University of Virginia Library

SCENE I.

Chorus.
Close by a lake, beneath a long-backed hill
A lodge stood new and bare;
Larch and spruce had been planted there,
But they were still
Only like tufts of grass upon the long-backed hill.
There, by no care oppressed,
The wanderer now found rest
Who had seen many cities, many men,
And many perils known,
And many a die had thrown
With risk of all his living now and then.
Skimming the surface lightly and alone
Gaily he took what pleasure might be got;
No higher life the stirring West had shown,
The brooding East called forth no deeper thought.
Yet could he shrewdly use his wits,
And had his cautious, prudent fits,
His memories also and regrets
That touched his heart with lights from heaven,
Though he sat easy under debts
Of duty, that had surely driven
To their wits' end respectable good folk
Who went to church, and no commandment broke.

Scene—Glen Chroan Lodge. Dr. Lorne and Chundra, his servant.
Chundra.
The Begum, sahib! I have seen her.

Dr. Lorne.
Tush!
We have no Begums here.

Chundra.
I saw her—her!

Dr. Lorne.
Why, man, she has been dead these ten years past,
And more.

Chundra.
Yes, sahib, dead ten years; and yet
I saw her, and she smiled; and then I said
What devilry is brewing?

Dr. Lorne.
I never knew
Of any ghost that had been ten years dead,
And yet came smiling back. They lose their smile,
Chundra, exactly in the seventh year,
And it returns no more, because they have not
Lips, cheeks, or eyes to smile with, though the teeth
Grin horribly. But, now, I'm rather busy;
I'll hear you by and by. I am expecting
A visitor on matters of great moment:
You'll show him in, and see that no one enters
While he is here. Have tiffin ready, too,
On the instant notice, mind.

Chundra.
Yes, Doctor sahib.

[Exit Servant.
Dr. Lorne.
I partly guess what Begum he has seen;
She's like her mother, doubtless. Well, I've got
A pill to purge her devilry, if she
Is at the old one's tricks.

Chundra.
Sir Bennett, sahib.

Enter Bennett.
Dr. Lorne.
Good-morning, Bennett. Had a pleasant journey?

Bennett.
So so; your nags are good enough, but then
Your roads are something perpendicular,
And what with ruts and rocks they make hard driving.

Dr. Lorne.
There; how you lawyers grumble! If you knew
The roads I've gone by dâk! And for your climb,
You got the better view of scenery
Thought to be well worth seeing. But now, Bennett,
Our Highland air is reckoned hungry air;
Shall you bait first, or work?

Bennett.
Let us to business;
It spoils alike the dinner and digestion
To have work hanging o'er you, like the skull
At the old feasts.

Dr. Lorne.
So be it, then; and yet
I fear your patience may be tried beyond
Endurance of your appetite. You know
Old travellers claim the right to be long-winded.

Bennett.
I can recruit me at the sideboard there,
If you abuse your privilege.

Dr. Lorne.
All right.
And so now to my tale. You know my brother,
The Parson, Ronald; we were twins, alike
In form and feature, but in mind—Ah! well;
He was the family saint, and I the pickle
From childhood. So he took to healing souls,
And I to doctoring people's pains and aches
And indigestions—he for love of souls,
And I for love of fees. I did my work,
As others did, by rule; went feeling pulses,
Looking at tongues, and writing out prescriptions
With a good conscience, and a look of wisdom.
I knew the does was dropt into the dark,
But it was what our high tradition ordered.
Sometimes it cured, but how, I could not tell;
Sometimes it failed, and why I did not know:
God orders all; except He build the house
They labour in vain that build it. So I took
My fee, and silently allowed the vis
Naturæ medicatrix, and the mors
That beats with equal foot at every door.

Bennett.
Quite right; what other could you do?

Dr. Lorne.
Even so
It seemed. And yet, if Nature worked the cure,
Nature should have the fee too; and besides
My conscience got entangled with new science
That would have no empiric, no haphazard;
And I must go but where it showed the way—
And oh, it had so little way to show:
So I lost faith in all our Therapeutic.

Bennett.
Queer, now: I had a parson with me lately
Wanting to strip his gown off. He had dropt,
Bit by bit, all old formulas of faith,
And buried all his gods, he said, and saw
No difference in his flock who came to church,
And said their prayers, and hardly pricked their ears
At any fresh negation; traded, feasted,
And gossipped as before—nor worse nor better,
A moral class of pure respectables.
But he opined his life would be a lie
If he went on.

Dr. Lorne.
And surely so it had been.
What counsel gave you him?

Bennett.
Bade him go home,
And write his sermon, said I envied him
Having so clear a case, so plain a brief,
Authority so full, and absolute law
To preach the gospel. But the fellow went
And took to writing novels—he is lost.
Yet it is odd that ministers and doctors
Should be so sceptic in their own affairs:
You'll never find a lawyer acting so.
I have my doubts, like other folk, but keep them
Clear of my business.

Dr. Lorne.
Some have doubts of it.

Bennett.
Ay, but they're laymen.

Dr. Lorne.
Lucky you that can
Doubt every thing, except that law is right,
And bide unmoved when all around is shifting.—
But to my story: like your parson, I
Flung up my craft, but did not take to writing,
Having no knack that way; and though I had—
No faith in physic, I had faith enough
In my own luck. Therefore I went abroad,
And drifted round the world, now up, now down,
Making a fortune one day, losing it
Another, now in rags among the miners,
Then swaggering from a “hell” where the croupiers
Hated the sight of me. A pretty game
Life is now, if you only have the pluck
To brave the worst it can do.

Bennett.
Maybe so;
But how about your conscience now, that scrupled
At physic? Could it swallow dice and cards?

Dr. Lorne.
Quite readily: I take it that a conscience
Is like an Arab horse that frets and fidgets
In the strait streets where people congregate;
But let it free i' the wilds, and it obeys
The lightest touch. At last I found myself—
After a run of luck in India—
Up in a native state—netting one day
Some hundred thousand, odds.

Bennett.
Then you came home
To your snug place here.

Dr. Lorne.
Not a bit of it.
I said, “Now, if I keep this, ten to one
'Twill vanish at the next turn o' the wheel;
And yet I cannot give the game up yet,
Or settle down, respectable, to grow
Fungi and mosses on my brains at home.
But there's my brother, dear old fellow, starving
In the old manse, where we all starved in youth,
I'll send it him, and he will use it well.”

Bennett.
The whole of it?

Dr. Lorne.
Well, pretty nearly so.
I kept a nest-egg, or I scarce had been
Where I am now. But listen; I am coming
Straight to the point at last. I knew poor Ronald
Would never take it as a gift from me,
Would only bank it in my name—he had
No notion of investing even—and so
If things went wrong, as they had often done,
Why, it would go, as other gains had gone,
To hungry creditors.

Bennett.
I see. But how
Avoid that, if he would not take your gift?

Dr. Lorne.
That's what I had to settle. Well, there was
A crofter fellow from Glenaradale,
Who had gone partners with me in some ventures,—
Rail way-contracting, money-lending, what not?
I took him for my friend, for I had done him
A good turn more than once. This man I made
My banker; giving it in charge to him
To send the money to my brother here,
When he next heard of me, which should be soon.

Bennett.
But you took vouchers?

Dr. Lorne.
Surely; here they are;
And that is why I sent for you, to know
If they be valid, as I think they are.
He dealt in money, managed our exchanges,
Contracted, too, for railways; a smart fellow,
Jobbing at everything, and everything
Brought money to him—so they said at least.
But to my plot. Having set all this right,
As I supposed, I went and drowned myself.

Bennett.
Drowned yourself! Well, you take your drowning kindly.

Dr. Lorne.
Next day there was a body—a white man's
From the up-country somewhere—floated down
The river with a pocket-book of mine
Found on him, where they did not know my face.
I read the notices of my decease
In the newspapers, one day, in Japan,
Months afterwards. They gave me on the whole
A character for enterprise and honour,
My brother read at home with grateful tears,
And I in Tokyo with mirth and laughter.

Bennett.
What could you mean by such a foolish trick?
How could this drowning help you?

Dr. Lorne.
Don't you see?
To take a gift of eighty thousand pounds
Was one thing to a kind of thin-skinned conscience,
And quite another thing a legacy
From his dead brother lying in his grave.

Bennett.
Well, well; you're a mad fellow. But the money—

Dr. Lorne.
Was never heard of more. My clever friend
Had married in the native state a woman
We used to call the Begum—a volcano
Incarnate, an embodied thunder-bolt,
Fat, greedy, false, and cunning as a serpent,
And yet a fierce tornado. I've no doubt
She set him on to write that I had died
In debt, and hunted up some old accounts
Which the poor parson paid. They were but trifles,
Yet he would wear a shabbier coat for them.
I almost could forgive the theft, but not
That dirty trick on him, the scurvy rogue!

Bennett.
Ah! your too clever schemes miscarry always.
But what came of your Begum?

Dr. Lorne.
Oh, she died
Ten years ago; and Cattanach came home
With a fine half-breed daughter, and my money,
Which bought Glenaradale; and then he died.

Bennett.
The papers now? But did you never write
Your brother?

Dr. Lorne.
No; he thought that I was dead;
And I thought oft, when things were tight with me,
What plenty there would be in the old manse,
And that somehow contented me.

Bennett.
The vouchers?

Dr. Lorne.
Well, here they are; it was a native lawyer
Drew them up for me, but I think they're right.

Bennett.
Leave me alone a while;—at least be quiet,
Unless I ask a question. 'Tis a case
Needs an old lawyer's skill. Of course he held
That you were dead indeed, and the temptation
Was too much for him. Opportunity
Makes rogues as heat breeds worms in carrion;
You gave him just the chance to turn a rascal.
A most mad business! Had you but consulted
A lawyer, now, you might have had your will,
And he might have been honest to this day.

Dr. Lorne.
Nay, but he was a rogue in grain, I fear,
And never took the straight road, when a crooked
Came handy to him.

Bennett
(reading).
Right, right; clear as day.
Not a flaw in them. Who could have believed
That a brown Hindoo could have made a case
So tight as this? There's only one thing now.
How about that same drowning in the river?

Dr. Lorne.
Read on.

Bennett.
I see. Compeared before the Judge;
Witnesses certify that you are you,
And that the dead man was not you. All right.
And now, sir, we may dine with easy minds.

Dr. Lorne.
Then we can do it?

Bennett.
Do it! we can wring
Both principal and interest from his heirs
To the last mite. I have not time to sum it,
But it will take a many Highland acres
Of hill and moor to clear it; and there's nothing
Will clear his character.

Dr. Lorne.
He had none to lose.
Then you will take the case in hand for me?

Bennett.
Will I consent to eat your venison,
Pick well-kept grouse, and drink your dry champagne,
Or orderly draw up a long account
For a good client? Will I consent, quotha?
Why, if the case were only half a case,
Instead of what it is, a certainty,
There is no lawyer could refuse so neat,
Compact a job. It's really beautiful.

Dr. Lorne.
Then we shall go and dine.

Bennett.
By all means dine.
I never felt both appetite and conscience
So sweetly go together. If you have
A bottle of old port, you're safe to draw it;
'Twill not be wasted on me.

Chorus.
So they sit there and drink
Port, crusted, that mellows
Even crusty old fellows
That are well on the brink
Of the threescore and ten
Appointed for men
To labour and think,
And to eat here and drink.
Oh the night that they spent!
And the stories they told!
And the bottles that went
Like shorn sheep to the fold!
What did the ordered household say?
And what could the old men think next day?