University of Virginia Library

SCENE I.

Chorus.

Scene—Boudoir in Cairn-Cailleach. Doris and Mairi.
Doris.
Mairi, you are a fool. If you were quit
Of these poor kinsfolk in Glenaradale,
Think what you might be. You are very pretty,
And lady-like, and have the trick of dressing,
And matching colours—you might wed a lord
Who did not know the root from which you sprang.

Mairi.
I do not wish to wed a lord, Miss Doris,
I do not wish to hide from whence I came;
I am a cottar's daughter, as your father
Rose from a like beginning.

Doris.
There's no need
Reminding me of that; but, never mind,
After this week I'll hear no more of it.

Mairi.
But they will hear in heaven, where poor folks' prayers
Do fill its courts like incense.

Doris.
Then you mean
To pray for vengeance on the friend who tried
To lift you from the mud. Oh, but you are
A proper saint.

Mairi.
Nay, I am not a saint,
But, Doris, we might both be better women.

Doris.
Well, when I pray, for I am more forgiving
Than you, I'll pray for you that you may get
A better husband than that Kenneth Parlane,
Who'll starve you on his rhymes and rebuses,
Rehearsing them to clowns in alehouse parlours,
Inspired of usquebagh,—meanwhile his wife
Will time her poet with a tambourine.

Mairi.
You do not know him, Doris: but no matter;
Why should we part in bitterness? You meant
Friendly by me, although your way of life
Cannot be mine. “The sea hides much,” they say,
And there is much that love will hide away.

Doris.
E'en as you will. But here's another coming;
Adieu!

Exit Mairi. Enter Tremain.
Tremain.
Why, Doris, what a pretty maid
You have! But beauty still should wait on beauty.
You need no foil; twin stars are doubly bright.

Doris.
How have we grown so deep familiar,
Who scarce have known each other for a week?

Tremain.
A week! I seem to have known you all my days;
The years before, like childhood, are a blank.
How did I live then?

Doris.
Oh, like other babies,
Getting your milk-teeth, squalling now and then,
Making a noise with spoons, and being petted
And spoilt by kissing women. What of Diarmid?
Where is he?

Tremain.
Well; he's busy with affairs;
A man of acres he, and beeves and sheep,
With tenants, gillies, keepers, and what not?
To see to.

Doris.
Oh! He did not use to be
Quite so full-handed.

Tremain.
Then, he's not in love;
And no one cares to look on when a game
Is played by others, after he has thrown
His own cards up.

Doris.
He palms me off on you, then,
Having no taste for such poor gear himself,
Or else another market for his wares!
'Tis very well, Sir Poet.

Tremain.
Nay, I said not
Any rude word like that.

Doris.
Did you not tell me
He had thrown up his cards, and did not care
To see you play his game? So you have come
To take his cast-off, and relieve his mind
Of its perplexity! A gracious office!
Sure, gentlemen are most accommodating!
And doubtless I am honoured, could I see it,
And doubtless you are favoured, when you think on't!
People keep poets sometimes—do they not?—
For their own uses, as to praise their wares
In rhyming advertisement quaintly fancied,
Or to relieve the tedium of their greatness.
So I have heard. But 'tis a new vocation
To take their leavings.

Tremain.
Ha! a clever shot,
And yet a miss. How you do drop on one,
As a lithe panther lurking in a tree,
Licking his lips, with slowly wagging tail,
Might leap down from his branch, and bite the nape
Of the stag's neck, while every claw is dug
Into the quivering flanks. I like to watch
Your eyes at such a time, at first so sleepy
With half-closed lids, then flashing out so fierce
With sudden lightnings. You have the perfect art
Of deadly wounding; yet I am not hurt.

Doris.
A pachyderm, perhaps, or armadillo
Wearing his bones outside. Some people have
An armature of vanity as tough
As the thick folds of the rhinoceros' hide,
And wot not when they are shamed.

Tremain.
You miss the mark,
Though you aim low—or just because you aim
So very low. I feel when I am hit
Like other men, and may be hit like them;
But then my feet are not among the dirt
To be hurt there. So you have sped your bolt
Wide of the mark.

Doris.
Oh yes! you are a poet,
And fly, of course. It is among the clouds
That one must speed an arrow after you.
But whether you are singing lark, or gled,
Or mousing-owl, who knows? You bring such strange
Reports.

Tremain.
A lark, be sure, the bird of heaven—
A lark full-throated up in the blue heavens,
That all day singeth to his love below,
And only can be silent by her side.—
But what reports mean you?

Doris.
Something you said,
Self-satisfied, about a laggard wooer,
A gamester who threw up his cards, and left
The play to you who gladly took his place;
I the poor stake.

Tremain.
But not his cards I play,
Nor yet his game, whate'er it may have been;
'Tis my own luck I try, laying my life
Upon that throw.

Doris.
Just so; he casts me over,
And then you take me up; he's done with me,
And therefore I am fit for you. Perhaps
You like the game: I cannot say I take
The humour of it.

Tremain.
Nay, it is not so.
I said he did not love you, which is true;
He said you loved him not, which I believed;
And so, because the way was clear for me,
I said I loved you, which is truest of all:
And I will challenge in the tournament
Of song all poets in the land to match
My Queen of Beauty—or be hushed for ever.

Doris.
Fine words! But that's your trade.

Tremain.
Words! If you knew
The passion burning in the heart of them,
The sense of utter weakness in all words,
In paradox and high superlative,
To speak the thoughts that swell and surge in me!
Listen a moment, Doris. When I came
Hither to gather pictures and sensations
Among the mountains, and beside the sea,
And from dim caves, and from the whish of pines,
And lingering mists, and from the setting suns,
That I might write a book which should entrance
A brain-fagged world, then I was studying words
To trade on them. But having lighted on
My Helena, my Fate, I heed no more
The hills, the lochs, the caves, the forest trees,
Or trailing mists, or glory of the sunsets,
Or curious felicities of speech,
Or swing of rhythmic phrase, or anything
But just to love thee, and to win thy love.

Doris.
There; that's enough; I half believe you, though
I fear I should not even half believe.
I think you love me just a little.

Tremain.
Doris,
A little! I am all, and over all,
Within, without, in heart and brain, afire
With a consuming passion which no sea
Could quench, but it would make its waves to boil
Though they were ribbed with ice.

Doris.
You've studied well
The art, at least, how one should play with hearts.
Yet if I were to prove your love with some
More simple test than boiling seas of ice,
It would not much amaze me though it failed.

Tremain.
Nay, put me to the proof; and if my life—

Doris.
Pray, let your life alone; men wager that
Most freely, when they least intend to pay.
But if you cared to pleasure me, you could,
And I could love the man who pleasured me
As I would have him.

Tremain.
Only tell me how,
And if a heart's devotion, and a will
Resolved, and some small skill of nice invention
To frame such dainty plots as poets use
To work out fates with, can accomplish it,
Count it already done.

Doris.
I hardly know
How I should put it. There's a girl you know,
At least you've seen her—Ina at the manse:
I hate her.

Temain.
Well, then, I will hate her too.

Doris.
Nay, that is not my meaning.

Tremain.
Then I'll love her,
If that is what you will.

Doris.
Oh yes, your love,
Like a small seedling, having little root,
May readily be plucked up from the soil,
And planted elsewhere. Let's to something else:
No more of this. I had forgot she is your
Pallas-Athene.

Tremain.
What, an if she be?
Pallas-Athene is not Aphrodite,
And it is Love and Beauty I adore,
Which I find perfect here. What would you with her?

Doris.
She's in my way, was always in my way,
Balked me when we were children, baffled me
In every purpose that I set my heart on,
And brought out all the worst in me, until
He hated me, who should have loved me best.

Tremain.
Ah! well; 'tis clear why you should like her ill,
But not so clear how I can meddle. Would you
That I should carry off a rival beauty,
And leave you a clear field to win your lover,
Breaking my own heart with a frustrate hope?
That is a test of love's unselfishness
Love never claimed before.

Doris.
And does not now.
The man is nought to me, and never was
Even then before that I had met with you
Who say you love me.

Tremain.
Yet you hint that she
Is in your way.

Doris.
Well; what if I would be
Revenged upon the gamester who has scorned me,
And she comes in between me and my wrath?
May I not spite him where he most would feel
Cut to the quick? But there; no more of this.
You'd give your life for me, of course; but when
I ask a trifle, you are scrupulous.
Let it alone.

Trmain.
What would you have me do?

Doris.
Oh, nothing. I am not so poor in friends
That I must beg of strangers.

Tremain.
Am I then
Become a stranger to you? Say, what would you?
I must not hate her—that is not your meaning;
I must not love her—that is less your drift;
But she is in your way—yet not in love's way:
How may I construe this, and do your will?
Am I to tie the offending Beauty, as
In Stamboul, in a sack, and sink her deep
Some evening in the silence and the darkness
Of the mid loch? Or shall I go in search
Of the lost art of Medicean poison,
And with a kerchief or a pair of gloves,
Subtly envenomed, so assail her life
That straightway she shall pine away and die?
These ways are out of date. Besides they bring
Vulgar detective fellows, worse than slot-hounds,
About one's heels.

Doris.
Prithee, have done with this:
I might have known that you would trifle with me.
She said you were a coxcomb.

Tremain.
By the heavens,
And all the gods of Hellas, never was
A heart more seriously inclined to serve you
Than mine is, if I only knew the way.

Doris.
May I believe you?

Tremain.
Is there any oath
Will carry strong assurance? I will swear it.

Doris.
Oh yes; and break it. Oaths of any kind
Sit easy on the soul that easy takes them:
There is no traitor like your ready swearer
Clothed in the tatters of forgotten vows.

Tremain.
Nay, I will keep it. I am in your toils,
And you shall lead me like a meek, tame creature
Whither you will.

Doris.
I fancied that a woman,
Having a lover faithful and devoted,
Had but to will, and he would find the way,
His the invention, hers but to desire.—
I've heard indeed of men who with fair speech
Have plied a maiden's heart, and mischief came on't,
But hush! there's some one coming.

Enter Factor.
Factor.
Good-evening, lady.
I am not marring better company?
May I come in?

Doris.
Yes, certainly. But what
Brings you again to-day?

Factor.
Well, I have heard
That these Glenara folk will have a grand
Function of their religion there next Sabbath,
A Holy Fair, a big communion-day,
And there will be hot words, they say.

Doris.
Can't you
Prevent them?

Factor.
That's not easy, if they come
In thousands as their custom is, and get
The drink once in their heads.

Doris.
But you can stop
Newspaper men from sending false reports
About the country.

Factor.
Yes, yes; I can do
All the reporting they are like to get,
And more than they would wish. But you might give me
The gillies, and authority from you
To warn them off the ground with threats of law
If they refuse. They do not like the Law,
Nor does the Law like them.

Doris.
By all means do
Whate'er may stop these dangerous gatherings.

Factor.
Thanks; I will see to't. By the way, I met
Your pretty cousin in a pretty plight.

Doris.
How mean you? She was here a little ago,
Handsome as ever.

Factor.
Well, she's on the way now
Across the hills, and Kenneth Parlane with her,
Dressed in the rags she wore when she came here,
Barefoot, bareheaded, with her snooded hair,
And the small bundle in the hand-kerchief
That held her comb, her mother's wedding ring,
Her Bible and Kenneth's letters, prose and verse.

Doris.
Oh! she's a fool; and it was like a fool
To think that I could take her from the byre
Into the drawing-room. But let her go.

Factor.
I have your full authority, then, to act.

Doris.
Surely. But run no risk of rioting.

Factor.
Oh! never fear.

[Exit Factor.
Doris.
And now you would not mind
Walking across the hill, perhaps, on Sunday?
You'll have rare fun, and you could serve me too.
I have been moving some of my poor tenants
From wretched crofts to settle by the sea,
Where they can fish, and better their estate,
And better, too, my rents by foresting
Their ill-tilled, scanty fields. They do not like it,
And I would fain know what is said and done
About it at this preaching. The factor will
Report, of course, but your account would be
More picturesque—perhaps a trifle truer.

Tremain.
Certainly, I will go.

Doris.
Till then, adieu.
You will think over what I said to you?

Chorus.
Cat-like, purring and mewling, and softest rubbing of fur,
With just a pat of the claw, now and then, for a needed spur,
Touching the quick of his vanity, making him keen to go
Whithersoever she would, though whither he did not know,
Seeming to answer love with love, though her heart was cool,
And the clear-working brain was practising as on a fool,
So she played with her victim, who thought he was playing with her,
For there was not a heart between them to master or minister.
Clever he might be, yet would she wind him around her thumb,
Reason soon to be blinded, conscience soon to be dumb;
For when a woman is good, she doth to all good inspire,
But being evil, alas! she burns up the soul like fire.
Rouse thee, man, for an effort; what though her speech be smooth,
What though she smile too upon thee in splendour of beauty and youth,
There is no pity in her; look at her hard, cold eye;
You she will use for her tool now, and mock with her scorn by and by.