The Surgeon's Daughter Part 11

"He never knew them, madam," said Hartley; "there was a mystery on the score of his birth. A cold, unwilling, and almost unknown hand, dealt him out his portion when he came of lawful age, and he was pushed into the world like a bark forced from sh.o.r.e, without rudder, compa.s.s, or pilot."

Here General Witherington involuntarily looked to his lady, while, guided by a similar impulse, her looks were turned upon him. They exchanged a momentary glance of deep and peculiar meaning, and then the eyes of both were fixed on the ground.

"Were you brought up in Scotland?" said the lady, addressing herself, in a faltering voice, to Hartley--"And what was your master's name?"

"I served my apprentices.h.i.+p with Mr. Gideon Gray of the town of Middlemas," said Hartley.

"Middlemas! Gray?" repeated the lady, and fainted away.

Hartley offered the succours of his profession; the husband flew to support her head, and the instant that Mrs. Witherington began to recover, he whispered to her, in a tone betwixt entreaty and warning, "Zilia, beware--beware!"

Some imperfect sounds which she had begun to frame, died away upon her tongue.

"Let me a.s.sist you to your dressing-room, my love," said her obviously anxious husband.

She arose with the action of an automaton, which moves at a touch of a spring, and half hanging upon her husband, half dragging herself on by her own efforts, had nearly reached the door of the room, when Hartley following, asked if he could be of any service.

"No, sir," said the General, sternly; "this is no case for a stranger's interference; when you are wanted I will send for you."

Hartley stepped back on receiving a rebuff in a tone so different from that which General Witherington had used towards him in their previous intercourse, and felt disposed for the first time, to give credit to public report, which a.s.signed to that gentleman, with several good qualities, the character of a very proud and haughty man. Hitherto, he thought, I have seen him tamed by sorrow and anxiety, now the mind is regaining its natural tension. But he must in decency interest himself for this unhappy Middlemas.

The General returned into the apartment a minute or two afterwards, and addressed Hartley in his usual tone of politeness, though apparently still under great embarra.s.sment, which he in vain endeavoured to conceal.

"Mrs. Witherington is better," he said, "and will be glad to see you before dinner. You dine with us, I hope?"

Hartley bowed.

"Mrs. Witherington is rather subject to this sort of nervous fits, and she has been much hara.s.sed of late by grief and apprehension. When she recovers from them it is a few minutes before she can collect her ideas, and during such intervals--to speak very confidentially to you, my dear Doctor Hartley--she speaks sometimes about imaginary events which have never happened, and sometimes about distressing occurrences in an early period of life. I am not, therefore, willing that any one but myself, or her old attendant Mrs. Lopez, should be with her on such occasions."

Hartley admitted that a certain degree of light-headedness was often the consequence of nervous fits.

The General proceeded. "As to this young man--this friend of yours--this Richard Middlemas--did you not call him so?"

"Not that I recollect," answered Hartley; "but your Excellency has. .h.i.t upon his name."

"That is odd enough--Certainly you said something about Middlemas?"

replied General Witherington.

"I mentioned the name of the town," said Hartley.

"Ay, and I caught it up as the name of the recruit--I was indeed occupied at the moment by my anxiety about my wife. But this Middlemas, since such is his name, is a wild young fellow, I suppose?"

"I should do him wrong to say so, your Excellency. He may have had his follies like other young men; but his conduct has, so far as I know, been respectable; but, considering we lived in the same house, we were not very intimate."

"That is bad--I should have liked him--that is--it would have been happy for him to have had a friend like you. But I suppose you studied too hard for him. He would be a soldier, ha?--Is he good-looking?"

"Remarkably so," replied Hartley; "and has a very prepossessing manner."

"Is his complexion dark or fair?" asked the General.

"Rather uncommonly dark," said Hartley,--"darker, if I may use the freedom, than your Excellency's."

"Nay, then, he must be a black ouzel, indeed!--Does he understand languages?"

"Latin and French tolerably well."

"Of course he cannot fence or dance?"

"Pardon me, sir, I am no great judge; but Richard is reckoned to do both with uncommon skill."

"Indeed!--Sum this up, and it sounds well. Handsome, accomplished in exercises, moderately learned, perfectly well-bred, not unreasonably wild. All this comes too high for the situation of a private sentinel.

He must have a commission, Doctor--entirely for your sake."

"Your Excellency is generous."

"It shall be so; and I will find means to make Tom Hillary disgorge his plunder, unless he prefers being hanged, a fate he has long deserved.

You cannot go back to the Hospital to-day. You dine with us, and you know Mrs. Witherington's fears of infection; but to-morrow find out your friend. Winter shall see him equipped with every thing needful. Tom Hillary shall repay advances, you know; and he must be off with the first detachment of the recruits, in the Middles.e.x Indiaman, which sails from the Downs on Monday fortnight; that is, if you think him fit for the voyage. I dare say the poor fellow is sick of the Isle of Wight."

"Your Excellency will permit the young man to pay his respects to you before his departure?"

"To what purpose, sir?" said the General hastily and peremptorily; but instantly added, "You are right--I should like to see him. Winter shall let him know the time, and take horses to fetch him hither. But he must have been out of the Hospital for a day or two; so the sooner you can set him at liberty the better. In the meantime, take him to your own lodgings, Doctor; and do not let him form any intimacies with the officers, or any others, in this place, where he may light on another Hillary."

Had Hartley been as well acquainted as the reader with the circ.u.mstances of young Middlemas's birth, he might have drawn decisive conclusions from the behaviour of General Witherington, while his comrade was the topic of conversation. But as Mr. Gray and Middlemas himself were both silent on the subject, he knew little of it but from general report, which his curiosity had never induced him to scrutinize minutely.

Nevertheless, what he did apprehend interested him so much, that he resolved upon trying a little experiment, in which he thought there could be no great harm. He placed on his finger the remarkable ring intrusted to his care by Richard Middlemas, and endeavoured to make it conspicuous in approaching Mrs. Witherington; taking care, however, that this occurred during her husband's absence. Her eyes had no sooner caught a sight of the gem, than they became riveted to it, and she begged a nearer sight of it, as strongly resembling one which she had given to a friend. Taking the ring from his finger, and placing it in her emaciated hand, Hartley informed her it was the property of the friend in whom he had just been endeavouring to interest the General.

Mrs. Witherington retired in great emotion, but next day summoned Hartley to a private interview, the particulars of which, so far as are necessary to be known, shall be afterwards related.

On the succeeding day after these important discoveries, Middlemas, to his great delight, was rescued from his seclusion in the Hospital, and transferred to his comrade's lodgings in the town of Ryde, of which Hartley himself was a rare inmate; the anxiety of Mrs. Witherington detaining him at the General's house, long after his medical attendance might have been dispensed with.

Within two or three days a commission arrived for Richard Middlemas, as a lieutenant in the service of the East India Company. Winter, by his master's orders, put the wardrobe of the young officer on a suitable footing; while Middlemas, enchanted at finding himself at once emanc.i.p.ated from his late dreadful difficulties, and placed under the protection of a man of such importance as the General, obeyed implicitly the hints transmitted to him by Hartley, and enforced by Winter, and abstained from going into public, or forming acquaintances with any one.

Even Hartley himself he saw seldom; and, deep as were his obligations, he did not perhaps greatly regret the absence of one whose presence always affected him with a sense of humiliation and abas.e.m.e.nt.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.

The evening before he was to sail for the Downs, where the Middles.e.x lay ready to weigh anchor, the new lieutenant was summoned by Winter to attend him to the General's residence, for the purpose of being introduced to his patron, to thank him at once, and to bid him farewell.

On the road, the old man took the liberty of schooling his companion concerning the respect which he ought to pay to his master, "who was, though a kind and generous man as ever came from Northumberland, extremely rigid in punctiliously exacting the degree of honour which was his due."

While they were advancing towards the house, the General and his wife expected their arrival with breathless anxiety. They were seated in a superb drawing-room, the General behind a large chandelier, which, shaded opposite to his face, threw all the light to the other side of the table, so that he could observe any person placed there, without becoming the subject of observation in turn. On a heap of cus.h.i.+ons, wrapped in a glittering drapery of gold and silver muslins, mingled with shawls, a luxury which was then a novelty in Europe, sate, or rather reclined, his lady, who, past the full meridian of beauty, retained charms enough to distinguish her as one who had been formerly a very fine woman, though her mind seemed occupied by the deepest emotion.

"Zilia," said her husband, "you are unable for what you have undertaken--take my advice--retire--you shall know all and everything that pa.s.ses--but retire. To what purpose should you cling to the idle wish of beholding for a moment a being whom you can never again look upon?"

"Alas," answered the lady, "and is not your declaration that I shall never see him more, a sufficient reason that I should wish to see him now--should wish to imprint on my memory the features and the form which I am never again to behold while we are in the body? Do not, my Richard, be more cruel than was my poor father, even when his wrath was in its bitterness. He let me look upon my infant, and its cherub face dwelt with me, and was my comfort among the years of unutterable sorrow in which my youth wore away."

"It is enough, Zilia--you have desired this boon--I have granted it-- and, at whatever risk, my promise shall be kept. But think how much depends on this fatal secret--your rank and estimation in society--my honour interested that that estimation should remain uninjured. Zilia, the moment that the promulgation of such a secret gives prudes and scandalmongers a right to treat you with scorn, will be fraught with unutterable misery, perhaps with bloodshed and death, should a man dare to take up the rumour."

"You shall be obeyed, my husband," answered Zilia, "in all that the frailness of nature will permit. But oh, G.o.d of my fathers, of what clay hast thou fas.h.i.+oned us poor mortals, who dread so much the shame which follows sin, yet repent so little for the sin itself!" In a minute afterwards steps were heard--the door opened--Winter announced Lieutenant Middlemas, and the unconscious son stood before his parents.