Upon this Dr. Johnson recited the following burlesque ballad of his own making:
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 lower. 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 with a bodkin in his hand. 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 donned greatcoats and prepared for our vigil. On point of departure, I observed Dr. Johnson standing before a handsome rosewood nest of drawers, swaying himself in meditation, and pulling and pushing the upper drawer out and in.
“Shall we go, sir?”
“Go? Oh, ay, let us go.”
We 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 bed-chamber window. The night 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 skins and reentered 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 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.”
“Then he has made his way to the house, under the bank,” replied my friend. “Come, Bozzy, this is a thing susceptible of demonstration.”
He rose, and boldly sweeping aside the skins, he entered the hermitage. The hermit was from home.
The hermitage, however, was not untenanted. Established on the pallet, as if she had been there a long time, sat Kitty Clive. At our entrance she leaped to her feet.
“Back!” she cried. “Back, on your life! There is death in this place! Yonder poor man hath been carried to his village sick to death of the small pox. Pray, pray, shun the infection!”
I drew back in alarm, but Dr. Johnson entered unmoved.
“Prettily played, ma’am,” says he. “Drury Lane never saw better. I beg, however, you’ll hold your peace. I am resolved to have a word with this pox’d hermit.”
“ ’Tis but a quiz,” says the Clive, “there’s no harm in it,”
“Then, ma’am,” says Dr. Johnson, “we’ll quiz the quizzer; so pray, ma’am, hold your tongue.”
Kitty was perforce silent, and again we took up a vigil. The moon silently shone in at the opening. By its light I studied the appointments of the hermitage, the one low door, the walls hung with skins, a carved wood virgin in her niche. The Clive stared before her, and bit her finger-ends. Dr. Johnson sat by her side in meditation.
Soon, however, a step was heard. In another moment, the skins on the backward wall parted, and the hermit stepped through the opening. In one hand he held a wax taper; in the other, the Black Stone in its case.
When he saw us, he took one backward step before Dr. Johnson seized his wrist in a grip of iron.
“I yield at discretion,” said the hermit with a shrug, and set down his candle.
Surely I had heard that voice?
Dr. Johnson stopped not to parley. With a sudden mighty tug he tore away the long white beard and exposed the face beneath.
Lord Frederic Campbell!
Dr. Johnson took the case from his hand and extracted the polished black sphere.
“Pray, Lord Frederic,” he enquired, “what is the secret of this stone, that you give it away without a thought, and within a season, like the base Indian, you must have it back?”
“Nay, Dr. Johnson,” replied the hermit, “Kitty will bear me out, ’tis but a frolick.”
Never have I seen a countenance so little frolicsome.