The Heir of Douglas

by Lillian de la Torre

He was sent for the very next day, and the Duchess behaved as if no such thing had happened. She did not, however, abandon her campaign. She became more outrageous than ever. She threatened to throw herself over the window. She picked up the pruning-knife and threatened to cut her throat. One morning she tried still another tack. She came to the Duke’s bedside and fell dramatically upon her knees.

  “Your sister,” she told him, “appeared to me last night! Crying out: ‘Justice, justice, justice for my innocent child!’ And she desired me to notify your Grace, that the curse of God will fall upon you if you give your estate away from her son!”

  “Tell me, Margaret,” inquired the Duke thoughtfully, “did you ever see my sister in her lifetime?”

  “You know I did not.”

  “Then,” said the Duke, and laughed at her, “how did you know it was my sister?”

  But the Duke could not hope to win every bout, especially when pruning-knives were in it. He endured a few more days of harangues and scenes and threats, and then he fairly took to his heels and ran away. He ran to his cousin’s house at Newbattle. Thence he sent his Duchess a letter renouncing her forever. He also drafted a circular letter explaining the whole affair to a number of friends and relations. Copies of these curious documents survive among the papers of Andrew Stuart.

  The Duchess did not take these proceedings tamely. She hurried right down to Newbattle to confront her errant mate. But the retainers were on the qui vive, and sent her to the right-about. They did not repulse her without a sharp engagement, in the course of which the embattled virago was roughly handled before being hustled back to Edinburgh.

  The terrified Duke got his settlements on Hamilton, and put them in safe-keeping with his doer, enjoining him not to give them up again, even to himself; he was afraid the redoubtable Peggy might still wheedle or threaten them into her possession.

  The whole thing made the Duke really ill. He was an old man, and the repeated bursts of fury, the storming of Newbattle, and loneliness, laid him low. He began to miss his Duchess. He began to send her surreptitious messages. When the night came on which the Duke waked in tears from a dream that his Peggy was dead, reconciliation was inevitable. The contending parties drew up a curious little treaty to mark the event. In it the reconciled pair drew once more on the ducal privilege of blaming somebody else; they agreed to banish certain inflammatory attendants. They also agreed that the Duchess should cease her meddling, that she should expect no jewels from the Duke, and “That the Duchess shall be an obedient dutiful wife.”

  Warned by her experience, Duchess Peggy went more wisely to work. In a few weeks her banished attendant was back. Somehow the Duke laid out three thousand pounds on jewels. The unwelcome relatives were kept in the background. Archie’s charitable protector sent him to Rugby, stopping further attempts to produce the boy before the Duke. Colonel John was off to the Isle of Man, a notorious hot-bed of smugglers. He acquired no riches there, but it kept him out of sight.

  On November 1, 1759, at long last, something turned up. His brother George died. Suddenly no-pay-at-all Colonel John became Sir John Steuart of Grandtully, at a thousand pounds a year. He hurried back to Edinburgh to collect.

  For a man with nothing in his pocket, his very rings in pawn, the forms of the law moved plaguy slow. Patient Mr. Loch endured much. Colonel John had been ingratiating; Sir John was quick in adopting a high tone. He wanted an immediate advance, under threat of getting into complications. He wanted Mr. Loch at his beck and call, and resented it if the busy Writer kept him waiting. Under such treatment Mr. Loch took to keeping out of the way. For this he was dubbed a crack-tryst, and peppered with notes from “Balfour’s Coffe house, just come up to town,” or dated

  Saturday 4 in the

  morning after drinking

  a great deal of punch

  The Colonel’s creditors were down on him like a swarm of hornets. They meant to get their money quickly, before the old man died and the entailed estate went to Jock. They sequestered the rents. Sir John had much ado to get a sum to live on. In the middle of creditors’ meetings, at which he did not always remember to show up, he was busy settling a sum of money on little Archie. He meant to provide for him handsomely, as became the son of Lady Jane Douglas. In vain did Mr. Loch represent that there was no such sum of money in sight. Sir John argued that the fir woods of Grandtully alone were worth it. Since he had already burdened the fir woods to the Plimsoll mark, this is a good specimen of his financial thinking. Mr. Loch absolutely refused to draw up such a document. In the end Sir John drew it up with his own hand, an unusual proceeding in the day when the “Writer” wrote the legal documents. Since Sir John never paid a cent of principal or interest, and did not list it among his debts, he may have regarded it rather as one of his more impressive literary efforts.

  More solid good fortune was promising for Archie down at Holyrood. The Duchess’s propaganda was beginning to take effect. Isabel Walker and Mrs. Hepburn of Keith were called in, and said earnestly that Lady Jane had certainly been pregnant; they had seen her so intimately that they could not possibly doubt it. Mrs. Hewit became a visitor at the Abbey, and touched the Duke’s heart with her accounts of his sister’s trials.

  The Duke now thought Mrs. Hewit an excessive honest good woman, and condescended to call on her at her lodging at the wig-maker’s. When he heard that the wig-maker had been obliging to her, he repaid him by ordering a number of new wigs. He showered Mrs. Hewit with presents, the kind that he preferred to give—such presents as cost him no money. Out of the hampers sent down from Douglas she would have a hare or a salmon. When the Duke moved to the country, she received the superfluous coals. The Duke was in an Indian-summer mood.

  When the Ducal entourage returned to Edinburgh for the winter, the Duchess judged that the time was ripe for the final push. She induced the Duke to send for his settlements. True to his trust, the man of business refused to give them up. The litigious Duke called upon the law. For this action he employed a rising young advocate, Alexander Murray (later Lord Henderland), who handled the matter with a modesty and candour becoming his youth, but with the propriety and judgement of ripe experience. The Duchess took note of this promising youth.

  When he had the papers, the Duke took them and shut himself up in the drawing-room with them. He ordered supper delayed, and sent for a pair of scissors. It was a long time before supper was ordered up.

  In the spring of 1761 the Duke began to fail fast, and all engines were set to work. All friends of Hamilton were excluded from his presence. The Duchess was at his side day and night plying him with quicksilver and solicitations. At last the old man gave in and sent for a lawyer.

  Other factions were not idle. Andrew Stuart sent an express to Charles Yorke, the great English lawyer, to retain him for Hamilton in whatever litigation should result. He was too late. Another would-be heir, Lord Selkirk, had been beforehand with him. The Duchess thought she had got there first. When Yorke, finally, acted for Selkirk, she snapped at him: “Then, Sir, in the next world whose will you be, for we have all had you?”

  Andrew Stuart also took out a warrant for sealing the Duke’s papers. He was just in time. Before the next dawn the Duke had died. In less than an hour Andrew Stuart was in the death chamber. So were other men of the law, Charles Brown, W. S., for Douglas, and John Davidson, W. S., for Selkirk. They saw the archives sealed. They returned next day and officially opened them. Sir John Steuart made a point of being present. The fortune at stake was the biggest in Scotland.

  There was no Count Douglas letter in the bosom of the Hamilton settlements. The settlements on Hamilton were there—with every signature cut clean away with a pair of scissors. There was a new settlement; and it made Archie Douglas the Duke’s heir.

  So a messenger went off for Rugby to fetch the heir of Douglas. Colonel John invited the heir’s half-brother, his son Jock, to furnish himself with new mournings at the Duchess’s expense. It took ten days to get all ready for the funeral.
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  They gave the wealthy Peer, first and last Duke of Douglas, the grandest burying that had been in Great Britain for a hundred years. The procession was escorted by a detachment of the city guard in their scarlet uniforms, marching with muskets reversed. All the church-bells tolled. The Duke took his last journey amid medieval pomp and pageantry. There were baton-men and lackeys; a winged hour-glass; his gauntlet and spurs, his helmet and crest, his shield and coronet, his sword of state; his riderless horse, his empty carriage; crests, standards, banners, and great and little gumphions (which are not sea creatures, but banners suspended from poles). Twenty coaches followed.

  At Hamilton, the country gentlemen joined the cortège, in carriages and on horseback, to the number of three hundred. When at Lismahagow the tenantry fell in, the procession was nearly a mile long. At its head in the first mourning-coach, his swarthy young face composed and his sturdy form clad in mourning-weeds of sombre splendour—strange contrast to the shabby, tear-stained figure that was left behind upon the doorstep at another funeral eight years before—rode the heir of Douglas.

  PART TWO

  Andrew Stuart

  Stuart conducted the investigations in France, on which the evidence that the children said to be born to Lady Jane Douglas were spurious, was founded; and from the strange circumstances brought forward in the evidence, we can imagine that, if Stuart had left a diary of his adventures and inquiries, few works of fiction could be more interesting.

  (J. HILL BURTON: Letters to Hume)

  Chapter VI

  Andrew Stuart stands at the rail of the cartel ship, his face turned toward France. It is August 1762, and he is on his way to learn the truth about the heir of Douglas.

  He is now thirty-seven years old, mature, composed, handsome, and elegant. Tall and slim, he is dressed with restrained good taste. Snowy ruffles at wrist and throat set off the sombre richness of his dress. Not a hair is out of place in the precise curls of the powdered wig, tied behind with a broad black ribbon. Not a shadow mars the silver buttons on his embroidered waistcoat. His cocked hat is under his arm, and the light falls upon his face.

  His face is like his character, cold and correct. The features are handsome, the eyes limpid and fine; but it is a face that shuts you out. His mouth is firmly closed over a private smile which does not quite reach his watchful eyes. There is pride in the flaring nostril, and scepticism in the supercilious lift of the brow. Here is a man of his time—urbane, civilized, keen-minded, logical. He has a chilly courage, and an iron control under which he is capable of burning with a slow, unquenchable anger like a fire in a coal mine. He has no foibles, no amours, and many firm friendships. Altogether, Andrew Stuart is a very formidable antagonist.

  All unaware of antagonists, the fourteen-year-old heir of Douglas thinks himself solidly in possession of the Duke’s fortune. He plies his books at Westminster School, a sturdy, swarthy boy with a stolid face and a broken nose. Another schoolboy, George James, Duke of Hamilton, at eight years of age shows promise of beauty and brilliance as he outstrips his younger brother Douglas in the family school-room.

  In Edinburgh Duchess Peggy is enjoying herself. At Murthly Sir John Steuart, seventy-two years old, is honeymooning with a new bride. He had married Lady Jane on Jock’s modest inheritance. The new shower of gold launched him once more on matrimony. Archie had barely been served heir of Douglas when the knot was tied in haste. The new bride is Lady Helen Murray, of a certain age and Jacobite connections. Even at this moment a firebrand brother of hers is in exile in Paris, under ban for inciting to riot and insulting Parliament.

  At the Court of the young King George III, the beautiful Hamilton Duchess, now married to Argyll’s heir, is high in favour. She alone of those most concerned knows what Andrew Stuart is about. It is for her sake that, half in doubt, he sets forth.

  At first all the disappointed would-be heirs tried to get a slice of the Douglas estate by legal quibbles. They searched in their charter-chests for old deeds and marriage-settlements to quibble upon. They found plenty. The Duke’s father by himself, in vinous hours, had made far too many settlements. It kept the courts busy. The Hamilton faction went further. They actually sent out a rent-collector. This confused the tenantry, and made more work for the lawyers, but did not serve to strengthen the Hamilton claim. It had soon become apparent that some stronger means must be found to divert the Douglas inheritance from Archie. The most promising quibble lay in the Duke’s own will, and there is every reason to think that he put it there deliberately. Even full of quicksilver and over-persuaded by the determined Duchess, he had no mind that his estate should go to a nunnery-child. If he had said plainly: “I leave my estate to Archie Douglas,” no quibble could have ousted the boy; but he did not. He left his estate to the heirs of his father’s body. If Archie was the son of Lady Jane, he filled the description and took the estate. If he was not, the next heir named by the Duke would take it; and that heir was little Lord Douglas Hamilton. The Hamilton tutors decided to find out for certain what Archie was. The beautiful Duchess persuaded Andrew Stuart to undertake the task.

  Innumerable difficulties crowded his path. Understanding not a word of French, he set out for an enemy country. France and England were once more embroiled over the spoils of the East and the West. Although Quebec was taken, and peace was in sight, it was still as an enemy alien that the young Scotchman would enter the French capital. That the French King’s capital held many a Scotch ally of his most Christian Majesty would be a factor in his favour.

  Andrew Stuart completed his journey without untoward incident. On August 5 he entered Paris, and looked about him. What he saw did not impress him. He thought he had seen better in London. The new squares were spacious and fine enough, but the streets were narrow and dirty. Over the uneven cobbles rattled the French coaches, more clumsy than an English cart. For greenery there were only sad trees clipped like brooms and planted on pedestals of chalk. The window of his modest lodging, lacking pulleys, was only held back by a hook from crashing on his head. From that window he looked upon passing Frenchmen, and despised them, swaggering along in tawdry finery, their lace ruffles all too often depending from false sleeves, and their faces, after seven years of war, as meagre as their soup.

  He made himself as comfortable as possible. He found himself a better lodging in the second most expensive hotel in Paris, the Hôtel de Tours, rue du Paon. He set up his valet de place, and habited him tastefully in a livery of gray with yellow facings and plenty of silver lace. He agreed with the pastry-cook for meals to be sent in; for his British taste he required extras, butter and tea. He engaged a French teacher. He arranged to take fencing lessons. He seems to have foreseen that before the cause was over it would embroil him in a duel. He chose for his master the famous Motet, known all over the Continent as the strongest pareur living. To Motet’s famous finishing-school of fence the great swordsman Angelo sent his son; and what was good enough for Angelo was good enough for the Duke of Hamilton’s agent.

  These details attended to, he could concentrate upon the job of detection he had come for. He was not entirely without clues to follow. He had brought with him a printed copy of the evidence that was offered in court when Archie was served heir.

  Archie’s lawyers had thought it best to give very complete proofs of his filiation. There was plenty of eye-witness and documentary proof of the pregnancy. The Hepburns of Keith, Isabel Walker, and Mrs. Hewit all testified to the symptoms. Barring the claimant’s father, an interested party, only Mrs. Hewit could testify to the birth. She told the story. When rising prices drove them from Aix, they settled at Rheims. Thence, at the last moment, they set out in the stage-coach to obtain better medical advice at Paris.

  “Upon the 10th of July,” said she, “Lady Jane was delivered at Paris of two sons, and I was present at their birth, and received them both into my lap, as they came into the world.”

  Written evidence of Mrs. Hewit’s part in the story survived. Isabel Walker had saved som
e of her letters. The Douglas lawyers put them in evidence. The first one announced the birth:

  Dear Tiby and Effe,

  “This will be the welcomest leter iver eny of you recved. The last day I writ to you, Tiby, I told you, your mrs. was very well, as I thoght, so far from that she had been ill the whole neght, and sad not a word tell tuall a clok, which was 4 ours after your leter wint af; then, I think, she was in soch a way, as I could a wisht not to a been witness to, tho, I belive, many is been worc with on, and she produced 2 lovly boys. You may belive the confusion I have been in sinc, haven no thoght of more then wan, tho Tiby Walker was so moch a conjuerour, as to tell me, she thoght she was with two, still my thoghts joined Effe’s; they are two lovly creters, but the yongst very small and weakly, so the doctor beght he might be sent to the country as soun as possible. Your mr and I had to go not a litell way before we got a right nurse that we ould pert with him to, at last we got on of the clinest best woman iver you sa, a farmer’s wife, so, I hop, he shall do very well; he agreeing so well, we was fond to find the other, who is a very stordy piece [a nurse as well]. Som days after your mr wint out to see him, and found the nurse dronk, apon which he sint the coach for me, and we brought him with hos. We have got a feen milk woman, till we geet a right norc, for your mr and mrs is resolved, he shall never go out of ther sight. She is recovering most surprisingly well, not on back-going howr; so soun as the ninth day was over, ther was no confining her longer to her bed, the heat being so vilint. In short, Tiby and Effe, all is to a wish; but I am in such confusion, and is so hurryd tell we get a right norc, that I can say no more, bot shall writ to you soun. You are both kindly remembert, and I am, both

  Your frinds and well-wishers,

  Helen Hewitt

  I have thoght it two months since I left you all.—The hurry I was in last writin, I blive, I dated my letter the 11, instead of the 10, which was the happy day. Adeu, dr Tiby.…