Camioli had been some time concealed in Ireland. He now entered his
Brother Sir Everard’s door. Upon that night he was seized with illness,
before he had time to explain his intentions. He had placed a bag of
gold in the hands of his brother; and now, in the paroxysm of his
fever, he called upon his daughter; he urged those who attended on
him to send for her, that he might once again behold her. “I am come
to die in the land of my father,” he said. “I have wandered on these
shores to find if all I heard were true. Alas! it is true; and I wish
once more to see my unhappy child—before I die.”
They wrote to Elinor; they told her of her father’s words. They said:
“Oh, Elinor, return; ungrateful child—haste thee to return. Thy father
is taken dangerously ill. I think some of the wretches around us
have administered poison to him. I know not where to find thee. He
has called thrice for thee; and now he raves. Oh hasten; for in the
frantic agony of his soul, he has cursed thee; and if thou dost not
obey the summons, with the last breath of departing life, he will
bequeath thee his malediction. O, Elinor, once the pride and joy
of thy father’s heart, whom myself dedicated as a spotless offering
before the throne of Heaven, as being too fair, too good for such a
lowly one as me—return ere it be too late, and kneel by the bed of
thy dying father. This is thy house. It is a parent calls, however
unworthy; still it is one who loves thee; and should pride incline
thee not to hear him, O how thou wilt regret it when too late—Ever,
my child, thy affectionate, but most unhappy uncle,
“EVERARD ST. CLARE.”
She received not the summons—she was far distant when the letter was
sent for her to the mountains. She received it not till noon; and
the bard’s last hour was at hand.
Miss Lauriana St. Clare then addressed her—“If any feeling of mercy
yet warms your stubborn heart, come home to us and see your father,
ere he breathe his last. ’Tis a fearful sight to see him: he raves for
you, and calls you his darling and his favourite—his lost lamb, who
has strayed from the flock, but was dearer than all the rest. Miss
Elinor, I have little hopes of stirring your compassion; for in the
days of babyhood you were hard and unyielding, taking your own way,
and disdaining the counsel of such as were older and wiser than you.
Go too, child; you have played the wanton with your fortune, and the
hour of shame approaches.”
Miss St. Clare heard not the summons—upon her horse she rode swiftly
over the moors—it came too late—Camioli had sickened in the morning,
and ere night, he had died.
They wrote again: “Your father’s spirit has forsaken him: there is no
recall from the grave. With his last words he bequeathed his curse
to the favourite of his heart; and death has set its seal upon the
legacy. The malediction of a father rests upon an ungrateful child!”
Elinor stood upon the cliff near Craig Allen Bay, when her father’s
corpse was carried to the grave. She heard the knell and the melancholy
dirge: she saw the procession as it passed: she stopped its progress,
and was told that her father in his last hour had left her his
malediction. Many were near her, and flattered her at the time; but
she heard them not.
Elinor stood on the barren cliff, to feel, as she said, the morning
dew and fresh mountain air on her parched forehead. “My brain beats
as if to madden me:—the fires of hell consume me:—it is a father’s
curse,” she cried; and her voice, in one loud and dreadful shriek,
rent the air. “Oh it is a father’s curse:” then pausing with a fixed
and horrid eye: “Bear it, winds of heaven, and dews of earth,” she
cried: “bear it to false Glenarvon:—hear it, fallen angel, in the dull
night, when the hollow wind shakes your battlements and your towers,
and shrieks as it passes by, till it affrights your slumbers:—hear
it in the morn, when the sun breaks through the clouds, and gilds
with its beams of gold the eastern heavens:—hear it when the warbling
skylark, soaring to the skies, thrills with its pipe, and every note
of joy sound in thy ear as the cry of woe. The old man is dead, and
gone: he will be laid low in the sepulchre: his bones shall be whiter
than his grey hairs. He left his malediction upon his child. May it
rest with thee, false Glenarvon. Angel of beauty, light, and delight
of the soul, thou paradise of joys unutterable from which my heart is
banished, thou God whom I have worshipped with sacrilegious incense,
hear it and tremble. Amidst revels and feastings, in the hour of love,
when passion beats in every pulse, when flatterers kneel, and tell
thee thou art great, when a servile world bowing before thee weaves
the laurel wreath of glory around thy brows, when old men forget
their age and dignity to worship thee, and kings and princes tremble
before the scourge of thy wit—think on the cry of the afflicted—the
last piercing cry of agonizing and desperate despair. Hear it, as
it shrieks in the voice of the tempest, or bellows from the vast
fathomless ocean; and when they tell thee thou art great, when they
tell thee thou art good, remember thy falsehood, thy treachery. Oh
remember it and shudder, and say to thyself thou art worthless, and
laugh at the flatterers that would deny it.”