University of Virginia Library

23. CHAPTER XXIII.
I TAKE ARTHUR BONNICASTLE UPON MY OWN HANDS AND SUCCEED
WITH HIM.

In a small town like Bradford, the birds have a way of collecting
and carrying news, quite unknown in more considerable
cities; and, apparently, a large flock of them had been around
The Mansion during the events narrated in the preceding
chapter; for, on the following day, the community was alive
with rumors concerning them. A daily paper had just been
established, whose enterprising editor deemed it his special duty
and privilege to bruit such personal and social intelligence as
he could gain by button-holing his victims on the street, or by
listening to the voluntary tattle of busy-bodies. My good angel,
Mr. Bradford, apprehending an unpleasant notoriety for me,
and for the occurrences associated with my name, came to me
at once and heard my story. Then he visited the editor, and
so represented the case to him that, on the second morning
after taking up my home with my father, I had the amusement
of reading a whole column devoted to it. The paper was very
wet and very dirty; and I presume that that column was read
with more interest, by all the citizens of Bradford, than anything
of national import which it might have contained. I will reproduce
only its opening and closing paragraphs:

Romance in High Life.—Our little city was thrown into intense excitement
yesterday, by rumors of a most romantic and extraordinary character,
concerning occurrences at

A CERTAIN MANSION,

which occupies an elevated position, locally, socially, and historically. It

appears that a certain estimable young man, whose heroic feat cost him so
dearly in a recent struggle with

A MIDNIGHT ASSASSIN,

is the natural heir to the vast wealth which he so gallantly rescued from spoliation,
and that

A CERTAIN ESTIMABLE LADY,

well known to our citizens as the companion of a certain other lady, also
well known, is his mother. Nothing more startling than the developments
in this case has occurred in the eventful history of our city.

A MYSTERY

has always hung around these persons, and we are not among those who
are surprised at the solution. But the most remarkable part of the story
is that which relates to the young man who has been reared with the expectation
of becoming the owner of this magnificent estate. Upon learning the
relations of the young man previously alluded to, to his benefactress, he at
once, in loyalty to his friend and his own personal honor, renounced forever
his expectations, surrendered his position to the heir so strangely discovered,
and took up his abode in his father's humble home. This act, than
which none nobler was ever performed, was, we are assured by as good authority
as there is in Bradford, wholly voluntary.

WE GIVE THAT YOUNG MAN OUR HAT—

Miller & Sons' best—and assure him that, in whatever position he may
choose to take in this community, he will have such support as our humble
editorial pen may give him. We feel that no less than this is due to his
nobility of character.

After half a dozen paragraphs in this strain, the article closed
as follows:—

It is rumored that the newly-found heir has formed

A TENDER ALLIANCE

with a beautiful young lady—a blonde—who is not a stranger in the
family of our blue-eyed hero—an alliance which will enable her to

SHARE HIS BONNY CASTLE,

and unite the fortunes of the two families in indissoluble bonds. Long
may they wave!

Far be it from us, enthroned upon the editorial tripod, and wielding the
scepter of the press, to invade the sanctities of private life, and we therefore
withhold all names. It was due to the parties concerned and to the
public, however, to state the facts, and put an end to gossip and conjecture
among those who have no better business than that of tampering with the
secrets of the hearthstone and the heart.

During the day, I broke through the reluctance which I naturally
felt to encounter the public gaze, after this exposure of
my affairs, and went out upon the street. Of course, I found
myself the object of universal curiosity and the subject of universal
remark. Never in my life had I been treated with more
deference. Something high in position had been won back to
the sphere of common life; and common life was profoundly
interested. My editorial friend had so represented the case
as to win for me something better than sympathy; and a good-natured
reticence under all inquiries, on my own part, seemed
to enhance the respect of the people for me. But I had something
more important on hand than seeking food for my vanity.
I had myself on hand and my future; and the gossip of
the community was, for the first time in my life, a matter of indifference.

It occurred to me during the day that an academy, which a
number of enterprising people had built two or three years before,
had been abandoned and closed, with the conclusion of
the spring term, for lack of support, and that it would be possible
for me to secure it for the field of my future enterprise.
I called at once upon those who held the building in charge,
and, before I slept, closed a bargain, very advantageous to myself,
which placed it at my disposal for a term of three years.
The next day I visited my friend the editor, whom I found with
bare arms, well smeared with ink, at work at his printer's case,
setting up the lucubrations of the previous night. He was
evidently flattered by my call, and expressed the hope that
what he had written with reference to myself was satisfactory.
Assuring him that I had no fault to find with him, I exposed
my project, which not only met with his hearty approval, but

the promise of his unstinted support. From his office I went
directly to the chambers of the principal lawyer of the city, and
entered my name as a student of law. I took no advice, I
sought no aid, but spoke freely of my plans to all around me.
I realized almost at once how all life and circumstance bend
to the man who walks his own determined way, toward an object
definitely apprehended. People were surprised by my
promptness and energy, and indeed I was surprised by myself.
My dreams of luxury and ease were gone, and the fascinations
of enterprise and action took strong possession of me. I was
busy with my preparations for school and with study all day,
and at night, every moment stolen from sleep was filled with
planning and projecting. My father was delighted, and almost
lived and moved and had his being in me. To him I told
everything; and the full measure of his old faith in me was recovered.

When the autumn term of the academy opened, of which I
was principal, and my sister Claire the leading assistant, every
seat was full. Many of the pupils had come from the towns
around, though the principal attendance was from the city, and
I entered at once upon a life of the most fatiguing labor and
the most grateful prosperity. My purse was filled at the outset
with the advanced installment upon the term-bills, so that
both Claire and myself had a delightful struggle with my father
in our attempt to compel him to receive payment for our
board and lodgings. Our little dwelling was full of new life.
Even my mother was shaken from her refuge of faithlessness,
and compelled to smile. Since those days I have had many
pleasant experiences; but I doubt whether I have ever spent
three years of purer happiness than those which I passed with
Claire beneath the roof of that old academy—old, now, for
though put to strange uses, the building is standing still.

There was one experience connected with this part of my
history of which it is a pain to speak, because it relates to the
most subtle and sacred passage of my inner life; but having
led the reader thus far, I should be disloyal to my Christian

confession were I to close my lips upon it and refuse its revelation.

From the hour when I first openly joined a band of Christian
disciples, I had been conscious of a mighty arm around me.
Within the circuit of that restraining power I had exercised an
almost unrestricted liberty. I had violated my conscience in
times and ways without number, yet, when tempted to reckless
wandering, I had touched the obstacle and recoiled. In whatever
direction I might go, I always reached a point where I
became conscious of its living pulsations and its unrelaxing embrace.
Unseen, impalpable, it was as impenetrable as adamant
and as strong as God. The moment I assumed responsibility
over other lives, and gave my own life in counsel and
labor for the good of those around me, the arm came closer,
and conveyed to me the impression of comfort and health and
safety. I thanked God for the restraint which that voluntary
act of mine had imposed upon me.

But this was not all. My life had come into the line of
the divine plan for my own Christian development. I had
been a recipient all my life; now I had become an active
power. I had all my life been appropriating the food that came
to me, and amusing myself with the playthings of fancy and
imagination; now I had begun to act and expend in earnest
work for worthy objects. The spiritual attitude effected by
this change was one which brought me face to face with all that
was unworthy in me and my past life, and I felt myself under
the operations of a mighty regenerating power, which I had
no disposition to resist. I could not tell whence it came or
whither it went. If it was born of myself, it was a psychological
experience which I could neither analyze nor measure. It
was upon me for days and weeks. It was within me like
leaven in the lump, permeating, enlivening, lifting me. It was
like an eye-stone in the eye, searching for dust in every place
and plication, and removing it, until the orb was painless
and the vision pure. There was no outcry, no horror of great
darkness, no disposition to publish, but a subtle, silent, sweet

revolution. As it went on within me, I grew stronger day by
day, and my life and work were flooded with the light of a
great and fine significance. Sensibility softened and endurance
hardened under it.

Spirit of God! Infinite Mother! Thou didst not thunder
on Sinai amidst smoke and tempest; but in the burning bush
thou didst appear in a flame that warmed without withering,
and illuminated without consuming. Thou didst not hang
upon the cross on Calvary, but thou didst stir the hearts of the
bereaved disciples as they walked in the way with their risen
Lord. All gentle ministries to the spiritual life of men emanate
from Thee. Thou brooding, all-pervading presence, holding a
weeping world in thy maternal embrace, with counsel and tender
chastening and holy inspirations, was it thy arms that had
been around me all these years, and came closer and closer,
until I felt myself folded to a heart that flooded me with love?
I only know that streams rise no higher than their fountain,
and that the fountain of spiritual life in me had sunk and ceased
to flow long before this time. Could anything but a long,
strong rain from the skies have filled it? All the things we see are
types of things we do not see—visible expressions of the things
and thoughts of God. All the phenomena of nature—the persistent
radiance of the sun and moon—the coming, going, and unloading,
and the grace and glory of the clouds—the changes of the
seasons and of the all-enveloping atmosphere, are revelations
to our senses and our souls of those operations and influences
which act upon our spiritual natures. I find no miracle in this;
only nature speaking without material interpreters—only the
God of nature shunning the coarser passages of the senses, and
finding his way direct to the Spirit by means and ministries and
channels of his own.

Was this conversion? It was not an intellectual matter at
all. I had changed no opinions, for the unworthy opinions I
had acquired had fallen from me, one by one, as my practice
had conformed more and more to the Christian standard. Indeed,
they were not my opinions at all, for they had been

assumed in consequence of the necessity of somewhat bringing
my spiritual and intellectual natures into harmony. My deepest
intellectual convictions remained precisely what they had
always been. No, it was a spiritual quickening. It had been
winter with me, and I had been covered with snow and locked
with ice. Did I melt the bonds which held me, by warmth
self-generated? Does the rose do this or the violet? There
was a sun in some heaven I could not see that shone upon me.
There was a wind from some far latitude that breathed upon
me. To be quickened is to be touched by a vital finger. To
be quickened is to receive a fructifying flood from the great
source of life.

The change was something better than had happened to me
under Mr. Bedlow's preaching, long years before; but neither
change was conversion. Far back in childhood, at my
mother's knee, at my father's side, and in my own secret chamber,
those changes were wrought which had directed my life
toward a Christian consummation. My little rivulet was flowing
toward the sea, increasing as it went, when it was disturbed
by the first awful experiences of my life; and its turbid waters
were never, until this latter time, wholly clarified. My little
plant, tender but upright, was just rising out of its nursing
shadows into the light when the great tempest swept over it.
If my later experience was conversion, then conversion may
come to a man every year of his life. It was simply the revivification
and reinforcement of the powers and processes of
spiritual life. It was ministry, direct and immediate, to development
and growth; and with me it was complete restoration
to the track of my Christian boyhood, and a thrusting out of
my life of all the ideas, policies and results of that terrible winter
which I can never recall without self-pity and humiliation.

The difference in the respective effects of the two great
crises of my spiritual history upon my power to work illustrated
better than anything else, perhaps, the difference in
their nature. The first was a dissipation of power. I could
not work while it lasted, and it was a long time before I could

gather and hold in hand my mental forces. The second was
an accession of strength and the power of concentration. I
am sure that I never worked harder or better than I did during
the time that my late change was in progress. It was an uplifting,
enlightening and strengthening inspiration. One was
a poison, the other was a cure; one disturbed, the other harmonized;
one was surcharged with fear, the other brimmed
with hope; one exhausted, the other nourished and edified
me; one left my spirit halting and ready to stumble, the other
left it armed and plumed.

After my days at the academy, came my evening readings of
the elementary books of the profession which I had chosen.
There were no holidays for me; and during those three years I
am sure I accomplished more professional study than nine-tenths
of the young men whose every day was at their disposal. I
was in high health and in thorough earnest. My physical powers
had never been overtasked, and I found myself in the
possession of vital resources which enabled me to accomplish
an enormous amount of labor. I have no doubt that there
were those around me who felt a measure of pity for me, but
I had no occasion to thank them for it. I had never before
felt so happy, and I learned then, what the world is slow to
learn, that there can be no true happiness that is not the result
of the action of harmonious powers steadily bent upon
pursuits that seek a worthy end. Comfort of a certain sort
there may be, pleasure of a certain quality there may be, in
ease and in the gratification of that which is sensuous and
sensual in human nature; but happiness is never a lazy man's
dower nor a sensualist's privilege. That is reserved for the
worker, and can never be grasped and held save by true manhood
and womanhood. It was a great lesson to learn, and it
was learned for a lifetime; for, in this eventide of life, with
the power to the rest, I find no joy like that which comes to
me at the table on which, day after day, I write the present
record.

During the autumn and winter which followed the assumption

of my new duties, I was often at The Mansion, and a
witness of the happiness of its inmates. Mrs. Sanderson was
living in a new atmosphere. Every thought and feeling seemed
to be centered upon her lately discovered treasure. She listened
to his every word, watched his every motion, and seemed
to feel that all her time was lost that was not spent in his presence.
The strong, indomitable, self-asserting will which she
had exercised during all her life was laid at his feet. With her
fortune she gave herself. She was weary with the long strain
and relinquished it. She trusted him, leaned upon him, lived
upon him. She was in the second childhood of her life, and it
was better to her than her womanhood. He became in her
imagination the son whom long years before she had lost. His
look recalled her boy, his voice was the repetition of the old
music, and she found realized in him all the dreams she had indulged
in concerning him who so sadly dissipated them in his
own self-ruin.

The object of all this trust and tenderness was as happy as
she. It always touched me deeply to witness the gentleness of
his manner toward her. He anticipated all her wants, deferred
to her slightest wish, shaped all his life to serve her own. The
sense of kindred blood was strongly dominant within him, and
his grandmother was held among the most sacred treasures of
his heart. Whether he ever had the influence to lead her to
higher sources of joy and comfort than himself, I never knew,
but I know that in the old mansion that for so many years had
been the home of revelry or of isolated selfishness, an altar was
reared from which the incense of Christian hearts rose with the
rising sun of morning and the rising stars of night.

Henry passed many days with me at the academy. In truth,
my school was his loitering place, though his loitering was of
a very useful fashion. I found him so full of the results of experience
in the calling in which I was engaged that I won from
him a thousand valuable suggestions; and such was his love
for the calling that he rarely left me without hearing a recitation,
which he had the power to make so vitally interesting to my

pupils that he never entered the study-hall without awakening
a smile of welcome from the whole school. Sometimes he
went with Claire to her class-rooms; and, as many of her pupils
had previously been his own, he found himself at home everywhere.
There was no foolish pride in his heart that protested
against her employment. He saw that she was not only useful
but happy, and knew that she was learning quite as much that
would be useful to her as those who engaged her efforts. Her
office deepened and broadened her womanhood; and I could
see that Henry was every day more pleased and satisfied with
her. If she was ill for a day, he took her place, and watched
for and filled every opportunity to lighten her burdens.

Mr. Bradford was, perhaps, my happiest friend. He had had
so much responsibility in directing and changing the currents
of my life, that it was with unbounded satisfaction that he
witnessed my happiness, my industry and my modest prosperity.
Many an hour did he sit upon my platform with me,
with his two hands resting upon his cane, his fine, honest face
all aglow with gratified interest, listening to the school in its
regular exercises; and once he came in with Mr. Bird who
had traveled all the way from Hillsborough to see me. And
then my school witnessed such a scene as it had never witnessed
before. I rushed to my dear old friend, threw my arms
around him and kissed him. The silver had begun to show
itself in his beard and on his temples, and he looked weary.
I gave him a chair, and then with tears in my eyes I stood out
upon the platform before my boys and girls, and told them
who he was, and what he had been to me. I pictured
to them the life of The Bird's Nest, and assured them that if
they had found anything to approve in me, as a teacher and a
friend, it was planted and shaped in that little garden on the
hill. I told them further that if any of them should ever come
to regard me with the affection I felt for him, I should feel
myself abundantly repaid for all the labor I had bestowed upon
them—nay, for the labor of a life. I was roused to an eloquence
and touched to a tenderness which were at least new to

them, and their eyes were wet. When I concluded, poor Mr.
Bird sat with his head in his hands, unable to say a word.

As we went out from the school that night, arm in arm, he
said: “It was a good medicine, Arthur—heroic, but good.”

“It was,” I answered, “and I can never thank you and Mr.
Bradford enough for it.”

First I took him to my home, and we had a merry tea-drinking,
at which my mother yielded up all her prejudices
against him. I showed him my little room, so like in its
dimensions and appointments to the one I occupied at The
Bird's Nest, and then I took him to The Mansion for a call
upon Henry. After this we went to Mr. Bradford's, where we
passed the evening, and where he spent the night.