Fancy the torture of such a situation to a high-principled and sensitive girl! Reardon was true to his word, and her story was listened to incredulously by the maid, the only person beside himself who was allowed access to her during the voyage. By the time they reached New York her spirit was completely broken, and her health in an alarming state of decay. This enraged Reardon, and he brutally reproached her with grieving over my loss. Indeed, I believe he sometimes proceeded beyond reproaches toward his helpless and now uncomplaining victim. She bore it all in silence, for she felt that death would soon release her from the sufferings she endured.
On their arrival in this city Reardon procured a house, and set his servant as a spy on her during his absence from home. Alice made an attempt to escape from his power, determined to throw herself on the protection of the first person she met who looked as if he might give credence to her story. The servant followed and brought her back to her prison, and when Reardon returned, his anger knew no bounds. Then I know he struck her, for she fell with violence against the sharp corner of a table; and that blow upon her breast hastened the doom that was already impending over her.
To die with him was horrible, and she next found means, through the agency of an intelligent child, who sometimes played beneath her window to send to one of the city papers a letter containing an advertisement addressed to her unknown uncle. She knew that Reardon never read any thing, and equally well, that there was little danger of being discovered by him in this last effort to escape from the horrible thralldom in which she was held.
Several weeks rolled away—weeks of sickening doubts and harrowing fears; but, at length, the hour of her rescue came. One morning, shortly after Reardon had left the house, a carriage stopped before the door, containing an elderly lady and gentleman, who inquired for Alice. It was her uncle and his wife, and after hearing her story he instantly removed her to his hotel, from whence in another hour they started for his residence in the interior of the State, thus eluding all chances of discovery by Reardon.
It was a mere chance that the advertisement had reached Mr. Crawford. When it did, he lost no time in seeking his brother's daughter, and offering her his protection. Alice felt assured that I would follow her, and she yearned to behold me once more, before her eyes closed forever in this world. Yes, she was dying of a broken heart, while I madly plowed the ocean in pursuit of her destroyer. The ship was detained by long calms, and I bowed in abject supplication to the God of the storm, to send us wind that might waft me to the land I so ardently desired to behold. At last, haggard from intense suffering, and half-maddened with the fever of my mind, I stood upon the sod of the New World.
I at once sought out the post-office, for I knew if still living, Alice would there have deposited a clew to her abode. I found a letter from her uncle directing me to his residence, and the last words sent a cold and sickening thrill through my soul: "Come as soon as this reaches you, if you would find Alice alive; her only desire is now to behold you," he wrote. The letter bore the date of the previous month. If I could but see her again, I felt that I could resign her; but to behold no more the being who had become so knit to my very existence; to find the grave closed over that form of unequaled beauty, was a thought which made my brain whirl and my blood grow cold. I learned the route to——, near which place was Mr. Crawford's residence. I took my seat in the first stage-coach which left for that town, and was borne toward my dying Alice. I can not tell you how the day and night which I spent on the road passed. I know that my mind was not perfectly clear; but one idea filled it: Alice, dead or dying, and I condemned to live forever alone. In this wide and breathing world, so filled with human aspirations and human hopes, I felt myself doomed to wander without ties and without sympathy. Then came the image of him who had thus desolated my path, and at once a fixed resolve filled my mind.
When we stopped, I mechanically ate, because I feared that without nourishment the unnatural tension of my nerves might incapacitate me from going through with the trying ordeal which awaited me. I at length reached the house. I dismounted at the gate, and walked up the avenue. My feet seemed glued to the ground, and I faltered like a drunken man, as I slowly drew near the portico, afraid to learn that I had arrived too late.
A gentleman met me at the door, and my parched lips syllabled the name of Alice. He read the question I would have asked, in my agonized and distorted countenance. "She lives," he said, and led me toward her apartment.
The doors were all wide open, for it was summer, and in a darkened room, on a bed whose snowy drapery was scarcely whiter than her face, lay my adored Alice in a calm slumber. I approached and leaned over her: then I could mark the ravages which suffering had made on her sweet features; but I read on her tranquil brow, and in the subdued expression of her small mouth, that the angel of peace had folded his wings over her departing spirit. I felt that her trust in a higher Power had subdued the bitterness of approaching death, and I prayed fervently to be enabled even then to say: "My God, not my will, but Thine be done;" but my rebellious heart would not thus be schooled. A moment I dared to ask why she, who loved all human beings, would turn aside from her path to spare the meanest insect that crawls, should have this unutterable load of suffering laid upon her? My burning tears fell over her; I knew not that I wept, until she unclosed her eyes, and wiped from her cheek a lucid drop which had fallen there. She gazed upon me with a radiant smile; a bright gleam from the heaven to which she was hastening seemed to shine over her lovely countenance, and she stretched forth her emaciated hands to me:
"Ah, I dreamed this. I knew you would come. Heaven is kind to permit another earthly meeting, before I go hence. My beloved Erlon, you are just in time!"