University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.
MR. BRADFORD TELLS ME A STORY WHICH CHANGES THE
DETERMINATIONS OF MY LIFE.

I have already alluded to the effect which Henry's presence
produced upon Mrs. Sanderson. For a few days after her return,
I watched with covert but most intense interest the development
of her acquaintance with him. Mrs. Belden had been
for so long a time her companion, and was so constantly at
Henry's bedside, that my aunt quickly took on the habit of going
in to sit for an hour with the lady and her charge. I was
frequently in and out, doing what I could for my friend's amusement,
and often found both the ladies in attendance. Mrs.
Sanderson always sat at the window in an old-fashioned rocking
chair, listening to the conversation between Mrs. Belden and
Henry. Whenever Henry laughed, or uttered an exclamation,
she started and looked over to his bed, as if the sounds were
familiar, or as if they had a strange power of suggestion.
There was some charm in his voice and look to which she submitted
herself more and more as the days went by—a charm so
subtle that I doubt whether she understood it or was conscious
of its power.

Two or three days passed after I had executed Jenks's will,
with relation to his savings, when my old resolution to visit Mr.
Bradford recurred. In the meantime, I felt that I had won
strength from my troubles and cares, and was better able to
bear trial than I had ever been before. I was little needed in
the house, now that Jenks was gone, so, one morning after
breakfast, I started to execute my purpose. As I was taking
my hat in the hall, there came a rap upon the door, and as I
stood near it I opened it and encountered Millie Bradford.

She met me with a cordiality that spoke her friendship, but with
a reserve which declared that the old relations between us had
ceased. I know that I blushed painfully, for she had been
much in my thoughts, and it seemed, somehow, that she must
have been conscious of the fact. I knew, too, that I had disappointed
and shamed her.

“My father is busy this morning, Mr. Bonnicastle,” she said,
“and I have been sent up to inquire after the invalid.”

Ah, how her “Mr. Bonnicastle” removed me from her!
And how much more lovely she seemed to me than she had
ever seemed before! Dressed in a snowy morning wrapper,
with a red rose at her throat, and only a parasol to shade her black
hair and her luminously tender eyes, and with all the shapely
beauty in her figure that the ministry of seventeen gracious
years could bestow, she seemed to me almost a goddess.

I invited her in, and called my aunt. Mrs. Belden heard
her voice soon afterwards and came down, and we had a pleasant
chat. As soon as Mrs. Belden appeared, I noticed that Millie
addressed all her inquiries concerning Henry to her, and that
there seemed to be a very friendly intimacy between them.

When, at last, the girl rose to go, I passed into the hall with
her, and taking my hat, said: “Miss Bradford, I was about to
go to your house for a business call upon your father, when you
came in. May I have the pleasure of walking home with you?”

“Oh certainly,” she replied, though with a shadow of reluctance
in her look, “but I fear your walk will be fruitless. My
father has gentlemen with him, and perhaps will not be at
liberty to see you.”

“Still, with your leave I will go. I shall win a walk at
least,” I responded.

The moment I was alone with her, I found myself laboring
under an embarrassment that silenced me. It was easy to talk
in the presence of others, but it was “Arthur” and “Millie”
no more between us.

She noticed my silence, and uttered some common-place
remark about the changes that had taken place in the city.

“Yes,” I said, “I see they have the cathedral finished yonder.”

“Entirely,” she responded, “and the little chapel inside has
been torn down.”

How much she meant by this, or whether she intended any
allusion to the old conversation, every word of which I recollected
so vividly, I could not tell, but I gave her the credit of
possessing as good a memory as myself, and so concluded that
she considered Arthur Bonnicastle, the boy, as a person dead
and gone, and Mr. Bonnicastle the young man as one whom
she did not know.

As we came in sight of her house, we saw three gentlemen at
the door. Two of them soon left, and the third, who was Mr.
Bradford, went back into the house.

“I believe those two men are my father and Mr. Bird,” I
said. “I don't think I can be mistaken.”

“You are not mistaken,” she responded, looking flushed and
troubled.

“What can they want of your father at this time of the
morning?” I said.

She made no reply, but quickened her steps, as if she wished
to shorten the interview. Whatever their business was, I felt
sure that she understood its nature, and almost equally sure
that it related to myself. I knew that the three had met at
New Haven; and I had no doubt that they had the same
business on hand now that they had then. I determined to
learn it before I left the house.

As we approached the gate, she suddenly turned to me in
her impulsive way, and said:

“Arthur Bonnicastle, are you strong this morning?”

“Yes,” I replied, “I can meet anything.”

“I am glad; I believe you.”

That was all. As we mounted the steps we found Mr.
Bradford sitting before the open door, reading, or pretending to
read, a newspaper.

“Here's Mr. Bonnicastle, father,” Millie said, and passed
through the hall and out of sight.

Mr. Bradford rose and gave me his hand. My coming had
evidently agitated him, though he endeavored to bear himself
calmly.

“I wish to ask you some questions, and to talk with you,”
I said.

“Let us go where we can be alone,” he responded, leading
the way into a little library or office which I had never seen
before. Throwing open the shutters, and seating himself by the
window, at the same time pointing me to a chair opposite to
him, he said: “Now for the questions.”

“I want you to tell me what person is represented by the
picture of a boy in Mrs. Sanderson's dining-room.”

“Her own son, and her only child,” he replied.

“Is he living or dead?”

“He is dead.”

“Will you tell me his history?” I said.

He hesitated a moment, looking out of the window, and
then replied slowly: “Yes, I will. It is time you should know
it, and everything connected with it. Have you leisure to
hear it now?”

“Yes. That is my business here this morning.”

“Then I must begin at the beginning,” he replied. “I suppose
you may have learned before this time that Mrs. Sanderson
was a Bonnicastle.”

“I know it,” I said.

“You have learned, too, that she is a willful woman. In
her youth, at least, she was unreasonably so. She was an heiress,
and, in her young days, was pretty. For fifty miles around
she was regarded as the finest “catch” within the reach of any
ambitious young man. Her suitors were numerous, and
among them was the one to whom, against the wishes of her
parents, she at last gave her hand. He was handsome, bright,
gallant, bold and vicious. It was enough for her that her
parents opposed his attentions and designs to secure for him
her sympathy. It was enough for her that careful friends
warned her against him. She turned a deaf ear to them all,

and became fixed in her choice by the opposition she encountered.
To the sorrow of those who loved her and wished her
well, she was married to him. Her parents, living where she
lives now, did the best they could to secure her happiness, and
opened their home to their new son-in-law, but witnessing his
careless treatment of their daughter, and his dissipations, died
soon afterwards, of disappointed hopes and ruined peace.

“The death of her parents removed all the restraint which
had thitherto influenced him, and he plunged into a course of
dissipation and debauchery which made the life of his wife an
unceasing torment and sorrow. He gambled, he kept the
grossest companions around him, he committed a thousand
excesses, and as he had to do with a will as strong as his own,
the domestic life of The Mansion was notoriously inharmonious.

“After a few years, a child was born. The baby was a boy,
and over this event the father indulged in a debauch from
which he never recovered. Paralysis and a softened brain reduced
him in a few months to essential idiocy, and when he died
the whole town gave a sigh of relief. Self-sufficient in her nature,
your aunt was self-contained in her mortification and sorrow.
No one ever heard a complaint from her lips, and no one ever
dared to mention the name of her husband to her in any terms
but those of respect. His debts were paid, and as his time
of indulgence had been comparatively short, her large fortune
was not seriously impaired.

“Then she gave herself up to the training of her boy. I
think she saw in him something of the nature of his father, and
set herself to the task of curbing and killing it. No boy in
Bradford ever had so rigid a training as Henry Sanderson.
She did not permit him to leave her sight. All his early education
was received at her hands. Every wish, every impulse,
even every aspiration of the child, was subjected to the iron
rule of her will. No slave that ever lived was more absorbed,
directed and controlled by his master than this unfortunate
child was by his mother. Not one taste of liberty did he ever
know, until she was compelled to send him away from her to

complete his education. The portrait of him which has
excited your curiosity for so many years was painted when he
was less than twelve years old, though he was not permitted to
leave his home until some years later.

“I was young at that time myself, though I was older than
Henry—young enough, at least, to sympathize with him, and to
wish, with other boys, that we could get him away from her
and give him one taste of social freedom and fellowship.
When she rode he was with her, looking wistfully and smilingly
out upon the boys wherever he saw them playing, and when
she walked she held his hand until he was quite as large as herself.
Every act of his life was regulated by a rule which consulted
neither his wish nor his reason. He had absolutely no
training of his own will—no development within his own heart
of the principles of right conduct, no exercise of liberty under
those wise counsels and restraints which would lead him safely
up to the liberty of manhood. He was simply her creature,
her tool, her puppet, slavishly obedient to her every wish and
word. He was treated as if he were a wild animal, whom she
wished to tame—an animal without affection, without reason,
without any rights except those which she might give him. She
was determined that he should not be like his father.

“I have no doubt that she loved this child with all the
strength of her strong nature, for she sacrificed society and a
thousand pleasures for the purpose of carrying out her plans
concerning him. She would not leave him at home with servants
any more than she would give him the liberty of intercourse
with other children, and thus she shut herself away from
the world, and lived wholly with and for him.

“He was fitted for college in her own house, by the tuition
of a learned clergyman of the town, who was glad to eke out
a scanty professional maintenance by attending her son, though
she was present at every recitation, and never left him for a
moment in the tutor's company.

“When the work of preparation was completed, she went
through the terrible struggle of parting with her charge, and

sending him away from her for the first time. He went from her
as dependent and self-distrustful as a child of three—a trembling,
bashful, wretched boy, and came back in less than a year just
what any wise man would have anticipated—a rough, roystering,
ungovernable fellow, who laughed at his mother, turned her orderly
home into a pandemonium, flouted her authority, and made
her glad before his vacation ended to send him back again, out
of her sight. Untrained in self-control and the use of liberty, he
went into all excesses, and became the one notorious rowdy of
the college. He was rusticated more than once, and would have
been expelled but for the strong influence which his mother
brought to bear upon the government of the college.

“After his graduation, he was for a time at home; but Bradford
was too small to cover up his debaucheries and immoralities.
He had all the beauty and boldness of his father, and inherited
his dominant animal nature. After a long quarrel with his
mother, he made an arrangement with her by which he was allowed
a generous annuity, and with this he went away, drifting
at last to New Orleans. There he found college classmates
who knew of his mother's wealth, and as he had money enough
to dress like a gentleman, he was admitted at once into society,
and came to be regarded as a desirable match for any one of
the many young women he met. He lived a life of gayety,
gambled with the fast men into whose society he was thrown, and
at last incurred debts which, in desperation, he begged his mother
to pay, promising in return immediate and thorough reform.
After a long delay his request was granted; and I have no
doubt that he honestly undertook the reform he had promised,
for at this time he became acquainted with a woman whose influence
over him was purifying and ennobling, and well calcuted
to inspire and fortify all his good resolutions. She was not
rich, but she belonged to a good family, and was well educated.

“Of course he showed her only his amiable side; and the
ardent love she inspired in him won her heart, and she married
him. At this time he was but twenty-five years old. His mother
had been looking forward wearily to the hour when he would

see the folly of his course, would complete the sowing of his
wild oats, and be glad to return to his home. She had her own
ambitious projects concerning a matrimonial alliance for him;
and when he married without consulting her, and married one
who was poor, her anger was without bounds. Impulsively she
sat down and wrote him the cruelest letter that it was in her
power to write, telling him that the allowance which she had
hitherto sent him would be sent to him no longer, and that her
property would be left to others.

“The blow was one from which he never recovered. He
was prostrated at once upon a bed of sickness, which, acting
upon a system that had been grossly abused, at last carried
him to his grave. Once during this sickness his wife wrote
to his mother a note of entreaty, so full of tender love for her
sick and dying husband, and so appealing in its Christian
womanliness, that it might well have moved a heart of stone;
but it found no entrance at a door which disappointed pride
had closed. The note was never answered, and was undoubtedly
tossed into the fire, that the receiver might never be
reminded of it.

“The son and husband died, and was buried by alien hands,
and his mother never saw his face again.”

Here Mr. Bradford paused, as if his story was finished.

“Is this all?” I asked.

“It is, in brief, the history of the boy whose portrait you
have inquired about,” he replied.

“What became of his widow?” I inquired.

“She returned to her parents, and never wrote a word to
Mrs. Sanderson. She had been treated by her in so cruel a
manner that she could not. Afterwards she married again, and
removed, I have since learned, to one of the Northern States.”

I sat in silence for some moments, a terrible question burning
in my throat, which I dared not utter. I felt myself trembling
in every nerve. I tried to thrust the question from me,
but it would not go.

Then Mr. Bradford, who, I doubt not, read my thoughts,

and did not feel ready to answer my question, said: “You
see how differently Mrs. Sanderson has treated you. I have
no doubt that she reasoned the matter all out, and came to
the conclusion that she had acted unwisely. I have no doubt,
though she never acknowledged it to any one, that she saw the
reason of the failure of the plan of training which she adopted
in the case of her son, and determined upon another one for
you.”

“And that has failed too,” I said sadly.

“Yes: I mean no reproach and no unkindness when I
frankly say that I think it has. Both plans ignored certain
principles in human nature which must be recognized in all
sound training. No true man was ever made either by absorbing
and repressing his will, or by removing from him all stimulus
to manly endeavor.”

“Do you think my aunt cares much for these things that
happened so long ago?” I inquired.

“Yes, I think that she cares for them more and more as
the days go by, and bring her nearer to her grave. She has
softened wonderfully within a few years, and I have no doubt
that they form the one dark, ever-present shadow upon her life.
As she feels the days of helplessness coming, she clings more
to companions, and misses the hand that, for sixteen long and
laborious years, she tried to teach obedience, and train into
helpfulness against the emergency that is almost upon her.
She mourns for her child. She bewails in secret her mistakes;
and, while she is true to you to-day, I have no doubt that if
the son of her youth could come to her in rags and wretchedness,
with all his sins upon him, and with the record of his
ingratitude unwashed of its stains, she would receive him with
open arms, and be almost content to die at once in his embrace.”

The tears filled my eyes, and I said: “Poor woman! I
wish he could come.”

Mr. Bradford's observations and conclusions with regard to
her coincided with my own. I had noticed this change coming

over her. I had seen her repeatedly standing before the picture.
I had witnessed her absorption in revery. Even from
the first day of my acquaintance with her I saw the change had
been in progress. Her heart had been unfed so long that it
had begun to starve. She had clung more and more to me;
she had lived more and more in the society of Mrs. Belden;
and now that Henry had become an inmate of her house, she
evidently delighted to be in his presence. Her strong characteristics
often betrayed themselves in her conduct, but they
were revealed through a tenderer atmosphere. I pitied her
profoundly, and I saw how impossible it was for me, under any
circumstances, to fill the place in her heart of one who had
been nursed upon it.

We went on talking upon various unimportant matters, both
of us fighting away from the question which each of us felt was
uppermost in the other's mind. At last, summoning all my
resolution and courage, I said: “Was there any child?”

“Yes.”

“Is that child living?”

“Yes; I think so—yes.”

I knew that at this reply to my question the blood wholly
forsook my face. My head swam wildly, and I reeled heavily
upon my feet, and came close to the window for air.
Mr. Bradford sprang up, and drew my chair close to where I
stood, and bade me be seated. I felt like a man drifting resistlessly
toward a precipice. The rocks and breakers had been
around me for days, and I had heard indistinctly and afar the
roar of tumbling waters; but now the sound stunned my ears,
and I knew that my hurrying bark would soon shoot into the
air, and pitch with me into the abyss.

“Does Mrs. Sanderson know of this child?”

“I do not think she does. There has been no one to tell
her. She communicates with no one, and neither child nor
mother would ever make an approach to her in any assertion
of their relations to her, even if it were to save them from
starving. But the man undoubtedly lives to-day to whom Mrs.

Sanderson's wealth will belong by every moral and natural
right, when she shall have passed away.”

The truth had come at last, and although I had anticipated
it, it was a plunge into warring waters that impelled, and held,
and whelmed, and tossed me like some poor weed they had
torn from sunny banks far away and above. Would they play
with me for an hour, and then carry me with other refuse out
to the sea, or would they leave me upon the shore, to take root
again in humbler soil and less dangerous surroundings? I did
not know. For the moment I hardly cared.

Nothing was said for a long time. I looked with compressed
lips and dry eyes out of the window, but I knew that Mr.
Bradford's eyes were upon me. I could not but conclude
that it was the intention of my friends that Mrs. Sanderson
should be informed that her grandson was living, else Mr. Bradford
would not have told me. I knew that Mrs. Sanderson
had arrived at that point in life when such information would
come to her like a voice from heaven. I knew that the fortune
I had anticipated was gone; that my whole scheme of life was
a shattered dream; that I was to be subjected to the task of
taking up and bearing unassisted the burden of my destiny;
that everybody must know my humiliation, and that in my
altered lot and social position I could not aspire to the hand
of the one girl of all the world whose love I coveted.

The whole dainty fabric of my life, which my imagination
had reared, was carried away as with the sweep of a whirlwind,
and the fragments filled the air as far as I could see.

When reaction came, it was at first weak and pitiful. It
made me angry and petulant. To think that my own father
and my old teacher should have been plotting for months with
my best friend to bring me into this strait, and that all should
not only have consented to this catastrophe, but have sought
it, and laid their plans for it, made me angry.

“Mr. Bradford,” I said, suddenly and fiercely, rising to my
feet, “I have been abused. You led me into a trap, and now
my own father and Mr. Bird join with you to spring it upon me.

You have wheedled them into it; you have determined to ruin
me, and all my hopes and prospects for life, because I do not
choose to model my life on your stingy little pattern. Who
knows anything about this fellow whom you propose to put in
my place? A pretty story to be trumped up at this late day,
and palmed off upon an old woman made weak by remorse,
anxious to right herself before she goes to her grave! I will
fight this thing to the death for her and for myself. I will not
be imposed upon; nor will I permit her to be imposed upon.
Thank you for nothing. You have treated me brutally, and I
take your grand ways for just what they are worth.”

I whirled upon my feet, and, without bidding him good morning,
attempted to leave the room. His hand was on my shoulder
in an instant, and I turned upon him savagely, and yelled:
“Well, what more do you want? Isn't it enough that you
ruin me? Have you any new torture?”

He lifted his free hand to my other shoulder, and looked me
calmly and with a sad smile in the face.

“I forgive it all, Arthur,” he said, “even before you repent
of it. The devil has been speaking to me, and not Arthur
Bonnicastle. I expected just this, and now that it is come, let
us forget it. This is not the mood in which a wise man encounters
the world, and it is not the mood of a man at all, but
of a child.”

At this, I burst into tears, and he drew me to his breast,
where I wept with painful convulsions. Then he led me back
to my seat.

“When you have had time to think it all over,” he said
calmly and kindly, “you will find before you the most beautiful
opportunity to begin a true career that man ever had. It
would be cruel to deprive you of it. Your aunt will never
know of this heir by your father's lips, or Mr. Bird's, or my own.
Neither the heir nor his mother will ever report themselves to
her. Everything is to be done by you, of your own free will.
You have it in your power to make three persons superlatively
happy, and, at the same time, to make a man of yourself. If

you cannot appropriate such an opportunity as this, then your
manhood is more thoroughly debased, or lost, than I supposed.”

I saw how kindly and strongly they had prepared it all for
me, and how all had been adjusted to a practical appeal to my
manhood, to my sense of justice, and to my gratitude.

“I must have time,” I said at last; “but where is this man?”

“In his grandmother's house, with a broken leg, suffered in
the service of his friendship for you; and his mother is nursing
him!”

“Grandmother's house?... Henry Hulm?... Mrs.
Belden?”

I was so stunned by the information that I uttered the words
in gasps, with long pauses between.

“Yes, the Providence that has cared for you and me has
brought them there, and fastened them in the home where they
belong. There has been no conspiracy, no intrigue, no scheme.
It has all been a happening, but a happening after a plan that
your father learned long before I did to recognize as divine.”

“Do they know where they are?”

I asked the question blindly, because it seemed so strange
that they should know anything about it.

“Certainly,” Mr. Bradford said, “and Henry has always
known his relations to Mrs. Sanderson, from the first day on
which you told him of your own. When you first went to her,
I knew just where both mother and son were, and was in communication
with them; but I knew quite as well then that any
attempt to reconcile Mrs. Sanderson to the thought of adopting
them would have been futile. Things have changed with her
and with you.”

“Why are they here under false names? Why have they
kept up this deception, and carried on this strange masquerade?”
I asked.

“Henry very naturally took his step-father's name, because
he was but a child at his mother's second marriage; and Mrs.
Belden Hulm chose to be known by a part of her name only,

for the purpose of hiding her personality from Mrs. Sanderson,
whom she first met entirely by accident.”

“Do they know that you have intended to make this disclosure?”
I inquired.

“No, they know nothing of it. It was once proposed to
them, but they declared that if such a thing were done they
would fly the city. Under Mr. Bird's and your father's advice
I have taken the matter into my own hands, and now I leave
it entirely in yours. This is the end of my responsibility, and
here yours begins.”

“Will you be kind enough to send a messenger to Mrs.
Sanderson, to tell her that I shall be absent during the day?”
I said. “I cannot go home now.”

“Yes.”

I shook his hand, and went out into the sunlight, with a
crushed, bruised feeling, as if I had passed through a great catastrophe.
My first impulse was to go directly to my father,
but the impulse was hardly born before I said aloud, as if moved
by some sudden inspiration: “No; this thing shall be settled
between God and myself.” The utterance of the words seemed
to give me new strength. I avoided the street that led by my
father's door, and walked directly through the town. I met
sun-browned men at work, earning their daily bread. On every
side I heard the din of industry. There were shouts and calls,
and snatches of song, and rolling of wheels, and laughter of
boys. There was no sympathy for me there, and no touch of
comfort or healing.

Then I sought the solitude of the woods, and the silence of
nature. Far away from every sight and sound of man I sat
down, but even there went on the ceaseless industries of life.
The bees were plundering the flowers with not a thought of
me or of play. A humming bird probed a honeysuckle at my
side, and darted away like a sunbeam. A foraging squirrel
picked up his dinner almost at my feet, and ran up a tree,
where he sat to eat it and scold me for my idleness. A spring
of water, twinkling in the light, gushed from under a rock, and

went singing down the valley on its mission of service. Back
and forth a robin flew, carrying food to her young. The air was
loaded with the breath of flowers and the scent of balsams,
beauty appealed to my eyes wherever I turned them, and the
summer breezes fanned my feverish cheeks. Industry and
ministry—these were the words of the world, and God had
uttered them.

I looked up through the trees into the deep blue Heaven,
and thought of the Being of whom that sky was but an emanation,
with its life-giving sun and its wilderness of unseen stars
wheeling in infinite cycles of silence, and there came unbidden
to my lips those words—a thousand times divine—“My father
worketh hitherto, and I work.” I realized that to live outside
of work was to live outside of the universal plan, that there
could be no true godliness without work, and that manliness
was simply godliness made human.

I thought I knew from the first what I should do in the end;
but I felt the necessity of being led to my act by deliberation.
I need not tell how many aspirations went up from my heart
that day. I threw my soul wide open to every heavenly influence,
and returned at night strong.

On the way, I thought over all that had occurred in my intercourse
with Henry, and wondered why I had not apprehended
the facts which now seemed so plain to me. I thought of his
reticence, his reluctance to enter the door of his friend and
companion, his likeness to his father's portrait, his intimacy
with Mrs. Belden, of a thousand incidents that pointed to this
one conclusion, and could never have led to anything else. It
is more than likely that the reader of this history anticipated
all that I have recorded, but to me it was a staggering surprise
that would have been incredible, save for the conspiring testimony
of every event and fact in our intercourse and history.

I entered the house with a new glow upon my face, and a
new light in my eyes. Mrs. Sanderson noticed my altered look,
and said she was glad I had spent the day away.

In the evening, I went out upon the broad acres that lay

about me, looked up at the grand old house and the splendid
elms that stood around, and said: “I can do it, and I will.”

Then I went to bed, and with that sweet and strong determination
locked in my breast, I slept, brooded over and wrapt
around by a peace that held every nerve and muscle of my
body and every faculty of my soul in downy bonds until morning.