Chapter Thirteen-The End

by Kate J. Neily
Edited and Revised by Amber Moeller

In Nelly's own little sewing-chair, beside the window, evidently waiting for her, sat her mother, pale, and with a countenance both angry and sorrowful. Across the foot of the low, white bed lay the veritable breakfast shawl, looking warm and bright, with its gay shades of scarlet. On a chair, near by, stood two pairs of bronze kid boots, of the same size, and exactly alike, except that the delicate leather of the one was all warped and stained by mud and water, while the others were glossy and fresh with newness.

Nelly saw, in one rapid and desperate glance, that her sin had found her out. These mute witnesses had silently told the tale, and there was nothing for her to do now, but bear her disgrace as best she might. With a low cry of pain and shame, she sank into a chair near the bed, and buried her face in the pillows. She could not bear to meet her mother's eye.

Mrs. Morgan looked at the shame-bowed figure of her daughter with a sad and displeased glance. Presently she said, --

"Nelly!"

But Nelly only shrank at the sound of her voice, and did not rise.

"Nelly, come here! I wish to speak with you."

Mrs. Morgan's tone was cold and severe, and Nelly did not dare disobey. She lifted her head heavily, and striving vainly to hide her shame-dyed face with her trembling fingers, rose, and slowly approached the spot where her mother sat. "Uncover your face, Nelly, and look at me. That ever my daughter should be ashamed to meet her mother's eye!"

The poor girl unclasped her hands from her burning face, and bent a frightened and pleading glance upon the sad, displeased countenance that looked so severely upon her.

"Don't be so angry with me, mother - don't!" she begged, taking a step forward, and clasping her hands with a beseeching gesture. "Indeed, I didn't mean to do anything so very wrong at first; but everything seemed to happen, and - and -"

She stopped, and, burying her face in her hands again, broke a passion of bitter sobs.

"Didn't mean! - didn't mean!" repeated her mother, scornfully. "Never say that to me, Nelly! It is the pitiful excuse which the wicked, who are not brave enough to take the consequences for their wickedness, always offer. I do not wish to hear any excuses. I want a full and free explanation of all these mysteries, a full and free confession of all your deceptions. It is your only chance for forgiveness; so be careful to tell me the exact truth now. Why did you make me believe you intended to give this shawl to you teacher, when it was your purpose to sell it, even if you had to disgrace both me and yourself by hawking it about in the public shops? When did you wear these shoes, that you should get them so stained and spoiled? Why did you not come and show them to me, instead of hiding them away in a hole of the attic wall, where the very rats could betray you? For it was by a rat jumping down, and dragging one of those shoes after him, that Anne discovered them as she was cleaning in the attic today. And how did you buy the other to replace them without money? I want an explicit answer to each of these questions; and remember, Nelly, that I shall not forgive any evasion or prevarication. Begin at the beginning, and tell me how you ruined your shoes; for I suppose, that was the origin of the deception about the shawl."

So Nelly began, with drooped face, and in a low, ashamed voice, to tell the sad story of her first deceit, and how, day by day, she had become entangled closer and closer in the web of falsehood, until it had ended in actual crime; and her mother sat and listened in a shame and grief almost as deep as her own.

When she had finished, there was a dead silence in the room. Mrs. Morgan sat lost in painful thought, and did not know what to say or do.

This solemn pause grew quite awful to Nelly, and she broke it presently with an exceeding bitter cry.

"O, mother, mother," she said, with streaming eyes, "do forgive me! Indeed, if you knew how miserable I have been from the very first day, though I tried to brave it out; how many, many times I wished I had never begun to deceive you; how hard I tried to get out of it all without telling you, because I was so ashamed to have you know I could be so wicked; and how I have felt sometimes I had rather die than go on so, you would, - I am sure you would, - mother - mother!"

And Mrs. Morgan remember how miserable indeed the girl had looked ever since that sorrowful Christmas Eve; how she had spent the merry holiday time, when other children were so gay and happy, on a bed of pain; and how of late she had seemed to be struggling under a burden of anxiety to heavy for so young a heart to bear. And, looking at her now, humbled to the very dust, conscience-stricken and ashamed, and listening to her piteous cry, the mother's heart softened towards her erring child, and she felt that her punishment was indeed severe enough.

"O, Nelly, Nelly!" she said, in a tone of sorrowful wistfulness, "if I only could believe that you were truly sorry - sorry for your sin itself, not along for the trouble it has brought upon you; if I could only hope that it was the kind of sorrow which should work such deep repentance that you could never, never be tempted to commit such a sin again!"

Nelly sank upon her knees by her mother's side, and buried her face in her bosom.

"I do not ask you to trust me again yet, mother," she sobbed; "only forgive me now, and try me once more. I have suffered so much that it seems to me I could die before I could tell another lie. And it isn't only the suffering either I mind. I see now, as I never did before, how mean and how wrong it is. O, mother, you could not wish me to be more ashamed and sorry than I am!"

Mrs. Morgan's eyes filled with tears. She stroked the hair gently from the feverish brow of the weeping girl, and said, solemnly, -

"You know, Nelly, mine is not the only forgiveness you should seek."

"Do you mean that I should tell my father, mother?" asked Nelly, with a start, and a new pang of shame and fear.

>"Don't you think that you would be more likely to resist any temptation that may come to you in the future, Nelly if you had to remember the pain of confessing this to him as well as to me? And a stronger reason than that; don't you think it would be a kind of keeping up deception if you kept this great fault hidden from him who has a right to know all about you? if you allowed him to think that you had always been honest, and true, and esteem, and, perhaps, praise you for those qualities, when, in reality, you do not possess them? Could you not look him in the face more bravely and openly, after the first pain was over, than you could if you were conscious, all the time, of appearing to him in a better light than you deserved? Think about it, Nelly. It is hard, I know; but do you not deserve, and need, to bear some hardship for your sin?"

Nelly drew a long, quivering breath of shame and pain.

"I will tell him, mother," she said, in a low, humbled tome. "I see I ought to, but I am sorry to make him feel so badly."

"And I am sorry, too," said her mother; "but you see that is one of the sad consequences of evil-doing. 'None of us liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself;' and we must always bring others into trouble, as well as ourselves, when we do wrong. But, Nelly, though I meant, of course, that your father should know of this, it was not to him I referred, when I spoke of another's forgiveness being needed."

"You did not mean Mr. Porter, or Miss Elliott, mother?" asked Nelly, aghast. "O, I never could tell them, mother, that - that I had - had stolen, mother!" and her face grew all aflame again, and a sick feeling of shame and degradation came over her. Mrs. Morgan's cheek, too, burned with the reflection of her daughter's disgrace. She sat silent for a moment in very unpleasant thought, and then said gravely, --

"I do not know that there is any real principle of right and wrong involved in your making a confession to them, Nelly. You repaired your fault so quickly that no suspicion or trouble was brought upon any one else; and, perhaps, an explanation of the real state of the case would do no good to any one but yourself. But would it not do you good, Nelly? Would you not feel more honest and true in your teacher's presence? Would you not have more confidence in your own purpose to sin no more in the future, if you bravely took upon yourself all the consequences of the present error?"

Nelly remained silent with covered face. These were hard lines, indeed. Her punishment seemed greater than she could bear.

Her mother waited a moment, and then said, kindly, --

"That question need not be decided just yet, Nelly. You can think about it, and see what your own heart will bid you do by and by. But it is against a higher Power than your father, or myself, or your teachers, that you have sinned most deeply, Nelly. I want to feel sure, my daughter, that you realize your offense towards God, and his just displeasure. Unless your repentance is such as he will acknowledge, unless you obtain his forgiveness, ours will be of little worth. And he will never deny either his pardon, or the help of his Spirit against future temptation, to those who ask it in humility and faith, for the sake of his Son and Savior, who died that our sins might be washed away in his blood. You believe that - don't you, Nelly?

"Then, my child, seek that forgiveness at once. You will never feel happy till you obtain it; you will never know real peace or safety till you feel that God, for Christ's sake, has pardoned all the past, and become your Father and Friend. I will leave you now, my child; but I leave you with a kiss of perfect forgiveness. Seek also that other and higher forgiveness; and remember the sacred promise, 'If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Mrs. Morgan stooped and pressed her lips, in a long and earnest, and pitying caress, upon the flushed and tear-stained face of her erring but repentant child, and then moved quietly from the room, leaving her to the solemn silence of the gathering twilight, and of her own contrite thoughts.

The shades of evening threw a covering mantle over the kneeling figure of the repentant girl: we, too, will draw a veil over the workings of the young and sorrowful heart which opened itself in grief and shame to God. It is enough to say that Nelly thought, and felt and prayed, as she had never thought, or felt, or prayed before; and that when, an hour later, she appeared at the tea-table, her father, after one long keen, scrutinizing look at her pale and humbled, but calm and resolute, face, seemed satisfied that, if she had sinned, she had repented, and drew her to his breast in a long clasp of forgiving love, which seemed to bind the whole family together in a bond of such peace and happiness as they had never know before.

It only remains now to say, that it took Nelly but one day to decide to tell the whole truth to Mr. Porter and Miss Elliott. After passing so many weeks as a living lie, it had seemed so sweet to her to feel that, at last, she was concealing nothing from those at home, that she longed to feel the same happy consciousness at school; and the kind smile which the principal bestowed upon her, when she first met him the next day, broke down the last barrier of reluctance to fulfil the bitter duty.

She asked permission to see him alone in the library for a few minutes, and that Miss Elliott might be sent for; and when they were seated there, with grave and listening faces, she told them, shamefully and sorrowfully, but bravely and truthfully, the sad story of her vanity and folly, which led her first into disobedience and deception, and yesterday into actual crime - how she had been mercifully enabled to restore what she had taken, within the hour, but how her conscience compelled her to reveal the whole truth. And they listened, surprised and displeased at first, it is true, but touched, at the last, with pity for her humiliation, and approval of her brave resolve to tell the truth at whatever cost. There could be no doubt of the reality of her repentance when proved so nobly, and both principal and teacher at once accorded a full forgiveness, respect and confidence in the future.

Nelly went out from their presence with a lighter heart than she had known for many long, weary weeks, and feeling that at last she had right to hold up her head before the whole world, and begin her life anew, walking steadily, henceforward, in a straight path, by the grace of God.

Not that she suddenly became perfect, little reader. Not that her besetting sins of vanity and love of dress, which had plunged her into all this sea of trouble and sin, were at once entirely over come, or that she was never again tempted to conceal an act of folly.

But that she had learned first, that finery, of itself, never brings happiness, and that falsehood brings trouble and disgrace; and secondly, the far deeper truths of her own weakness, and God's strength to "give grace to help in time of need."

If her story should assist one little girl, in this age of devotion to outward adornment, to find her highest pleasure elsewhere than in the gratification of vanity, or teach one erring child to seek relief from trouble in confession rather than concealment, this little book will not have been written in vain.

THE END

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