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."