The Heir of Douglas

by Lillian de la Torre

  She never quite got into line. She thought, and records corroborated, that the child was brought in September, and carried off eighteen months later, in March. She said that the boy was not ill in teething.

  Andrew Stuart did not care what she said. If the boy was under the care of the deceased journeyman surgeon, he had no connection with Sholto, for Louis Pierre Delamarre was quite a different man from the accoucheur described by Sir John Steuart.

  The Douglas party, on the contrary, were jubilant. They went to the curé of Saint-Laurent, and told him the case was as good as closed. Whatever they meant to ask him, his reply knocked it clean out of their heads:

  “You think you know the nurse of Sholto? I know the mother of Sholto!”

  “Have you told this to anyone?”

  “Yes: to Andrew Stuart!”

  It chanced a French mountebank lost son or heiress

  The same year the DOUGLAS was born in great Paris;

  And they will maintain it, (the de’il give them joy),

  That our warlike Douglas is harlequin’s boy.

  (The Douglas Garland)

  Chapter VIII

  Andrew Stuart sat at his desk in the Hôtel de Tours. From his powdered wig to his buckled shoes he was point-device, as became the manager of the Hamilton cause. His black velvet suit was sombre, his laced ruffles and his silk stockings snowy white. His eyes were wide open, and his mouth was tight closed. It was May 9, 1763, and he was new-returned from London. Before him lay a month’s accumulation of letters.

  He sifted them. Cards of invitation and letters of greeting could wait. A letter with a Rheims post-mark waited; it had already been waiting three weeks. At last he picked it up and slit the envelope.

  The writer was an Alderman of Rheims whom Andrew Stuart had met there. A polite attention, Stuart thought it, as he read the first small items of gossip. He had no premonition that this was the petard which was to hoist the Douglas claimant.

  Mons. and Madame D’Aubigny [the writer chatted on to the next bit of gossip], whom you saw at my house, some days ago saw Mons. Poule, abbe of Nogent-under-Concy, who told them à propos your affair, that some time ago the curé of St. Laurent, or of the Fauxbourg St. Laurent at Paris, told them an adventure of which he had been a witness, about thirteen or fourteen years ago.

  An English gentleman and his wife came to establish themselves in his fauxbourg, and after having captured the good will of the curé with some alms, they imparted to him the intention they held, of undertaking the education of the son of some poor person of his parish, and even taking him with them. The curé indicated to them a poor shoe-maker, who had six children, among whom they chose one, whom they took, and forthwith disappeared.…

  Andrew Stuart needed to read no more. He recruited lawyer D’Anjou’s son to help with the French, and went out to Saint-Laurent. The curé looked at the letter.

  “Are these facts true or false?”

  “Some are true,” replied the curé cautiously, “and some are false. It is true that such a thing happened. The gentleman came to me after Sunday Mass. At first glance I took him for an Irishman of my acquaintance. I cannot recall if he talked like a foreigner. His face was a little long, and pretty full; he was tall, and well-proportioned in his person, had a manly air, and appeared from fifty-five to sixty years of age.”

  Colonel John Steuart to the life! Andrew Stuart pressed for more details.

  “It is not true that I indicated any poor person to him. I mistrusted him, and declined to aid him. I gave him a vague direction to the sisters of charity, and he took himself off. But I heard that he did find his way to the poor of my parish, and carried off the little son of one of them. Upon hearing of this enlèvement, I communicated with the police.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “In 1749.”

  “How were these poor people called?”

  “I cannot remember; but if you will send to me in five or six days, I will search for them in the meantime.”

  With this promise Andrew Stuart had to be satisfied. The curé took his time. Intimidated by the Douglas party and their great ones, he gave the impatient Hamilton agent, calling again and again for news, only vague and tantalizing tidbits. He had learned the name of the parents; but he would not tell it. He had found where the soidisant Irishman had lodged, and questioned the people of the inn. By a variety of signs he had established the time as November 1749.

  Here was a solid clue. Andrew Stuart seized it, and went to the police lists. On the list of foreign lodgers he found a very likely entry. On November 21, 1749, the police had noted three foreigners lodged at the sign of the Iron Cross. They were set down as “Duvernes, gentilhomme de Korgue en Irlande, avec sa famme et sa soeur.”

  Andrew Stuart put this information before the curé.

  “That is precisely the affair!” cried the curé.

  The curé regaled the eager Hamilton investigator with a few more tidbits, but still persisted in holding back the whole story for the perusal of the great ones. Andrew Stuart, deterred by a sense of honour and a lack of French, did not attempt to follow the clues he now held. He continued, impatiently, to wait.

  On June 8 the curé exploded his mine in the face of the Douglas faction, and tore the thing wide open. The next evening Andrew Stuart made him another of many pressing visits, and heard that toute l’Angleterre had been with him; by which inclusive phrase the curé meant Douglas lawyers Murray and Garden, and Jacobites Carnegie and Hay. They had coaxed out of him the name and address of the bereaved parents.

  Andrew Stuart, who had tried for a month to obtain this precious information, lost his temper. He complained hotly of the unfairness of giving it first to the last in the field. The curé gave it to him at once. The father’s name was Pierre Sanry, and he was a rope-dancer. In his salad days he had played many a jeu as merry-Andrew to Nicolet the master rope-dancer; and at this very moment, as it turned out, his son was doing his part as tumbler with the same troupe. He dwelt close by. Also in the neighbourhood was Madame Legris, who had acted as Duvernes’s guide on that fatal day.

  Andrew Stuart at once sent for the family Sanry. They were from home. They were visiting about the neighbourhood, and the Douglas agents were furiously seeking them. Young Sanry was with the rope-dancing troupe at the Boulevard. Andrew Stuart sent for him, and received a rebuff. The tumbling Sanry was in the middle of a performance, and could not come till it was over. Stuart shrugged, and called on Madame Legris. She was at home, and agog. The Douglas faction had already been with her.

  “I will recount the matter to you,” she said, “in the same way that I did to them. It was the sisters who bade me conduct the gentleman to the poor of the parish. He was something taller than you, Monsieur, and stronger made, and had the air of a soldier. His complexion was tanned, his forehead high, and he spoke very bad French, yet one understood him.

  “I conducted him,” she went on, “into several houses, where he barely looked at the girls, and dismissed with a trifle some half-grown boys sprawled upon the straw, before we went to the house of Sanry.…”

  Thus brought to the Sanrys, Andrew Stuart heard a few more details, and then sought the Sanry hovel. The doorway was bright with flambeaux, and before it stood the Duchess of Douglas’s coach. The Stuart coach came to a stand-still, and a consultation was held. At first Andrew Stuart was eager to press forward, and be present at the interview. On second thought he decided that, since Garden was of the Douglas number, it would be better, and quite safe, to let him hear the matter without Hamilton prompting. They turned the horses’ heads and drove away.

  The next morning before nine o’clock Andrew Stuart was at the Sanry hovel. He brought his brother Jack along. They found Sanry père and mère and a couple of sons. One of the sons was just rising from his pallet. He apologized for his sluggardy: “I had three performances at the Boulevard last night.”

  The Stuarts stared at the nimble lad, and thought him handsome and well made, with fair
complexion and blue eyes and an aristocratic aquiline nose. The vanished Joseph had been like him.

  “He had blue eyes, a white skin, and fair hair, and was of delicate make,” recalled the bereaved mother. “He was about twenty months old, and had been weaned only fifteen days, when Madame Legris brought the stranger gentleman to my house.…”

  The ruddy, soldierly stranger, on that day in November 1749, looks at the Sanry children, eight little stairsteps, and says in his halting French:

  “Have you none smaller?”

  Madame Sanry fetches the pretty baby from his cradle.

  “Has he no distemper?”

  “None.”

  “Then I will return tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow he is back alone. Sanry has given his consent. Madame Sanry gets eighteen livres to replace the child’s rags, that he may appear more neat to the ladies. The next day the child is ready. At eleven in the morning the gentleman is there with a lady. The lady wears a hood and says not a word; she makes no impression whatever on the Sanrys. One thing remains to be done before they go. Madame Sanry has said the child has no distemper; but he has one curious defect. He is subject to letting fall his breast-bone. Madame Sanry shows the lady how to lift it. The precise nature of this curious affliction remains dark.

  Now the gentleman and the lady mount into a hackney-coach, the mother gets in carrying the child, the father, weeping, hangs on behind, and they drive off to the Croix de Fer.

  The inn people watch them arrive. They hear the gentleman saying:

  “We will take care of your child, and do him good; after a week you may see him when you please; but you must pass yourself off as his nurse.”

  Then they go up to a room in the inn. There they find another lady, who unlike the negligible creature in the hood makes the strongest impression on both Sanrys. Though in deshabille, she retains her noble and distinguished air. She is tall, thin, and pale, well made, her erect body springing from a taper waist. She seems no more than thirty-five years old. The Sanrys retain her picture before their eyes in the years to come.

  The pale lady takes the fair little boy in her arms and sets him before a mirror. She makes much of him, and thinks him pretty. Then she clasps him to her bosom and carries him off to the inner room.

  The disappearance of her child, though she has connived at it, makes Madame Sanry uneasy. The gentleman soothes her. After a week she may see the child when she likes, at his house at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Sanry père pays little attention to this. The Croix de Fer has no sign, and he has formed an impression that he is now in the gentleman’s town house, comfortingly located close to the Sanry home. The Sanrys go away easy in mind.

  The inn people take an interest in the foreign party. They are always drinking tea. They bathe the fair little boy in milk. Madame Legris goes and takes a look at him, out of curiosity. She finds him on a pillow by the fire-side, and the maid of the inn is about to wash his little face with warm water. At this point in comes the gentleman, and vetoes warm water, because it will wrinkle the face; the water must be cold and bracing.

  The Sanrys in their little hovel are not easy in mind. They wonder what the gentleman means. They recall how he has said en passant: “There, Madame, is our child, whom we have fetched from the nurse, and there—” pointing to Madame Sanry “—is the nurse.” They determine to have the child back. They go to the inn.

  The child is on his cushion by the fire, happily chewing on a biscuit while the lady and the serving-wench put on his bright new clothes. They sign for quiet; the Sanrys, they whisper, must stay away until the boy is weaned from them. Meekly the Sanrys go.

  But anxiety will not down. Again they return, with renewed determination to repossess their youngest child from these smooth-talking strangers. The strangers are gone, and the child with them. They have decamped on Saturday at midnight, not taking the turning for Saint-Germain, but the contrary direction. Upon this the mother sets up a loud lamentation.

  “You have been much attached to your foster-child,” remarks the mistress of the inn, “that you set up such a bawling in my court. What,” adds she cynically, “have they not paid you?”

  “What do you call my foster-child?” cries the bereaved mother. “He is so indeed, since I nursed him; but he is likewise my own child.”

  “Then you are a great fool to have trusted these strangers,” rejoins the landlady sharply.

  “In this house, or at Saint-Germain,” says the stunned father, “we counted upon seeing him again.”

  But they are never to see him again. The bereaved father goes to Saint-Germain, and finds no trace of him. He travels from sea-port to sea-port, supporting himself by dancing on the rope. He asks at the quays, among the sailors, and learns nothing. Madame Sanry goes to the curé, and the curé applies to the police. The police enter his complaint, as of January 10, 1750, and take no further action.…

  All this Andrew Stuart learned from Sanry père and mère, and the people of the inn confirmed it. He was altogether jubilant. He could not keep from telling the great news to every one involved, even the other witnesses.

  “We have discovered the real father and mother of one of the children!” he told reliable Madame Michelle.

  “Don’t believe it!” said Madame Michelle. “They are lying to you. I remember my Lady in the ’48. I thought then she was truly the mother of the child, and I think so still; and if she was not the mother, she was strenuously playing a part!”

  Andrew Stuart thought she was. He went home to the Hôtel de Tours and entered his interview at Michelle’s in his diary under date of June 17. Then he laid down his pen for a week. The whole excitement had been too much for his high-strung constitution, and he fell ill of a violent fever. Thereupon they bled him copiously. A garde malade sat at his bedside for six nights. For his convalescence he had to have a silk night-gown and vest. The doctor prescribed riding. At first he hired a horse, but soon realized it was better to buy one, and hire an hostler. For all these extras he sent the bills to the Duke of Hamilton.

  The Duke of Hamilton across the water took no account of his agent’s condition of health nor its effect on the Ducal pocket-book. The slim, handsome lad of eight was nourishing a precocious flame for his beautiful cousin Susan, Lord Galloway’s daughter, and writing her sentimental missives in a stately style beyond his years:

  Lord Galloway tells me I must call you wife no more, and that you are only joking with me. I am sure it is the pleasantest joke I ever was concerned in, and I beg we may carry it on. I fancy all the world is joking with me too, for there is not a Lady that visits me but offers me her sister, her niece, her daughter, or herself. I heartily wish them all good husbands, but will reserve myself for my dear Lady Susan. You tell me there are little boys with you that read delightfully and know everything. I know what you mean by that, and indeed I will not pretend to so high a character, but I will every day strive to improve, especially as I find that will make me still dearer to my wife (for I must call you so), and hope that you will always think me

  Yr affecte Husband

  Hamilton

  The heir of Douglas at fifteen was pretending to no kind of character where ladies were concerned. The even-tempered, steady young fellow was a pleasure to his masters at Westminster, and a pleasure to himself when holiday time came. Then he was free to ramble the Scottish countryside at Bothwell with dog and gun, spending his time, he wrote to his half-brother Jock, “as agreeably as if I had been the greatest man in the world, even the King himself, who, one would think, enjoys all the happiness that can be had for love or gold.”

  Jock’s father, Sir John, was enjoying life in the country by taking his pleasure with the jolly tenantry at the tap-house in Sloginhole, as convivial in prosperity as he was in the King’s Bench Prison. His old friend Mrs. Hewit, ailing, had retired to country quarters for a course of drinking ass’s milk. All too soon these pleasant retirements were disturbed. The Hamilton lawyers got them before the court to ask them some questions b
earing on the affair of Sanry.

  They got only the vaguest replies. Memories had departed. Mrs. Hewit could give no account of where they lodged in November 1749. She would not say it was an inn; she thought it was a private house because it had no sign. This interested the Hamilton lawyers; Sanry thought the same thing, for the same reason, about the Croix de Fer. They asked her again about Sholto’s nurse. She gave a new and different story, contradicting herself, Sir John, and Madame Garnier in one magnificent burst of confusion or mendacity. She said nothing that could help the Hamilton faction, or the Douglas faction either.

  The Douglas faction fought like tigers to keep Sir John out of court; he was their biggest liability. It took forty days and nine law-papers to get him produced. When finally he was produced, he knew nothing whatever:

  “When we arrived at Paris in November 1749, we put up at a lodging-house; but in what street, or in what quarter of the town, I cannot recollect. Nor did I attend to the persons in the house, so as to describe them; nor do I know whether it was a man or a woman that kept the house, nor what was their names, nor whether it was a house much or little frequented.”

  One useful detail only transpired. They had come up to Paris in a chaise which they borrowed from Rutledge the filibuster. “Having left the machine without the town,” said Sir John, “because the driver did not know the streets, we called a hackney-coach, and ordered the coachman to drive us to a house where we could lodge.”

  Here was a clue to be followed. Andrew Stuart could not leave the investigations at Saint-Laurent, but he enlisted the help of Aeneas Macdonald, now settled into a banker of Paris again after his brief day of glory as one of the Seven Men of Moidart. Macdonald set out for Rheims to track down the Rutledge factor who had provided the chaise and the coachman who had driven it.

  The factor was soon found. Unhappily, the coachman was dead; but his story survived in other memories. The adventure had been an interesting break in the monotony of a waggoner’s life, and he had related it often.…