LADY CICELY. Oh, poor things, they must want it more than we do; and you know, Howard, that Mahometans never spend money in drink.
RANKIN. Excuse me a moment, my leddy. I have a word in season to say to that same Moor. (He goes into the house.)
LADY CICELY (walking about the garden, looking at the view and at the flowers). I think this is a perfectly heavenly place.
Drinkwater returns from the house with a chair.
DRINKWATER (placing the chair for Sir Howard). Awskink yr pawdn for the libbety, Sr Ahrd.
SIR HOWARD (looking a him). I have seen you before somewhere.
DRINKWATER. You ev, Sr Ahrd. But aw do assure yer it were hall a mistike.
SIR HOWARD. As usual. (He sits down.) Wrongfully convicted, of course.
DRINKWATER (with sly delight). Naow, gavner. (Half whispering, with an ineffable grin) Wrorngfully hacquittid!
SIR HOWARD. Indeed! That’s the first case of the kind I have ever met.
DRINKWATER. Lawd, Sr Ahrd, wot jagginses them jurymen was! You an me knaowed it too, didn’t we?
SIR HOWARD. I daresay we did. I am sorry to say I forget the exact nature of the difficulty you were in. Can you refresh my memory?
DRINKWATER. Owny the aw sperrits o youth, y’ lawdship. Worterleoo Rowd kice. Wot they calls Ooliganism.
SIR HOWARD. Oh! You were a Hooligan, were you?
LADY CICELY (puzzled). A Hooligan!
DRINKWATER (deprecatingly). Nime giv huz pore thortless leds baw a gent on the Dily Chrornicle, lidy. (Rankin returns. Drinkwater immediately withdraws, stopping the missionary for a moment near the threshold to say, touching his forelock) Awll eng abaht within ile, gavner, hin kice aw should be wornted. (He goes into the house with soft steps.)
Lady Cicely sits down on the bench under the tamarisk. Rankin takes his stool from the flowerbed and sits down on her left, Sir Howard being on her right.
LADY CICELY. What a pleasant face your sailor friend has, Mr. Rankin! He has been so frank and truthful with us. You know I don’t think anybody can pay me a greater compliment than to be quite sincere with me at first sight. It’s the perfection of natural good manners.
SIR HOWARD. You must not suppose, Mr. Rankin, that my sister-in-law talks nonsense on purpose. She will continue to believe in your friend until he steals her watch; and even then she will find excuses for him.
RANKIN (drily changing the subject). And how have ye been, Sir Howrrd, since our last meeting that morning nigh forty year ago down at the docks in London?
SIR HOWARD (greatly surprised, pulling himself together) Our last meeting! Mr. Rankin: have I been unfortunate enough to forget an old acquaintance?
RANKIN. Well, perhaps hardly an acquaintance, Sir Howrrd. But I was a close friend of your brother Miles: and when he sailed for Brazil I was one of the little party that saw him off. You were one of the party also, if I’m not mistaken. I took particular notice of you because you were Miles’s brother and I had never seen ye before. But ye had no call to take notice of me.
SIR HOWARD (reflecting). Yes: there was a young friend of my brother’s who might well be you. But the name, as I recollect it, was Leslie.
RANKIN. That was me, sir. My name is Leslie Rankin; and your brother and I were always Miles and Leslie to one another.
SIR HOWARD (pluming himself a little). Ah! that explains it. I can trust my memory still, Mr. Rankin; though some people do complain that I am growing old.
RANKIN. And where may Miles be now, Sir Howard?
SIR HOWARD (abruptly). Don’t you know that he is dead?
RANKIN (much shocked). Never haird of it. Dear, dear: I shall never see him again; and I can scarcely bring his face to mind after all these years. (With moistening eyes, which at once touch Lady Cicely’s sympathy) I’m right sorry — right sorry.
SIR HOWARD (decorously subduing his voice). Yes: he did not live long: indeed, he never came back to England. It must be nearly thirty years ago now that he died in the West Indies on his property there.
RANKIN (surprised). His proaperty! Miles with a proaperty!
SIR HOWARD. Yes: he became a planter, and did well out there, Mr. Rankin. The history of that property is a very curious and interesting one — at least it is so to a lawyer like myself.
RANKIN. I should be glad to hear it for Miles’s sake, though I am no lawyer, Sir Howrrd.
LADY CICELY. I never knew you had a brother, Howard.
SIR HOWARD (not pleased by this remark). Perhaps because you never asked me. (Turning more blandly to Rankin) I will tell you the story, Mr. Rankin. When Miles died, he left an estate in one of the West Indian islands. It was in charge of an agent who was a sharpish fellow, with all his wits about him. Now, sir, that man did a thing which probably could hardly be done with impunity even here in Morocco, under the most barbarous of surviving civilizations. He quite simply took the estate for himself and kept it.
RANKIN. But how about the law?
SIR HOWARD. The law, sir, in that island, consisted practically of the Attorney General and the Solicitor General; and these gentlemen were both retained by the agent. Consequently there was no solicitor in the island to take up the case against him.
RANKIN. Is such a thing possible to-day in the British Empire?
SIR HOWARD (calmly). Oh, quite. Quite.
LADY CICELY. But could not a firstrate solicitor have been sent out from London?
SIR HOWARD. No doubt, by paying him enough to compensate him for giving up his London practice: that is, rather more than there was any reasonable likelihood of the estate proving worth.
RANKIN. Then the estate was lost?
SIR HOWARD. Not permanently. It is in my hands at present.
RANKIN. Then how did ye get it back?
SIR HOWARD (with crafty enjoyment of his own cunning). By hoisting the rogue with his own petard. I had to leave matters as they were for many years; for I had my own position in the world to make. But at last I made it. In the course of a holiday trip to the West Indies, I found that this dishonest agent had left the island, and placed the estate in the hands of an agent of his own, whom he was foolish enough to pay very badly. I put the case before that agent; and he decided to treat the estate as my property. The robber now found himself in exactly the same position he had formerly forced me into. Nobody in the island would act against me, least of all the Attorney and Solicitor General, who appreciated my influence at the Colonial Office. And so I got the estate back. “The mills of the gods grind slowly,” Mr. Rankin; “but they grind exceeding small.”
LADY CICELY. Now I suppose if I’d done such a clever thing in England, you’d have sent me to prison.
SIR HOWARD. Probably, unless you had taken care to keep outside the law against conspiracy. Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.
LADY CICELY. So I do. But suppose your agent takes it into his head to give the estate back to his wicked old employer!
SIR HOWARD. I heartily wish he would.
RANKIN (openeyed). You wish he WOULD!!
SIR HOWARD. Yes. A few years ago the collapse of the West Indian sugar industry converted the income of the estate into an annual loss of about 150 pounds a year. If I can’t sell it soon, I shall simply abandon it — unless you, Mr. Rankin, would like to take it as a present.
RANKIN (laughing). I thank your lordship: we have estates enough of that sort in Scotland. You’re setting with your back to the sun, Leddy Ceecily, and losing something