Helen and Arthur; or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel

by Caroline Lee Hentz

Suddenly a deadly sickness came over him, and reeling back to his pallet, he buried his face in his hands and wept aloud—and the wail of his soul was that of the first doomed transgressor, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.”

While there he lies, a prey to keen and unavailing agonies, we will take a backward glance at the romance of his childhood, and the temptations of his youth.

Bryant Clinton was the son of obscure parents. When a little boy, his remarkable beauty attracted the admiration of every beholder. He was the pet of the village school, the favorite on the village green. His intelligence and grace were equal to his beauty, and all of these attributes combined in one of his lowly birth, seemed so miraculous, he was universally admitted to be a prodigy—a nonpareil. When he was about ten years of age, a gentleman of wealth and high social standing, was passing through the town, and, like all strangers, was struck by the remarkable appearance of the boy. This gentleman was unmarried, though in the meridian of life, and of course, uncontrolled master of all his movements. He was very peculiar in character, and his impulses, rather than his principles, guided his actions. He did not love his relatives, because he thought their attentions were venal, and resolved to adopt this beautiful boy, not so much from feelings of benevolence towards him, as a desire to disappoint his mercenary kindred. Bryant’s natural affections were not strong enough to prove any impediment to the stranger’s wish, and his parents were willing to sacrifice theirs, for the brilliant advantages offered to their son. Behold our young prodigy transplanted to a richer soil, and a more genial atmosphere. His benefactor resided in a great city, far from the little village where he was born, so that all the associations of his childhood were broken up and destroyed. He even took the name of his adopted father, thus losing his own identity. Had Mr. Clinton been a man of pure and upright principles, had he been faithful to the guardianship he had assumed, and educated his heart, as well as his mind, Bryant might have been the ornament instead of the disgrace, the blessing instead of the bane of society. He had no salient propensities to evil, no faults which righteous wisdom might not have disciplined. But indulged, caressed, praised and admired by all around him, the selfishness inherent in our nature, acquired a hot-bed growth from the sultry moral atmosphere which he breathed.

The gentle, yet restraining influence which woman, in her purity and excellence, ever exerts, was unfortunately denied him. Mr. Clinton was a bachelor, and the careful, bustling housekeeper, who kept his servants and house in order, was not likely to burden herself with the charge of young Bryant’s morals. All that Mr. Clinton supervised, was his progress at school, which surpassed even his most sanguine expectations. He was still the prodigy—the nonpareil—and as he had the most winning, insinuating manners—he was still the favorite of teachers and pupils. As he grew older, he was taken much into society, and young as he was, inhaled, with the most intense delight, the incense of female adulation. The smiles and caresses bestowed upon the boy-paragon by beautiful and charming women, instead of fostering his affections, as they would have done, had they been lavished upon him for his virtues rather than his graces, gave precocious growth and vigor to his vanity, till, like the cedar of Lebanon, it towered above all other passions. This vanity was only visible to others in an earnest desire to please—it only made him appear more amiable and gentle, but it was so strong, so vital, that it could not, “but by annihilating, die.”

Another fatal influence acted upon him. Mr. Clinton, like most rich bachelors, was fond of having convivial suppers, where wine and mirth abounded. To these young Bryant was often admitted, for his beauty and talents were the pride and boast of his adopted father. Here he was initiated into the secrets of the gaming-table, not by practice, (for he was not allowed to play himself,) but by observation, a medium of instruction sufficiently transparent to his acute and subtle mind. Here he was accustomed to hear the name of God uttered either in irreverence or blasphemy, and the cold sneer of infidelity withered the germs of piety a mother’s hand had planted in his bosom. Better, far better had it been for him, never to have left his parent’s humble but honest dwelling.

Just as he was about to enter college, Mr. Clinton suddenly died of a stroke of apoplexy, leaving the youth whom he had adopted, exposed to the persecutions of his worldly and venal relatives. He had resolved to make a will, bequeathing his property to Bryant, as his sole heir; but having a great horror of death, he could not bear to perform the act which would remind him too painfully of his mortality.

“Time enough when I am taken sick,” he would say, “to attend to these things;” but the blow which announced the coming of death, crushed the citadel of thought. There was no time for making wills, and Bryant was left far poorer than his adopted father had found him, for he had acquired all the tastes which wealth alone can gratify, and all the vices, too.

When he returned, reluctant and disappointed, with alienated feelings, to his native home, he found that his father was dead, and his mother a solitary widow. By selling the little farm which had served them for a support, and restricting herself of every luxury, and many comforts, she could defray the expenses of a collegiate education, and this she resolved to do. Bryant accepted the sacrifice without hesitation, deeming it his legitimate right.

On his way to the university, which was still more remote from his native village than that was from the home of his adopted father, he conceived the design of imposing upon his new companions the story of his Virginian birth—though born in reality in one of the Middle States. He had heard so much of Virginian aristocracy, of the pride of tracing one’s descent from one of the first families of Virginia, that he thought it a pardonable deception if it increased his dignity and consequence. He was ashamed of his parentage, which was concealed under the somewhat patrician name of Clinton, and as he chose to change his birth-place, it was not very probable that his real origin would be discovered. He had previously ascertained that no boys were members of the college, who had ever seen him before, or who knew any thing of the region where he had dwelt. He soon became a star-scholar, from the brilliancy of his talents, and a favorite, too, from the graceful pliancy of his manners, and apparent sweetness of his disposition. But with all his grace and sweetness, he was unprincipled and dissolute, and exerted the commanding influence he had acquired over the minds of his companions, to lead them into temptation, and lure them to sin. Yet he had the art to appear himself the tempted, as well as they. His agency was as invisible as it was powerful, and as fatal, too. When, with seeming reluctance, he took his seat at the gaming-table and won, as he invariably did, from his unsuspecting comrades, he manifested the deepest regret and keenest remorse. No one suspected that it was through his instrumentality they were seduced into error and ruin.

Louis, the impulsive, warm-hearted, and confiding Louis Gleason, was drawn as if by fascination towards this young man. There was a luminous atmosphere around him, that dazzled the judgment, and rendered it blind to his moral defects. Dissipation appeared covered with a golden tissue, that concealed all its deformity; and reckless prodigality received the honors due to princely generosity.