--M. G."
The haste with which Dr. Hartley sped to the Fort, and demanded an
audience of the Governor, was defeated by the delays interposed by
Paupiah.
It did not suit the plans of this artful Hindoo, that any interruption
should be opposed to the departure of the Begum and her favourite,
considering how much the plans of the last corresponded with his own. He
affected incredulity on the charge, when Hartley complained of an
Englishwoman being detained in the train of the Begum against her
consent, treated the complaint of Miss Gray as the result of some female
quarrel unworthy of particular attention, and when at length he took
some steps for examining further into the matter, he contrived they
should be so tardy, that the Begum and her retinue were far beyond the
reach of interruption.
Hartley let his indignation betray him into reproaches against Paupiah,
in which his principal was not spared. This only served to give the
impassable Bramin a pretext for excluding him from the Residency, with a
hint, that if his language continued to be of such an imprudent
character, he might expect to be removed from Madras, and stationed at
some hillfort or village among the mountains, where his medical
knowledge would find full exercise in protecting himself and others from
the unhealthiness of the climate.
As he retired, bursting with ineffectual indignation, Esdale was the
first person whom Hartley chanced to meet with, and to him, stung with
impatience, he communicated what he termed the infamous conduct of the
Governor's Dubash, connived at, as he had but too much reason to
suppose, by the Governor himself; exclaiming against the want of spirit
which they betrayed, in abandoning a British subject to the fraud of
renegades, and the force of a tyrant.
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