"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.
"Noble lady," said he, "your physicians are honest men. They have told
me, my hours are numbered; and, that I have a short time in which to
express my thanks to your humanity; and to make up my accounts with the
world. Will you indulge me with the means?"
And he stretched his hands towards the writing materials. Cornelia
relinquished them to his eager grasp; though, at the same time, she
expressed her dread of the exertion increasing his danger.
"This done!" replied he, "an hour more or less, in arriving at the
goal, is of no consequence.--Delay me, sweet lady," continued he,
observing her reluctance; "and you may deprive me of the victor's
crown!"
Cornelia gave him the pen; and bowing gratefully, he began to write.
She moved to withdraw, but looking up with a beseeching eye, he
entreated her, as well as Lorenzo, to remain, to bear witness that the
papers he was writing were penned by his own hand.
She retook her place, and soon found her presence necessary; for he was
often faint under his task; and, after taking a restorative from her
hand, in spite of all her persuasions to the contrary, recommenced it.
As he closed one packet, to begin another, she laid her hand upon his
arm. "For the sake of all you revere in earth and heaven, desist!"
cried she, "this perseverance is suicide."
"No," replied he, "there is but one man in the world, who could act by
me, as your kinsman has done! And this deed is my last act of duty to
him and to myself."
Cornelia said no more; but submitted with an awful awaiting of the
conclusion.
By the Duke's orders, Lorenzo sealed the first packet, and returned it
into his hand. No one saw how he directed it. The second packet was
then sealed, and superscribed, and both put into a cover. This was also
sealed, and when directed by the Duke's hand, he put it into that of
Cornelia. She glanced upon the superscription.
"To my benefactress. But not to be opened until I am dead."
She read it, and for the first time in his sight, her eyes gushed out
with tears. The burning hand, which then gratefully pressed her's as he
relinquished the packet, would be cold and motionless, when she should
break that seal! Human nature, pity, admiration! all struck at once
upon her heart, and she trembled, almost to sinking.
The Duke observed her emotion, and made a sign to Lorenzo to withdraw.
Both his hands now clasped her's, as with his dying eyes he gazed on
her.
"Lady," said he, "when you open that packet, you will know that he
who you now honour with your pity, was a being to be condemned; but,
he trusts, to be pardoned also! I am a man, and I erred; but I am a
Christian, and have contrition. When you know me, remember me with
one of those tears, and my conscious soul will disdain the world's
persisted obloquy!"
Cornelia wept the more at these words; but she strove to speak; and
to gently extricate her hand from a grasp, which already seemed the
convulsive pressures of death.
"You will tell de Montemar," cried he in great emotion; and in
that moment, of what he thought mortal fainting, forgetting his
caution:--"You will tell him----" he paused, and struggled for a few
seconds--then gasping--relinquished the hand he held, and fell back
upon his pillow.
Cornelia saw and heard no more; she fainted, and sunk upon the floor.
When she recovered, she found herself in another room, and supported by
her uncle of Lindisfarne.
"Your fears are premature, my dear child;" cried the venerable man, as
soon as she opened her eyes; "Lorenzo has just been in to tell me, your
invalid guest is now recovering from the swoon in which you left him;
and that the surgeons are in his chamber."
"Heaven has brought you my revered uncle!" cried she, "to sustain me.
You will see him?"
"For that purpose," replied Mr. Athelstone, "I came."
Indeed, as soon as he received Louis's few lines, imparting his
indispensable absence, and obligation to leave Cornelia to take charge
of his invalid friend; the good Pastor judged, that whoever this
nameless person might be, and for whatever reasons his reception at
Morewick was to be generally concealed; yet it was his duty not to
allow his niece to be with servants alone, in the distressing scene
which the agitated letter of his nephew confessed might be anticipated
during his absence. Notwithstanding all Louis's caution in his first
communications respecting his foreign friend; and his subsequent
reserve while continuing his apologies from the same cause, for his
and Cornelia's detention at Morewick; Mr. Athelstone drew his own
conclusions, that there was more unexplained, than the fantastic
mystery of a foreigner wishing to travel incognito. He knew Louis's
mind too well, to believe that he would adopt with such carefulness
of concealment, so trifling a whim. He was convinced that danger to
one party at least, hung over the discovery; and in his guesses, he
was not very remote from the truth. The more his suspicions gained
ground, from the style of his nephew's last letter, the more he saw
the propriety of acting in defiance of Louis's positive request,
that he would allow none of the Lindisfarne family to interrupt the
charitable duties of Cornelia. The earnestness of this injunction;
(for it was put, so as not to admit of a discussion;) confirmed Mr.
Athelstone in an idea, that peril was attached to the entertainer of
this mysterious personage; and resolving to protect his nephew and
his niece in the possible dilemma into which humanity on one side,
and romantic generosity on the other, might involve their safeties,
he ordered a post chaise to await him on the opposite shore. Without
imparting any thing of these reflections or motives to Mrs. Coningsby,
he left his directions with her and Alice, to prepare every comfort
for the expected reception of the Marchioness and her daughter. Busy
in the hospitable bustle of such arrangements, the happy mother and
her favourite child, saw Mr. Athelstone depart to rejoin Cornelia,
without a suspicion of the nature of his errand. He alighted in the
hall at Morewick, at the very moment Lorenzo had found Miss Coningsby
lying insensible in the room of the stranger, who at the instant
seemed beyond all future pain. She was brought into the next chamber,
and delivered into the arms of her uncle; while Lorenzo recalled
the medical assistants to his master's friend: and the result he
communicated, as soon as the Duke breathed, to the benevolent inquiries
of the Pastor.
When Cornelia had sufficiently recovered from her swoon to speak with
composure, she related with brief eloquence, all that had passed
between her and the invalid since his restored senses. Unconsciously
to herself, her heart spoke; and she ended her communications by
affirming, that notwithstanding his acknowledgement of errors, and the
secrecy that involved him, she must believe him to be a man not less
illustrious in the nobleness of his life, than in birth and station.
Mr. Athelstone listened attentively to all she had to say and
to conjecture about the object of their discourse. She always
distinguished him, by the approving and pitying appellation of _the
noble sufferer_; and the penetration of her uncle, soon discovered,
that his niece was no longer an impartial speaker.
"Cornelia," replied he, "I perceive you have no suspicion, who this
_noble sufferer_ may be?"
"None, my uncle."
"But I have. I recognise him in every word you have uttered, except his
repentance; and that may be yet the salutation of Iscariot!"
"My uncle! what do you mean?" "I mean to speak of one," returned the
Pastor, "_whose heart was lifted up because of his beauty; and he
corrupted his wisdom, by reason of his brightness; and where we should
have found light, there was darkness, and the mouth of the grave_!"
Cornelia sunk into a seat. "Sir," cried she, "you terrify me with
an unutterable apprehension! If he be what you suppose, you are a
Christian minister! Go to him, in this his last hour; and save him if
it be possible, from the death whence there is no recall!"
Her hands were clasped over her face, as she pronounced the last words.
Lorenzo at the same moment appeared at the door; and beckoning Mr.
Athelstone, the pious man left the room, with the intention, if Duke
Wharton yet breathed, to obey the prayer of his niece, in exhorting him
to a sincere repentance.