The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson

by Lillian de la Torre

  He took into his hand the tooled leather case, one face of which still bore, neatly affixed, a slip of paper with the auctioneer’s lot number on it. Removing the cover, he displayed to our curious eyes a black object like a mirror, round and highly polished, provided with a pierced loop for a handle.

  “Pray, Mr. Walpole,” said Dr. Johnson, “will not you put this object in a place of safety?”

  “Sir,” said Walpole, “Strawberry Hill is a place of safety. We are not plagued, as Fleet Street, by light-fingered gentry.”

  “Or,” said I, “Arlington Street.”

  I had for reply a freezing stare, as Walpole replaced the Stone and conducted the party to the library.

  We were forced to admire this spacious chamber. A large window looked east, topped with stained glass, with a rose window on each side. The room was lined with books, arranged in Gothick arches of pierced wood. To them my learned friend devoted his attention, blinking at the titles in the candlelight.

  I picked up from a bureau a book lying by itself, richly bound in morocco and stamped with the Walpole arms.

  “Well, Mr. Boswell,” came the thin voice of our host at my elbow, “what say you to my little Gothick romance?”

  “Why, sir,” I replied, “nothing, for I have never read it.”

  Walpole smiled sourly.

  “This, Mr. Boswell, is an ignorance not invincible. You shall have the reading of this very copy.”

  “Do,” says the Clive, “for you’ve never read its like. It consists of ghosts and enchantments; pictures walk out of their frames; armour is heard to clank, and helmets drop from the moon. Horrie says, it came to him in a dream, and sure I fancy ’twas a dream when he had some feverish disposition on him.”

  I accepted of the volume eagerly. With such a prospect in store, I regretted having pledged myself to take a hand at loo; I was in haste to be at it. Dr. Johnson excused himself. He never plays at cards, preferring to supply the vacuity of life with conversation; which failing, he betook himself to the book-cases.

  We sat down, therefore, seven at the table, to our game. I was out more money than I like, and feeling as bored as the Duke by the curiosities, when our game was cut short by a distressing incident. Lord Orford was in ill luck. He sat mum-chance, losing steadily, taking his breath noisily between his teeth as he saw his guineas swept away. Luck was all with Lord Frederick.

  “Pam be civil,” said he, leading the ace of trumps.

  Lord Orford held Pam, the all-conquering knave of clubs, and was thus debarred by the custom of the game from taking the trick with it. He scowled with senseless fury; a moment later he took a distressing revenge.

  With a sudden roar he leaned forward and seemed to draw an ace from Lord Frederick’s sleeve. Lord Frederick leaped to his feet, his blank countenance purple with fury.

  “What kind of jugglery is this, my Lord?” he demanded angrily. “I should call you out for this.”

  “Pray, sir,” said Walpole hastily, “be so candid as to overlook my nephew, you know his weakness.”

  Still roaring with laughter, Lord Orford was hustled away, and in perturbed silence the party broke up. The carriage rolled off with the ducal party, Lord Frederick ’squired the Clive in her homeward walk across the moonlit mead. Dr. Johnson was already retired to the Red Bedchamber with Barrow’s quarto of Archimedes. Walpole mounted to his two-pair-of-stairs bedroom, and I was left alone by the fire in the great gallery to read The Castle of Otranto.

  Having once opened it, I was powerless to lay it down. Long after all were wrapped in slumber, I sat in the shadowy gallery and read by the light of a single candle.

  Through the stained-glass window arch the full moon spilled blood upon the floor, while a shaft of cold green assailed but could not conquer the shadows of the passage into the Round Tower. I liked the shadows little, and less as I read Mr. Walpole’s tale. ’Tis of just such a castle, most dismally haunted, at once by the vices of the chatelain and the avenging spirits of his ancestors. From the wicked lust of Manfred the Lady Isabella fled. I read entranced:

  “Where conceal herself? How avoid pursuit?

  “As these thoughts passed rapidly through her mind, she recollected a subterraneous passage which led from the vaults of the castle to the church of St. Nicholas. Could she reach the altar before she was overtaken, she knew even Manfred’s violence would not dare profane the sacredness of the place. She seized the lamp that burned at the foot of staircase, and hurried towards the secret passage.”

  Brave, intrepid soul! I read on:

  “The lower part of the castle was hollowed into several intricate cloisters; and it was not easy for one under so much anxiety to find the door that opened into the cavern. An awful silence reigned throughout those subterraneous regions—”

  A silence as thick reigned in the shadowy gallery. I permitted myself an uneasy glance about me, before I read further:

  “—except now and then some blasts of wind that shook the doors she had passed—”

  Was that the wind in the battlements of the Round Tower?

  “—and which, grating on the rusty hinges, were re-echoed through that long labyrinth of darkness.”

  I could have sworn that somewhere a hinge creaked. I rebuked myself for phantasy, and continued to read:

  “She trod as softly as impatience would give her leave, yet frequently stopped and listened to hear if she was followed. In one of those moments she thought she heard a step—”

  Was it a step that I heard? I shook off the fancy, and took up the tale:

  “Her blood curdled. She was on point of flight, when a door was opened gently—”

  Was not that faint sound, the opening of the door to the Round Tower? I forced myself to read on:

  “—but ere her lamp, which she held up, could discover who opened it, the person retired precipitately on seeing the light.”

  The impression was too strong for me. I rose and advanced my candle to the Round Tower passage. The weak yellow rays assailed the darkness and barely revealed—

  A shadowy Presence. It stood motionless in the pale green moonlight and gazed towards me. It was clad from crown to heel in an antique gown, the cowl drawn forward and shadowing the face, from which sightless eyes seemed to burn.

  For a moment I stood as if turned to stone. Then the Presence melted into the darkness of the Round Tower, and the heavy door swung shut. It wanted no more to impel me to activity. The great key was in the lock. I leaped forward and turned it. The midnight intruder was a prisoner.

  I found my learned friend abed in his chamber, reading his tome of Archimedes by candle-light, poking his head so close to the candle as to scorch the front of his nocturnal headkerchief, with a smell like ironing-day.

  “Well done, Bozzy,” he cried approvingly when he had heard my tale. “Time was, when you would have conceived no other remedy, but to repair to the oratory and ejaculate Ave Marys against the powers of darkness. You progress, sir, you progress. Let us at once go look upon this apparition, and so prove it to be flesh and blood. ’Tis to be hoped,” he added thoughtfully, thrusting his feet into his vast buckled shoes, “that your prisoner is not our host, night-rambling in one of his Gothick freaks.”

  Though forcibly struck by the possibility, I nevertheless gripped the poker as we passed along the gallery, and held it at the ready when Dr. Johnson swung back the massive door of the Round Tower drawing-room.

  The chamber was empty.

  Dr. Johnson tried the windows in the bay. They were all made fast.

  The Presence had not been flesh and blood after all.

  My hair stirred at the thought. For Dr. Johnson, ’twas his irascibility that stirred.

  “Sir,” said he scathingly, “I find you do not improve, but the contrary. ’Tis said, Mr. Walpole’s book has set Misses in boarding schools to screaming in the night. Sure you lie under its spell. Did not armour clank, and chains rattle?”

  “No, sir,” I replied, “but I heard the wind in t
he battlements, and a step in the Round Tower, and the opening of the door.”

  “Why, then,” continued my friend severely, “perhaps your apparition stepped from yonder portrait” (pointing) “and has gone again home into its frame.”

  I yielded to his mood.

  “It may be so,” I granted him, “for I own, that I have been kept from mounting to my chamber above, by the fancy that the portrait that hangs in it, he in black armour, might step from the frame to trouble my rest.”

  “Sir, clear your mind of phantasy!” roared my commonsensical friend. “My mind misgives me for Mr. Walpole’s Black Stone. It lies exposed to every chance in yonder open cabinet.”

  “We must,” said I, “remove it to a place of safety.”

  “My chamber is too easy of access. Pray, Mr. Boswell, keep it by you this night in your embattled Round Tower.”

  It seemed an idle precaution, against a visitant that could pass through walls, but I acquiesced. I fetched the stone in its case, and carried it with me up the narrow stair into my bedchamber high in the Round Tower.

  The portrait in black armour viewed my proceedings. The eyes of the face, and the eye-holes of the casque, seemed to follow my movements as I laid the case on the antique chest opposite the bed. I turned the key in the door, divested myself hastily, and blew out the candle.

  The full moon streamed through the narrow slitted casement, and fell upon the chest. I took a fancy to expose the magick stone itself to the moonlight. It shone with an awful dark steady gleam. Even after I had drawn the bed-curtains, through the slit I could still perceive the magick stone shining in the moonlight. It seemed to me that then, if ever, the spirits must enter into it. Mingled cloudily with these musings was the thought of the man in black armour descending from his frame to bend over me. ’Twas my last thought as I drifted into uneasy sleep.

  The moon was still in the south window when I opened my eyes again. Motionless in its bright ray stood—a figure in armour I strove to shake off the phantasy, and looked again.

  ’Twas no phantasy. The figure was solid. It stood in the bright moonbeam and cast a shadow across the chest. The casque was not in its hand, but on its head. The visor was closed, concealing who knows what? Between the palms of the gauntleted hands lay the Black Stone of Dr. Dee.

  I swallowed, and spoke. My voice came out in a croak:

  “In the name of GOD—” I uttered.

  With a violent start, the apparition whirled. The speculum flew from its hands, and landed safely among the bed-curtains. With measured tread the armoured thing passed from the room. I heard the key turn in the lock, the door creak open, and a heavy step descending the stair.

  With damp palms I huddled my night-gown about me, seized the Black Stone, and fairly fled to the Red Room.

  “Pho, pho, Bozzy,” said Johnson angrily. “You dreamt it. ’Tis the natural result of Mr. Walpole’s Gothick castle, and his Gothick romance, and his magick stone. Let us hear no more on’t.”

  Nevertheless, he afforded me the half of his bed, and there I passed the night, with the Black Stone thrust up into the tester.

  When I awoke, the sun was high. I found the company dispersed. Horace Walpole was feeding his bantams. Lord Orford was not to be seen. Dr. Johnson was in the wash-house engaged in experiments in natural philosophy.

  The object of his study was the Black Stone of Dr. Dee. When I came into the dark, damp-smelling wash-house from the spring sunshine, he was engaged in duplicating the magick stone from a piece of cannel coal, laboriously chipping and grinding away the surface, and every so often laving the rough object in a bucket full of water. I could not see why he persisted in saving the sooty water that overflowed, but save it he did, storing it up in a graduated phial, and only decanting it when a new lustration occasioned a fresh supply.

  Ultimately his handiwork satisfied him, unsymmetrical and rugged as it was. His next care was to weigh the polished stone against the rough one. They balanced. He scowled, dissatisfied; but declaring his experimentation at an end, he restored the magick stone to its case and the case to its cabinet in the Tribune, discoursing the while of substances heavy and light.

  Chymistry is not my study. I was full of determination to consult him upon the nature of the apparition which the full moon and the magick stone of Dr. Dee had conjured into the Round Tower bedchamber, but sought in vain to stem the eloquence of his learning.

  Dinner was a sturdy buttock of beef, of which Dr. Johnson ate ravenously, declining to say a word. Walpole picked at a cold bird. Orford’s boiled countenance grinned steadily as he depleted a loaded trencher.

  After dinner we parted, our host to the offices, Orford upon some errand of his own, my friend and I to stroll the meads.

  Our way led past the hermitage. This time we glimpsed another of the appointments of Strawberry—the hermit. He was a sturdy strong-built man, having a long white beard and a hardy blue eye. His dun-coloured gown was kilted up, revealing that he was clothed in skins; though he had so little sense of the part that he was hired to play, that he was wearing buckled shoes. He had come to the opening of the hermitage to gaze across the mead; when glimpsing us, he hastily slipped back into the obscurity of his den.

  Upon this Dr. Johnson recited the following burlesque ballad of his own making:

  “Hermit hoar, in solemn cell,

  Wearing out life’s evening grey,

  Strike thy bosom, sage, and tell

  What is bliss, and which the way.

  Thus I spoke, and speaking sigh’d,

  Scarce repress’d the starting tear,

  When the hoary sage reply’d,

  Come, my lad, and drink some beer.”

  These lines, he maintained, though written in mockery of Dr. Percy the ballad antiquarian, well suited the ridiculous Gothick fashion of the time, when every estate had its grotto and its oratory, its hermitage, and in it its hermit; being otherwise an honest rustick fee’d to sit within and clank his beads.

  The sun was declining as we approached the Round Tower. The ruddy rays slanted across the mead and illuminated, a long way off, the sturdy figure of Mistress Kitty, issuing from her door, with her rustick petticoats girded about her, and in her hand a milking-pail. ’Twas a little landskip in enamel, and put my friend in high good humour.

  Nevertheless, we had no sooner entered the door than he fell foul of our host about the hermit:

  “Are not there in the world enough of the unfortunate, who want a dinner, and know not where they shall lay their heads at night, but Mr. Walpole must fee some idle lubber to sit about in his garden, because, forsooth, in times past the land teemed with idle lubbers?” he demanded hotly.

  “What idle lubber?” asked Walpole blankly.

  “The hermit,” replied Dr. Johnson sternly, “he in skins, who decorates your hermitage yonder.”

  “Hagley has a hermit,” I put in nervously. “A hermit is the refinement of the Gothick.”

  “A hermit is the refinement of flummery,” said my friend angrily, turning on me.

  “I am sorry that Strawberry does not please you,” said Mr. Walpole coldly. “The chaise will be at your disposal in the morning.”

  I was aghast. We were dismissed, and we had failed of our errand. Dr. Johnson merely bowed.

  “And,” added Walpole, preparing to leave the apartment, “permit me to state, I do not employ a hermit.”

  “Not?” cried Johnson in excitement.

  “No, sir. My hermitage is untenanted.”

  “My apologies, sir,” cried Dr. Johnson, “and I shall be ready to ride in the morning.”

  Supper was a stiff and uncomfortable collation. Dr. Johnson cut his tea ration to a mere five cups, and withdrew early. Soon I was constrained to follow him.

  He was not in the library nor the Round Tower, the wash-house nor the Red Bedchamber. At last I found him in the Tribune. The Black Stone lay before him. He stared upon it, and said nothing.

  “Pray, Dr. Johnson, give over your care in
this matter. We are dismissed, and must depart in the morning.”

  “Why, then we will depart in the morning. But tonight we shall resolve this puzzle.”

  “Pray, sir, how is this to be done?”

  “I have put my endeavours, sir, upon the stone, which is the end and object of these manoeuvres. I can give but little better account of it—” (replacing it in the cabinet). “Tonight we shall approach the matter at its point of departure—the hermitage.”

  ’Twas Dr. Johnson’s plan, I soon learned, that we should give our attention to the proceedings of this hermit that was no hermit, by watching before his cell and following him whither he went.

  “Thus, sir, we may see how he gains access to the house, how he goes on there, and what his object is.”

  Retiring early, accordingly, upon plea of our impending departure on the morrow, we left the house by a backward way, armed ourselves with rough staves from the wash-house, and took up our post concealed in the scallop-shell settle.

  In the trees above our heads an owl mourned softly. On the two-pair-of-stairs floor Mr. Walpole’s candle burned in his bedchamber window. The air was soft and smelled of spring. We sat a long time in the balmy darkness.

  Once the owl was startled into flight. ’Twas the hermit come out to gaze towards the house. He returned to his cell in a little space. Time passed with leaden foot.

  The moon rose behind the house, and began to swing out and up in the southern sky. Mr. Walpole’s light went out. Once more the hermit came to his door and gazed towards the now darkened castle. Once more he swept aside the doorway skins and re-entered his hermitage.

  Still we sat in the shadow of the shell. Again time passed. Suddenly Dr. Johnson gripped my elbow. A light flickered in the windows of the Tribune.

  “We have watched the wrong man,” I whispered aghast. “The hermit sits harmless in his hermitage while another steals Mr. Walpole’s Black Stone.”

  “Say rather, while we watched the front door, the false hermit has made off by the back.”

  “The hermitage has no back, save under the bank.”