Part 13

Cornelia's astonishment was not so great as to supersede the active exercise of the benevolence which brought her to his side. She bent down, and placing the lamp on the ground, with her trembling hands attempted to turn the face of the dying person, from the stifling wool in which it was now sunk. When she had accomplished what she wished, her pitying admiration was not less attracted to that face, than it had been to the figure of the unhappy sufferer. It was as pale and motionless as marble; and as perfect in every line of manly lineament, as the finest statue that ever lay under the chizel of the sculptor. A majesty, almost more than human, was stampt in the brow, on which her eyes were rivetted.

A deep groan broke the fixture of his lips. It was that of pain; and she took up the lamp, to see if she could find its immediate cause. She then saw that where his waistcoat was open, the linen on his breast was stained and stiff with blood. His before tranquil features, which had appeared fixed in death, were agitated by an evident sense of acute suffering. She put her hand upon that part of his linen, where the blood-stain was the widest, and in the act, she thought she felt a gaping wound. He shrunk under the touch, and convulsively opened his eyes. They were shut as suddenly, and in a low voice, he hardly articulated--

"Where am I?"

"In a wretched place," replied Cornelia, "but with those who only wait the morning light to bear you to one of comfort."

On the first sounds of her voice, the sufferer appeared to struggle to bear the light with his eyes; but it was beyond their power. He tried to speak:--

"If I live--" said he. But a sudden agony rushing through his frame, arrested the rest; and turning his face again upon the dark pillow, Cornelia thought that moment was his last.

She clasped her hands, in the wordless sympathy of human nature. She was then brought through the horrors of the still raging tempest, at that dismal hour of night, to this lonely hovel, to close the eyes of a forlorn stranger!--To perform the last offices to the beloved son or husband of some tender mother or doating wife, who must "long look for him who never would return!"

"Louis, Louis!" cried she, in the piteous accents of one calling for an assistance they needed, but despaired of its bringing help. Louis heard the cry, and the tone struck him with an alarm that instantly brought him into the hovel. Lorenzo followed his master, and both rushed through the chamber in which she was not to be found, into the one whence the light gleamed. She pointed, without being able to speak, to the heap on the floor. Seeing her so overcome, instead of approaching it, Louis put his arm round her waist to support her. Lorenzo stepped towards the wretched bed, and the rays of the lamp resting upon the marks of blood, he started back, and exclaimed:--

"Santa Maria!--A murdered man!"

Cornelia gasped at this enunciation of his actual death; and Louis, while he held her faster to his heart, instinctively moved towards the terrific object. Her feet readily obeyed the humane impulse of his; and sliding down on her knee by the side of the motionless stranger, she ventured to put her hand on his, expecting to feel the chill of death.

"He is warm!" cried she, looking up in the face of her cousin. He had caught a glimpse of the figure as it lay, and she saw him pale and trembling, while putting away Lorenzo, who leaned over to assist in raising the dying man, he approached close to the bed. He bent to the head that was smothered up in the wool, and touching it with an emotion in his soul he had only felt once before, he turned that lifeless face upwards. He did not gaze on it a moment. His nerveless hands let go their hold, and it would have fallen back into its loathsome pillow, had not the watchful care of Cornelia caught it on her arm.

"My God! my God!" exclaimed he, as recoiling from the bed, he hid his face in his hands; "to what am I reserved?"

Cornelia did not move from her position, but her eyes were now fixed on her cousin. The emotions of his mind shook his frame to convulsion, though he gave no second utterance to his thoughts.

"Who was it then, whose deathful face now lay on her arm?" She had seen, by her cousin's countenance, on the first view of the sufferer, that he knew him; and she now contemplated the silent agonies of a more than common grief!--Her hand instinctively moved to the heart of the stranger. "Lorenzo," said she, in a low voice; as if alike afraid to wake the dead, or to disturb the living; "feel! surely there is a pulse!"

Lorenzo obeyed her; but not so gently as her tender touch; and pressing likewise heavily on the body, as he leaned over to examine, the sufferer started in Cornelia's arms, and murmured a few inarticulate sounds. Louis heard them, as a voice from the dead; and springing forward, was again at his side.

"He is wounded, but he lives, Cornelia!" cried he, "we must search his wounds, and he may yet be saved!"

"Who is he?" asked Cornelia, in a tone that echoed the deep interest of his own.

"He is my friend," answered Louis. But he checked himself from saying more, for his heart smote him with the true response: "my bitterest enemy!"

Heavy groans succeeded the few halfuttered sounds from the lips of Wharton; for it was he that Louis recognized in this lone abode of ruffianly murder; and finding that as he and Lorenzo attempted to raise him, the symptoms of pain were always most acute when he appeared to press on the left shoulder; Louis concluded that on that spot was the principal injury. Though the sufferer was evidently sensible to bodily anguish, his other faculties were too confused to shew any perception of what was now passing around him.

On examining farther, which his anxious attendants did with the tenderest care, they found his shoulder dislocated, and a frightful wound in his breast, made by some jagged instrument. The blood was staunched over it by the cold of the night. Louis had no sooner removed the stiffened linen, and a broad blue ribbon, part of which had been stabbed into the wound, than the blood began to flow afresh. Cornelia shuddered as the pure crimson trickled over the hand of her cousin. He shuddered also, but it was from a different reflection. She gave him a cambrick handkerchief from her neck, to well up what she feared might be the last effort of life. The heart's surgery was then in the hands of Louis; and by the time he had bound up the wound, and composed the shoulder, so as to produce the least possible pain until he could reach proper assistance, a servant came in from without, to say the carriage was brought into a tolerable state for proceeding.

On Lorenzo going out to examine, he saw the information was correct; and returning, told his master the extreme violence of the storm having subsided, one of the out-riders had found his way back with tidings of a secure track. Another had been yet more successful, having brought a herdsman, whose cottage he had lit upon; and arousing him, by a promise of reward, had engaged him to guide the carriage over the waste into the direct northern road.

On inquiry of this man, Louis found they were now in the midst of Wansbeck Moor, a terrible wilderness of bituminous slime, exhausted coal-pits, and pasture land, so marshy, that it was rather poison than aliment to the cattle which were so miserably provided, as to be turned on it to graze. But as it possessed a few causeways of firmer texture, which the wretched herdsmen had raised for their own convenience, such tracks were sometimes temptations to less practised travellers to use as cross roads; and often, as might be expected, led them astray, or into no very insignificant nightly perils. This had been the temptation and the issue to the postilions of de Montemar's travelling equipage.

When all was prepared in the coach, the wounded Duke was carried into it between Louis and Lorenzo. None knew who he was, but the bleeding heart of him who had once been his friend. At the unavoidable changes of position, his sufferings became so grievous, that every sound went to the soul of Cornelia; who now felt both for the invalid and her cousin, whose interest in his recovery, she saw, not in words, but in the pale cheek and searching eye with which he composed every thing that could yield him ease.

In her discourses with Louis concerning Germany and Spain, she had heard him speak of estimable persons in both countries; but who of them all, was now before her, she could form no conjecture; for though he spoke of several, with considerable regard, yet he had not given her to understand that he had conceived a friendship for any one of them, so exclusive as that which was now manifested in his silent but ceaseless attentions to the noble stranger. That he was noble in other respects, besides the stamp of nature, was apparent to her, from the ribbon of some order which hung on his breast under his linen. There was a badge suspended to it, which Louis concealed the moment he had extricated the ribbon, by rolling them up, and putting them, without an observation, into his own bosom.

The travellers were now in the carriage, and the rain having ceased, the wind that remained did the service of dispersing the clouds, so that the moon sometimes appeared, and Louis had the hope of reaching Morewick soon after sun-rise. The dell in the Moor, from which they started, was not more than three hours journey to Warkworth; a little town, about two miles from the hall; and he gave orders, that in passing through it, a surgeon should be called up to follow the carriage to Morewick.

As they journeyed forward with the stranger's head in the lap of Cornelia, and Louis supporting his shoulder on his knees; her cousin told her, in a suppressed tone, that it was necessary for a time, the invalid should remain in ignorance that he was at Morewick-hall, and who were his present attendants. "Therefore," continued he, "your Christian charity must take charge of his comforts; and as you love my peace, neither ask his name, not let him hear that of Louis de Montemar!"

"Not ask his name!" repeated Cornelia, looking down upon the deathly face on her lap; "what has he done to be ashamed of it?"

Louis turned almost of the same ashy hue: "do men never seek concealment but from infamy?"

"I would not think so ill of any man you could love;" replied she, "and certainly not of this;" her eye again falling on the finely composed features before her; "for here the finger of heaven seems to have written true nobleness."

"Cornelia;" returned he, "when we obey the commands of Him who told of the Samaritan binding up the wounds of the stranger, and bade us do likewise; he did not say, inquire of his virtues first; but behold his misery, and relieve it!"

There was an air of reproof in this remark; a something of asperity, that Cornelia could not understand; and instead of its raising doubts in her mind relative to the character of the stranger, she cast down her eyes in silence, to conjecture what she had done to merit such unusual harshness from the unerring candour of her beloved cousin. The features her meditating gaze dwelt on, were to her an unimpeachable witness of good within. But what would she have felt, could she have been told at that moment, that the object of Louis's distracted thoughts, and her own then unqualified pity and admiration, was the delusive, treacherous, and out-lawed Duke Wharton!

CHAP. XX.

On the travellers' arrival at Morewick, the orders of its present temporary master were strictly obeyed. Duke Wharton was laid in an airy, but remote chamber; and a surgeon, with every proper assistant, in attendance day and night. The Duke's shoulder was set, and his wound probed. The danger of the latter arose rather from the nature of the weapon by which it was inflicted, than from its depth or direction; but his life hung on the termination of a fever, which, though it did not at first amount to absolute delirium, was continually hovering on its verge.

For swine time he remained in a strange dreamy sort of inanity, which threatened his wound with mortification. But no watching nor hopelessness, could weary the cares of Cornelia. And though she was not the only attendant on his comforts, in his most trance-like distractions, he had yet perception enough to appreciate the tenderness of her hand, when it placed his pillows; and the gentleness of her voice prevailed, when no other could induce him to obey the orders of his medical attendants.

Louis also hovered near; and the medicines passed through his hand to that of Cornelia, when the burning lip of Wharton turned from all other persuasions. As the fever gained ground, his delirium became absolute. Yet it was never violent, but rather uttered itself in low and half articulate murmurs. In its fits, he often muttered the names of de Montemar and Ripperda. When she first heard the latter, her eye instinctively turned upon her cousin, who sat behind the bed curtain; and such an expression of horror was then in his countenance, that it struck her with a nameless terror of some past or coming evil. Louis soon after quitted the room, and he did not return any more that day.

The next morning brought him intelligence that surprised, and increased the present agitated state of his mind. There was pleasure in it; but the accompanying circumstances were of such mingled nature, he could hardly trust his heart to say, "I am glad!"

This surprise was a letter from the Marquis Santa Cruz, dated from Harwich. It requested Louis to join him there without loss of time, to be the conductor of the Marchioness and Lady Marcella to the hospitable shores of Lindisfarne. The Marquis had a particular mission to the Spanish Embassador in London; therefore, could not himself proceed so far northward as the Holy Island, before he had seen that minister. Besides, his daughter's fatigues, from a very boisterous voyage, made his stay at Harwich a little excusable; and there he would remain until his friend should arrive, and relieve him of the care of the two dearest objects of his anxiety, his wife and her invalid child.

On Louis turning to the date of this letter, he found it had been written several days, and must have been unduly delayed in its progress. No time, therefore was to be lost in welcoming his best friends; and, above all, the friends of his father's memory, to the land which, he trusted, was now to be his undisturbed home. And, having dispatched a messenger to prepare his uncle at Lindisfarne for his speedy arrival with the illustrious Spaniards, before he communicated to Cornelia the necessity for his temporary absence, he begged an audience of the Duke's surgeon.

This gentleman answered his agitated inquiry with more truth than sympathy.

"Sir," said he, "if a material change does not take place in the course of eight and forty hours, he will not be alive the day after!"

"Then I must not hope to see him again, should I be absent three days."

"I fear not," replied the surgeon.

Louis left the room.

He passed along the silent galleries, for it was now a very late hour, to the chamber of his friend.

"Wharton!" cried he, as he stood alone by the side of the Duke's couch, and gazed, as he thought, for the last time on his face; "Is it thus we are to part?" He took the inanimate hand; and, wringing it between his, held it there for a long time in the agony of his mind.

"O blighted affection! Tenderness mourning that man is frail! Here stand, and feel that thine is the canker worm that eats into the heart!"

The unconscious violence with which Louis clasped the hand of him he once loved and trusted, roused the dormant faculties of Wharton to some perception. His eye opened; but it turned vacantly and without recognition on the anguished face of his friend; and, heavily sighing, he fell back on the pillow.

"Here, vanity of man, and pride of intellect, behold thyself!" cried the inward soul of Louis, smiting his breast. "Here is all that woman ever admired, or that man envied! All that betrayed him to dishonour! All that bound me to deplore him, and to love him to the end! Wharton,--farewell!"

Louis could not utter a dearer appellative, than the low breathing of that ever-beloved name; and, with a death-chill at his heart, he pressed the unconscious hand to his lips, and rushed from the room.

Cornelia met him in the anti-chamber. She observed his extraordinary agitation; and, without a preface, which he had not sufficient self-command even to attempt, he informed her of his summons to the south-east coast, and of the probable event before his return.

"Cornelia," said he, "to what a scene may I leave you! But should the last extremity come,--should he then be sensible, and he chance to name me,--tell him under whose roof he dies,--and he will then know he may die in peace!"

"Louis," returned she, "you do indeed leave me to an awful task! I cannot regard one you appear to love so much, with a common compassion. Trust me, and tell me who he is?"

"I dare not.--On _his_ life, short as it may be, I dare not," repeated her cousin. "Too soon it may be revealed, and then you will respect my reasons. And, for his knowledge of where he is; only in the case of his naming me, with the anguish that is now wringing my heart for him,--only, in that case, say, his _last friend_ was Louis de Montemar!"

"Your emotions are terrible!" cried Cornelia, clinging to her cousin's arm; "What do you leave me to suppose, by such inscrutable mystery? Oh, Louis, except when speaking of your father, I never saw you shaken thus!"

"On your bosom's peace, my sweet Cornelia!" replied he, "inquire no further. Should he be no more, preserve the sacred remains till I return. They at least, shall sleep with my ancestors.--There is no enmity in the grave."

The morning after that of Louis's departure for Harwich, the Duke awoke to a perfect perception of his state, his wounds, and his danger. He remembered every event which had brought him into that perilous condition. His secret missions from the Kings of Spain and of France, to examine into the aptness of the public mind in Scotland, and in the border counties of England, to receive a foreign army, headed by the exiled prince. To do this unsuspected, and to avoid the forfeiture of his head, should he be found in England after his attainder, he disguised himself as a German merchant at Hamburgh, where he engaged two resolute men of the country to be his servants. They served the seeming trader with sufficient fidelity during his Scottish progress. He came southward; and now he had to recall what terminated his first day's journey. He recollected being thrown from his restive horse in the storm and darkness of Wansbeck Fells; also, that the accident dislocated his shoulder; and that his two servants, by his own orders, had taken him into the hovel, whose sudden discovery in the lightning, had frightened his horse.--In attempting to set the dislocated limb, which he had also directed them to do, their awkwardness occasioned him so much pain, that he fainted under the unsuccessful operation. When he recovered from his swoon, which he did with an extraordinary sickness at the heart; he put his hand to his side, where the peculiar sensation was, and found it weltering in his blood. It was not needful for him to find no voice return an answer to his immediate call upon his servants. The previous silence, uninterrupted by any thing but the raging storm without, confirmed his suspicion that the villains had given him his death wound; and were fled with the booty. He, however, thrust the linen of his shirt into the wound; and lay half dead with pain and exhaustion, till all was lost in insensibility. He knew nothing from that hour, until he now opened his eyes from a refreshing sleep. He saw himself on a comfortable bed, instead of the wretched litter on which he had believed himself left to perish! He was then in the hands of some benevolent person!--But how brought, or where resident, he could not guess.

At this moment of conjecture Cornelia heard him move, and gently put aside the curtain. Her eyes met the surprised fixture of his.--But it was no longer with the glare of fever, with the wild flashes of delirium; the light of recovered reason was there, and the inquiring gaze of gratitude. If she had thought his face perfect in manly beauty, while it was insensible, or only moved by a distempered spirit; what were her impressions, when his intelligent mind was restored to all its powers, and it shone out in those eyes, and in that countenance?

Even her self-controuled spirit, trembled before the resistless influence; and with a failing voice, she answered his respectful demand of where he was.

"You are under the roof of a gentleman who is my kinsman, and who has left you under my care."

Wharton considered for a moment.--"his name, noble lady?"

"Your present critical state," replied she, "does not permit me to answer you that question."

An immediate apprehension that he was a prisoner, shot through the mind of the Duke.

"I am then in the house of an enemy!" cried he, starting on his arm; "and your benevolence, Madam, would spare me the truth!"

"No," answered Cornelia, astonished at the suspicion; or, rather, gazing on him with renewed anxiety, for fear his delirium was returning. "He is your friend--your anxious friend. And, while he enjoined me not to mention his name in your hearing; he likewise refused me, and all in this house, the knowledge of yours."

"That is sufficient!" replied Wharton, "Madam, whoever your friend may be, this caution does indeed manifest him to be mine. I am without guess on the subject; nor will I seek to penetrate what he wishes to conceal. But you may answer me, how I came under this generous care!"

Cornelia briefly related, (though without betraying whence she came, or whither she was going;) the events of the Moor.

"Then I am still in Northumberland?" replied Wharton. He paused, and added; "there are some names I would inquire after in this county, but--" and he paused again. "It is better I should not. My last hours shall not injure any man."

There were sensations within him, that made him murmur to himself the concluding sentence. And Cornelia, seeing, by the sudden lividness which overspread his so lately re-animated countenance, that some unhappy change was recurring; rose from her chair, and summoned his medical assistants.

They were closed up for nearly an hour, with their patient. At the door of the anti-room, Cornelia met them; and, with a dawning hope in her heart, to which his recovery to reason had given birth, she hastily inquired their opinion of the invalid.

"That he may last till to-morrow morning, but not beyond it," replied the superior surgeon.

She heard no more; though his colleagues spoke also, giving their various reasons for this judgement. She stood benumbed; but shewed no other sign of the blow on her heart, while bowing their heads, the party left her. She then walked steadily to her own chamber; and there, throwing herself on her knees before heaven, petitioned for its mercy to heal so prized a friend of her beloved cousin.

"Thy hand alone!" cried she, "and on that alone, I now confide!"

She was soon after summoned to the side of the dying stranger, by one of the female attendants who waited in his anti-room. He requested the lady he had seen, to have the goodness to grant him the use of pen and ink, and to allow him to see her once more. Cornelia took what he required, and hastened to his apartment.

He was propped up in the bed, by the attentive hands of Lorenzo; who remained, by his directions, after the entrance of Cornelia. The paleness of watching and anxiety was in her face. The flush of pain, mental and bodily, on Wharton's. She drew near him.