The Surgeon's Daughter

When General Witherington saw Hartley, he was startled at his youth; but when he heard him modestly, but with confidence, state the difference of the two modes of treatment, and the rationale of his practice, he listened with the most serious attention. So did his lady, her streaming eyes turning from Hartley to her husband, as if to watch what impression the arguments of the former were making upon the latter. General Witherington was silent for a few minutes after Hartley had finished his exposition, and seemed buried in profound reflection. “To treat a fever,” he said, “in a manner which tends to produce one, seems indeed to be adding fuel to fire.”

“It is – it is,” said the lady. “Let us trust this young man, General Witherington. We shall at least give our darlings the comforts of the fresh air and cold water, for which they are pining.”

But the General remained undecided. “Your reasoning,” he said to Hartley, “seems plausible; but still it is only hypothesis. What can you show to support your theory, in opposition to the general practice?”

“My own observation,” replied the young man. “Here is a memorandum-book of medical cases which I have witnessed. It contains twenty cases of small-pox, of which eighteen were recoveries.”

“And the two others?” said the General.

“Terminated fatally,” replied Hartley; “we can as yet but partially disarm this scourge of the human race.”

“Young man,” continued the General, “were I to say that a thousand gold mohrs were yours in case my children live under your treatment, what have you to peril in exchange?”

“My reputation,” answered Hartley, firmly.

“And you could warrant on your reputation the recovery of your patients?”

“God forbid I should be presumptuous! But I think I could warrant my using those means, which, with God’s blessing, afford the fairest chance of a favourable result.”

“Enough – you are modest and sensible, as well as bold, and I will trust you.”

The lady, on whom Hartley’s words and manner had made a great impression, and who was eager to discontinue a mode of treatment which subjected the patients to the greatest pain and privation, and had already proved unfortunate, eagerly acquiesced, and Hartley was placed in full authority in the sick room.

Windows were thrown open, fires reduced or discontinued, loads of bed-clothes removed, cooling drinks superseded mulled wine and spices. The sick-nurses cried out murder. Doctors Tourniquet and Lancelot retired in disgust, menacing something like a general pestilence, in vengeance of what they termed rebellion against the neglect of the aphorisms of Hippocrates. Hartley proceeded quietly and steadily, and the patients got into a fair road of recovery.

The young Northumbrian was neither conceited nor artful; yet, with all his plainness of character, he could not but know the influence which a successful physician obtains over the parents of the children whom he has saved from the grave, and especially before the cure is actually completed. He resolved to use this influence in behalf of his old companion, trusting that the military tenacity of General Witherington would give way on consideration of the obligation so lately conferred upon him.

On his way to the General’s house, which was at present his constant place of residence, he examined the package which Middlemas had put into his hand. It contained the picture of Menie Gray, plainly set, and the ring, with brilliants, which Doctor Gray had given to Richard, as his mother’s last gift. The first of these tokens extracted from honest Hartley a sigh, perhaps a tear of sad remembrance. “I fear,” he said, “she has not chosen worthily; but she shall be happy, if I can make her so.”

Arrived at the residence of General Witherington, our Doctor went first to the sick apartment, and then carried to their parents the delightful account, that the recovery of the children might be considered as certain.

“May the God of Israel bless thee, young man!” said the lady, trembling with emotion; “thou hast wiped the tear from the eye of the despairing mother. And yet – alas! alas! still it must flow when I think of my cherub Reuben. – Oh! Mr. Hartley, why did we not know you a week sooner! – my darling had not then died.”

“God gives and takes away, my lady,” answered Hartley; “and you must remember that two are restored to you out of three. It is far from certain, that the treatment I have used towards the convalescents would have brought through their brother; for the case, as reported to me, waa of a very inveterate description.”

“Doctor,” said Witherington, his voice testifying more emotion than he usually or willingly gave way to, “you can comfort the sick in spirit as well as the sick in body. But it is time we settle our wager. You betted your reputation, which remains with you, increased by all the credit due to your eminent success, against a thousand gold mohrs, the value of which you will find in that pocketbook.”

“General Witherington,” said Hartley, “you are wealthy, and entitled to be generous – I am poor, and not entitled to decline whatever may be, even in a liberal sense, a compensation for my professional attendance. But there is a bound to extravagance, both in giving and accepting; and I must not hazard the newly acquired reputation with which you flatter me, by giving room to have it said, that I fleeced the parents, when their feelings were all afloat with anxiety for their children. – Allow me to divide this large sum; one half I will thankfully retain, as a most liberal recompense for my labour; and if you still think you owe me any thing, let me have it in the advantage of your good opinion and countenance.”

“If I acquiesce in your proposal, Doctor Hartley,” said the General, reluctantly receiving back a part of the contents of the pocketbook, “it is because I hope to serve you with my interest, even better than with my purse.”

“And indeed, sir,” replied Hartley, “it was upon your interest that I am just about to make a small claim.”

The General and his lady spoke both in the same breath, to assure him his boon was granted before asked.

“I am not so sure of that,” said Hartley; “for it respects a point on which I have heard say, that your Excellency is rather inflexible – the discharge of a recruit.”

“My duty makes me so,” replied the General – “You know the sort of fellows that we are obliged to content ourselves with – they get drunk – grow pot-valiant – enlist over-night, and repent next morning. If I am to dismiss all those who pretend to have been trepanned, we should have few volunteers remain behind. Every one has some idle story of the promises of a swaggering sergeant Kite – It is impossible to attend to them. But let me hear yours, however.”

“Mine is a very singular case. The party has been robbed of a thousand pounds.”

“A recruit for this service possessing a thousand pounds! My dear Doctor, depend upon it, the fellow has gulled you. Bless my heart, would a man who had a thousand pounds think of enlisting as a private sentinel?”

“He had no such thoughts,” answered Hartley. “He was persuaded by the rogue whom he trusted, that he was to have a commission.”

“Then his friend must have been Tom Hillary, or the devil; for no other could possess so much cunning and impudence. He will certainly find his way to the gallows at last. Still this story of the thousand pounds seems a touch even beyond Tom Hillary. What reason have you to think that this fellow ever had such a sum of money?”

“I have the best reason to know it for certain,” answered Hartley; “he and I served our time together, under the same excellent master; and when he came of age, not liking the profession which he had studied, and obtaining possession of his little fortune, he was deceived by the promises of this same Hillary.”

“Who has had him locked up in our well-ordered hospital yonder?” said the General.

“Even so, please your Excellency,” replied Hartley; “not, I think, to cure him of any complaint, but to give him the opportunity of catching one, which would silence all enquiries.”

“The matter shall be closely looked into. But how miserably careless the young man’s friends must have been to let a raw lad go into the world with such a companion and guide as Tom Hillary, and such a sum as a thousand pounds in his pocket. His parents had better have knocked him on the head. It certainly was not done like canny Northumberland, as my servant Winter calls it.”

“The youth must indeed have had strangely hard-hearted, or careless parents,” said Mrs. Witherington, in accents of pity.

“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 shore, without rudder, compass, 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 apprenticeship 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 assist 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 assigned 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 embarrassment, 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 harassed 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.