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!”
“But her memory, General--spare the memory of your wife, in which the
character of your children is involved.”
“I have no children!” said the desperate and violent man. “My Reuben is
gone to Heaven, to prepare a lodging for the angel who has now escaped
from the earth in a flood of harmony, which can only be equalled where
she is gone. The other two cherubs will not survive their mother. I
shall be, nay, I already feel myself, a childless man.”
“Yet I am your son,” replied Middlemas, in a tone sorrowful, but at the
same time tinged with sullen resentment--“Your son by your wedded wife.
Pale as she lies there, I call upon you both to acknowledge my rights,
and all who are present to bear witness to them.”
“Wretch!” exclaimed the maniac father, “canst thou think of thine own
sordid rights in the midst of death and frenzy? My son?--thou art the
fiend who has occasioned my wretchedness in this world, and who will
share my eternal misery in the next. Hence from my sight, and my curse
go with thee!”
His eyes fixed on the ground, his arms folded on his breast, the
haughty and dogged spirit of Middlemas yet seemed to meditate reply. But
Hartley, Winter, and other bystanders interfered, and forced him from
the apartment. As they endeavoured to remonstrate with him, he twisted
himself out of their grasp, ran to the stables, and seizing the first
saddled horse that he found, out of many that had been in haste got
ready to seek for assistance, he threw himself on its back, and rode
furiously off. Hartley was about to mount and follow him; but Winter and
the other domestics threw themselves around him, and implored him not to
desert their unfortunate master, at a time when the influence which he
had acquired over him might be the only restraint on the violence of his
passions.
“He had a _coup de soleil_ in India,” whispered Winter, “and is capable
of any thing in his fits. These cowards cannot control him, and I am old
and feeble.”
Satisfied that General Witherington was a greater object of compassion
than Middlemas, whom besides he had no hope of overtaking, and who
he believed was safe in his own keeping, however violent might be his
present emotions, Hartley returned where the greater emergency demanded
his immediate care.
He found the unfortunate General contending with the domestics, who
endeavoured to prevent his making his way to the apartment where
his children slept, and exclaiming furiously--“Rejoice, my
treasures--rejoice!--He has fled, who would proclaim your father's
crime, and your mother's dishonour!--He has fled, never to return,
whose life has been the death of one parent, and the ruin of
another!--Courage, my children, your father is with you--he will make
his way to you through a hundred obstacles!”
The domestics, intimidated and undecided, were giving way to him, when
Adam Hartley approached, and placing himself before the unhappy man,
fixed his eye firmly on the General's, while he said in a low but stern
voice--“Madman, would you kill your children?”
The General seemed staggered in his resolution, but still attempted to
rush past him. But Hartley, seizing him by the collar of his coat on
each side, “You are my prisoner,” he said; “I command you to follow me.”
“Ha! prisoner, and for high treason? Dog, thou hast met thy death!”
The distracted man drew a poniard from his bosom, and Hartley's strength
and resolution might not perhaps have saved his life, had not Winter
mastered the General's right hand, and contrived to disarm him.
“I am your prisoner, then,” he said; “use me civilly--and let me see my
wife and children.”
“You shall see them to-morrow,” said Hartley; “follow us instantly, and
without the least resistance.”
General Witherington followed like a child, with the air of one who is
suffering for a cause in which he glories.
“I am not ashamed of my principles,” he said--“I am willing to die for
my king.”
Without exciting his frenzy, by contradicting the fantastic idea which
occupied his imagination, Hartley continued to maintain over his
patient the ascendency he had acquired. He caused him to be led to his
apartment, and beheld him suffer himself to be put to bed. Administering
then a strong composing draught, and causing a servant to sleep in the
room, he watched the unfortunate man till dawn of morning.
General Witherington awoke in his full senses, and apparently conscious
of his real situation, which he testified by low groans, sobs, and
tears. When Hartley drew near his bedside, he knew him perfectly, and
said, “Do not fear me--the fit is over--leave me now, and see after
yonder unfortunate. Let him leave Britain as soon as possible, and go
where his fate calls him, and where we can never meet more. Winter knows
my ways, and will take care of me.”
Winter gave the same advice. “I can answer,” he said, “for my master's
security at present; but in Heaven's name, prevent his ever meeting
again, with that obdurate young man!”