The next day he was ill, which, common as is illness to humanity, was strange, for it had never befallen him before. He was unable to leave his bed. But he never said a word to his daughter, who alone waited on him, as to what had happened in the night. He had passed it sleepless, and without the possibility of a dream on which to fall back; yet, when morning came, he was in much doubt whether what he had seen—the face, namely, of Dawtie, peeping in at the door—was a reality, or but a vision of the night. For when he opened the door which she had closed, all was dark, and not the slightest sound reached his quick ear from the swift foot of her retreat. He turned the key twice, and pushed two bolts, eager to regard the vision as a providential rebuke of his carelessness in leaving the door on the latch—for the first time, he imagined. Then he tottered back to his chair, and sunk on it in a cold sweat. For, although the confidence grew, that what he had seen was but
a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain,
it was far from comfortable to feel that he could no longer depend upon his brain to tell him only the thing that was true. What if he were going out of his mind, on the way to encounter a succession of visions—without reality, but possessed of its power! What if they should be such whose terror would compel him to disclose what most he desired to keep covered? How fearful to be no more his own master, but at the beck and call of a disordered brain, a maniac king in a cosmos acosmos! Better it had been Dawtie, and she had seen in his hands Benvenuto Cellini's chalice made for Pope Clement the Seventh to drink therefrom the holy wine—worth thousands of pounds! Perhaps she had seen it! No, surely she had not! He must be careful not to make her suspect! He would watch her and say nothing!
But Dawtie, conscious of no wrong, and full of love to the old man, showed an untroubled face when next she met him; and he made up his mind that he would rather have her ignorant. Thenceforward, naturally though childishly, he was even friendlier to her than before: it was so great a relief to find that he had not to fear her!
The next time Dawtie was dusting the books, she felt strongly drawn to look again at the picture of the cup: it seemed now to hold in it a human life! She took down the book, and began where she stood to read what it said about the chalice, referring as she read from letterpress to drawing. It was taken from an illumination in a missal, where the cup was known to have been copied; and it rendered the description in the letterpress unnecessary except in regard to the stones and dessins repoussés on the hidden side. She quickly learned the names of the gems, that she might see how many were in the high-priest's breast-plate and the gates of the new Jerusalem, then proceeded to the history of the chalice. She read that it had come into the possession of Cardinal York, the brother of Charles Edward Stuart, and had been by him intrusted to his sister-in-law, the Duchess of Albany, from whose house it disappeared, some said stolen, others said sold. It came next to the historic surface in the possession of a certain earl whose love of curiosities was well known; but from his collection again it vanished, this time beyond a doubt stolen, and probably years before it was missed.
A new train of thought was presently in motion in the mind of the girl: The beautiful cup was stolen! it was not where it ought to be! it was not at home! it was a captive, a slave! She lowered the book, half closed, with a finger between the leaves, and stood thinking. She did not for a moment believe her master had stolen it, though the fear did flash through her mind. It had been stolen and sold, and he had bought it at length of some one whose possession of it was nowise suspicious! But he must know now that it had been stolen, for here, with the cup, was the book which said so! That would be nothing if the rightful owner were not known, but he was known, and the thing ought to be his! The laird might not be bound, she was not sure, to restore it at his own loss, for when he bought it he was not aware that it was stolen; but he was bound to restore it at the price he had paid for it, if the former owner would give it! This was bare justice! mere righteousness! No theft could make the owner not the rightful owner, though other claims upon the thing might come in! One ought not to be enriched by another's misfortune! Dawtie was sure that a noble of the kingdom of heaven would not wait for the money, but would with delight send the cup where it ought to have been all the time! She knew better, however, than require magnificence in any shape from the poor wizened soul of her master—a man who knew all about everything, and whom yet she could not but fear to be nothing: as Dawtie had learned to understand life, the laird did not yet exist. But he well knew right from wrong, therefore the discovery she just made affected her duty toward him! It might be impossible to make impression on the miserliness of a miser, but upon the honesty in a miser it might be possible! The goblet was not his!
But the love of things dulls the conscience, and he might not be able, having bought and paid for it, to see that the thing was not therefore his! he might defend himself from seeing it! To Dawtie, this made the horror of his condition the darker. She was one of God's babes, who can not help seeing the true state of things. Logic was to her but the smoke that rose from the burning truth; she saw what is altogether above and beyond logic—the right thing, whose meanest servant, the hewer of its wood, not the drawer of its water, the merest scullion and sweeper away of lies from the pavement of its courts, is logic.
With a sigh she woke to the knowledge that she was not doing her work, and rousing herself, was about to put the book on its shelf. But, her finger being still in the place, she would have one more glance at the picture! To her dismay she saw that she had made a mark on the plate, and of the enormity of making a dirty mark on a book her master had made her well aware.
She was in great distress. What was to be done? She did not once think of putting it away and saying nothing. To have reasoned that her master would never know, would have been an argument, pressing and imperative, for informing him at once. She had done him an injury, and the injury must be confessed and lamented; it was all that was left to be done! “Sic a mischance!” she said, then bethought herself that there was no such thing as mischance, when immediately it flashed upon her that here was the door open for the doing of what was required of her. She was bound to confess the wrong, and that would lead in the disclosure of what she knew, rendering it comparatively easy to use some remonstrance with the laird, whom in her mind's eye she saw like a beggar man tottering down a steep road to a sudden precipice. Her duty was now so plain that she felt no desire to consult Andrew. She was not one to ask an opinion for the sake of talking opinion; she went to Andrew only when she wanted light to do the right thing; when the light was around her, she knew how to walk, and troubled no one.
At once she laid down book and duster, and went to find the laird. But he had slipped away to the town, to have a rummage in a certain little shop in a back street, which he had not rummaged for a long time enough, he thought, to have let something come in. It was no relief to Dawtie: the thing would be all the day before her instead of behind her! It burned within her, not like a sin, but like what it was, a confession unconfessed. Little wrong as she had done, Dawtie was yet familiar with the lovely potency of confession to annihilate it. She knew it was the turning from wrong that killed it, that confession gave the coup de grâce to offense. Still she dreaded not a little the displeasure of her master, and yet she dreaded more his distress.