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."