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 tre 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 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 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 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 postil 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.— 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! 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 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 "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 "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 "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 "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 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 half 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 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 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 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 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 sup "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 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! |