“Will he do, my Lord?” he enquired impatiently.
“You must say how you came by him,” replied the little philosopher.
The wild boy squatted on his hams and watched with bright eyes from beneath his tangled mat of hair. He was small and wiry, perhaps as much as ten years old. There were fresh scratches on his skinny arms, and a bruise on his dark cheek. He watched Lord Monboddo without blinking.
“Caught him in a tree,” replied the man, adding as an afterthought, “eating nuts.”
“Where?”
“This side of Montrose.”
“Can he speak?” enquired Dr. Johnson.
“Never a word. He’s a real wild ape boy, my Lord, and they said at Lawrencekirk you’d pay us well for him.”
“A guinea apiece,” said Monboddo firmly.
The lout began to whine, but he took the guinea the Scotchman handed him and backed off. The whey-faced man pocketed a guinea in his turn, and between them they manœuvred the pannier out at the door and were gone.
“What a fortunate thing!” exclaimed Lord Monboddo. “I will communicate with M. Condamine at once. I will write a report for the Select Club. A real wild boy!—Here, sir, what are you about?”
With his own hands my revered friend was shovelling turnips onto a plate.
“Why, my Lord,” replied Dr. Johnson coolly, dexterously slicing a large cut off the joint and laying it on a second plate, “why, my Lord, ’tis not every night a man has it in his power to test Lord Monboddo’s theories by actual experimentation. Here, boy.”
He laid both plates on the floor where the wild boy still squatted warily. Unhesitatingly the scrawny half-starved creature chose the mutton. He did not grovel into it with his snout like a pig, but took it up in both hands like a squirrel with a nut, tearing at it ravenously. When it was gone, he curled himself up into a ball under the table, and instantly fell into slumber; nor could Lord Monboddo’s impatience awaken him again.
“Let the lad sleep,” said Dr. Johnson. “We shall get nothing further from him till he is rested. Pray, my Lord, will you not let us enjoy the sight of your chymical experimentations?”
“Gladly,” replied Lord Monboddo. “Pray step this way.”
He led the way down a passage towards one of the ancient turrets, and unlocked a massive door with a large brass key which he took from his pocket. We entered a lofty vaulted room furnished with every device for chymical experimentation. A kiln stood on one side, supported by a very St. Dunstan’s battery of pokers, tongs, shovels, and besoms. Vessels of clay in tortured shapes were crowded on the walls. Over a brick oven a closed copper bubbled monotonously through a long spiral of glass.
Lord Monboddo took from his pocket a second brass key, and unlocked the heavy chest which stood by the door.
“I hold, sir,” said he, “that every metal is composed of infinitesimal particles, smaller than any yet rendered out; I do not despair of so reducing them; and when I have done so, what shall hinder me to build these atomies again into new combinations? I may thus produce one metal from another; or I may produce by reduction and combination metals wholly new, stronger and more useful than any yet known.”
“Why, sir,” said I, “then you may turn lead into gold if you will.”
“You will have the philosopher’s stone,” concurred Dr. Johnson.
“’Tis my view,” said the eccentrick Lord of Session, “that only that has value which is useful. I would rather turn gold into iron. I have gold.”
He laid in my hand a yellow ingot of about the bigness of my little finger.
“This is gold,” said he. “I will reduce it, and turn it to iron or tin, if I can.”
I surveyed the rows of ingots in the brass-bound chest.
“Is it all gold?” I gasped.
“Not so,” replied Lord Monboddo, “for I will as gladly turn iron into tin, or tin into iron, if it may be so. This is tin.”
He handed me a duller, lighter finger of metal.
“This is lead—this is iron—this is silver—”
My learned friend and I observed the metals with interest.
“How will you go about to reduce—I should say to transmute—these metals?” enquired Dr. Johnson.
“Sir,” replied Monboddo, “liquefaction has failed. I design to use pressure, when once I can devise some means of producing a pressure sufficiently great.”
“Well, sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “lock up your treasure chest, for all men are not such philosophers as we, to despise a bar of gold if it may be easily come by.”
Lord Monboddo wielded the ponderous brass key and pocketed it. He then walked to the narrow windows and dropped the bars of the heavy shutters.
“You do well,” approved Dr. Johnson, “to make this room impregnable, for gold is a strong temptation.”
“Nay, Dr. Johnson,” replied Lord Monboddo, “I trust my people. I lock and bar behind me, only because the slightest meddling, though well-intentioned, might bring to naught a chymical investigation on which I had spent weeks of labour.”
He locked the oaken door behind us as we left, and the second key joined the first. The wild boy, awakened from his cat-nap, was frisking in the corridor. As we stood by the door in a contest of courtesy as to who should be first down the passage, he loped swiftly towards us, and before we could move he had scaled Monboddo like a tree.
“God bless my soul!” cried the wiry little Scotchman.
For a moment the wild boy clung about our astonished friend’s neck, mopping and mowing; then with a leap he ascended into the ornamental cornice over the door and squatted there on hands and haunches.
“Come down!” cried Monboddo in alarm. “Alas, he’ll do himself a mischief.”
“He who can climb up,” said Dr. Johnson calmly, “can climb down. Let us leave him here. He is like a puppy; you shall see, he will follow fast enough.”
We walked away slowly. I watched out of the tail of my eye. The bright eyes of the wild boy followed us to the turn of the passage. Then with a leap he was down and running after us as fast as his hands and feet would carry him.
“He is indeed like a puppy,” mused Monboddo as he sat by the kitchen fire. The wild boy, squatting at his feet, nuzzled the Scotchman’s thin hand, and was rewarded by a pat on the head.
“I’ll teach him to speak,” says Monboddo in a happy waking dream, “I’ll teach him to wear cloathes and write.”
“And to subsist on a vegetable diet?” enquired Dr. Johnson slyly.
“Yes, sir,” replied Monboddo innocently. “’Twill be a great vindication of my theories. He shall be tended and instructed; I’ll make him a lawyer. He shall learn to be grateful for the day when I bought him from yonder rough lout.”
The wild boy chewed softly on his finger.
“See,” says Monboddo happily, “he caresses me. This is a great argument that gratitude is innate in the human species.”
“If that be indeed gratitude,” responded Dr. Johnson, “’tis a great argument that knowledge of the English language is innate in the human species. How otherwise could he apprehend the benefits you intend him?”
“By instinct,” said Monboddo, “the wild thing knows by instinct who is his friend.” He softly scratched the wild boy’s touselled head.
“It may be,” said Dr. Johnson. “None the less, I advise you against putting your finger in his mouth.”
“Gentlemen,” said I, creating a diversion, “the hour grows late. Let us retire. Pray, Lord Monboddo, what is to be your ape boy’s place of rest? Must we put him in a tree?”
“He shall have a pile of clouts by the fire,” responded the benevolent little philosopher. “He shall have better when I have taught him cleanly habits.”
The ape boy took kindly to the warm nest by the fire. We left him burrowed into it, and took leave till morning.
Dr. Johnson and I lay in one commodious chamber together. Retiring first, I jotted down, as is my custom, the interesting events of the day, and the wis
e comments made thereon by my philosophical friend. When I had finished, and still Dr. Johnson lingered, I ventured to take the candle and sally forth in search of him.
I found him, to my unutterable amazement, painfully clambering down from the cornice above the chymistry room door; I gaped at him.
“What do you here, Bozzy?” demanded he in a subdued voice bursting with annoyance.
“Nay, sir, what do you?” I demanded in my turn, suiting my tone to his.
He dusted off his decent brown small-cloathes, and suddenly he grinned at me.
“I had a fancy to see if the wild boy had left any nuts in this tree.”
“And had he?” I asked stupidly.
“Yes, sir,” said Dr. Johnson. “Two. Write it in your note-book, Bozzy: where the wild boy can-climb, there can climb the old scribbler from London.”
“With the aid of a stool,” I remarked, indicating the bench my friend had used to make the ascent.
“Take up the stool, then,” said Dr. Johnson. “It belongs at the bend of the passage.”
We were awakened betimes by blood-curdling screams from without, which continued as we hastened below.
“In Heaven’s name,” cried Dr. Johnson to a passing domestick, “what is the meaning of this horrible outcry?”
The man laughed.
“’Tis only the wild boy,” said he. “You must know, Lord Monboddo thinks to do himself good by going nude in the morning air in his chamber, and mighty pleased he is that his wild boy exposes himself from morning till night without any respect for Christians. Well, sir, when my lord has aired himself thoroughly, he goes next, for his health’s sake, to bathe in a stream of living water which he has led through a commodious little bathing-house hard by. Now, sir, as the wild boy is well aired too, Lord Monboddo must needs carry him along to bathe for his health’s sake; but the little animal, I take it, will have none of it, for he’s screaming bloody murder down there. Look, here he comes.”
The wild boy came streaking across the door-yard and clambered breathlessly up to the roof of the lean-to, where he clung wild-eyed and panting. He was as dirty and black as ever; clearly Lord Monboddo’s bathing regimen was less than attractive to his primitive mind.
“This is cruelty,” cried Dr. Johnson, who never loved cold water. “Come, come down, boy.”
The wild boy eyed him with dumb distrust. Dr. Johnson signalled him with his great hand. The wild boy shook his head stubbornly.
“Here, Bozzy, fetch the joint. He’ll understand that.”
He understood it indeed. He came down at once. It was a sight to see the learned philosopher standing in the misty morning feeding gobbets of mutton to a dirty, hairy, naked wild boy.
His al fresco breakfast over, the little animal ran in and quickly fell asleep by the fire, just as Lord Monboddo came trotting back from his bath, looking chopped and red and feeling self-righteous.
Dr. Johnson cut short his disquisition.
“I’ve lived sixty years without cold water, and I’ll not take to it now. Let us hear no more of this.”
It came on to rain, and Dr. Johnson declined as firmly to join our host in a circumambulation of his borders. Lord Monboddo made us free of his library, and with profuse apologies left us to inspect the progress of some sort of rain-trenching in his turnip fields.
I settled down by the fire with Dodd’s sermons, and I may have nodded a little. As I jerked up my head I saw out of the tail of my eye the bare-footed ape boy flitting like a shadow out at the door. I followed softly. A chronicler must neglect no means of observation that may enrich his record.
The bare feet pattered lightly down the long passage to the chymical room. The door was ajar. He slipped inside, and so did I after him.
Behind me the door swung to with a click, and the key grated in the lock.
“Mr. Boswell,” said Dr. Johnson quietly. “This is a lucky chance. I have a mind to try a little transmutation of my own, and you shall be my assistant.”
“I know nothing of chymistry,” I replied doubtfully, though willing to be of help. I recalled the Doctor’s chymical experimentations at Streatham, mostly explosive in nature, and shuddered slightly.
“’Tis not a chymical transmutation,” replied my friend, “but a human one. I have a mind to teach Monboddo’s wild boy how to speak.”
“This is the task of years,” I protested, “and Lord Monboddo will scarce thank you if you begin at the wrong end, and set his theories at naught.”
“Lord Monboddo will thank me indeed,” said Dr. Johnson gently, “if he comes home and finds that I have taught his wild boy to speak between breakfast and dinner.”
“How is this to be accomplished?” I enquired.
“Very simply, sir,” replied my learned friend, “as you would teach a jack-daw to speak. We’ll take out the fold of his tongue as a huntsman worms a whelp, and then we’ll split the tongue to the root, but carefully, for I would not slit his throat; and you shall see, he will speak to us like any Christian.”
I regarded my old friend with horror. He proposed this hideous surgery upon his friend’s wild boy in easy and gentle tones, a slight smile of benevolence playing about his lips.
“Come, Bozzy,” said he, “don’t be squeamish. Our proceedings will be of inestimable benefit to knowledge. ’Twill pain the subject, I grant; but his screams will go unheard behind these thick walls, and Monboddo will thank us in the end.”
I found no words to reply.
“You may take the tongs,” pursued Dr. Johnson. “I fancy the carving-knife will serve my turn. But first we must secure our subject. Do not move, Bozzy, he must not be alarmed. I’ll just approach him gently—”
As he spoke these words in an even, gentle tone, Dr. Johnson was already moving towards the unsuspecting wild boy. But as he came within arm’s reach, his victim suddenly gave an uncontrollable scream of terror, and bolted towards the locked door. He seemed to understand that it was locked, for he wasted no time wrenching at the handle, but scaled the door-frame in an ecstasy of fear, and clung trembling above the lintel. Dr. Johnson smiled grimly.
“Come down,” he said, “come down. What’s your name, eh? Dick? Tom? Come down, I’ll not hurt you.”
Still the wild boy clung to the cornice.
“I know you understand me,” said Dr. Johnson sternly. “Speak but two words, and I promise I will protect you.”
The wild boy gazed down with stiffened lips.
“Come, sirrah,” said Dr. Johnson, “what is to be the word? There is a word?”
“Witcher and ridge,” whispered the trembling boy.
“And the time?”
“Midnight.”
“Tonight?”
The wild boy nodded.
“Come down, then, boy,” said Dr. Johnson. “I will be your friend.”
The skinny frame slid lightly to the floor. The bright eyes searched my friend’s face, and then the child burst into a passion of weeping.
“Here, boy, don’t do that,” said my benevolent friend anxiously. “Come, I’ll get you something to eat.” He took the grimy hand in his. “But remember, don’t ever eat turnips.”
But though this strange exchange cemented a stranger friendship between my friend and the dirty, naked child, so that they spent the rainy day in one another’s company; and though the wild boy had indeed spoken two words; nothing of this was said to Lord Monboddo when he came home in the gloaming. The wild boy again sat under the table and ate generously off the joint, without turnips, eating eagerly from his thin fingers. Again we sat by the kitchen fire, and the wild boy sat against Monboddo’s knee. Again we retired betimes to our commodious chamber, and the wild boy lay among his clouts by the fire.
’Twas hard on midnight when Dr. Johnson rose and huddled himself into his greatcoat. He slipped a pistol into my hand.
“Come,” he said, “but lightly, for Monboddo is a poor sleeper.”
We passed quietly, without a light, to the door of the chymistry room,
which Johnson opened with the key. A shadow came down the passage towards us.
“’Tis Ritter,” Johnson breathed in my ear.
My manservant took his stand beside me. He was armed with a cudgel. With infinite quiet Dr. Johnson set the door close.
We stood so for interminable minutes, hearing the old house creak and whisper around us, and the fire in the brick oven sigh and crack. Then I heard the click of a drawn bolt, and in a moment I was aware of movement in the passage, guarded and almost soundless. Another second, and the door swung silently inward.
“Stand,” cried Dr. Johnson, thrusting his pistol against a dark shape. I found the second man’s ribs with the muzzle of mine.
“Bing avast!” cried a thick voice. “The young Abram cove has betwattled us!”
“Stubble your whids,” drawled a second voice. “We yield, sir.”
“Secure the child,” cried Dr. Johnson. “Ritter, strike a light.”
It was not clear to me how Ritter was to hold the slippery child and strike a light at the same time; but he contrived it, for when the candle’s rays strengthened and revealed the strange scene, they fell first on the terrified face of Monboddo’s wild boy, held fast by the tangled hair.
They fell, too, on the pale coffin-shaped physiognomy of the man of the pannier, and on his burly companion.
“Ruffin cly thee, Jem,” muttered the latter between his teeth, “hast whiddled the whole scrap, eh?”
“Shut your bone-box,” said the pale-faced man. “I’ll take care of Jem.” He smiled dangerously. He spoke negligently well, like a Mohock. The skinny boy shrank back against his captor.
“Make them secure,” said Dr. Johnson to Ritter. My servant produced a quantity of rope. He bound the false wild boy with a prodigious number of loops, and laid him on the bench.
The heavy-set man shewed fight when his turn came, but Ritter tapped him under the ear, and he gave no more trouble. He too was bound and stowed away. The second man cursed us with quiet dignity. He too was made secure.
“What’s to be done with these gentry?” I enquired.
“We’ll carry them to Aberdeen in the morning,” replied Dr. Johnson.
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