The Surgeon's Daughter

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 hit 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 Middlesex 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 circumstances 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 emancipated 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 abasement.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH

The evening before he was to sail for the Downs, where the Middlesex 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 cushions, 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 passes – 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, God of my fathers, of what clay hast thou fashioned 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.

Witherington started involuntarily up, but immediately constrained himself to assume the easy deportment with which a superior receives a dependent, and which, in his own case, was usually mingled with a certain degree of hauteur. The mother had less command of herself. She, too, sprung up, as if with the intention of throwing herself on the neck of her son, for whom she had travailed and sorrowed. But the warning glance of her husband arrested her as if by magic, and she remained standing, with her beautiful head and neck somewhat advanced, her hands clasped together, and extended forward in the attitude of motion, but motionless, nevertheless, as a marble statue, to which the sculptor has given all the appearance of life, but cannot impart its powers. So strange a gesture and posture might have excited the young officer’s surprise; but the lady stood in the shade, and he was so intent in looking upon his patron, that he was scarce even conscious of Mrs. Witherington’s presence.

“I am happy in this opportunity,” said Middlemas, observing that the General did not speak, “to return my thanks to General Witherington, to whom they never can be sufficiently paid.”

The sound of his voice, though uttering words so indifferent, seemed to dissolve the charm which kept his mother motionless. She sighed deeply, relaxed the rigidity of her posture, and sunk back on the cushions from which she had started up. Middlemas turned a look towards her at the sound of the sigh, and the rustling of her drapery. The General hastened to speak.

“My wife, Mr. Middlemas, has been unwell of late – your friend, Mr. Hartley, might mention it to you – an affection of the nerves.”

Mr. Middlemas was, of course, sorry and concerned.

“We have had distress in our family, Mr. Middlemas, from the ultimate and heart-breaking consequences of which we have escaped by the skill of your friend, Mr. Hartley. We will be happy if it is in our power to repay a part of our obligations in service to his friend and protege, Mr. Middlemas.”

“I am only acknowledged as his protege, then,” thought Richard; but he said, “Every one must envy his friend in having had the distinguished good fortune to be of use to General Witherington and his family.”

“You have received your commission, I presume. Have you any particular wish or desire respecting your destination?”

“No, may it please your Excellency,” answered Middlemas. “I suppose Hartley would tell your Excellency my unhappy state – that I am an orphan, deserted by the parents who cast me on the wide world, an outcast about whom nobody knows or cares, except to desire that I should wander far enough, and live obscurely enough, not to disgrace them by their connexion with me.”

Zilia wrung her hands as he spoke, and drew her muslin veil closely around her head as if to exclude the sounds which excited her mental agony.

“Mr. Hartley was not particularly communicative about your affairs,” said the General; “nor do I wish to give you the pain of entering into them. What I desire to know is, if you are pleased with your destination to Madras?”

“Perfectly, please your Excellency – anywhere, so that there is no chance of meeting the villain Hillary.”

“Oh! Hillary’s services are too necessary in the purlieus of St. Giles’s, the Lowlights of Newcastle, and such like places, where human carrion can be picked up, to be permitted to go to India. However, to show you the knave has some grace, there are the notes of which you were robbed. You will find them the very same paper which you lost, except a small sum which the rogue had spent, but which a friend has made up, in compassion for your sufferings.” Richard Middlemas sunk on one knee, and kissed the hand which restored him to independence.

“Pshaw!” said the General, “you are a silly young man;” but he withdrew not his hand from his caresses. This was one of the occasions on which Dick Middlemas could be oratorical.

“O, my more than father,” he said, “how much greater a debt do I owe to you than to the unnatural parents, who brought me into this world by their sin, and deserted me through their cruelty!”

Zilia, as she heard these cutting words, flung back her veil, raising it on both hands till it floated behind her like a mist, and then giving a faint groan, sunk down in a swoon. Pushing Middlemas from him with a hasty movement, General Witherington flew to his lady’s assistance, and carried her in his arms, as if she had been a child, into the anteroom, where an old servant waited with the means of restoring suspended animation, which the unhappy husband too truly anticipated might be useful. These were hastily employed, and succeeded in calling the sufferer to life, but in a state of mental emotion that was dreadful.

Her mind was obviously impressed by the last words which her son had uttered. – “Did you hear him, Richard,” she exclaimed, in accents terribly loud, considering the exhausted state of her strength – “Did you hear the words? It was Heaven speaking our condemnation by the voice of our own child. But do not fear, my Richard, do not weep! I will answer the thunder of Heaven with its own music.”

She flew to a harpsichord which stood in the room, and, while the servant and master gazed on each other, as if doubting whether her senses were about to leave her entirely, she wandered over the keys, producing a wilderness of harmony, composed of passages recalled by memory, or combined by her own musical talent, until at length her voice and instrument united in one of those magnificent hymns in which her youth had praised her Maker, with voice and harp, like the Royal Hebrew who composed it. The tear ebbed insensibly from the eyes which she turned upwards – her vocal tones, combining with those of the instrument, rose to a pitch of brilliancy seldom attained by the most distinguished performers, and then sunk into a dying cadence, which fell, never again to rise, – for the songstress had died with her strain.

The horror of the distracted husband may be conceived, when all efforts to restore life proved totally ineffectual. Servants were despatched for medical men – Hartley, and every other who could be found. The General precipitated himself into the apartment they had so lately left, and in his haste ran, against Middlemas, who, at the sound of the music from the adjoining apartment, had naturally approached nearer to the door, and surprised and startled by the sort of clamour, hasty steps, and confused voices which ensued, had remained standing there, endeavouring to ascertain the cause of so much disorder.

The sight of the unfortunate young man wakened the General’s stormy passions to frenzy. He seemed to recognise his son only as the cause of his wife’s death. He seized him by the collar, and shook him violently as he dragged him into the chamber of mortality.

“Come hither,” he said, “thou for whom a life of lowest obscurity was too mean a fate – come hither, and look on the parents whom thou hast so much envied – whom thou hast so often cursed. Look at that pale emaciated form, a figure of wax, rather than flesh and blood – that is thy mother – that is the unhappy Zilia Moncada, to whom thy birth was the source of shame and misery, and to whom thy ill-omened presence has now brought death itself. And behold me” – he pushed the lad from him, and stood up erect, looking wellnigh in gesture and figure the apostate spirit he described – “Behold me,” he said; “see you not my hair streaming with sulphur, my brow scathed with lightning? I am the Arch-Fiend – I am the father whom you seek – I am the accursed Richard Tresham, the seducer of Zilia, and the father of her murderer!”

Hartley entered while this horrid scene was passing. All attention to the deceased, he instantly saw, would be thrown away; and understanding, partly from Winter, partly from the tenor of the General’s frantic discourse, the nature of the disclosure which had occurred, he hastened to put an end, if possible, to the frightful and scandalous scene which had taken place. Aware how delicately the General felt on the subject of reputation, he assailed him with remonstrances on such conduct, in presence of so many witnesses. But the mind had ceased to answer to that once powerful keynote.

“I care not if the whole world hear my sin and my punishment,” said Witherington. “It shall not be again said of me, that I fear shame more than I repent sin. I feared shame only for Zilia, and Zilia is dead!”