, and let him set
the police at work? If you had warned him as soon as
you discovered the loss, this organ-grinder might have been
caught. Now he is perhaps in New Orleans, perhaps half-way
to Europe. Why didn't you tell Barlow, I say?”

“Please, sir, I couldn't bear telling any one but you that
I done it,” said Teddy in a low voice.

“Well, sir, and, now you have told me, you will please
walk out of this office, and never enter it again. I did not
imagine, that, in all these months, you were preparing such

a pleasant surprise for me. One question, however: did
your mother know who the child was?”

“No, sir: never.”

“Then you may thank her that I let you off so easily;
but I never desire to see either of you again after to-day.
Wait here for one hour, while I go with a detective to hear
your mother's story and to get a description of this organ-grinder.
At two o'clock, leave the office; and take with
you whatever belongs to yourself, and nothing more.”

Mechanically obeying his master's gesture, Teddy staggered
out of the room. Mr. Burroughs followed him, and,
locking the door of the inner office, put the key in his
pocket, and went out.

“He thinks I'm a thief!” was the bitter thought that
darted through Teddy's mind; and then, “And how
could I steal more than when I stole her? He's right to
lock up from me.”