During these conferences, the day gradually declined into red billowy
clouds, till the whole heavens were overcast; and the pregnant vapour
hung on every hill. A chill, unnatural to the season of the year,
pervaded the air, while at times, a steam of sulphureous vapour
descended from the sky, and rendered the atmosphere hot to suffocation.
With the gathering clouds the evening soon deepened into night; and, in
the midst of a succession of wide moors, this fearful canopy developed
itself to the travellers, in all the horrors of a tempest. It was
profoundly dark, though the hour could not be much beyond the time of
twilight. But the violence of all the seasons, seemed accumulated in
this tremendous storm. Thunder and lightning, sleet and rain, and
furious hurricanes of wind, menaced the travellers in every blast. The
postilions lost their way. Sometimes plunging into plashes of water; at
other times, struggling in a morass; but, at every step encountering
some new obstacle, and some new danger.
Several hours passed in this dreadful wandering over the dreary fells;
and the yawning coal-pits which were scattered over their bosom, were
not the least objects of fear to the bewildered drivers.
Louis became alarmed for the health, as well as the immediate personal
safety of his cousin; for owing to the frequent narrow escapes of the
carriage, from over-turning in the difficult and trackless road, he
let the windows down, for fear of the glass injuring her, in case of
an accident. He drew up the blinds in their stead; but, from their
construction, little of the outward weather could be excluded; and the
whole weight of the storm drove in upon her, till she was wet through.
He had covered her with his coat; but all could not shield her from
the deluge and piercing blast of that furious night. She shivered,
and shrunk close into the corner of the carriage, in spite of her
resolution not to distress him, by shewing herself affected by what was
hopeless of remedy till the morning light should shew them where they
were.
In the midst of this compulsory resignation, the carriage made a
violent rebound, and stuck fast in the mud behind, while the horses
plunged and reared with such strength, as to threaten its instant
over-turn in the morass.
Lorenzo dismounted, and throwing open the door, Louis leaped out, and
taking Cornelia in his arms, who was almost fainting from exhaustion,
he carried her out of the reach of the wheels and refractory horses.
One of the servants approached him at the moment, and told him the
accident was occasioned by the breast of one of the leaders striking
against the angle of a stone-hovel. It was a miserable, uninhabited
shed; but might give some shelter to Miss Coningsby, till they saw what
could be done with the carriage.
Revived at hearing of any refuge from the fury of the elements,
Cornelia exerted herself to obey the suggestions of the servant;
and Louis, equally glad of so providential a shelter, supported her
tottering steps through the muddy ground. The hovel appeared of
considerable extent, from the length of wall they had to grope along,
before they reached the entrance, for door it had none. Louis bent
under the low rafter, and leading Cornelia in, found his way obstructed
by heaps of dried turf. On one of these heaps, she proposed seating
herself, till her cousin had enquired after the injury of the horse,
and given his judgment on what was best to be done for the extrication
of the carriage.
Louis knew her too well, to fear that solitude and darkness alone could
create any alarm in her mind; and, having seen her harassed spirits a
little revived by the comparative security of the place, he had just
consented to quit her for a short time, when Lorenzo re-entered with a
glimmering lamp he had rescued from the carriage. All the others had
been extinguished in succession, by the storm; and this was following
their fate, when the prompt Italian seized it from its hook, and
brought it in to light a few turfs, and warm Cornelia.
She took it, and dismissing her cousin and Lorenzo to their exertions
without, with her own unpractised hands, she gathered some of the
moor-fuel into a distant corner from the rest, and soon spread a
cheering light and glow through the dreary habitation. Lorenzo ran in
with a flask of oil from one of the postillions' pockets, to replenish
her lamp; and he answered her anxious enquiries, by saying, that the
wounded horse was loosened from the harness, and his master was then
examining the injury. After this information, he left her.
While the group without, were raising the carriage from the bog
into which it appeared to sink the deeper after every attempt at
extrication, Cornelia sat, anxiously attending to their alternate
voices of hope, and the disappointing plunges of the vehicle into the
treacherous soil. In the midst of this solicitude, she thought she
heard sounds of another import; and listening, found they were repeated
low and heavily, as from one in a dying extremity. She turned her head
in the direction whence they came; and, as she held her breath to hear
more distinctly, the moans became louder, and drew her eye to a narrow
door-way in the side of the intermediate mud-wall, at some distance
from where she sat.--Without once considering there might be danger
to herself, in exposing herself alone to the human being, or beings,
she might find there, she thought only of succouring the distress
those sounds indicated; and taking up her lamp, made her way over the
scattered turf, to the miserable half-shut door.
It let her into a part of the hovel, even more dismal than the one
she had left; for here was the confusion and stench of old worm-eaten
sheep-skins; broken tar-tubs; and other implements of the shepherd's
life, lying about in rust and disorder. In the middle of the apartment,
something dark was spread on the floor. From that wretched bed the
moans proceeded. Probably the poor tenant of this lonely sheep-cote,
lay perishing there, under the toil of his occupation; without the
support of necessary nourishment, or the comfort of a companion to
soothe him in the last moments of over-tasked nature! She stepped
gently towards the object of her pity. As she drew near, she saw the
bed was a heap of these dingy fleeces, half covered with a cloak, on
which lay the suffering person.
Cornelia bent over it; and holding the lamp, so as to distinguish what
was beneath, beheld, not the squallid shape of poverty and comfortless
old age, but a man in the garb of a gentleman, and with one of the
noblest forms that ever met her sight. His dress was disordered, and
clotted with the slime of the morass; but his figure, whose contour
she thought she had never seen equalled, needed no embellishment to
shew its consummate elegance, though now motionless in the torpor of
approaching death.
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!