The Heir of Douglas Read online

  Archibald, Duke of Douglas, was as handsome as his sister, with fine eyes and an upstanding figure; but his mind was cloudy and his nature was proud, savage, and vindictive. He position as chief of the Douglas clan inflated his pride, shielded his savagery, and consecrated his vindictiveness. “You scoundrel,” cries the Scottish chieftain to his clansman, “don’t you know that if I ordered you to go and cut a man’s throat you are to do it?” “Yes,” replies the kern, “an’t please your honour, and my own too, and hang myself too.” Among such retainers the young Duke domineered unchecked.

  Duke Archibald was passionately fond of his beautiful sister, and as jealous of her as if she had been his wife. He resented it when she began to show a sentimental inclination to patronize handsome youths. Lany Jane was always surrounded with humble adorers, her inferiors in rank and years, who gave her their confidences and their worship, and were rewarded with the flattery of her emotional interest and the inspiration of her elevated sentiments. One of these youths was a soldier, a bastard cousin of her own, who came to Douglas Castle and hovered about her. Duke Archibald seethed with anger.

  Fury burst into madness when the youth was admitted to take his farewells in my Lady’s boudoir at midnight. The angry Duke waited until young Captain Kerr had retired to his own couch. Then he seized pistol and dagger, rushed to the soldier’s room, and killed him where he lay.

  A lesser man would have gone to the gallows. The Duke went to Holland. Thence after a discreet interval he was permitted to return to Douglas Castle, where it was understood he might feel safe if he lived retired and did not flaunt himself about. The entire transaction by common consent came to be referred to as the Duke’s “misfortune.” What it was for the young soldier was not specified, his name being thereafter expunged from polite conversation. It was probably thought of as the Captain’s “indiscretion.” It was unheard-of presumption for a poor relation on the wrong side of the blanket to involve his Ducal kinsman in so much inconvenience.

  The episode parted brother and sister. Thereafter Lady Jane dwelt with her mother at Merchiston, living quietly on the meagre income her brother had settled on her, and letting her youth slip from her.

  My Lady was rising forty when Colonel John Steuart, a handsome widower of fifty with a half-grown son, turned up in Edinburgh. His eyes fell on the fascinating lady of whom he had heard so much, Lady Jane Douglas.

  Know then, my dearest child [he wrote years later], that at first sight your noble mother captivated my heart, and that though I well knew the improbability, if not impossibility, of having my addresses to her hearkened to, after her having refused those of the Dukes of Hamilton, Buccleuch, and Athole, Earls of Hopetoun, Aberdeen, Panmure cum multis aliis, the strength of my passion brought me over all these difficulties, and forced me to make a respectful declaration of it, and had the pleasure to find I did not incur her displeasure by my aspiring boldness, as I was allowed the honour of continuing my visits and respectful assiduities for two years. I then met with a strong and unexpected shock from dear Lady Jane, which was, sending me back many trifles she had vouchsafed to receive from me, without giving me any reason, and from that time was forbid access, and had no return to letters I sent her begging to know in what I had offended, as I could not accuse myself in thought, word, nor deed.

  Just so does the offended goddess withdraw from her peccant votary, wrapped in impenetrable cloud.

  “In short,” wrote Colonel John, “on this unhappy turn, I left Scotland, unable to be where she was whilst banished from her presence.”

  On July 25, 1745, seven men landed from a small French vessel in the remote Highland region of Moidart. The vessel was the Du Teillay, out of Dunkirk, outfitted by an Irish filibuster, one Rutledge, of whom we shall hear again; and two of the seven men were fated to play a part in Lady Jane’s story. One of them was Aeneas Macdonald, banker of Paris. The other was Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender.

  The old Jacobite Colonel, meanly lodged on the Continent, heard with exultation how the Seven Men of Moidart rolled like a snowball through Scotland, until Bonnie Prince Charlie at the head of an army rode in triumph into Edinburgh. At the same time he heard personal good news: his father-in-law was dead, and his son Jock was the heir. He hastened back to Scotland.

  He found his offended goddess in a rural retreat by the Water of Dean, and she was kinder. Upon his return, writes Colonel John, “I had the honour of an obliging message from Lady Jane, telling me that very soon after my leaving Scotland she came to know that she had done me an injustice, that she would acknowledge it publicly if I chose, as the undeserved shock was known; enfin, I was allowed to visit her as formerly.” Soon the accepted wooer had the bliss of becoming one of my Lady’s household.

  It was an Indian-summer idyll by the Water of Dean, marred all too soon when the tide turned against their gallant Prince and his hopes fell forever at Culloden. Soon my Lady was sheltering a fugitive with a price on his head, Mrs. Hewit’s nephew, who had been Prince Charlie’s aide-de-camp. He was one of her adoring young men, and he had elected to come straight to her at Edinburgh rather than take refuge in the heather. She did not fail him. She kept him hidden abovestairs, where his spirits were sustained by my Lady’s gay courage and the Colonel’s merry sallies. But the day came when the search grew hot, and the resourceful Colonel had to hide the young fellow in a hay-cock. This was coming too close. They packed him off in disguise; my Lady burnt-corked the fair eyebrows with her own hands.

  Edinburgh was growing uncomfortable for Jacobites. It was time for them all to go. Colonel John found a little money; son Jock went on his note for £31–5–0. On this scanty capital, he called in a clergyman and made my Lady his wife. Then he slipped out of Scotland. The Duke’s sister got passes and followed. With her travelled Mrs. Hewit and two Scotch serving-lasses, Isabel Walker and Effie Caw. They all met in England. Under the very noses of the King’s ships at Harwich my Lady smuggled out of danger, disguised as her serving-men, the old Jacobite and the young one.

  They landed safe at Hellevoetsluis. Once more began for Colonel John Steuart the old difficult story of living in exile on insufficient funds. They had only Lady Jane’s meagre pension from her estranged brother, and who knew how long that would keep up?

  Now, almost two years later, in the summer of 1748, better days seemed in sight. Fighting was done. The war over the Austrian succession, of which the Stuart rising was only an episode, was ending in the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. Bonnie Prince Charlie, having made good his escape, was holding his Court and biding his time at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. At Paris, Colonel John and his lady were richer by an heir and the hopes he brought of reconciliation and augmented funds. The Dukedom would die with the childless Duke, and he might leave his fortune to whom he pleased, but to whom more likely than to his sister’s son? To Colonel John’s sanguine mind the future at last seemed bright. They had only to impart their happy news to Duke Archibald.

  Archibald Douglas, Duke of Douglas, turned the letter over in his hands. He could make out the address: “To his Grace the Duke of Douglas at Douglas Castle.” But to make out the contents was beyond him. He could read and write no more than would serve to scratch a sprawling “DOUGLAS” at the foot of a letter, or spell it out on a cover. When there was more to read, he must call upon his underlings. He sent for the minister of Douglas Town, and put the letter in his hands.

  “’Tis from my Lady Jane,” said the minister.

  “From my sister!” The Duke scowled. His addled mind held implacable resentment against her. The murder of the young captain lay between them like the bloody dagger that wrought it, and the half-mad Duke was still revenging his deed upon his sister in a cloud of unreasonable resentments. He was ready to swallow any tale against her. People interested to part them told him many a story. He believed as Gospel that she had plotted to clap him in a mad-house, that she had suborned a mob to kidnap him and confine him on remote St. Kilda, that she had personally incited the odious
Young Pretender to the havoc he had wrought at Douglas Castle. She had certainly been hand in glove with the rebels. When she ran off hugger-mugger to the Continent, disquieting rumors had floated back. They said that she had spirited the Pretender himself out of the country in her train. It was all the clack that she was now living incognito near Windsor, or unsuitably married to an old flame, an Edinburgh legal light. Returning travellers told of meeting her on the Continent in their ramblings, escorted by a Jacobite who was her equerry—or something closer. The only certainty was that she had regularly collected the remittances his man of business sent her.

  Now here was a letter from her, with who knows what news of her ill-considered stravagings, or what fresh demand on her unwilling brother. Duke Archibald was ready to be annoyed.

  “I’ll perhaps say some strong things,” he remarked to the minister, “while you are reading, but never mind me, but go on with it.”

  The Reverend Mr. Hamilton went on with it. My Lady Jane, in the polished and persuasive prose that was habitual to her, began by putting her brother in mind that he had often pressed her to marry, in order to prevent bad consequences—by which she meant the dying out of the race of Douglas.

  “Now,” she wrote, “I am married to Mr. Steuart, brother to Sir George Steuart of Grandtully, and I hope these bad consequences are prevented—” by which she meant to announce that she was pregnant.

  “Your Grace will perhaps think that I have matched far below the dignity of your family; but he is a gentleman related to the best dukes in France.”

  Then she came to give his character, and said: “He is one of the best beloved gentlemen that ever came from our country; in a word, my Lord, he is a very Titus.”

  The explosion came.

  “I must stop you a little now,” burst out the Duke. “Did not you always say to me that Jeanie was a woman of good sense?”

  “I always thought so, my Lord,” replied the clergyman, “and,” he added valiantly, “I still think so.”

  “Why,” said the Duke violently, “the woman is now mad, to give such a character to Steuart, who is one of the worst of men; for,” said he, “he is a Papist, a Jacobite, a gamester, a villain, and all the ills in the world!”

  After this outburst the Duke kept his mouth shut, moving restlessly about the room while the clergyman read to the end. Then he sat down and composed himself.

  “Pray,” said he, “give me your best advice what I should do.”

  “The best advice I can give you,” replied the clergyman immediately, “is for your Grace to marry in your turn, and this will baulk Lady Jane and Colonel Steuart both.”

  “I think the advice exceeding good,” replied the Duke, “and what I ought to follow; but you know, Sir, I am an old man, and a goutish man, and I am told that marriage is bad for the gout.”

  “It is the first time ever I heard it; but allowing it was so,” said the minister persuasively, “would not your Grace risk a fit of the gout to save your family from sinking?”

  “I once thought,” mused the Duke, “that if there was a virtuous woman in the world, my sister Jeanie was one; but now I am going to say a thing that I believe I should not say of my own sister, that she is a whore; and I believe that there is not a virtuous woman in the world.”

  “There are thousands of virtuous women in the world,” the clergyman contradicted him stoutly; and pressed him to consider marrying one of them.

  “That I will never do,” said the Duke positively, “for I am easy what way my estate goes. Jeanie once thought to get my estate sequestrated, and she put in possession; but she shall never have a sixpence from me while I breathe.”

  Strong in this resolution, the Duke made his sister no reply. This did not stop the correspondence, however, for on August 7 my Lady wrote again. The outrageous woman said that she had produced, not one, but twin boys to perpetuate the Douglas line!

  “Please know then, my Lord,” she wrote, “that the 10th of last month I was blessed with two boys, one a promising child; the other, poor thing, so weak, that I fear is little to be reckoned on. God’s will be done! The other my hopes center in, and want but the pleasure of your approving his having your name, with that of Sholto to the younger, to be happy; for, thank God, I have philosophy enough not to place happiness on superfluous riches or pomp, and faith enough to hope they nor I shall ever want a decent competency.”

  The letter was dated from Rheims in Champagne. The astounding news it contained drew from the Duke some very strong remarks indeed. He simply did not believe it, at his sister’s time of life, and he cynically took to dubbing the twins “Pretenders.” Others agreed with him.

  “This marble table,” said his man of business, and laid his hand on the cold surface, “will bring forth as soon as Lady Jane Douglas.”

  “I pray God,” remarked one of his cousins, “that he will enable me to believe the miracles of the Old and New Testaments; but I believe no later ones.”

  “I’m glad to hear of Lady Jane’s good fortune,” wrote a well-wisher who had heard many such remarks; “I wish she had come over to England to lie in; some people here are so ill-natured as to think her extraordinary good fortune an impossibility.”

  In vain did the friends of the lady appeal eloquently to the Duke, delicately intimating the necessity of some monetary assistance to the new arrivals, and calling in their innocent names for some pecuniary marks of brotherly affection. There was not a sixpence worth of brotherly affection in Archibald Douglas, and not a sixpence extra did my Lady Jane get out of him.

  On the contrary. All too soon the irascible Duke was pierced in his most sensitive nerve—money—when Lady Jane’s many creditors, past their patience, started dunning him.

  Incensed, the Duke went to get her settlement papers. They were not to be found. The Duke approached apoplexy when he learned that some time earlier his redoubtable sister had laid hands on them where they lay in a cousin’s strong-box. First she had threatened the cousin with poker and tongs—how jocosely, the intimidated clansman was not sure—and then behind his back she had broken into the strong-box and carried off the papers.

  The Duke was wild. At once he brought an action at law against the unhappy cousin, and only waited to get my Lady where a Scotch writ ran before serving her likewise. Meanwhile, he could not tear up the missing settlement, but he could stop payment on it, and he did.

  Living meanly at Rheims, Lady Jane’s household suddenly confronted the prospect of having nothing to live on at all. In vain did Colonel John, who fancied himself as a writer of eloquent epistles, ply his pen. The Duke of Douglas ignored his appeals. In vain, as a last desperate hope, did the Colonel try to draw for the next quarter’s allowance anyhow. His draft was protested and his credit ruined. Without credit they could not live on at Rheims; without money they could not go home.

  In this impasse Colonel John battered himself against one closed door after another. He had exhausted the pockets and the patience of all his friends at Rheims. There was no hope in the Jacobite coterie at Saint-Germain-en-Laye; they had scattered with empty purses when last winter their erstwhile ally, the French King, had bundled their bonnie Prince neck and crop out of France.

  There was little enough to hope for in Scotland. The Duke was adamant. It was useless to appeal to cranky brother George, sitting tight-fisted at Murthly. It was useless to appeal to good-natured son Jock; Jock, now twenty-one, had his few pounds tied up in the expensive business of taking a wife.

  In this extremity, Lady Jane took a hand. She wrote one of her eloquent appeals to her cousin Lord Morton, and Lord Morton was won over. He sent her enough to come home on. In great relief they prepared to return to Britain.

  O happiness! Where art thou to be found?

  I see thou dwellest not with birth and beauty,

  Tho’ graced with grandeur, and in wealth arrayed:

  Nor dost thou, it would seem, with virtue dwell;

  Else had this gentle lady missed thee not.

&n
bsp; (HOME’S Douglas)

  Chapter III

  A few days before Christmas, 1749, a storm-tossed little band disembarked from the Channel packet at Margate. The tall soldierly gentleman supported his lady, slim and ghost-white after a rough passage. At her right elbow came her confidential woman, ugly, square-cut, like a man in disguise.

  Behind came the little boys, clinging to the hands of the Scotch serving-wenches. At seventeen months, Archie was sturdy and big for his age, while Sholto was delicate and small. Archie was dark, with big brown eyes and black hair growing low on his swarthy brow. Blond Sholto silently watched the cold strange world out of eyes as blue as Lady Jane’s. They certainly did not look like twins.

  The wenches who led them were the two who had followed my Lady from Scotland, reliable Isabel Walker, and Effie Caw, a pert piece not yet out of her teens.

  The company pulled their cloaks tighter against the storm-wind that still lashed in from the sea, and mounted the coach for London.

  They rolled into London, and the growing city looked good to them. The slender spires of the Wren churches rose in the frosty air over the crooked streets of the old City. The open Thames sparkled with its crowded shipping, its lighters and barges and pleasure craft. To the south was the fascinating murky maze of Southwark. Up-river the little village of Chelsea gleamed green in the distance. Nearer at hand, between the Temple and the Abbey, stretched the Court end of town, where open squares and fashionable streets pleased the eye with fine flat paving-stones and patches of verdure, with new houses of yellow brick, broad white doors and lacy fan-lights. There they began to look about for a lodging fine enough for Lady Jane’s quality, and cheap enough for her consort’s purse.

  On Christmas Day they dined with Lord Mark Kerr. Lord Mark was a blunt old soldier. He had never really forgiven Lady Jane for losing Buccleuch, still less for later misfortunes. It was his own soldier son who had died on her account. But she was his niece, and it was the season of good will. He made them welcome to the goose and the plum pudding, the furmety and minced pies at his board. When the meal was done, he ushered them out again. He was not prepared to give them house-room.