The Return of Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

by Lillian de la Torre

  JOHNSON: Pretty proceedings for an Earl, truly!

  MACARCHER: But we have baffled him, and still shall do. Our cause is on the calendar this very Trinity term, and I doubt not we shall strip the black Earl of his ill-gotten honours!

  JOHNSON: I congratulate you, sir. It hardly appears you have need of my counsel.

  MACARCHER: Why, sir, I do not think we do. But James has taken a foolish notion—

  ANSLEY: How, foolish? Here am I, a rough foremast hand—

  MACARCHER: Nay, dear boy, under my tutelage you are taking a nice polish—polite literature, the play, the sights of the town—

  ANSLEY: I say a rough foremast hand. And yet I have won my heart’s desire, Lady Lalage has consented to be mine. (The girl reached him a white hand, and he took it gently.) Now this cannot be, that the bastard of a serving-wench shall sully the line of the noble Dukes of Westermark. Unless I can know for certain that I am no bastard, I cannot do this thing. I will drop my suit and bid my lady farewell, and go back to the sea.

  LADY LALAGE: No, James! I will not be dropped!

  ANSLEY: I will go back to the sea. Well, Mr. Johnson, what do you say? Can you help me to certainty?

  JOHNSON: Sir, I will be plain with you. Your story may be true. But were I to set up for the heir to an Earldom, I would invent just such a tale, a romantick story of trepanning and servitude and heroism before the Havannah and attempts at assassination—

  ANSLEY (stiffly): It is true, sir.

  JOHNSON: Then the court will so decide. My counsel is this, sir, that you await the issue before you take to the sea.

  LADY LALAGE: James, I beg you—

  MACARCHER: James, you cannot thus reduce all my effort and expense to a cypher—

  BOSWELL: Do, sir, be perswaded—

  ANSLEY: I will wait.

  MACARCHER: Brave boy!

  ANSLEY: Three days.

  On the evening following our conference with the Kidnapped Earl, my learned companion carried me across the Thames to Vauxhall Gardens, whither all the fashionable world was wont to resort in summer to hear the nightingale sing. Part of a plan (I wondered) to give this rustical Scot “a fine polish” such as Mr. MacArcher was giving his rough sailor? Or just the nostalgia for nightingales that comes over Londoners in June?

  I leaned the more to the former theory when in the modish throng I glimpsed none other than Dougal MacArcher himself with his sailor in tow, clearly in process of polishing.

  Whether for polish or pleasure, we were in gallant frame as we enjoyed the gardens, Johnson ponderous in his mighty wig of state fresh-powdered, I with my bloom-coloured coat setting off, as I fancied, my neat frame and alert countenance. We strolled in the verdant allees, admired Roubiliac’s statue of Handel while listening to his musick, took a syllabub, heard the nightingales sing, and came away by moonlight well pleased with our entertainment.

  It was our intent on this bright moonlit night to stroll down to the river and so go home by water. But barely had we turned a corner, when the air was rent with the clash of steel and the oaths of combatants.

  “An affair of honour!” I cried eagerly.

  “Say rather a general brawl,” said Johnson, pausing to observe the melee.

  By the bright moonlight I made out two paladins fighting back to back, set upon by a quartet of ill-looking rapparees. The shorter paladin was a nimble and deft swordsman. His tall ally used his sword like a cutlass, swinging and slashing in wild sweeps. I looked again, and saw that the cutlass-wielder was able seaman James Ansley, and the duellist was Dougal MacArcher.

  While I was still staring, my intrepid friend had taken in the situation, and with instant resolution had gripped his stout oaken stick and waded into the fray. I drew my sword to second him, but there was no need, for in less time than it takes to tell it, the embattled scholar had laid about the four rapparees with his mighty stick, cracking the crown of one of them, sending flying the weapon of the second, knocking the breath out of the third, and collaring the fourth as his comrades took to their heels.

  “What’s the meaning of this, fellow?” he demanded, shaking his captive as a mastiff might shake a rat.

  “Unhand me, old poot!” shrilled his victim, “or it will be the worse for you, for I am the Earl’s man!”

  “What Earl? Of Angleby perhaps?”

  “He. So look to it, old square-toes, and don’t put your nose in his fist!”

  “And where is the noble Earl? Nearby, no doubt?”

  “Yonder he sits in his coach.”

  “Be off with you!” cried his captor, propelling him none too gently in the opposite direction.

  Shaking off the thanks of our friends, he strode directly to where a coach stood against a clump of trees.

  “A word with you, my Lord.”

  A face came scowling out of the window into the moonlight, dusky yellow of hue, thin and deeply furrowed with down-turning lines, dark bushy brows scowling over little snapping black eyes—no wonder Dougal MacArcher had called him the Black Earl!

  “What’s the meaning of this,” he snarled, “that you interfere with my servants in the performance of their duties?”

  “Pray say, my Lord,” rejoined Johnson calmly, “whether you consider one of their duties to be assassinating your nephew?”

  At this the Black Earl fell a-cursing: “A rogue, a bastard, a scoundrel! An imposter, my brother’s by-blow, that seeks to rob his own kinsman!”

  “If he is indeed your brother’s by-blow, my Lord,” replied Johnson, “and not the true Earl, the law will soon discover it. You need not set assassins on him. I must warn you, sir, by these violent proceedings you betray yourself, that you know your cause is bad.”

  “No man’s cause is bad,” sneered the Black Earl, “who has ten thousand pounds a year.”

  “Of another man’s money.”

  “What’s that to you?” snapped the Earl. “I warn you, old fustylugs, take your thick nose out of my business, or ’twill be the worse for you. Who do you think you are, to bandy words with an Earl?”

  “I am Sam: Johnson.”

  “Save us, the lexicographer! Will you word me to death? I defy words, and be d-mned to you!”

  “Then have deeds. Be sure, my Lord, I will do my best endeavour to see that James Ansley is enabled to prove his legitimacy!”

  “Bah! I’ll parley no longer. Drive on, coachman!”

  The juggernaut coachman snapped his whip, and the equipage started with a jerk so reckless I barely stepped back in time.

  During this colloquy, the rest of our party had been busy setting themselves to rights, sheathing their weapons, staunching a superficial scratch or two—but not too busy to take in every word spoken. James Ansley was jubilant.

  “Now, sir,” he cried, “you know my uncle. Am I a bastard?”

  “I have sworn to prove that you are not,” said Johnson drily. “You must assist me. Pray come to Inner Temple Lane in the morning betimes, and bring all your papers—”

  “Alack, sir, we have no papers. All are in the hands of the Black Earl.”

  “Bring what you can, but come. You too, Mr. Boswell.”

  With this, by common consent we began to escort our friends to the river, and so made our way home by water with no further incident.

  Life at Inner Temple Lane began unwontedly early the next day. The tea things were cleared when the Ansley party presented themselves, Lady Lalage among them.

  “I grieved so, Mr. Johnson,” said she, “that by reason of other concerns I could not be with James to hear the nightingale sing, and I grieve the more now I know what passed, for my presence might have prevented it.”

  “You might have come to harm, milady, for the Black Earl’s bully-huffs respect neither man, woman nor beast. But we’ll be up with them yet! Come, gentlemen, your papers.”

  It was a thin sheaf that Mr. MacArcher proffered, laying them out on the walnut-tree table one after one, with a commentary.

  “The affidavit of Jiggy L
andry that James Ansley, her nursing, is Milady Eltham’s son. Her cousin Paddy, that he was the groom sent gallop-ping for the midwife. Her sister Biddy, that she was the scullery maid that fetched hot water, and saw the babe born of Lady Eltham with her own eyes …”

  Johnson shook his head.

  “Alack, sirs, what odds that the whole Landry connection will not lie to make their kinsman an Earl? Where is the midwife?”

  “Not found, sir.”

  “Lady Eltham’s physician?”

  “Long since dead.”

  “The clergyman who christened the heir?”

  “Dead too. ’Tis over twenty-five years ago.”

  “The parish register, then?”

  “Nothing in it, ’twas but ill kept.”

  “We must find better evidence, sir,” said Dr. Johnson, frowning. “Come, a family resemblance? Does James Ansley resemble his father?”

  “His father is dead this twenty years,” said Mr. MacArcher.

  “There’s no hope there,” said James Ansley with a smile. “My father and my uncle were two of a kind, little, black and loud; and you will not say I resemble my uncle?”

  “Heaven forfend!” cried Lady Lalage.

  “Then, sir, your mother?”

  “Folks that knew her have thought to see a resemblance; but she is gone, how to prove it?”

  “Come, my friends,” said Dr. Johnson, rising decisively, “let us go.”

  “Go? Whither?”

  “To call upon your mother’s kin.”

  Shepherded by Dr. Johnson, our little party ascended a hackney coach, clattered westward, and descended at Westminster Abbey. There our guide led us to an ornate monument, and paused before it. On it we beheld the deceased, clad in a marble toga, kneeling before his own cenotaph, regarding without surprise a mixed entourage of mourners and angels: “Sacred to the Memory of JOHN BARFIELD, first Duke of BREDINGHAM.”

  “Your grandfather, Mr. Ansley.”

  Eagerly we scanned the marble lineaments, a handsome face enough, but more Greek than Roman. Try as we would, we could not see in it anything of James Ansley.

  “I fear, sir,” said Johnson, “that the Duke your grandfather affords us no assistance. Well, come, follow me.”

  He hailed a passing verger, who pointed us the way.

  “’Tis a main narrow stair for the lady,” he offered, dubiously regarding milady’s modish draperies.

  “No matter, I’ll climb any stair,” cried Lady Lalage, “if justice for James is at the top.” She reached him her hand.

  It was a narrow stair most like a ladder, behind the panels of Henry the Seventh’s chapel, and it led to a dusty chamber above. There we found an equally dusty old verger in charge, and ranged about the walls loomed the dusky visages of personages richly clad. It was like being surrounded by ghosts.

  At once the old verger began as if by rote to recite:

  “Pray step in, sirs and madam, and attend me. You must know, milady and gentlemen all, that in a former age it was the custom to exhibit the deceased on a catafalque at his obsequies. But sometimes it would not do, for corruption, you take me, sir, and a waxen effigy came to be substituted. When the custom fell out of use, the effigies were tumbled together in this attick, and they have only recently been rediscovered, set to rights, and put on shew. (pointing) King Charles the Second—”

  Kingly in his royal robes, a full black periwig above a swarthy waxen countenance.

  “Queen Anne—”

  A sweet face, a robe studded with glass gems.

  “Her Grace the Duchess of Bredingham—”

  At her we looked with quickened attention, but read nothing in her regular features.

  “Milady Duchess favoured the old ways, as you see, and most especially when her son, the second Duke, died on his travels in Italy, she took the greatest care that the effigy on his catafalque should be a true likeness in every respect. Yonder he lies, the second Duke of Bredingham, exactly as he was in life—”

  Recumbent, we had overlooked him. There he lay on his catafalque in his ducal robes—James Ansley to the life! Someone gasped, and Lady Lalage threw her arms impulsively around the claimant’s neck.

  “Now we can marry!” she cried.

  “Past doubt this Duke is my uncle,” said young Ansley slowly. “Now we can marry, my love.”

  They clung oblivious, while the rest of us stared at the waxen image. There were the blond curls, the tawny brows and lashes meticulously formed of real human hair in two carefully chosen shades of pale brown, the sensitive mouth, the well-formed chin, most convincing the superbly high Roman nose. Dr. Johnson had found his proof. We fee’d the verger lavishly, and came away rejoicing.

  For some ten days thereafter, I neglected my respected friend’s company, my time being taken up in raking with Mr. Wilkes and the wits, and—alas that I must say it!—dallying with low wenches. But on a warm July day, in better frame, I called again in Inner Temple Lane.

  There I found Dr. Johnson sitting over the teapot with the Kidnapped Earl and his company, in high good humour.

  “Welcome, Mr. Boswell,” said he. “You come in good time, for we have need of you.”

  “The Ansley cause comes up at the King’s Bench on Monday,” exclaimed Dougal MacArcher exultantly. “The Black Earl’s time of reckoning has come!”

  “My good friends here would have me go down to Westminster Hall to watch the proceedings,” said Dr. Johnson, “but you know, sir, this is quite contrary to my way of life—”

  I knew it well, for the sturdy philosopher would scarce rise before noon, or go abroad before four of the clock.

  “And so I have selected you, Mr. Boswell, to be my deputy, for I hardly suppose you will miss this entertainment.”

  “Not likely, sir, for I count myself fortunate to be able to see this great cause tried before I proceed to my law studies in Utrecht.”

  “And in recompense, Mr. Boswell, you shall dine with me daily at the Mitre and report the day’s proceedings.”

  “All’s to a wish!” cried Lady Lalage, James Ansley wrung my hand, and so the plan was concerted.

  Thus it came about that the next week, towards evening, Sam: Johnson and James Boswell sat at a table at the Mitre over a cut off the joint and a glass, and spoke of the Kidnapped Earl.

  “A great day in the court for the Ansley cause!” I reported. “You can picture, sir, the solemn scene at the King’s Bench. On the bench sit three judges, gowned and periwigged, a little fidgety one, a big somnolent one, and in the middle a judge of godlike mien—”

  “Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, Mr. Boswell, note him well.”

  “—and the jury is in the box, and at their long table sit the lawyers in their black gowns and white bands, and the crowd is everywhere, crammed to the walls. In the forefront sit the litigants, the old Earl and the ‘young Earl,’ the cynosure of all eyes. Now the crier calls order, and Dougal MacArcher rises to open his friend’s case. How eloquently he pictures the plight of the friendless boy, inhumanly put out of his heritage by his wicked uncle Richard! Ladies weep. Even James Ansley has a tear in his eye. Only the Black Earl sits sneering.”

  “And then, sir?”

  “Then, sir, MacArcher and his juniors begin calling their witnesses. A score of honest Irish folk appear. They swear to my Lady’s pregnancy and the birth of the heir. Some say they were present at the birth. Many good souls remember how they drank the heir’s health at the christening.

  “Then come others of the household, to tell of how my Lady left Dalmain under a cloud, how the child came home from nurse at Jiggy Landry’s, and was handsomely attired, made much of, and presented to all and sundry as the old Earl’s heir.”

  “Why sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “this is all to the good.”

  “But what emotion in court, sir, when Lord Eltham’s serving-folk tell how the boy was turned out into the streets of Dublin! And even the pandours who kidnapped the boy were there to tell of it, and say it was at the behest of wic
ked Uncle Richard! ‘You lie!’ bawls Uncle Richard, and is rebuked by the judge. Last comes a sailorman who met James Ansley in the backwoods of Pennsylvania, clad in skins, and knows him now for the same man. The plaintiff rests.

  “In a word, sir, the tide is high for James Ansley. The spectators, even the judges, look on him with compassion, and when the court rises, the claimant is cheered to the echo, and the Black Earl is hissed to his coach!”

  “So far so good; let us see what the morrow will bring,” says Dr. Johnson, and calls for the reckoning.

  “Well, sir, how goes James Ansley’s cause?” enquired Dr. Johnson next day over a mighty dish of collops at the Mitre.

  “Alack, sir, the tide runs counter. The Black Earl has had his day. Dougal MacArcher had brought Jiggy and the rest of the under servants to attest James Ansley’s birth. Now come all the upper servants to swear for the Earl there was no such birth. So say the butler and my Lord’s valet, and worst of all my Lady’s own confidential woman, she avers with vehemence that Lady Eltham never had a child. So say the Ansley kin to a man, and certain it is, the late Earl of Angleby never knew Lord Eltham had an heir. Much harm is done to the Ansley cause. When the defence rested, the crowd was beginning to look askance at James Ansley, What is to be done?”

  “The truth must be made visible,” said my friend thoughtfully, pushing back his plate and rising.

  I presented myself at Westminster Hall early the next morning, with a sense of impending crisis. This was the day appointed for the claimant’s rebuttal witnesses. Would they prevail?

  Again the spacious chamber was packed to the doors when to the crier’s piercing “Oyez!” the judges in their velvet-trimmed gowns paced to the bench. On one side James Ansley in his mulberry brocade sat smiling, Lady Lalage’s hand in his. On the other side, the old Earl bent his black brows and twisted his thin lip in his accustomed sneer. At the long table before the bar, like a flock of blackbirds, sat the lawyers, leaders and juniors in a row. Dougal MacArcher at one end sat on the edge of his chair, his green eyes snapping, ready for the fray. At the other end Earl Richard’s advocate sat solid, Serjeant Grimthorpe, a lowering mastiff of a man whose hectoring bull’s roar had discomposed many an Ansley witness.