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 gowned 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.
“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 this 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,” he said 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 the 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 common-sensical 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 an 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—” I uttered.
With a violent start the apparition whirled. The sphere 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. His work was still unfinished, for the rough out-weighed the smooth by two to one. Nevertheless, he now declared himself fully satisfied, and restored the magick stone to its case and the case to its cabinet in the Tribune, discoursing the while of substances heavy and light.
Chemistry 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 dish.
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 Gothick 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 with great haste slipped back into the obscurity of his den.