V. The Trial and its Effects.
The grand council-chamber of the palace was presently crowded with courtiers, officers of the guard, sicaries, mandarins, and pashas,—at the head of whom, seated by his queen, and attended by a magnificent suite of pages sat Pokatoka, King of Gazaret. At a desk, immediately under the throne, sat a venerable Arabian writer, versed in hieroglyphics, and ready to take the minutes of the whole proceedings. Ranged around, stood a number of beautiful Circassians, Georgians, Nubians, and Abyssinians—slaves and witnesses from the king’s harem; but the diamond of these gems was Omanea, arraigned on charge of having unlawfully bestowed her heart on Yoo-ti-hu. The fact is, Tally-yang-sang was determined that the lovers should both be condemned, and had thus prepared matters for the prosecution. In order to establish the truth of his charge, he remained—much to the edification of the young slaves by whom he was surrounded—in the same plight in which the king had met him.
“Quintessence of piety and disciple of wisdom,” said the king, “proceed with thy charge.”
“Know then, courtiers, rajas, mandarins and officers of the guard,” quoth Tally-yang-sang, “that Yoo-ti-hu hath stolen the heart of Omanea, and that his highness, the king, commanded me to rid the offender of his head. This very evening I roamed in the royal gardens, meditating on the most agreeable plans of decapitation, when I espied the wicked Yoo-ti-hu. Having lured me into a horrid bush, he struck up a tune on his lute—the infernal strains of which caused me to dance till I was fairly torn to shreds—as you all may perceive. Then—”
“Stop there!” cried Pokatoka, “this story of the lute must be established ere you proceed farther.”
“I solemnly beseech your mightiness to take my word,” groaned Tally-yang-sang, eyeing the lute with horror,—“Do, Great King of Gazaret! and the blessings of heaven be on thee!”
“Nay,” cried the king, “we must have a fair and impartial investigation. Yoo-ti-hu, thou art commanded on pain of loosing thy head to strike us a tune on thy lute!”
“For God’s sake,” implored the grand nazir, “since ye must hear it, I pray and beseech ye to bind me to a post.”
Exactly in the middle of the court stood a post, ornamented with divers beautiful designs, carved in wood and in gold; and to this was the chamberlain firmly tied.
“Truth is mighty,” quoth the king, “and will out. So proceed Yoo-ti-hu, in the name of God and Mahommed, his Prophet!”
Yoo-ti-hu forthwith struck up his liveliest air; and lords, rajas, and moguls; sages, philosophers and mamelukes; officers of the guard, sicaries and mandarins; slaves, young and lovely, and old and ugly; disciples of Mahommed; priests, friars, saints and heretics; pages, trainbearers, and virgins of incense—sprang to their feet and danced hither and thither—hornpipe, jig and merry reel—in such glee and confusion as were never heard of before or since. The venerable writer had leaped from the desk—the decrepit Pokatoka from his throne; the sharp-featured old queen from her chair of dignity and joined in the general melee. But the groans of the gouty—the blasphemies of the pious—the laughter of the young—and the remonstrances of the sage, were all drowned in the lusty roars of Tally-yang-sang, who cruelly bruised his head against the post in trying to beat time—tore the live flesh from his back so eager was he to dance—and uttered a horrid imprecation at every ornament on the post.
“Yoo-ti-hu! Yoo-ti-hu!” cried the breathless Pokatoka.
“Yoo-ti-hu!” screamed the dancing queen.
“Yoo-ti-hu! Yoo-ti-hu!” was echoed and re-echoed around by the nobles and courtiers; and to and fro they skipped, as Yoo-ti-hu plied his merriest tunes—the floor groaning—the perspiration streaming from their cheeks; and their breath failing at every jump.
“Dear, pleasant, Yoo-ti-hu,” cried the king, in the heat of a Spanish jig, “I do beseech thee to stop.”
“A thousand seguins for silence!” groaned a gouty raja, prancing high and low in a German waltz.
“I am shamed—disgraced forever!” muttered an Arabian astrologer, in the middle of a Scotch reel.
“Yoo-ti-hu—the devil seize thee!” shouted a pious Musselman.
“Have mercy!” cried a blasphemous heretic.
“Mercy! mercy!” echoed the dancers one and all—“Do, gentle Yoo-ti-hu, have mercy, and cease thy accursed music!”
“Pardon him! pardon him!” roared the magnanimous Tally-yang-sang—his ribs rattling frightfully against the post; “in the name of the prophet pardon him ere I bruise myself into an Egyptian mummy!”
“Yoo-ti-hu cease! thou art pardoned!” cried the king, in a piteous tone, “my seal—my life on it thou shall not be harmed!”
“Very well,” said Yoo-ti-hu, still striking his lute; “but I must have Omanea as a bride.”
“Thou shalt have her!—take her!—she is thine!” shouted the rheumatic monarch.
“Thy oath on it,” quoth Yoo-ti-hu.
“By all that’s sacred—by my beard she is thine!”
Yoo-ti-hu ceased—the dancers, groaning and breathless, returned to their seats—the grand nazir was taken from the post in a pitiable plight—and the pious Musselman ejaculated—“God is great!”
An Arabian historian says that Yoo-ti-hu having espoused Omanea, carried his bride to the kingdom of Bucharia, of which, in the course of time, he became the king; and with his inexhaustible purse built a palace of gold, wherein he reigned for half a century, the mirror of monarchy, and the admiration of mankind.
Louisville, Kentucky, December 14, 1840.
LEAVES FROM A LAWYER’S PORT-FOLIO.
THE AVENGER.
“Slave, I have set my life upon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die.”
Shakspeare.
“I feel that I am dying,” exclaimed the sick man, gazing wistfully toward the window, “and it seems good to me that it should be so. Lift me up a little that I may look upon this April morn, and throw back the curtains that I may feel the sweet breath of heaven once more upon my brow,—there, that will do, God bless you all.”
The speaker was in the last stage of his disease. His eye was sunken, his voice was feeble, his lips were bloodless, his emaciated fingers looked like talons, and his originally handsome countenance, now hollow, pale, and ghastly, seemed already as the face of a corpse. At times his features would twitch convulsively. He breathed quick and heavily.
The balmy air of a spring morning stealing soothingly across his forehead, and tossing his long dark locks wantonly about, appeared for a while to kindle up the fading energies of the dying man, and turning with a faint smile toward me, he said,
“I promised you my history, did I not? Well, I will tell it now, for I feel my sands are running low, and the cistern will soon be broken at the fountain. I have no time to lose; move nigher, for my voice is weak. Put that glass of wine close at your elbow,—I shall want my lips moistened, for my tale is long.
“Do you know what it is to be young? Ah! who does not? Youth is the heaven of our existence. Every thing then is full of poetry. It is the time for love, and song, and more than all for hope. This glorious morning is a type of our youth. The birds sing sweeter than ever; the winds have a music as of heaven; the distant tinkle of the streams is like a fountain-fall in moonlight, and the whole earth seems as if it were one cloudless Eden, where life would pass like a dream of sinless childhood. Poetry! did I say? oh! what is like our youth for that? But more than all, aye! more than music, or beauty, or even those childish dreams, is the poetry of a first pure love! I see by your countenance that you have known what that is. God help me! it has been at once the bliss and the bane of my existence.
“I left the University rich, accomplished, and not without academic fame. My parents were dead, and I had but few relations. Life was before me where to choose. I had every thing to make me happy, but—will you believe me?—I was not so. There was a void within me. I longed for something, and scarcely knew what. It was not for fame, for I had tasted of that, and turned sickened away; it was not for wealth, for I enjoyed enough of that to teach me, it would not satisfy my craving; it was neither fashion nor ease, nor the popularity of a public man; no, from all these I turned away athirst for higher and loftier things. What could it be? At length I learned. My life is dated from that moment.
“It was about a year after I had graduated, when, sick of the world and its emptiness, I left the city, in early summer for a stroll through the mountains of the interior. You have often seen the hills of the Susquehanna: well, I cannot stop to describe them. I was enraptured with their beauty, and determined to loiter among them until September, and so dismissing my servant, I took lodgings in a quiet country inn, and assumed the character of a mountain sportsman. But I delay my story. Hand me the wine and water.
“It was on a sporting excursion that I first saw my Isabel! Oh! if ever the ideal beauty of the ancients, or the dreams we have in childhood of angels’ faces, were realised in a human countenance, they were in that of Isabel. There was a sweetness about it I cannot describe; a purity in every line which breathed alone of heaven. Do you not believe that the face is the impress of the mind; that our prevailing thoughts gradually stamp themselves on our countenances, and that the sinless child and the haggard felon alike carry the mark of their characters written upon their brows? You do. Yes! God branded Cain as a murderer, but it was only the brand of his wild, terrible, agonising remorse.
“From the first moment of my seeing Isabel, I felt that I had met with that for which I had so long sought. The void in my bosom was satisfied. I had found something holier and brighter than I had deemed earth could give birth to, and I almost worshipped the ground where she trod. I loved her with all the poetry and fervor of a first love. She did not seem to me like others of her sex. There was a holiness cast around her like the mantle of a seraph, which awed the beholder into a reverential love. And oh! what bliss it was to gaze upon her face, to hear her lute-like voice, and to feel that I breathed the same air with herself.
“Isabel was the daughter of a village clergyman, who had been poor without being dependent. Her mother had been dead for many years; and her father had followed his wife but a few months before I first met Isabel.
“How could I help loving such a being? Wealth to me was no object: I looked not for it in a bride. I sought for one in whom I might confide every thought, and in finding Isabel my happiness was complete.
“Why should I delay telling the story of my love? Day after day found me at the cottage of Isabel, and day after day I grew more enraptured with her artlessness. Together we read in the mornings; and together we wandered out amidst the beautiful scenery around; and together we sat in the still evening twilight, when my greatest pleasure was to hear her sing some of those simple little lays of which her memory preserved such a store. Ah! those were happy hours,—hours, alas! which can never come again. From such meetings I would loiter home beneath the summer moon, with a thousand bright and joyous, yet undefined feelings, thrilling on every nerve of my frame. And often, as I turned to take a last look at the little white cottage, embowered in its trees, I thought I could detect the form of Isabel, standing where I left her as if she still followed me with her eye.
“It was not long before I declared my love to Isabel, and found that it was returned with all the fervor and purity of her guileless heart. Oh! with what rapturous emotions did I hear the first confession of her sentiments—with what delight did I clasp her hand in mine, as her head lay upon my bosom—what tumultuous feelings thrilled my soul, as her dark eyes looked up into my own, with all that purity and depth of affection which tell that the soul of the gazer is in the look.
“Well, we were married. It was that season of the year in which all nature puts on her autumn glory, and when hill and plain and valley are clothed with a garmenture as of a brighter world. The corn was yellowed for the harvest; the wild flowers were fading from the hill-sides; the grapes hung down in purple clusters from the old, twisted vines in the woods; and the birds, that had been used to sing for us, in every grove, were one by one disappearing, as they took flight for the sunny south. But could I miss their music while Isabel was by to whisper in her fairy voice, or cheer me with her low and witching minstrelsy? Was I not happy—wholly, supremely happy? It was as if I dwelt in an enchanted land. I forgot, almost, that I was a member of society; saw but little company; and spent the day with Isabel in rambling around the mountain, or when confined by the weather to the house, in a thousand little fireside amusements. We talked of the past, of our plans for the future, of the hollowness of the great world without, and of that mutual love for each other which we felt could not be eradicated by the power of a universe. Isabel was all I had imagined her in my fondest moments. Like myself, she turned away from the companionship of a selfish world, and sought only to spend life afar from human strife, secure in the possession of the one she loved. Alas! little did she think that the thunder-cloud was hanging, dark and lowering, above us, which would eventually burst, and bring ruin on our unsheltered heads.
“We saw but little company, I have remarked; but among that little was one with whom, as subsequent events developed, my destiny was inextricably woven. He was an old classmate in the University, whom I had casually met at the neighboring county-town; where he resided in the capacity of a medical man. Our former intimacy was revived; for Robert Conway was really a fascinating man. It was not long before he became intimate with our little family, and, seduced by his plausible demeanor, I not only engaged him as my family physician, but entrusted him with the nearest and dearest secrets of my heart. I felt the warmest friendship for him, and, next to Isabel, there was no one for whom I would have done so much. I have told you of the poetic nature of my character; you may have also noticed its warmth; and, in the present instance, believing I had found a really disinterested friend, I was hurried away into an infatuation from which I awoke only to find that I had clasped an adder to my bosom, and that—oh! my God—all my hopes of life were blasted forever.
“The winter had already set in, when I received a short letter from my town agent, requesting my immediate presence in the city on business of the last importance to my fortune. As Isabel was in a weak state of health, and would not be able to accompany me, I returned an answer, stating my inability to comply with the summons, and declaring my willingness to suffer even some pecuniary loss, rather than leave her at that time.
“In less than a fortnight, however, I received a still more pressing letter from my correspondent, declaring that my absence had already prejudiced my fortune, and that nothing but my personal presence could, in the then distracted state of monetary affairs, preserve myself from beggary. This was an appeal which, for Isabel’s sake, I could not resist. That the being whom I loved above myself should be subjected to the miseries of poverty, was a supposition too harrowing to entertain.
“Never shall I forget the eve of the morning on which I departed. It was one of surpassing beauty. The landscape without was covered with a mantle of snow, and the trees were laden with icicles spangled in the star-light. The heavens were without a cloud, and the innumerable worlds above, glittered on the blue expanse like jewels on the mantle of a king. It was, in short, one of those clear, cold nights in early February, when the very ringing of a sleigh-bell can be heard for miles across the still expanse of the landscape.
“As Isabel and I stood looking through the casement at the brilliancy of the starry hosts on high, a melancholy foreboding suddenly shot across my mind that we were parting to meet no more. I know not how it was, but the same feeling pervaded the thoughts of Isabel; for as a meteor-star darted across the sky, and instantly disappeared, she heaved a sigh, and, turning toward me, said, as she leaned upon my arm, and gazed confidingly up into my face,—
“ ‘Do you know, George, that, during all the evening I have been tortured with a foreboding that our happiness is destined, like yonder shooting-star, to last only for a while, and then pass away forever? It may be that this is our last evening. I cannot tell in what shape the impending evil will come,’ she said, ‘but this I know, that be it what it may, we shall always love each other, shall we not, George?’
“ ‘Yes, dearest!’ I replied, kissing her, ‘but dismiss these gloomy thoughts; they arise only from your ill-health. Believe me, we shall continue for long, long years to enjoy our present felicity.’ Ah! me, little did my own feelings coincide with what I said. ‘Cheer up, dearest, I shall return in a fortnight or so, and by that time shall be able to assure you that I shall leave you no more.’
“With words like these I attempted to remove the forebodings of Isabel, but though she smiled faintly in return, I found that I could not wholly dispel the melancholy of her thoughts. I dreaded the parting on the morrow, and accordingly, having deceived her as to the hour of my setting forth, I rose at day-break, kissed her as she lay calmly sleeping, and, tearing myself from her, entered the mail-stage, and before the hour when we usually arose, was miles away from our habitation.
“I reached the city, and found my fortune, indeed, trembling on the verge of ruin. For some days its preservation engaged every faculty of my mind, and I found time for nothing else, unless it was to read and answer the letters I daily received from my sweet wife. The times were critical. Stocks of every kind—and nearly my whole fortune was vested in them—were undergoing a fearful depreciation; and one or two heavy loans which had been made out of my estate, and which completed the balance of my wealth, were in a most precarious situation. I soon found it would not only be impossible to settle my affairs so as to rejoin Isabel at the end of the fortnight, but that I must undertake a journey, personally, to a southern city, which would delay me at least a month more; and, accordingly, I penned a hasty note to her on the eve of my setting out, bidding her look forward, at the expiration of this new term, to a happy meeting, and informing her at what post-towns I should look for letters from her.
“I set forth on the ensuing day, but, though I enquired at the various post-offices along my route, where I expected letters, yet I did not receive a line from Isabel; and the first epistle which I obtained was a letter which I found lying for me, on my arrival at the port of my destination. It had come from P——, and was written prior to Isabel’s knowledge of my second journey. I have it still by me; every line of it is graven on my heart; my only prayer is that it may be buried with me, for alas!—it is the last letter I ever received from Isabel.
“As day after day rolled by without receiving any intelligence from her, I grew more and more uneasy, until, as the term of my absence drew toward a close, my sensations approached to agony. A few disappointments I had borne with fortitude, if not with calmness, for I knew that the mail was not always regular; but when days grew into weeks, and weeks had almost grown into months, without the arrival of a single line from Isabel, either directly from our residence, or indirectly by the way of P——, nay fears grew insupportable. I was like Prometheus chained to a rock, and subject to a torture from which there was no escape. At length I could endure it no longer, but hastily bringing my business to a close, even at a considerable sacrifice, I set out by rapid journeys toward my home, without even passing by P——, such was my eagerness to know what could have been the cause of Isabel’s silence.
“It was on an evening in the latter part of the month of March, when my jaded horses drew up before the gate of my dwelling. Hastily alighting, I entered the little lawn, and was soon at my long-sought-for threshold. But I started back at the sight that met my eyes. The windows were dark and cheerless; the grass was covered with leaves and broken twigs; the knobs upon the door were soiled for want of burnishing; and everything around wore that appearance of loneliness and desolation which marks an uninhabited house. With a fainting heart I lifted the knocker. The sounds echoed with hollow distinctness through the house; but no one replied to the summons. Again and again I repeated it; and again and again I was unsuccessful. With a heart wild with the most terrible fears I passed to the back part of the house; but there, too, I found the same silence and desolation. It was like the house of the dead. Unable longer to contain myself I rushed back to my carriage, and with an air that made the coachman believe me insane, ordered him to drive to a neighboring farm-house.
“ ‘Who’s there?’ asked a female voice from inside of the cottage, in answer to my impetuous knock.
“ ‘I, madam, do you not know me? But where, in heaven’s name, is Isabel? where is my wife?’ I exclaimed, seeing by the astonished looks of the woman, that she, too, believed me out of my senses, ‘what is the matter at my house, that I find it closed?’
“ ‘Oh! la,’ answered the woman, curtseying as she held the candle to my face, ‘you are the gentleman that lived at the big house nigh to the stage-road, across the creek. Gracious me! how wild you look. But, sit down, sir; we ain’t very nice just now, for baby’s sick, and we can’t afford help—’
“ ‘Woman,’ I exclaimed, vehemently interrupting her, and seizing her fiercely by the arm, ‘in God’s name tell me all. Answer me at once—is my wife dead?’ and though my voice grew husky, it trembled not, as I put the fearful question.
“ ‘Dead! why indeed I don’t know, sir,’ she answered, tremblingly, awed by my wild demeanor, ‘for it’s been nigh a month since she left here to join her husband.’
“ ‘To join me!’
“ ‘Yes, sir. Why didn’t you,’ she asked, perceiving surprise in every feature of my countenance, ‘write for her? The neighbors all say so, and Dr. Conway went to see her safe to town; though it’s queer, now, since I think on’t, that he ain’t got back agin by this time.’
“ ‘My God,’ I exclaimed, staggering back, as a fearful suspicion flashed across my mind, ‘was I reserved for this? Oh! Isabel, Isabel—’ But I could say no more. My brain reeled; my temples throbbed to bursting; a strange, swimming sensation was in my ears; every thing appeared to whirl around and around me; and, losing all consciousness, I fell back, senseless, on the floor.
“When I recovered my recollection, I was leaning against the bed, and a group, composed of the woman to whom I had been speaking, her husband, and a farm boy, stood around me. My cravat was untied, and my brow was wet with water.
“ ‘My good woman,’ I said faintly, ‘I feel better now. Go on with your story; I can bear to hear the worst. God help me, though,’ I continued, placing my hand upon my forehead, ‘it has well nigh drove me mad.’
“She had, however, but little to tell, beyond what I knew already. But her husband added, that after my departure, he had noticed that not a day passed without his seeing the vehicle of Dr. Conway in front of my house; and that, too, long after the returning health of my wife rendered professional visits unnecessary. He had thought, he said, it singular, but, as he was not given to gossip, he had kept silence. About a month since, he added, the house had been shut up, and, under pretence of rejoining me, Isabel had set out, no one knew whither, with my old classmate.
“Oh! who can tell the feelings that, during this recital, and for days after, raged in my bosom? The evidence was unquestionable, irresistible, damning in its character. And yet I could not—though every one else did—believe Isabel to be guilty. She was too pure, too artless, too ardently attached to me. But, then again, how could I resist the testimony staring me in the face? The visits of Conway; his fascinating manners; the false report of my having written for her; and her flight with the seducer, no one knew whither, were circumstances which my reason could not answer, whatever my assurance of her love might persuade me. Who knows not the pangs, the torments of uncertainty? And day after day, while my enquiries of the fugitives were being pushed in every quarter, did I fluctuate between a confidence in Isabel’s purity, and the most fearful suspicions of her faith. It was a terrible struggle, that one in her favor. But at length, as every successive informant brought new proofs of her infidelity, I settled down into the agonising belief of her ruin.
“Yet I did not give up my pursuit of the fugitives. No—my God! how could I forget my shame? The dearest hopes of my heart had been overthrown, and she, in whom I had trusted as man never before trusted, had wantonly deserted me—aye! even while my own kisses were still, as it were, warm upon her cheek. I had sacrificed everything at the shrine of her love; was this the return my devotedness had met with? What! she whom I had pressed to my bosom as a wife,—she whom I had made the incarnation of all ideal loveliness, to be—oh! that I should have to speak the word—a mere wanton. God of my fathers! was this the destiny to which I was condemned?
“I am calmer now. I must hurry on, for my breath is rapidly failing me. My brow burns: bathe it—there, that will do. And open the window. There is something in this gentle, balmy breeze, fragrant with a thousand odors, which calls back the memory of happy days, and almost makes me weep. God grant that none of you may ever suffer as I have suffered.
“I pass by three months, three long and weary months, during which I received no tidings of the fugitives. They had never been in P——; even my epistle announcing my departure to the south had never been received by Isabel, but had been sent, with most of the ensuing ones, as a dead letter to Washington. I traced the fugitives only for a single stage; there every clue to them was lost. At length I was about giving over in despair, when chance revealed what I had so long sought for in vain.
“Did you ever visit an Insane Hospital? You start. Ah! you know nothing of its horrors unless you have seen your dearest friend writhing beneath the keeper’s lash, or chained like a felon by his infernal fetters. Do you understand me? No! the truth is too horrible for you to suspect. Well, then, it was in visiting one of these loathsome prison-houses that I saw and recognised, in one of its miserable victims, my own, my lost, my now suffering Isabel.
“You need not think that I shall grow phrenzied by this harrowing recital. I have thought of it too often, and endured subsequent agonies too great, to suffer myself now to lose my reason in reciting it. But neither will I dwell upon that awful meeting. Suffice it to say that all my anger against Isabel departed when I saw her, who had once lain pure and trusting on my bosom, confined as a maniac, in a public hospital. Oh! I would give worlds could I shut out that horrid sight.
“I soon learnt all from the keeper. Isabel had been placed there nearly four months before, by a woman I instantly recognised from his description, to be the one I had procured at my marriage to wait upon Isabel. She had stated that the patient was a half sister, and had left an address where she might be found.
“As the rules of the establishment precluded all hope of my removing Isabel, in spite of my protestations that I was her husband, unless I brought her pretended relative, to corroborate my account, I was compelled to rest satisfied with the melancholy pleasure of knowing, that her disease should receive at my expense, the attention of the best physicians, and with the renewed hope of discovering her waiting woman, and thus removing my wife from what I felt was worse than death. Guilty as she was, she was still my wife, and I could not utterly desert her.
“I entertained little doubt of discovering this woman, although as might have been supposed, her address was fictitious. I had, in fact, a means of finding her out which I did not scruple to adopt. She had been an English woman, and had often boasted of rich relations across the Atlantic, to whom in her simple vanity, she one day expected to be heiress. As I knew that, at most, she could only have connived at my wife’s disgrace, and as I knew also that money was the touch-stone of every avenue to her heart, I had no doubt whatever as to the success of the scheme I intended to put in execution. It was simply this: I caused an advertisement to be extensively circulated, describing her and her relationship to her English cousin, and informing her that if she would apply at a certain office in P——, she would hear of something to her advantage. The bait took. She came in person; I was instantly sent for, and confronted her. But to come at once to the conclusion of this part of my story; she owned, upon my threats, and promises of forgiveness with a large sum of money if she would confess all, that she could satisfy every particular as yet unknown to me, of this melancholy tragedy.
“She stated, in effect, that Conway, from the first moment he had beheld Isabel, had entertained a passion for her, which neither the favor he had received from me, nor her own purity, nor the impassable barriers against its gratification, had enabled him to conquer. Indeed it is questionable if he ever cared to do so. Wilful, headstrong, remorseless, and careless of every thing but the gratification of his desires, he was perhaps one of the most hardened villains that ever cursed mankind; a villain the more dangerous, because his fascinating manners enabled him to wear the guise of virtue, and perpetrate his infamous designs without suspicion. But in laying himself out to seduce Isabel, he capped the climax of his villainy. For a long time, however, he only attempted to gain the good will of Isabel, and to seduce by large presents, her waiting woman to his side. As yet he had not ventured to breathe a word of his unholy passion to its object. But my departure opened new hopes. Flattered and deceived by the attentions paid him by Isabel,—attentions which I now learned with the wildest joy, were only paid to him because he was my friend,—he now resolved to make a bold throw in his perilous game. He knew my writing well. In a word, he forged a letter purporting to be from me, to Isabel, requesting her to join me in P——, under his escort; and by these means he placed my unhappy wife wholly in his power. As she would not travel without her waiting woman, he was forced to make her his confidant, and purchase her secrecy by large sums of money. But why linger on this awful history? Demons themselves would shudder at its relation. I cannot—yes! I must tell it. Repulsed by Isabel with scorn, when, on the second day, he ventured to declare his passion, he told her, with the mockery of a fiend, as he pointed to the lonely inn where they then were, that resistance was useless. Yes!—here, hold down your ear, closer, let me whisper it only; he used force; God of heaven, there was none to save her from the monster’s fangs!
“There—there—it is over: unhand me I say. But forgive me: I am well nigh crazed: I know not what I do. Some of that drink. Bless you for fanning my poor, aching brow; I believe sometimes that I am becoming a child again. Those tears have relieved me. I am so weak now that they come involuntarily into my eyes, but time was when it seemed as if they had been dried up forever at their fountain, and when, in my unutterable agony, I would have given worlds to weep.
“I forgot to tell you that I felled that hag to the ground like an ox, when she told me that fearful tale. I could not help it. A woman! and stand by merciless! Oh! my God it was too much.
“And Isabel then was innocent. Aye! it had driven her mad. Oh! I could have crept on my hands and knees to her feet, for a whole life-time; if by so doing I could only have won from her forgiveness, for suspecting for a single moment, her angel purity. But it was not so to be. It was my fitting punishment. In the inscrutable designs of that Providence, before whose bar I shall so soon appear, it was decreed that I should never more see Isabel in the possession of her reason. She died. I had only time to hurry from that strange recital to behold her last moments. Never, never shall I forget that sight.
“She was evidently in the last stage of her malady when I entered the chamber where she lay; and as she turned her wild, and wasted, but still beautiful countenance toward me as the door opened, I burst into a flood of tears, and could scarcely stagger to a seat at her bedside. I suffered more—will you believe it?—in that moment than I had ever done before. Our first meeting; our early love; our auspicious union; our days of after felicity; that long to be remembered night of our separation; and all the hideous succession of ensuing events whirled through my brain as if a wild, shadowy phantasmagoria was revolving, with the swiftness of thought, around me. But more than all my injustice toward her smote me to the heart. Could I look upon that emaciated face, in every line of which was stamped sufferings the most extreme, and not feel its silent though unconscious reproaches? I bent over and kissed her cheek. As I did so a hot tear-drop fell upon her face.
“ ‘Who is it weeps?’ faintly said my dying wife, looking vacantly into my face, ‘ah! I know you not. You are not him. When will he come, when will he come?’ she continued, in a plaintive tone, drawing tears from every eye. She was dreaming still that she awaited my return at our far-off-home. Thank heaven! all else was forgot.
“At this moment one of the physicians entered the room. Noiseless as he was, her quick ear detected his footstep. She turned quickly around: a look of disappointment stole over her face. She shook her head mournfully.
“ ‘Why don’t he come?’ she murmured, ‘ah! he has forgotten Isabel. Well,’ she continued, in a tone that almost broke my heart, ‘he may desert me, but never can I desert him.’
“ ‘Isabel—Isabel,’ I ejaculated, unable longer to contain myself, ‘for the love of heaven speak not so. Isabel, dear Isabel, do you know me? Oh! you do. Say, only say you do: one word. Oh! my God, she will never awake to reason.’
“ ‘Did you talk of Isabel?’ she said, looking inquiringly up into my face, and for an instant I fancied the light of intellect shone across those pale, wan features. But alas! if so, it faded like it came. In another moment her eyes assumed their former vacant, yet sorrowful and imploring expression, and turning away she began to sing a snatch of an old song I had taught her in the days of our courtship.
“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.
“On my arrival at that vast metropolis, I instituted a cautious enquiry after his present abode, which I felt certain would ultimately place him within my grasp. Meantime I began a course of daily practice at a neighboring pistol-gallery, and soon became so proficient that I could split a ball, at twelve paces, nine times out of ten, upon the edge of a knife. Nor did I neglect fencing. I became by constant attention an invincible swordsman.
“But months, aye! years elapsed, and still he evaded my grasp. He hurried from one land to another, under a dozen disguises, but though delayed by my anxiety to be perfectly certain of the road he had adopted, I was ever like the blood-hound on his path. Fly where he would, the AVENGER OF BLOOD was behind him. Thrice he flew to Paris, once he hurried to Rome, twice he hid himself in the Russian capital, four times he visited England under different names, two several times he crossed and re-crossed the Atlantic, and once for nearly a whole year, during which he went on a voyage to Calcutta, I almost lost sight of him. But I recovered the clue at his return. Years had only whetted my appetite for revenge. My determination was when I met him, to goad him by insult into an honorable encounter, and if this could not be done, to shoot him in the street like a dog.
“Fortune favored me at length. It was scarcely a month after his return from the East Indies, when I learned that three days before he had set out for Paris. Thither, like the angel of death, I pursued him.
“It was the second night of my arrival at Paris, when I stepped into a noted gambling-house in the Rue des ——. The apartment was brilliantly lighted, and in the ostentatious luxury of its furniture reminded one of a fairy palace. It was densely crowded. I sauntered up to a table where they were playing vingt et un, and carelessly threw down a guinea upon the chance. I won. I was about turning indifferently away, when an individual approached the table, whom, even under his disguise, I recognised, in a moment, to be Conway. He threw down his stake. At that instant his eye caught mine. Never had I seen human countenance change so fearfully as his did during the instant of recognition. It quivered in every nerve. He turned paler than ashes. I looked at him, for a moment, sternly and calmly. His eye fell before mine. In an instant, however, he recovered, in a measure, his equanimity, and turning away with an air of affected indifference, whistled a careless tune. I stepped up to him.
“ ‘Dr. Conway,’ said I, ‘you are a scoundrel.’
“ ‘Sir, sir,’ stammered the abashed villain in French, affecting not to know me, ‘you mistake your man. I am Monsieur De Rivers, at your service.’
“ ‘Monsieur De Rivers then, if you please,’ said I, tauntingly, ‘I congratulate you on understanding a language which you affect not to be able to speak.’ The villain crimsoned and was abashed. ‘But think not you shall thus escape. You are my man; and without regard to the name under which at present you choose to go, I pronounce you again to be a scoundrel.’
“ ‘I—I,’ stammered Conway, ‘know you not. The gentleman is mad,’ he said, with a faint smile of contempt, turning to the crowd which had now gathered around us. A scornful look was the only reply. One of them even went so far as to say, shrugging his shoulders,
“ ‘Sacre—why don’t you fight? Can’t you see the gentleman means to insult you.’
“ ‘Crazy, did you say, villain?’ I exclaimed, stepping up to Conway, ‘I am sane enough to see that you are a coward as well as a scoundrel—do you understand me now?’ and deliberately taking him by the nose, I spat in his face.
“ ‘By God, sir,’ said he, his face blanched with rage, making him, for one moment, forget his fears, ‘this is too much. I am at your service. Here is my card. When shall it be?’
“ ‘The sooner the better,’ I hissed in his ear, as he turned to leave the room. ‘Let it be to-night.’
“ ‘Gentlemen,’ interposed a French officer, whom I knew casually, approaching us at my beck, ‘this matter had better be settled at once. Had it not?’ he continued, turning to Conway, or rather to an acquaintance of his, whom my enemy had singled out from the crowd as we left the room.
“ ‘Yes! let it be at once—here,’ exclaimed Conway, almost foaming with rage.
“ ‘At once then,’ said the two seconds, simultaneously, ‘step this way.’
“We followed as they lead; and passing up a staircase before us, we soon found ourselves in a small, dimly lighted room, about twelve feet square.
“ ‘We shall be free from observation here,’ said my second, as he closed and double-locked the door.
“During this brief remark the other officer had been engaged in an earnest conversation with his principal; and after a silence of some minutes on our part, he crossed the room, and addressed a few words to my second. After the other had ceased speaking, he continued silent for a few minutes. At length, however, he said,
“ ‘Well, I will make your proposition;’ and turning to me he continued, ‘I suppose you are scarcely willing to apologise. The demand comes from your opponent.’
“ ‘Never,’ said I.
“ ‘Then the affair must proceed.’
“ ‘Gentlemen,’ said Conway’s second, ‘how do you fight? As you are the challenged party the choice is with you!’
“ ‘With pistols—at once—in this room,’ answered my second.
“I observed the cheek of Conway blanch at these words, and his eye became wild and unsettled. He muttered something about the police, the possibility of an interruption, and the unseasonableness of the hour. Even his own second could not restrain an expression of disgust at his cowardice.
“ ‘I can scarcely hold a pistol, much less hit a mark with one,’ whispered Conway to his second; but in the death-like silence the remark was heard distinctly throughout the room.
“ ‘Sacre,’ muttered the officer addressed, but checking his anger, he turned around, and asked our party if we should be put up across the room.
“ ‘No,’ said I, ‘Dr. Conway has declared he knows nothing of the use of the weapon I have chosen. Villain as he is, I do not wish to take advantage of him. Let us fire across this table,’ said I, touching one about four feet wide with my foot, ‘or if that will not suit him, we will cut for the highest card, and the loser shall bare his breast to the pistol of the other.’
“ ‘My God! do you mean to murder me?’ said Conway, trembling like an aspen, and scarcely able to articulate.
“ ‘Murder you! No, miscreant, though you have murdered one dearer to me than life—one, whom friendship, if not gratitude should have preserved—one who now lies in her early grave; while you, for years since her death, have been insulting man and God by your continued existence.
“ ‘What do you choose?’ asked my second sternly, as soon as I had ceased, ‘it were better for all that this matter should be closed at once.’
“ ‘We cut for the chance,’ said Conway’s second.
“The cards were brought, shuffled, and placed upon the table. I signed to Conway to take one. He stepped hurriedly up, and with a trembling hand, drew. It was a king. A smile of sardonic triumph lighted up every feature of his countenance. My second looked aghast. Yet, in that moment, my confidence did not forsake me; not a nerve quivered, as I advanced proudly to the table and drew my card. It was an ace.
“ ‘Oh! my God, it is all over,’ almost shrieked the miserable Conway, flinging his card down in despair, ‘is there no hope?’ he said, turning wildly to his second, ‘oh! shew me a chance,’ he continued, addressing me, ‘for my life. Don’t murder me in cold blood. Don’t—don’t—don’t,’ and he fell on his knees before me, raising his hands imploringly to me, while the big drops of sweat rolled from his face.
“ ‘Take your place across the table,’ said I sternly to him, ‘put a pistol into his hands. Villain as he is, he is too miserable a coward to be shot down unresisting—though he would have granted me no such favor had the chance been his.’
“They placed him in his position. No words were spoken. Not many seconds elapsed before the word was given, and we both fired simultaneously. I felt a slight, sharp puncture in my side; and I knew I was wounded. But as the smoke wreathed away from before me, I beheld Conway leap toward the ceiling convulsively, and fall, the next instant, dead across the table. He had been shot through the heart. Isabel was AVENGED.
“I fled from Paris. I reached here, saw you, have adjusted my affairs under your supervision, and am dying of that wound.”
Reader, that night he expired.
D.
Philadelphia, December, 1840.
LANGUAGE OF THE WILD FLOWERS.
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BY THOMAS DUNN ENGLISH, M. D.
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