Graham's Magazine, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, January 1841Various
General
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, January 1841
Various
Literature -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals
“It flashed across me that, by singing the following verse, I might
possibly touch a link in her memory, and recall her to reason. I
mentioned it to the physicians. They implored me to do so. I obeyed.
“‘Who sang that?’ suddenly exclaimed the sufferer, starting half up in
bed, and looking eagerly around, ‘it seems, I do believe, as if it was
the voice of George,’ and lifting up her hand to command silence, she
bent her ear down to catch the sounds.
“There was not a dry eye in the room. My own tears came fast and thick;
and my utterance became so choked that I could not proceed.
“The hopes we had again entertained by her sudden question, seemingly so
rational, were the next instant dissipated, by her dropping her hand,
and sinking back upon the pillows, in a state approaching to
insensibility. Need I delay? From that stupor, gradually becoming deeper
and more profound, she never awoke; or rather awoke only in that better
world where she found relief from all her sorrows, and where, if earthly
suffering, or earthly purity can avail aught, she is now one of the
brightest of the redeemed.
“Ah! you may well shed tears. It were enough to make angels weep, that
death-bed! Night and day, in illness or health, here or in another
continent, that closing scene of her life has been present to me, urging
me on to avenge her wrongs.
“We buried her. Far away from the spot where she died, amid the green
old hills of her birth, and in the quiet, little church-yard where her
father and mother slept, we laid her down to her rest; and my last
prayer is that I too may be buried there, side and side with that sweet
suffering angel.
“I was from that moment her Avenger. I sought out her waiting woman
again, and learning from her all the information she could give me
respecting the retreat to which Conway had fled, I set out in his
pursuit. But her information was too scanty to avail me aught. Conway
had left her money enough to bear his victim to P——, and then, alarmed
at the catastrophe, fled she knew not whither. Once or twice since,
however, he had remitted her small sums of money by mail, enjoining on
her continued secrecy. The letters were post-marked New York.
“Thither I went. But all my enquiries were useless. After a search of a
month I was no nearer to the attainment of my object, than on the day
when I first set forth in pursuit of Conway.
“But did my zeal abate? How could it when that death-bed scene was
ringing its cry for vengeance night and day in my ears? No. I had stood
beside the grave of Isabel, and vowed to be her Avenger: I had repeated
that vow, night and morning since; and I would spend the last cent of my
fortune, and go to the uttermost end of the earth, but what I would yet
fulfil the oath.
“At length I obtained a clue to Conway’s retreat. He had sailed from New
York five months before for London, under an assumed name. I now felt
sure of my prey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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