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.”
