University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
THE OLD PORTRAIT IS DISCOVERED AND OLD JENKS HAS A
REAL VOYAGE AT SEA.

The spring passed quickly away, and the fervors of the June
sun were upon us. Mrs. Sanderson, whose health had been a
marvel of uniformity, became ill, and showed signs of that failure
of the vital power which comes at last to all. She was advised
by her physician that she needed a change of air, and encouraged
to believe that if she should get relief at once she
might retain her hold upon life for some years longer. Arrangements
were accordingly perfected to send her with a trusty
maid to a watering-place a few leagues distant. I have no
doubt that she had come to look upon death as not far away
from her, and that she had contemplated the possibility of its
visitation while absent from home. I could see that her eye
was troubled and anxious. Her lawyer was with her for two
days before her departure.

On the morning before she left she called me into her little
library, and delivering her keys into my keeping, said:

“I have nothing to tell you, Arthur, except that all my affairs
are arranged, so that if I should never return you will find
everything in order. You know my ways and wishes. Follow
out your plans regarding yourself, and my lawyer will tell you
of mine. Maintain the position and uphold the honor of this
house. It will be yours. I cannot take it with me; I have
no one else to leave it to—and yet—”

She was more softened than I had ever seen her, and her sad
and helpless look quite overwhelmed me. I had so long expected
her munificence that this affected me much less than
the change, physical and mental, which had passed over her.

“My dear, precious Aunt,” I said, “you are not going to

die. I cannot let you die. I am too young to spare you. You
will go away, and get well, and live a long time.”

Then I kissed her, and thanked her for her persistent kindness
and her splendid gifts, in words that seemed so poor and inadequate
that I was quite distressed.

She was deeply moved. Her physical weakness was such
that the iron rule of her will over her emotions was broken. I
believe she would have been glad to have me take her in my
arms, like a child, and comfort her. After sitting awhile in
silence, I said: “Please tell me what you were thinking of
when you said: `And yet'?”

She gave me no direct reply, but said: “Do you remember
the portrait of a boy which you saw when you first came to the
house?”

“Perfectly,” I replied.

“This key,” said she, taking the bunch of keys from my
hand which I still held, “will open a door in the dining-room
which you have never seen opened. You know where it is.
After I am gone away, I wish you to open that closet, and
take out the portrait, and hang it just where it was before. I
wish to have it hang there as long as the house stands. You
have learned not to ask any questions. If ever I come back,
I shall find it there. If I do not, you will keep it there for my
sake.”

I promised to obey her will in every particular, and then the
carriage drove up to bear her away. Our parting was very
quiet, but full of feeling; and I saw her turn and look back affectionately
at the old house, as she passed slowly down the hill.

I was thus left alone—with the old servant Jenks—the master
of The Mansion. It will be readily imagined that, still retaining
my curiosity with regard to the picture, I lost no time
in finding it. Sending Jenks away on some unimportant
errand, I entered the dining-room, and locked myself in. Under
a most fascinating excitement I inserted the key in the lock
of the closet. The bolt was moved with difficulty, like one
long unused. Throwing open the door, I looked in. First I

saw an old trunk, the covering of rawhide, fastened by brass
nails which had turned green with rust. I lifted the lid, and
found it full of papers. I had already caught a glimpse of the
picture, yet by a curious perversity of will I insisted on seeing
it last. Next I came upon an old punch-bowl, a reminder of
the days when there were men and revelry in the house. It
was made of silver, and had the Bonnicastle arms upon its side.
How old it was, I could not tell, but it was evidently an heir-loom.
A rusty musket stood in one corner, of the variety then
known as “Queen's Arms.” In another corner hung a military
coat, trimmed with gold lace. The wreck of an ancient and
costly clock stood upon a shelf, the pendulum of which was a
swing, with a little child in it. I remember feeling a whimsical
pity for the child that had waited for motion so long in the
darkness, and so reached up and set him swinging, as he had
done so many million times in the years that were dead and
gone. I lingered long upon every article, and wondered how
many centuries it would take of such seclusion to dissolve
them all into dust.

I had no excuse for withholding my eyes from the picture
any longer. I lifted it carefully from the nail where it hung,
and set it down by the dining-room wall. Then I closed and
locked the door. Not until I had carefully cleaned the painting,
and dusted the frame, and hung it in its old place, did
I venture to look at it with any thought of careful study; and
even this observation I determined to take first from the point
where I sat when I originally discovered it. I arranged the
light to strike it at the right angle, and then opening the passage
into the library, went and sat down precisely where I had
sat nearly six years before, under the spell of Mrs. Sanderson's
command. I had already, while handling it, found the date of
the picture, and the name of the painter on the back of the
canvas, and knew that the lad whom it represented had become
a man considerably past middle life, or, what seemed more
probable, remembering Mrs. Sanderson's strange actions in regard
to it, a heap of dust and ashes.

With my first long look at the picture, came back the old
days; and I was again a little boy, with all my original interest
in the beautiful young face. I expected to see a likeness of
Henry, but Henry had grown up and changed, and I found it
quite impossible to take him back in my imagination to the
point where his face answered, in any considerable degree, to
the lineaments of this. Still there was a likeness, indefinable,
far back in the depths of expression, and hovering around the
contour of the face and head, that at first puzzled me, and at
last convinced me that, if I could get at the secrets of my
friend's life, I should find that he was a Bonnicastle. I had
often while at school, in unexpected glimpses of Henry's features,
been startled by the resemblance of his face to some of
the members of my own family. The moment I studied his
features, however, the likeness was gone. It was thus with
the picture. Analysis spoiled it as the likeness of my friend,
yet it had a subtle power to suggest him, and to convince me
that he was a sharer of the family blood.

I cannot say, much as I loved Henry, that I was pleased
with my discovery. Nor was I pleased with the reflections
which it stirred in me; for I saw through them something of
the mercenary meanness of my own character. I was glad
that Mrs. Sanderson had never seen him. I was glad that he
had declined her invitation, and that she had come to regard
him with such dislike that she would not even hear his name
mentioned. I knew that if he were an accepted visitor of the
house I should be jealous of him, for I was conscious of his superiority
to me in many points, and felt that Mrs. Sanderson
would find much in him that would please her. His quiet bearing,
his steadiness, his personal beauty, his steadfast integrity,
would all be appreciated by her; and I was sure she could not
fail to detect in him the family likeness.

Angry with myself for indulging such unworthy thoughts, I
sprang to my feet, and went nearer to the picture—went where
I could see it best. As I approached it, the likeness to Henry
gradually faded, and what was Bonnicastle in the distance became

something of another name and blood. Another nature
mingled strangely with that to which I was consciously kindred.
Beneath the soft veil which gentle blood had thrown over the
features, there couched something base and brutal. Somewhere
in the family history of the person it represented the
spaniel had given herself to the wolf. Sheathed within the foot
of velvet was hidden a talon of steel. Under those beautiful
features lay the capacity of cruelty and crime. It was a wonderful
revelation, and it increased rather than lessened the fascination
which the picture exerted upon me. Not until an hour
had passed away, and I knew that Jenks had returned from his
errand, did I silently unlock the doors of the dining-room and
go to my chamber for study.

When the dinner-hour arrived, I was served alone. Jenks
had set the table without discovering the returned picture, but
in one of the pauses of his service he started and turned pale.

“What is the matter, Jenks?” I said.

“Nothing,” he replied, “I thought it was burned. It ought
to be.”

It was the first intimation that I had ever received that he
knew anything about the subject of the picture; but I asked
him no more questions, first, because I thought it would virtually
be a breach of the confidence which its owner had reposed
in me, and, second, because I was so sure of Jenks's reticence
that I knew I had nothing to gain by asking. He had
kept his place because he could hold his tongue. Still, the
fact that he could tell me all I wanted to know had the power
to heighten my curiosity, and to fill me with a discomfort of
which I was ashamed.

A few days of lonely life passed away, in which, for a defense
against my loneliness, I devoted myself with unusual diligence
to study. The first letter I received from Mrs. Sanderson
contained the good news that her strong and elastic constitution
had responded favorably to the change of air and place.
Indeed, she was doing so well that she had concluded to stay
by the sea during the summer, if she should continue to find

herself improving in strength. I was very much relieved, for in
truth I had no wish to assume the cares of the wealth she
would leave me. I was grateful, too, to find that I had a genuine
affection for her, and that my solicitude was not altogether selfish.

One warm evening, just before sunset, I took a chair from
the hall and placed it upon the landing of the steps that led
from the garden to the door, between the sleeping lions, and
sat down to enjoy the fresh air of the coming twilight. I had
a book in my hand, but I was weary and listless, and sat looking
off upon the town. Presently I heard the sound of voices
and laughter from the hill below me; and soon there came in
sight a little group whose approach made my heart leap with
delight. Henry, Claire and Millie were coming to make a call
upon their lonely friend.

I greeted them heartily at a distance, and Henry, with his
hat in his hand, walking between the two girls, sauntered up
to the house, looking it over, as it seemed to me, very carefully.
Suddenly, Millie sprang to the side of the road, and plucked a
flower which she insisted upon placing in the button-hole of his
coat. He bent to her while she fastened it. It was the work
of an instant, yet there was in it that which showed me that the
girl was fond of him, and that, young as she was, she pleased
him. I was in a mood to be jealous. The thoughts I had indulged
in while looking at the picture, and the belief that Henry
had Claire's heart in full possession, to say nothing of certain
plans of my own with regard to Millie, reaching far into the future—plans
very vague and shadowy, but covering sweet possibilities—awoke
a feeling in my heart towards Henry which I
am sure made my courtesies seem strangely constrained.

I invited the group into the house, and Claire and Millie accepted
the invitation at once. Henry hesitated, and finally
said that he did not care to go in. The evening was so pleasant
that he would sit upon the steps until we returned. Remembering
his repeated refusals to go home with me from
school, and thinking, for a reason which I could not have
shaped into words, that I did not wish to have him see the picture

in the dining-room, I did not urge him. So the two girls
and myself went in, and walked over the house. Millie had
been there before with her mother, but it was the first time that
Claire's maidenly figure had ever entered the door. The
dining-room had already been darkened for the night, and we
only looked in and took a hurried glimpse of its shadowy furniture,
and left it. Both the girls were curious to see my room,
and to that we ascended. The outlook was so pleasant and the
chairs were so inviting that, after looking at the pictures and
the various tasteful appointments with which the room had been
furnished, we all sat down, and in our merry conversation
quite forgot Henry, and the fact that he was waiting for us to
rejoin him.

Near the close of our pleasant session I was conscious that
feet were moving in the room below. Then I heard the sound
of opening or closing shutters. My first thought was that
Jenks had come in on some errand. Interrupted in this
thought by the conversation in progress, the matter was put
out of my mind for a moment. Then it returned, and as I reflected
that Jenks had no business in that part of the house at
that hour, I became uneasy.

“We have quite forgotten Henry,” I said; and we all rose
to our feet and walked down stairs.

Millie was at the foot in a twinkling, and exclaimed: “Why,
he isn't here! He is gone!”

I said not a word, but went straight to the dining-room.
Every shutter was open, and there stood Henry before the picture.
He appeared to be entirely unconscious of my entrance;
so, stepping up behind him, I put my hand upon his shoulder,
and said: “Well, how do you like it?”

He started as if I had struck him, trembled, and turned pale.

“The fact is, I got tired with waiting, my boy,” he said, “and
so came in to explore, you know, ha! ha! ha! Quite an old
curiosity-shop, isn't it? Oh! `How do I like it?' Yes, quite
a picture—quite a picture, ha! ha! ha!”

There certainly was no likeness in the picture to the Henry

[ILLUSTRATION]

Stepping up behind him, I put my hand upon his shoulder, and said: "Well,
how do you like it."

[Description: 587EAF. Illustration page. Image of two young men. One stands slightly behind the other with his hand on the other's shoulder. They both have concerned looks on their faces.]

who stood before it then. Haggard, vacant, convulsed with
feeling which it was impossible for him to conceal, he stood before
it as if fastened to the spot by a relentless spell. I took
him by the arm and led him into the open air, with his hollow-sounding
voice and his forced, mechanical laugh still ringing in
my ears. The girls were alarmed, and asked him if he were ill.

“Not in the least,” he replied, with another attempt at a
laugh which made me shiver. The quick instinct of his companions
recognized the fact that something unpleasant had happened,
and so, overcoming the chill which his voice and manner
had thrown upon them, they thanked me for showing them
the old house, and declared that it was time for them to go
home. Bidding me a hearty good-night, they started and went
out of the gate. Henry lingered, holding my hand for a moment,
and then, finding it impossible to shape the apology he
had evidently intended to make, abruptly left me, and joined
the girls. They quickly passed out of sight, Claire tossing me
a kiss as she disappeared, and I was left alone.

I was, of course, more mystified than ever. I did not think
it strange or ill-mannered for Henry to enter the dining-room
unattended, for I had invited him in, I had kept him long waiting,
and there was no one to be disturbed by his entrance, as
he knew; but I was more convinced than ever that there was
some strange connection between that picture and his destiny
and mine. I was convinced, too, that by some means he had
recognized the fact as well as I. I tossed upon my bed until
midnight in nervous wakefulness, thinking it over, permitting
my imagination to construct a thousand improbable possibilities,
and chafing under the pledge that forbade me to ask a
question of friend or servant.

It was a week before I saw him again, and then I found him
quite self-possessed, though there was a shadow of restraint
upon him. No allusion was made to the incident in the dining-room,
and it gradually fell back into a memory, among the
things that were, to be recalled years afterward in the grand
crisis of my personal history.

Not a day passed away in which Jenks did not inquire for
the health of “the mistress.” He seemed to be lost without
her, and to feel even more anxious for her health than I did.
“How is she now?” and “When does she say she is coming
back?” were always the inquiries, after he had brought me a
letter.

One day I said to him: “I thought you did not like my Aunt.
You were always wanting to get away from her.”

“I don't say that I do like her,” said Jenks, with a quizzical
expression of countenance, as if he were puzzled to know exactly
what his feelings were, “but the fact is she's a good woman
to get away from, and that's half the fun of living. When she's
here I'm always thinking of leaving her, and that takes up the
time and sets me contriving, you know.”

“You can't sail quite as much as you used to,” I said, laughing.

“No,” said he, “I'm getting rather old for the sea, and I
don't know but thinking of the salt water so much has given
me the rheumatism. I'm as stiff as an old horse. Any way, I
can't get away until she comes back, if I want to ever so much.
I've nothing to get away from.”

“Yes, Jenks,” I said, “you and your mistress are both getting
old. In a few years you'll both get away, and you will
not return. Do you ever think of what will come after?”

“That's so,” he responded, “and the thing that bothers me
is that I can't get away from the place I go to, whether it's
good or bad. How a man is going to kill time without some
sort of contriving to get into a better place, I don't know. Do
you think there's really such a place as heaven?”

“Of course I do.”

“No offense, sir,” said Jenks, “but it seems to me sometimes
as if it was only a sort of make believe place, that people
dream about just to pass away the time. They go to meeting,
and pray and sing, and take the sacrament, and talk about
heaven and hell, and then they come home and laugh and carry
on and work just the same as ever. It makes a nice way to

pass Sunday, and it seems to me just about the same thing as
sailing on an Atlas. One day they make believe very hard,
and the next it's all over with. Everybody must have his fun,
and everybody has his own way of getting it. Now here's this
Miss Lester down at Mr. Bradford's. She's got no end of a
constitution, and takes it out in work. She goes to all the
prayer-meetings, and knits piles of stockings for poor people;
but, dear me! she has to do something, or else she couldn't
live. So she tramps out in all sorts of weather, and takes solid
comfort in getting wet and muddy, and amuses herself thinking
she's doing good. It's just so with the stockings. She must
knit 'em, any way, and so she plays charity with 'em. I reckon
we're all a good deal alike.”

“No, Jenks,” I said, “there's really and truly such a place
as heaven.”

“I s'pose there is,” he responded, “but I don't see what I
can do there. I can't sing.”

“And there's another place.”

“I s'pose there is—that's what they say, and I don't see
what I am going to do there, for I don't like the sort of people
that live there. I never had anything to do with 'em here, and
I won't have anything to do with 'em anywhere. I've always
kept my own counsel and picked my own company, which has
been mighty small, and I always expect to.”

These last remarks of Jenks were a puzzle to me. I really
did not know what to say, at first, but there came back to me
the memory of one of our early conversations, and I said:
“What if she were to go to one place and you to the other?”

“Well,” he replied, his thin lips twitching and quivering,
“I shouldn't be any worse off than I am now. She went to
one place and I went to another a good while ago; but do you
really think people know one another there?”

“I have no doubt of it,” I replied.

“Well, I shouldn't care where I was, if I could be with her,
and everything was agreeable,” said Jenks.

“So you still remember her.”

“How do you s'pose I could live if I didn't?”

At this he excitedly unbuttoned the wristband of his left
arm, and pulled up his sleeve, and there, pricked patiently into
the skin, after the manner of sailors, were the two names in
rude letters: “Theophilus Jenks and Jane Whittlesey.”

“I did it myself,” said Jenks. “Every prick of the needle
hurt me, but the more it hurt the happier I was, just to see
the two names together where no man could rub 'em out; and
I think I could stand 'most anything else for the sake of being
with her.”

I was much impressed by this revelation of the inner life of
the simple old man, and the frankness with which he had given
me his confidence. Laboring from day to day, year after year,
in a position from which he had no hope of rising, he had his
separate life of the affections and the imagination, and in this
he held all his satisfactions, and won all his modest mental and
spiritual growth. At the close of our conversation I took out
my watch, and, seeing that it was time for the mail, I sent him
off to obtain it. When he returned, he brought me among
other letters one from Mrs. Sanderson. He had placed it upon
the top of the package, and, when he had handed it to me, he
waited, as had become his custom, to learn the news from his
mistress.

When I had opened the letter and read a few lines, I exclaimed:
“Oh, Jenks! here's some great news for you.”
And then I read from the letter:

I read this without looking at Jenks's face, but when I finished

I glanced at him, expecting to see him radiant with delight.
I was therefore surprised to find him pale and trembling in
every fiber of his frame.

“That's just like an old woman,” said Jenks. “How does
she s'pose a horse is going to sea? What's he to do when the
steamer rolls?”

“Oh, horses are very fond of rolling,” I said, laughing.
“All he will have to do will be to lie down and roll all the
way, without straining himself for it.”

“And how does she s'pose a carriage is going to keep right
side up?”

“Well, you can sit in it and hold it down.”

Jenks looked down upon his thin frame and slender legs,
and shook his head. “If there's anything that I hate,” said
he, “it's a steamboat. I think it will scare the old horse to
death. They whistle and toot, and blow up and burn up.
Now, don't you really think—candid, now—that I'd better
drive the old horse down? Don't you think the property'll
be safer? She never can get another horse like him. She
never'll get a carriage that suits her half as well as that. It
don't seem to me as if I could take the responsibility of risking
that property. She left it in my hands. `Take good care of
the old horse, Jenks,' was the last words she said to me; and
now because she's an old woman, and does'n't know any better,
she tells me to put him on a steamboat, where he's just as
likely to be banged about and have his ribs broke in, or be
burned up or blowed up, as he is to get through alive. It seems
to me the old woman is out of her head, and that I ought to
do just as she told me to do when she was all right. `Take
good care of the old horse, Jenks,' was the last words she said.”

The old man was excited but still pale, and he stood waiting
before me with a pitiful, pleading expression upon his wizen
features.

I shook my head. “I'm afraid we shall be obliged to risk
the property, Jenks,” I said. “Mrs. Sanderson is very particular,
you know, about having all her orders obeyed to the letter.

She will have no one to blame but herself if the whole establishment
goes overboard, and if I were you I wouldn't miss
this chance of going to sea at her expense for anything.”

Then Jenks resolutely undertook to bring his mind to it.
“How long will it take?” he inquired.

“Oh, three hours or so,” I replied carelessly.

“Do we go out of sight of land?”

“No, you sail down the river a few miles, then you strike the
ocean, and just hug the shore until you get there,” I replied.

“Yes; strike the ocean—hug the shore—” he mumbled to
himself, looking down and rubbing the bald spot on the top of
his head. “Strike the ocean—hug the shore. Three hours—
oh! do you know whether they have life-preservers on that
steamboat?”

“Stacks of them,” I replied. “I've seen them often.”

“Wouldn't it be a good plan to slip one on to the horse's
neck when they start? He'll think it's a collar, and won't be
scared, you know; and if there should happen to be any trouble
it would help to keep his nose up.”

“Capital plan,” I responded.

“What time do we start?”

“At eight o'clock to-morrow morning.”

Jenks retired with the look and bearing of a man who had
been sentenced to be hanged. He went first to the stable, and
made all the necessary arrangements there, and late into the
night I heard him moving about his room. I presume he did
not once close his eyes in sleep that night. I was exceedingly
amused by his nervousness, though I would not have intimated
to him that I had any doubt of his courage, for the world. He
was astir at an early hour in the morning; and breakfast was
upon the table while yet the early birds were singing.

“You will have a lovely day, Jenks,” I said, as he handed
me my coffee.

As he bent to set the cup beside my plate, there came close
to my ear a curious, crepitant rustle. “What have you got
about you, Jenks?” I inquired.

He made a sickly attempt to smile, and then pulling open
the bosom of his shirt, displayed a collapsed, dry bladder, with
a goose-quill in the neck ready for its inflation.

“That's a capital idea, Jenks,” I said.

“Do you think so? What do you think of that? and he
showed me the breast pocket of his coat full of corks.

It was impossible for me to restrain my laughter any longer.

“Number one, you know,” said Jenks, buttoning up his
coat. “Number one, and a stiff upper lip.”

“You're a brave old fellow, any way, Jenks, and you're going
to have the best time you ever had. I envy you.”

I drove down to the boat with him, to make the arrangements
for the shipment, and saw him and the establishment safely on
board. The bottom of the carriage was loaded with appliances
for securing his personal safety in case of an accident, including
a billet of wood, which he assured me was to be used for
blocking the wheels of the carriage in case of a storm.

I bade him good-by at last, and went on shore, where I waited
to see the steamer wheel into the stream. The last view I had
of the old man showed that he had relieved himself of hat and
boots, and placed himself in light swimming order. In the place
of the former he had tied a red bandanna handkerchief around his
head, and for the latter he had substituted slippers. He had
entirely forgotten me and the existence of such a town as Bradford.
Looking dreamily down the river, out towards that mysterious
sea, on which his childish imagination had dwelt so long,
and of which he stood in such mortal fear, he passed out of
sight.

The next evening I heard from him in a characteristic letter.
It was dated at “The Glaids,” and read thus:—

A few days afterwards, Henry and I made a flying trip to
New Haven, passed our examination for admission to the freshman
class, and in the weeks that followed gave ourselves up to
recreations which a debilitating summer and debilitating labor
had made necessary.