THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. Walter Scott

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      Richard Middlemas’s astonishment was equal to his horror. He had but one advantage over the poor wretches with whom he was classed, and it was in enjoying the luxury of a pallet to himself—most of the others being occupied by two unhappy beings. He saw no one who appeared to attend to the wants, or to heed the complaints, of the wretches around him, or to whom he could offer any appeal against his present situation. He looked for his clothes, that he might arise and extricate himself from this den of horrors; but his clothes were nowhere to be seen, nor did he see his portmanteau, or sea-chest. It was much to be apprehended he would never see them more.

      Then, but too late, he remembered the insinuations which had passed current respecting his friend the Captain, who was supposed to have been discharged by Mr. Lawford, on account of some breach of trust in the Town-Clerk’s service. But that he should have trepanned the friend who had reposed his whole confidence in him—that he should have plundered him of his fortune, and placed him in this house of pestilence, with the hope that death might stifle his tongue—were iniquities not to have been, anticipated, even if the worst of these reports were true.

      But Middlemas resolved not to be awanting to himself. This place must be visited by some officer, military or medical, to whom he would make an appeal, and alarm his fears at least, if he could not awaken his conscience. While he revolved these distracting thoughts, tormented at the same time by a burning thirst which he had no means of satisfying, he endeavoured to discover if, amongst those stretched upon the pallets nearest him, he could not discern some one likely to enter into conversation with him, and give him some information about the nature and customs of this horrid place. But the bed nearest him was occupied by two fellows, who, although to judge from their gaunt cheeks, hollow eyes, and ghastly looks, they were apparently recovering from the disease, and just rescued from the jaws of death, were deeply engaged in endeavouring to cheat each other of a few halfpence at a game of cribbage, mixing the terms of the game with oaths not loud but deep; each turn of luck 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 bedfellow 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 overheated 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, bandylegged 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 handcuffs 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 bedside 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”—

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