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

without some apprehensions; and after knocking and calling more than once, received at length the welcome return, “Who is there?”

On Hartley announcing himself, the door opened, and Middlemas appeared, well dressed, and with his hair arranged and powdered; although, from the appearance of the bed, it had not been slept in on the preceding night, and Richard's countenance, haggard and ghastly, seemed to bear witness to the same fact. It was, however, with an affectation of indifference that he spoke.

“I congratulate you on your improvement in worldly knowledge, Adam. It is just the time to desert the poor heir, and to stick by him that is in immediate possession of the wealth.”

“I staid last night at General Witherington's,” answered Hartley, “because he is extremely ill.”

“Tell him to repent of his sins, then,” said Richard. “Old Gray used to say, a doctor had as good a title to give ghostly advice as a parson. Do you remember Doctor Dulberry, the minister, calling him an interloper? Ha! Ha! Ha!”

“I am surprised at this style of language from one in your circumstances.”

“Why, ay,” said Middlemas, with a bitter smile—“it would be difficult to most men to keep up their spirits, after gaining and losing father, mother, and a good inheritance, all in the same day. But I had always a turn for philosophy.”

“I really do not understand you, Mr. Middlemas.”

“Why, I found my parents yesterday, did I not?” answered the young man. “My mother, as you know, had waited but that moment to die, and my father to become distracted; and I conclude both were contrived purposely to cheat me of my inheritance, as he has taken up such a prejudice against me.”

“Inheritance?” repeated Hartley, bewildered by Richard's calmness, and half suspecting that the insanity of the father was hereditary in the family. “In Heaven's name, recollect yourself, and get rid of these hallucinations. What inheritance are you dreaming of?”

“That of my mother, to be sure, who must have inherited old Moncada's wealth—and to whom should it descend, save to her children?—I am the eldest of them—that fact cannot be denied.”

“But consider, Richard—recollect yourself.”

“I do,” said Richard; “and what then?”

“Then you cannot but remember,” said Hartley, “that unless there was a will in your favour, your birth prevents you from inheriting.”

“You are mistaken, sir, I am legitimate.—Yonder sickly brats, whom you rescued from the grave, are not more legitimate than I am.—Yes! our parents could not allow the air of Heaven to breathe on them—me they committed to the winds and the waves—I am nevertheless their lawful child, as well as their puling offspring of advanced age and decayed health. I saw them, Adam—Winter showed the nursery to me while they were gathering courage to receive me in the drawing-room. There they lay, the children of predilection, the riches of the East expended that they might sleep soft and wake in magnificence. I, the eldest brother—the heir—I stood beside their bed in the borrowed dress which I had so lately exchanged for the rags of an hospital. Their couches breathed the richest perfumes, while I was reeking from a pest-house; and I—I repeat it—the heir, the produce of their earliest and best love, was thus treated. No wonder that my look was that of a basilisk.”

“You speak as if you were possessed with an evil spirit,” said Hartley; “or else you labour under a strange delusion.”

“You think those only are legally married over whom a drowsy parson has read the ceremony from a dog's-eared prayer-book? It may be so in your English law—but Scotland makes Love himself the priest. A vow betwixt a fond couple, the blue heaven alone witnessing, will protect a confiding girl against the perjury of a fickle swain, as much as if a Dean had performed the rites in the loftiest cathedral in England. Nay, more; if the child of love be acknowledged by the father at the time when he is baptized—if he present the mother to strangers of respectability as his wife, the laws of Scotland will not allow him to retract the justice which has, in these actions, been done to the female whom he has wronged, or the offspring of their mutual love. This General Tresham, or Witherington, treated my unhappy mother as his wife before Gray and others, quartered her as such in the family of a respectable man, gave her the same name by which he himself chose to pass for the time. He presented me to the priest as his lawful offspring; and the law of Scotland, benevolent to the helpless child, will not allow him now to disown what he so formally admitted. I know my rights, and am determined to claim them.”

“You do not then intend to go on board the Middlesex? Think a little—You will lose your voyage and your commission.”

“I will save my birth-right,” answered Middlemas. “When I thought of going to India, I knew not my parents, or how to make good the rights which I had through them. That riddle is solved. I am entitled to at least a third of Moncada's estate, which, by Winter's account, is considerable. But for you, and your mode of treating the small-pox, I should have had the whole. Little did I think, when old Gray was likely to have his wig pulled off, for putting out fires, throwing open windows, and exploding whisky and water, that the new system of treating the small-pox was to cost me so many thousand pounds.”

“You are determined then,” said Hartley, “on this wild course?”

“I know my rights, and am determined to make them available,” answered the obstinate youth.

“Mr. Richard Middlemas, I am sorry for you.”

“Mr. Adam Hartley, I beg to know why I am honoured by your sorrow.”

“I pity you,” answered Hartley, “both for the obstinacy of selfishness, which can think of wealth after the scene you saw last night, and for the idle vision which leads you to believe that you can obtain possession of it.”

“Selfish!” cried Middlemas; “why, I am a dutiful son, labouring to clear the memory of a calumniated mother—And am I a visionary?—Why, it was to this hope that I awakened, when old Moncada's letter to Gray, devoting me to perpetual obscurity, first roused me to a sense of my situation, and dispelled the dreams of my childhood. Do you think that I would ever have submitted to the drudgery which I shared with you, but that, by doing so, I kept in view the only traces of these unnatural parents, by means of which I proposed to introduce myself to their notice, and, if necessary, enforce the rights of a legitimate child? The silence and death of Moncada broke my plans, and it was then only I reconciled myself to the thoughts of India.”

“You were very young to have known so much of the Scottish law, at the time when we were first acquainted,” said Hartley. “But I can guess your instructor.”

“No less authority than Tom Hillary's,” replied Middlemas. “His good counsel on that head is a reason why I do not now prosecute him to the gallows.”

“I judged