University of Virginia Library

2. PART II.

Edward Carrington had been two years a student
of divinity, when his health, impaired by incessant
toil beside the midnight lamp, exiled him to a
more genial clime than that of New England. A graduate
of Dartmouth college, he had supported himself
through his collegiate course on the scanty pittance
realised by keeping a village school during the winter
vacations, for he was the only son of his mother, and
she was a widow, pious, humble and poor. Through
his triennial course of Theology, to his individual exertions
alone he also looked for support. He chose
the ministry, not to promote his worldly interests, to
have a “profession” or from any other improper motives:
but from a sense of duty, and because, as a minister
of the gospel, he felt that he would be most useful
to his fellow men. Answering the apostle's
directions for this sacred office, he was vigilant, patient,
sober, apt to teach, and withal conscientiously
and sincerely pious. He therefore chose the ministry.

There remained but one year to complete his course
of study, when that last hope, and often, ultimately,
the grave of the northern consumption—a southern

climate—wooed him to health. He left home with
bright hopes, a light purse, and his mother's blessing.

On board the packet carrying him from Boston to
Charleston, was the president of a southern University,
returning home from a tour among the lakes of
New England. The unassuming manners and agreeable
conversation of Edward, united with his fine
talents and high scholastic attainments, ripened, in the
space of a few days, from a mere traveller's acquaintance,
into an intimacy which promised to promote
materially the interests of our young adventurer. On
his arrival at the port of their destination, the President
proposed to him that he should accept a tutorship
in his university, until he could obtain a private situation
in a planter's family, when his duties would be
less laborious, and more time could be found for study.
In a few days, Edward was busily engaged in fulfilling
the duties of his new station.

The officers of the college were occasionally invited
to the dinner parties given by the neighboring planters.
On one of these occasions, six months after his arrival
in the south, at Laurel Hill, the residence of her father,
Colonel Willis, a surviving revolutionary soldier,
Edward saw for the first time the lovely and accomplished
Charlotte Willis, the eldest of two daughters,
the only children of this gentleman. Charlotte was at
this period, just entering her nineteenth year. Her
figure was faultless. Her hair was jetty as the raven's
plumage, her eyes large, black, and full of intellectual
expression. She was altogether a graceful and fascinating
creature, with an excellent but susceptible
heart, an amiable disposition, and an accurately cultivated
mind. Her beauty—for she was surpassingly
fair—like chef d'œuvres of painting or sculpture,
would not at first strike you, but won upon you as you
gazed. She could not be termed “beautiful” exactly,
nor “handsome,” nor, indeed, “pretty:” none of these
terms, which have their own proper applications, however

perverted, would suit her style of beauty. She
was lovely—a Rose Bradwardine, rather than a Flora
MacIvor. Her manner was gentle, and in conversation,
her eyes were oftener concealed behind their
drooping lids, and long silky fringes, than lifted to the
faces of those with whom she spoke. She was a
woman for poets to deify—for men to love.

Edward Carrington saw Charlotte Willis as he
entered the drawing room at Laurel Hill, and from
that moment the destinies of the two became forever
united. Edward, at this period was a strikingly handsome
young man. Health had returned to his cheek
and animation to his eye. His features were noble,
and his person manly and elegant. His general manner
was grave, or rather quiet; but when he strove to
please, few men have displayed higher powers of conversation
than he exhibited—his wit flashed, but was
harmless, while his humor was irresistible. Although
college professors, or “teachers,” as they are commonly
termed in the south, are not there recognised of
the “caste” which entitles them to free admission into
the best southern society (for teaching is a sort of
mechanical employment, and therefore, not exactly
comme il faut.) Edward Carrington, on account of his
pleasing address, soon became a frequent and welcome
visiter at the mansion of Colonel Willis. What
with mingling voices in the same air, bending till
cheek touched cheek, over the same drawing—for
Edward drew and sung delightfully—riding out
nearly every evening, and other opportunities placed
in their way by Cupid, and to which Isabel was particeps
criminis, Edward and Charlotte became within
two months after their first meeting, as deeply in love
as any author of moderate ambition would wish his
hero and heroine to be. Charlotte loved with her
whole heart. Her love was deep, pure, and unchangeable.
For Edward she lived, moved, and had

her being. Love had changed her whole character.
It was to her a new existence of the purest bliss,
which she would not exchange for any other. In the
heart of Edward, this new passion which he had introduced
there, assumed an alarming aspect. None of
the officers of the institution were professors of
religion.

Among the surrounding planters, its forms were
loosely observed. Gaiety and pleasure, and the
amusements and business of life seemed to absorb all
minds around him. None were congenial with his
own. His opportunities of private devotion, when he
first attached himself to the University were few and
interrupted, as the rulers of the institution required
that the tutors should room with the most troublesome
students. That privacy necessary to devotion, not
being always attainable, occasional omission of closet
devotions, finally ripened into a total neglect of them.
The lively society he met with at “Laurel Hill” was
not calculated to foster religious feeling, and at length,
like a plant that withers for want of nourishment and
care, his religious impressions gradually faded from
his heart, and Edward Carrington became a gay and
worldly young man. When love took possession of
his heart, the image of Charlotte Willis wholly displaced
that of the Savior, and the closet and the Bible
were altogether given up for the drawing room and
works of fiction.

Four months had expired, each day closer binding
the lovers in those pleasing chains, which, it is said,
no doubt slanderously, that only Hymen can unloose,
when the eyes of Colonel Willis were opened. The
lovers had never thought of “Pa.” They loved each
other, and looked not beyond themselves or the present
moment. One afternoon Colonel Willis suddenly
entered the parlor, and the lovers did not recover
themselves soon enough to prevent him from observing

that Edward had been seated by Charlotte, with
his arm enfolding her waist, and that she was just
placing a large agate upon his finger.

Edward was sternly but politely forbidden the
house—for Edward Carrington was a poor student,
and Charlotte Willis was an heiress! The third morning
after this event, the carriage of Colonel Willis
rolled down the avenue to the high road, followed by
an open barouche, containing servants and baggage,
and by the evening of the next day, it was known
generally throughout the neighborhod, that the family
at Laurel Hill had departed on a tour to the Virginia
Springs.

Before his departure, Colonel Willis had so far exerted
his influence with the board of Trustees, of
which he was a prominent member, that he received
the promise that Mr. Carrington should be removed
so soon as one could be found to supply his place. In
the course of three weeks, therefore, Edward was
displaced from his tutorship. The president, his friend
and patron, had previously resigned his office on account
of ill health, and, notwithstanding he was one
of the most efficient officers in the institution, Edward
was sacrificed to the vindictive displeasure of Colonel
Willis. Ill news will fly, while good tidings move at
a snail's pace. In a few days, it was known to all,
who had known Edward, that he had been removed
from his tutorship. There were a hundred causes devised,
but no one was the true one. The victim himself
well knew the author of his disgrace, and bore
up against the adverse tide of his fortunes with manly
fortitude. His efforts to obtain a private tutorship
were unsuccessful, for busy rumor had begotten prejudice
and suspicion, and all his applications were coldly
received. At length, mortified at his disappointment,
he determined to try his fortune where his ill-fame
had not yet preceded him, and with the balance due
him of his small salary, he set forth on foot, for he was

too poor to ride. The wanderer proceeded to a neighboring
village, where he passed the night, and in the
morning made a detour through the adjacent plantations
to seek a private tutorship in some family, but
his exertions were unsuccessful. He passed several
days, going from village to village, and from plantation
to plantation, in a fruitless search for a situation, until
his money was exhausted, he entered a remote village
and threw himself upon the benevolence of the Methodist
clergyman of the place—for he felt that if human
sympathy still lingered on earth, it must have its home
in the hearts of the followers of Christ. Through the
kind assistance of this good man, he obtained a small
school in the village, and was once more comparatively
happy. But when he thought of Charlotte, melancholy
and despondency reigned in his bosom.

One evening he was leaning over the railing of a
rural bridge on the skirts of the village, thinking of
Charlotte, and brooding over his poverty and blighted
hopes. His disposition had become soured by his
misfortunes, and he dared not fly for consolation to
that religion, which in prosperity he had neglected.
He had grown misanthropic; and at times, during his
greatest destitution, had even dared to question the
existence of an overruling Providence. So rapid is
the descent from belief to infidelity, when once the
hold is loosed! As he gazed into the dark flood gliding
stilly beneath, tempted to plunge into it, and terminate
at once his life and sufferings, the sound of
distant wheels and the clatter of horse's hoofs roused
him from his guilty meditations, and turning round,
he saw a carriage descending the hill to the bridge, and
the next moment, with the speed which benighted
travellers are wont to exert, it rolled past him across
the bridge and drove into the village. In a country,
where every planter keeps his carriage, there was
nothing extraordinary in the appearance of a handsome
travelling equipage entering an obscure hamlet,

in a remote district. Yet an undefinable sensation
that he was in some way interested in the appearance
of this carriage, induced him to retrace his steps to the
village inn. When he arrived there, he saw the carriage,
with a barouche which had passed him just
after he had left the bridge, standing in the yard of
the hostlery, and, in reply to his inquiries, was informed
by a communicative slave, that “a gemman and two
young misusses had come to stay all night.” On entering
the inn, the landlady told him that she had given
his room to the two young ladies, as it opened into
the gentleman's, who was their father, and that “she
had spoken to neighbor Bryan, across the way, to
give him a bed at her house. As Edward was only
the “teacher,” he could be stowed away any where,
as well as be ejected from his room. He quietly
acquiesced, and occupied, in common with four little
chubby urchins, his scholars, a bed at “neighbor
Bryan's.”

“Oh dear!” exclaimed one of the young ladies, on
entering the student's bed room, “we might as well
sleep in the coach as here, for this bit of a box isn't
much bigger.”

“It will do, Isabel; any accommodations will be
good enough for me—if you can only put up with
them. I am wearied of this journey:” and the speaker
leaned her head upon her beautiful hand, sighed, and
gazed with an absent air into a small mirror before
her, which reflected a face pale but strikingly interesting.

“If pa thinks this driving about here, there, and
everywhere,” said the other, “is to drive Edward out
of your head, or mine either, for that matter, Charlotte
—for I love him almost as much as you do—I can tell
him he is sadly mistaken. Heavens! Charlotte, look
at this ring!” she exclaimed, taking from one of the
little toilet drawers of the bureau, into one after another
of which, with true female curiosity, she had

been peeping, and holding before her sister a ring set
with a very large agate, of peculiar form; “It is the
very ring you gave Edward.”

Charlotte sprung forward with a faint, but joyful
exclamation, seized the ring, gazed on it eagerly for
an instant, then with trembling fingers pressed a concealed
spring. The agate flew open, displaying a
miniature locket, within which was enclosed a lock
of her own brown hair. She could not be mistaken!
It was the self same ring she was placing on Edward's
finger, at the fatal moment her father entered the room,
a moment of mingled joy and bitterness to both lovers,
and from which all their subsequent and future misery
was dated. She kissed the recovered treasure,
over and over again, until Isabel, who thought she
never would have done, proposed the very sensible
query, “I wonder how it came here?”

Poor Charlotte! she was too happy in the possession
of such a memento of her lover, to think of any
thing else but the joy of possessing it. “I wonder
how it did?” she at length repeated, thoughtfully and
looking into Isabella's face for an explanation. They
began to puzzle their heads by a good many possible
and impossible ways, by which it might have come
there. The idea never occurred to them that Edward
himself might have brought it there. Of his dismission
they had not heard, nor indeed received any intelligence
of Edward since they had left Laurel Hill
three months before, and supposing that he was still
in the University, the hope of soon meeting with him,
as they were now travelling homeward, alone supported
Charlotte, whose health and spirits were hourly
passing away, during the fatigues of the journey.
That he should be, therefore, one hundred miles from
home during term-time, was not probable.

In the midst of their perplexities, a little female
slave entered the room.

“Can you tell me, you little chit,” eagerly inquired
Isabel, “whose ring this is?”

The slave looked for a short time closely at the ring
with her large, round eyes, as if decyphering hieroglyphics,
and then replied with great confidence:

“Yes, missis, I'se seen him on um massa teacher's
fing'r.”

“The teacher!” repeated Isabel, looking archly at
her sister; “what teacher?”

“Him what's got dis room, missis.”

“Does he keep a school in the village?”

“Yes, missis, he do, dis five, six week.”

“Six weeks! It can't be, Charlotte. Where is he now?”

“Gone over to massa Bryan's.”

“Do you know his name?”

“Massa teacher, missis.”

“No, no, but his name?” interrogated Isabel impatiently.

“I don't know, missis; dey al'ays call him massa
teacher.”

This information not being very satisfactory, and
despairing of further intelligence from such a source,
they retired for the night—not, however, without
coming to the determination to take possession of the
ring, arguing that he who left it there had no honest
title to it.

The ensuing morning at dawn, they resumed their
journey, and on the evening of the fourth day arrived
at Laurel Hill. Here they soon learned the fate of
Edward.

“Charlotte,” said Isabel entering her sister's room,
the morning after their return, and a few minutes
after they had learned the fatal news, “dry your eyes
—Edward is not lost to you, after all pa's persecution.”

The weeping girl raised her tearful eyes, and fixed
them with a hopeless gaze upon the animated face of
her gayer sister.

“Now don't look so like a monument of wo, Charlotte,”

continued Isabel, smiling and embracing her,
“and I will tell you something that will make your
heart jump. Do you remember the little inn at which
we slept four nights ago?”

Charlotte pressed the agate which was upon her
finger to her lips, in reply.

“Well, then, it is my belief that Edward left the
ring there—that it was his room we occupied—and
in fine that he himself, and none other, was `massa
teacher.”'

Charlotte hung upon her sister's words, trembling
between hope and fear, and then threw herself with a
cry of joy upon her neck.

That night Charlotte Willis mysteriously disappeared
from the mansion at Laurel Hill, leaving the
following note on her father's dressing table:

When Colonel Willis read this note, the morning
after her departure, the violence of his rage was unbounded.
Isabel was calm, and so far from being disturbed
or surprised at her sister's absence, she wore a
smile of peculiar meaning, as one after another the
servants rode into the court, bringing no tidings of the
fugitive, that betrayed more knowledge of Charlotte's
movements than she would have been willing her father
should know.

The tenth morning after the mysterious disappearance
of his ring, which the little slave informed him
she had seen one of the strange young ladies place
upon her finger, Edward was sitting in his room,
brooding over the shipwreck of both his temporal and
spiritual hopes, without the moral power to retrieve
either, when he heard the stage, which three times a
week passed through the village, stop at the door of
the inn. In a few seconds the landlady's voice reached
his ears.

“Yes, my pretty lad, he is. That's the room at the
top o' the stairs, right side of the bannisters.” A light
footstep on the stairs, and a faint tap at his door, followed
this very audible direction.

“Come in,” said Edward, mechanically, without
raising his eyes, for domiciliary visits from his scholars
were not unusual.

The door slowly opened, as if the intruder wanted
confidence; and a youth, enveloped in a cloak, with a
cloth travelling cap, such as is worn by female equestrians,
but without the plume, upon his head, entered
the room. Love penetrates the cunningest disguises.
One glance from the student was sufficient. The recognition
was mutual.

“Charlotte!”

“Edward!” And the lovers were in each other's
arms.

The natural consequence, when true lovers will
not be twain, followed in this instance. They were
made one the same morning, by Edward's friend, the
benevolent Methodist clergyman. Edward now felt
that his privations and sufferings were terminated,
“For,” he said, folding her to his heart, “there can be
no suffering with so sweet a sharer of my vicissitudes.”

Happy as this marriage made Edward Carrington,
as a lover, it involved him in greater difficulties as a
member of society. Until now, he had, by strict economy,
just lived within the limits of the small income

derived from his school. By his marriage his expenses
were doubled, while the number of his scholars remained
the same. Although the gentle Charlotte, in
uniting her fate with Edward's, had acted with an
energy and decision contrary to her native character,
(for what metamorphoses will not love effect?) she had
not acted without reflection. By the legacy of a deceased
aunt, she possessed in her own right five thousand
dollars, which was placed in the bank of Charleston,
subject either to her own or, until she was eighteen
years of age, her father's check. For this sum
she drew a check the day after her marriage. But
the first act of her father, on recovering from the burst
of rage to which he gave way on discovering his
daughter's elopement, was, as its trustee, to withdraw
this legacy from the bank.

This source so unexpectedly dried up, the youthful
pair, wretched in their fortunes, but happy in their
loves, exerted every means in their power to meet the
exigences of their situation, still continuing to occupy
the little study which Edward had originally tenanted.

It would be painful to recount the various vicissitudes,
which they had to encounter the first year, during
which period the pittance from Edward's school
scarcely supplied them with the necessaries, and none
of the comforts of life. At length Charlotte was taken
ill, and he was compelled to incur debts with a physician,
and the stores in the village; and for some time
he continued to struggle through debt and poverty,
when the landlord of the humble inn, which they had
so long made their home, finding, that on account of
Mrs. Carrington's illness, her husband's debts and expenses
increased, and that bills from others were presented
against him, which he could not meet, began
to look out for his own interests, which were in danger
on account of six months' arrears due him for
their board. He, therefore, entered his room one
morning, and very politely requested Edward to settle

his bill, or find rooms elsewhere. He could not
do the former, and chose the latter.

Over his school-house was a vacant room, sometimes
used by the erudite school committee as a place
of meeting. This he was permitted to occupy, and with
the scanty furniture he had from time to time accumulated,
he furnished it, and moved there amid the abusive
language of his landlord, and the sneers of the
villagers, many of whom that day took their children
from school because “the master was such a bad character,
always having constables after him,” Edward
indeed experienced the fate of most debtors, particularly
those who are professional men or students.
A merchant may owe his thousands, and if unable to
meet his notes at maturity, he “breaks,” and at one
fell swoop settles with his creditors, perhaps at ten
cents on the dollar. His character stands as fair as
before. He has only failed! But a literary or professional
man, whose small and uncertain income may
render the contraction of small debts necessary, alas!
cannot “fail.” His accounts, presented one after another,
are put by in hopes of better times: these never
arrive, and constables, armed with writs, besiege his
door, and he soon gains the reputation, worse than
that of the thief, or gambler, of “not paying his debts.”
A gentleman, of sterling integrity, with a narrow income,
may contract, with the most upright intentions,
several small debts, whose aggregate, like Edward's
shall not exceed nine hundred dollars, by which he
will suffer more annoyance and lose far more in
reputation, if he is not able to pay them when due,
than the bold gambling speculator, who suddenly
“breaks,” and leaves his protested name on paper to
the amount of one hundred thousand dollars. Truly,
it would seem less venial to be a delinquent on a
large scale, than suffer the obloquy consequent of
petty offences!

Edward Carrington finally became a shunned man

—for he was in debt! His school was gradually
dwindling away, and he in vain sought to obtain some
additional or a more lucrative employment. Day after
day he traversed the vicinity on foot, seeking the
means of livelihood.—Once he was absent nearly two
days, when a report flew through the village that the
unhappy young man had “run off,” leaving his wife
on the charity (Heaven save the mark!) of the town.”
—But when at length he returned, dispirited and
broken-hearted, and cast himself in despair upon
the floor of his wretched abode, unable to meet the
eyes of the patient and suffering Charlotte, the villagers
changed their gossip to surmises, “that these frequent
absences could be for no good.” And a highway
robbery having been perpetrated about that
period, he was generally suspected of being its author.
This latter rumor had not got well whispered over
the town, before all Edward's creditors sent in their
bills, each anxious to get the first share of the windfall.
Alas, for the reputation of the poor debtor! No
crime is so enormous that he is not capable of committing
it! Let me be a pirate—a bandit—a highway
robber—a gambler—a drunkard—anything but
a poor debtor!

Edward's afflictions, aided by the patient example
and quiet influence of Charlotte, gradually drew him
back to his religion. On her gentle nature, deep sorrow
exercised a heavenly influence, and unable to find happiness
on earth, she looked forward with the strong hope
of the christian, for a resting place in Heaven. Affliction
had made her a Christian! Her sweet influence drew
Edward back to the altars he had deserted, and as he
kneeled beside her in morning and evening worship,
he felt that chastisement had been indeed a blessing.
His religious exercises at length became weapons for
his neighbors.—They very reasonably thought, that
for a man to pray in his family, morning and night,
and not pay his debts, must be the very height of hypocrisy.

Therefore, his unassuming piety became rather
his own enemy. During all these severe trials,
the gentle Charlotte was his guardian angel. She
checked his murmurings, soothed his wounded spirit,
and poured the balm of consolation into his broken
heart. While he was going from place to place seeking
a situation—for his little school was now entirely
broken up—she was on her knees in her closet, praying
for his success. When he returned wearied and
disappointed, ready to lie down and die with the accumulation
of his sorrows, for their last dollar, (the
remnant of a remittance from Isabel, who knew their
situation, and who sent them every dollar she could
command,) was gone, she exerted all those little tendernesses
of voice and manner which a young affectionate
wife knows so well how to avail herself of, to
encourage him to stem the adverse current. The
last sum they had received from the noble Isabel,
was parted with before night, to an inexorable,
lynx-eyed creditor, who kept up a system of espionage
upon the post office, (for he knew Edward
had received money by letter,) the good natured post
master's lady having sent him the information, that
“a letter containing money had just arrived for `the
teacher.”'

A month after this, a traveller was knocked down
and robbed near the school-house. The same day a
small donation from Isabel arrived, and Edward paid
a small bill with all that his necessities could spare of
it, to save himself from the degradation—worse than
death to his sensitive spirit—of a jail. The bank note,
which he gave in payment chanced to be on the bank
of the United States, and the money of which the traveller
was robbed was in notes on the same national
institution. There was ample proof of guilt where a
poor and friendless man, and withal in debt, was the
suspected person. Edward was arrested on suspicion,

by the very creditor to whom he paid the money, and
no doubt would have fallen a victim to popular prejudice,
had not a negro, while his examination was going
on before the village magistrate, ignorant of its value,
offered a one hundred dollar note on the same bank at
a grocery. He was dragged before the magistrate—
and on the appearance of this more probable criminal,
the justice discharged Edward, unable to prove anything
against him, advising him “to pay his debts and
become an honest man.”

There are men who censure, pity, nay, shun their
neighbors in distress, when by the offer of a fraction
of their means, their countenance or advice, they might
advance him to a situation where he would command
their respect, instead of exciting their contempt or commiseration.
The magistrate was wealthy and a bachelor,
and might have enabled Edward to follow his insulting
advice, without the diminution of a single
bottle of wine a year, or a less quantum of sleep. But
Edward was poor and in debt—two very excellent
and sufficient reasons why he should not receive assistance.
Through the hands of this magistrate, who
was a member of the church, and ate and drank at the
communion table, had passed all the demands against
Edward. He consequently was aware of his circumstances,
his resources, and his inabiltty to liquidate his
debts, nevertheless took no steps to relieve him. Yet
this man was a Christian, made long prayers at
monthly concerts, and professed to love his neighbor
as himself! How little there is to distinguish the professor
from the non-professor, in the daily transactions
of life!

From the moment of his arrest, Edward abandoned
himself to his fate, and sat for hours, without speaking,
beside his patient and dying wife, for unexpressed
grief was silently, like the worm in the bud, feeding
upon her damask cheek, and sapping at the germ of

life. At this period of their melancholy existence,
when she began to look forward to the hopes and pleasures
of a mother; Charlotte addressed the letter to
her sister, with which we commenced this tale of real
life.