The Surgeon's Daughter by Walter Scott (summer beach reads .txt) 📗

being hailed by the winner as well as the loser with execrations, which seemed designed to blight both body and soul, now used as the language of triumph, and now as reproaches against fortune.

Next to the gamblers was a pallet, occupied indeed by two bodies, but only one of which was living—the other sufferer had been recently relieved from his agony.

“He is dead—he is dead!” said the wretched survivor.

“Then do you die too, and be d—d,” answered one of the players, “and then there will be a pair of you, as Pugg says.”

“I tell you he is growing stiff and cold,” said the poor wretch—“the dead is no bed-fellow for the living—For God's sake help to rid me of the corpse.”

“Ay, and get the credit of having done him—as may be the case with, yourself, friend—for he had some two or three hoggs about him”—

“You know you took the last rap from his breeches-pocket not an hour ago,” expostulated the poor convalescent—“But help me to take the body out of the bed, and I will not tell the jigger-dubber that you have been beforehand with him.”

“You tell the jigger-dubber!” answered the cribbage player. “Such another word, and I will twist your head round till your eyes look at the drummer's handwriting on your back. Hold your peace, and don't bother our game with your gammon, or I will make you as mute as your bedfellow.”

The unhappy wretch, exhausted, sunk back beside his hideous companion, and the usual jargon of the game, interlarded with execrations, went on as before.

From this specimen of the most obdurate indifference, contrasted with the last excess of misery, Middlemas became satisfied how little could be made of an appeal to the humanity of his fellow-sufferers. His heart sunk within him, and the thoughts of the happy and peaceful home, which he might have called his own, rose before his over-heated fancy, with a vividness of perception that bordered upon insanity. He saw before him the rivulet which wanders through the burgh-muir of Middlemas, where he had so often set little mills for the amusement of Menie while she was a child. One draught of it would have been worth all the diamonds of the East, which of late he had worshipped with such devotion; but that draught was denied to him as to Tantalus.

Rallying his senses from this passing illusion, and knowing enough of the practice of the medical art, to be aware of the necessity of preventing his ideas from wandering if possible, he endeavoured to recollect that he was a surgeon, and, after all, should not have the extreme fear for the interior of a military hospital, which its horrors might inspire into strangers to the profession. But though he strove, by such recollections, to rally his spirits, he was not the less aware of the difference betwixt the condition of a surgeon, who might have attended such a place in the course of his duty, and a poor inhabitant, who was at once a patient and a prisoner.

A footstep was now heard in the apartment, which seemed to silence all the varied sounds of woe that filled it. The cribbage party hid their cards, and ceased their oaths; other wretches, whose complaints had arisen to frenzy, left off their wild exclamations and entreaties for assistance. Agony softened her shriek, Insanity hushed its senseless clamours, and even Death seemed desirous to stifle his parting groan in the presence of Captain Seelencooper. This official was the superintendent, or, as the miserable inhabitants termed him, the Governor of the Hospital. He had all the air of having been originally a turnkey in some ill-regulated jail—a stout, short, bandy-legged man, with one eye, and a double portion of ferocity in that which remained. He wore an old-fashioned tarnished uniform, which did not seem to have been made for him; and the voice in which this minister of humanity addressed the sick, was that of a boatswain, shouting in the midst of a storm. He had pistols and a cutlass in his belt; for his mode of administration being such as provoked even hospital patients to revolt, his life had been more than once in danger amongst them. He was followed by two assistants, who carried hand-cuffs and strait-jackets.

As Seelencooper made his rounds, complaint and pain were hushed, and the flourish of the bamboo, which he bore in his hand, seemed powerful as the wand of a magician to silence all complaint and remonstrance.

“I tell you the meat is as sweet as a nosegay—and for the bread, it's good enough, and too good, for a set of lubbers, that lie shamming Abraham, and consuming the Right Honourable Company's victuals—I don't speak to them that are really sick, for God knows I am always for humanity.”

“If that be the case, sir,” said Richard Middlemas, whose lair the Captain had approached, while he was thus answering the low and humble complaints of those by whose bed-side he passed—“if that be the case, sir, I hope your humanity will make you attend to what I say.”

“And—who the devil are you?” said the Governor, turning on him his single eye of fire, while a sneer gathered on his harsh features, which were so well qualified to express it.

“My name is Middlemas—I come from Scotland, and have been sent here by some strange mistake. I am neither a private soldier, nor am I indisposed, more than by the heat of this cursed place.”

“Why then, friend, all I have to ask you is, whether you are an attested recruit or not?”

“I was attested at Edinburgh,” said Middlemas, “but”—

“But what the devil would you have then?—you are enlisted—the Captain and the Doctor sent you here—surely they know best whether you are private or officer, sick or well.”

“But I was promised,” said Middlemas, “promised by Tom Hillary”—

“Promised, were you? Why, there is not a man here that has not been promised something by somebody or another, or perhaps has promised something to himself. This is the land of promise, my smart fellow, but you know it is India that must be the land of performance. So, good morning to you. The Doctor will come his rounds presently and put you all to rights.”

“Stay but one moment—one moment only—I have been robbed.”

“Robbed! look you there now,” said the Governor—“everybody that comes here has been robbed.—Egad, I am the luckiest fellow in Europe—other people in my line have only thieves and blackguards upon their hands; but none come to my ken but honest, decent, unfortunate gentlemen, that have been robbed!”

“Take care how you treat this so lightly, sir,” said Middlemas; “I have been robbed of a thousand pounds.”

Here Governor Seelencooper's gravity was totally overcome, and his laugh was echoed by several of the patients, either because they wished to curry favour with the superintendent, or from the feeling which influences evil spirits to rejoice in the tortures of those who are sent to share their agony.

“A thousand pounds!” exclaimed Captain Seelencooper, as he recovered his breath,—“Come, that's a good one—I like a fellow that does not make two bites of a cherry—why, there is not a cull in the ken that