by Unknown
Shand.
JOHN [who quite understands that he is being challenged]. That’s so,
Lady Sybil, meaning no offence.
SYBIL [who has a naughty little impediment in her voice when she is most alluring]. Of course not. And we are friends again?
JOHN. Certainly.
SYBIL. Then I hope you will come to see me in London as I present no terrors.
JOHN [he is a man, is JOHN]. I’ll be very pleased.
SYBIL. Any afternoon about five.
JOHN. Much obliged. And you can teach me the things I don’t know yet, if you’ll be so kind.
SYBIL [the impediment becoming more assertive]. If you wish it, I shall do my best.
JOHN. Thank you, Lady Sybil. And who knows there may be one or two things I can teach you.
SYBIL [it has now become an angel’s hiccough]. Yes, we can help one another. Goodbye till then.
JOHN. Goodbye. Maggie, the ladies are going.
[During this skirmish MAGGIE has stood apart. At the mention of her name they glance at one another. JOHN escorts SYBIL, but the COMTESSE turns back.]
COMTESSE. Are you, then, THE Maggie? [MAGGIE nods rather defiantly and the COMTESSE is distressed.] But if I had known I would not have said those things. Please forgive an old woman.
MAGGIE. It doesn’t matter.
COMTESSE. I — I dare say it will be all right. Mademoiselle, if I were you I would not encourage those tete-a-tetes with Lady Sybil. I am the rude one, but she is the dangerous one; and I am afraid his impudence has attracted her. Bon voyage, Miss Maggie.
MAGGIE. Goodbye — but I CAN speak French. Je parle francais. Isn’t that right?
COMTESSE. But, yes, it is excellent. [Making things easy for her]
C’est tres bien.
MAGGIE. Je me suis embrouillee — la derniere fois.
COMTESSE. Good! Shall I speak more slowly?
MAGGIE. No, no. Nonon, non, faster, faster.
COMTESSE. J’admire votre courage!
MAGGIE. Je comprends chaque mot.
COMTESSE. Parfait! Bravo!
MAGGIE. Voila!
COMTESSE. Superbe!
[She goes, applauding; and MAGGIE has a moment of elation, which however has passed before JOHN returns for his hat.]
MAGGIE. Have you more speaking to do, John? [He is somehow in high good-humour.]
JOHN. I must run across and address the Cowcaddens Club. [He sprays his throat with a hand-spray.] I wonder if I AM vulgar, Maggie?
MAGGIE. You are not, but I am.
JOHN. Not that I can see.
MAGGIE. Look how overdressed I am, John. I knew it was too showy when I ordered it, and yet I could not resist the thing. But I will tone it down, I will. What did you think of Lady Sybil?
JOHN. That young woman had better be careful. She’s a bit of a besom,
Maggie.
MAGGIE. She’s beautiful, John.
JOHN. She has a neat way of stretching herself. For playing with she would do as well as another.
[She looks at him wistfully.]
MAGGIE. You couldn’t stay and have a talk for a few minutes?
JOHN. If you want me, Maggie. The longer you keep them waiting, the more they think of you.
MAGGIE. When are you to announce that we’re to be married, John?
JOHN. I won’t be long. You’ve waited a year more than you need have done, so I think it’s your due I should hurry things now.
MAGGIE. I think it’s noble of you.
JOHN. Not at all, Maggie; the nobleness has been yours in waiting so patiently. And your brothers would insist on it at any rate. They’re watching me like cats with a mouse.
MAGGIE. It’s so little I’ve done to help.
JOHN. Three hundred pounds.
MAGGIE. I’m getting a thousand per cent for it.
JOHN. And very pleased I am you should think so, Maggie.
MAGGIE. Is it terrible hard to you, John?
JOHN. It’s not hard at all. I can say truthfully, Maggie, that all, or nearly all, I’ve seen of you in these six years has gone to increase my respect for you.
MAGGIE. Respect!
JOHN. And a bargain’s a bargain.
MAGGIE. If it wasn’t that you’re so glorious to me, John, I would let you off.
[There is a gleam in his eye, but he puts it out.]
JOHN. In my opinion, Maggie, we’ll be a very happy pair.
[She accepts this eagerly.]
MAGGIE. We know each other so well, John, don’t we?
JOHN. I’m an extraordinary queer character, and I suppose nobody knows me well except myself; but I know you, Maggie, to the very roots of you.
[She magnanimously lets this remark alone.]
MAGGIE. And it’s not as if there was any other woman you — fancied more, John.
JOHN. There’s none whatever.
MAGGIE. If there ever should be — oh, if there ever should be! Some woman with charm.
JOHN. Maggie, you forget yourself. There couldn’t be another woman once I was a married man.
MAGGIE. One has heard of such things.
JOHN. Not in Scotsmen, Maggie; not in Scotsmen.
MAGGIE. I’ve sometimes thought, John, that the difference between us and the English is that the Scotch are hard in all other respects but soft with women, and the English are hard with women but soft in all other respects.
JOHN. You’ve forgotten the grandest moral attribute of a Scotsman,
Maggie, that he’ll do nothing which might damage his career.
MAGGIE. Ah, but John, whatever you do, you do it so tremendously; and if you were to love, what a passion it would be.
JOHN. There’s something in that, I suppose.
MAGGIE. And then, what could I do? For the desire of my life now, John, is to help you to get everything you want, except just that I want you to have me, too.
JOHN. We’ll get on fine, Maggie.
MAGGIE. You’re just making the best of it. They say that love is sympathy, and if that’s so, mine must be a great love for you, for I see all you are feeling this night and bravely hiding; I feel for you as if I was John Shand myself. [He sighs.]
JOHN. I had best go to the meeting, Maggie.
MAGGIE. Not yet. Can you look me in the face, John, and deny that there is surging within you a mighty desire to be free, to begin the new life untrammelled?
JOHN. Leave such maggots alone, Maggie.
MAGGIE. It’s a shame of me not to give you up.
JOHN. I would consider you a very foolish woman if you did.
MAGGIE. If I were John Shand I would no more want to take Maggie Wylie with me through the beautiful door that has opened wide for you than I would want to take an old pair of shoon. Why don’t you bang the door in my face, John? [A tremor runs through JOHN.]
JOHN. A bargain’s a bargain, Maggie.
[MAGGIE moves about, an eerie figure, breaking into little cries. She flutters round him, threateningly.]
MAGGIE. Say one word about wanting to get out of it, and I’ll put the lawyers on you.
JOHN. Have I hinted at such a thing?
MAGGIE. The document holds you hard and fast.
JOHN. It does.
[She gloats miserably.]
MAGGIE. The woman never rises with the man. I’ll drag you down, John.
I’ll drag you down.
JOHN. Have no fear of that, I won’t let you. I’m too strong.
MAGGIE. You’ll miss the prettiest thing in the world, and all owing to me.
JOHN. What’s that?
MAGGIE. Romance.
JOHN. Poof.
MAGGIE. All’s cold and grey without it, John. They that have had it have slipped in and out of heaven.
JOHN. You’re exaggerating, Maggie.
MAGGIE. You’ve worked so hard, you’ve had none of the fun that comes to most men long before they’re your age.
JOHN. I never was one for fun. I cannot call to mind, Maggie, ever having laughed in my life.
MAGGIE. You have no sense of humour.
JOHN. Not a spark.
MAGGIE. I’ve sometimes thought that if you had, it might make you fonder of me. I think one needs a sense of humour to be fond of me.
JOHN. I remember reading of some one that said it needed a surgical operation to get a joke into a Scotsman’s head.
MAGGIE. Yes, that’s been said.
JOHN. What beats me, Maggie, is how you could insert a joke with an operation.
[He considers this and gives it up.]
MAGGIE. That’s not the kind of fun I was thinking of. I mean fun with the lasses, John — gay, jolly, harmless fun. They could be impudent fashionable beauties now, stretching themselves to attract you, like that hiccoughing little devil, and running away from you, and crooking their fingers to you to run after them.
[He draws a big breath.]
JOHN. No, I never had that.
MAGGIE. It’s every man’s birthright, and you would have it now but for me.
JOHN. I can do without, Maggie.
MAGGIE. It’s like missing out all the Saturdays.
JOHN. You feel sure, I suppose, that an older man wouldn’t suit you better, Maggie?
MAGGIE. I couldn’t feel surer of anything. You’re just my ideal.
JOHN. Yes, yes. Well, that’s as it should be.
[She threatens him again.]
MAGGIE. David has the document. It’s carefully locked away.
JOHN. He would naturally take good care of it.
[The pride of the Wylies deserts her.]
MAGGIE. John, I make you a solemn promise that, in consideration of the circumstances of our marriage, if you should ever fall in love I’ll act differently from other wives.
JOHN. There will be no occasion, Maggie.
[Her voice becomes tremulous.]
MAGGIE. John, David doesn’t have the document. He thinks he has, but
I have it here.
[Somewhat heavily JOHN surveys the fatal paper.]
JOHN. Well do I mind the look of it, Maggie. Yes, yes, that’s it.
Umpha.
MAGGIE. You don’t ask why I’ve brought it.
JOHN. Why did you?
MAGGIE. Because I thought I might perhaps have the courage and the womanliness to give it back to you. [JOHN has a brief dream.] Will you never hold it up against me in the future that I couldn’t do that?
JOHN. I promise you, Maggie, I never will.
MAGGIE. To go back to The Pans and take up my old life there, when all these six years my eyes have been centred on this night! I’ve been waiting for this night as long as you have been; and now to go back there, and wizen and dry up, when I might be married to John Shand!
JOHN. And you will be, Maggie. You have my word.
MAGGIE. Never — never — never. [She tears up the document. He remains seated immovable, but the gleam returns to his eye. She rages first at herself and then at him.] I’m a fool, a fool, to let you go. I tell you, you’ll rue this day, for you need me, you’ll come to grief without me. There’s nobody can help you as I could have helped you. I’m essential to your career, and you’re blind not to see it.
JOHN. What’s that, Maggie? In no circumstances would I allow any meddling with my career.
MAGGIE. You would never have known I was meddling with it. But that’s over. Don’t be in too great a hurry to marry, John. Have your fling with the beautiful dolls first. Get the whiphand of the haughty ones, John. Give them their licks. Every time they hiccough let them have an extra slap in memory of me. And be sure to remember this, my man, that the one who marries you will find you out.
JOHN. Find me out?
MAGGIE. However careful a man is, his wife always finds out his failings.
JOHN. I don’t know, Maggie, to what failings you refer.
[The Cowcaddens Club has burst its walls, and is pouring this way to raise the new Member on its crest. The first wave hurls itself against the barber’s shop with cries of ‘Shand, Shand, Shand.’ For a moment, JOHN stems the torrent by planting his back against the door.]
You are acting under an impulse, Maggie, and I can’t take advantage of it. Think the matter over, and we’ll speak about it in the morning.
MAGGIE. No, I can’t go through it again. It ends tonight and now.
Good luck, John.
[She is immediately submerged in the sea that surges through the door, bringing much wreckage with it. In a moment the place is so full that another cupful could not find standing room. Some slippery ones are squeezed upwards and remain aloft as warnings. JOHN has jumped on to the stair, and harangues the flood vainly like another Canute. It is something about freedom and noble minds, and, though unheard, goes to all heads, including the speaker’s. By the time he is audible sentiment has him for her own.]
JOHN. But, gentlemen, one may have too much even of freedom [No, no.] Yes, Mr. Adamson. One may want to be tied. [Never, never.] I say yes, Willie Cameron; and I have found a young lady who I am proud to say is willing to be tied to me. I’m to be married. [Uproar.] Her name’s Miss Wylie. [Transport.] Quiet; she’s here now. [Frenzy.] She was here! Where are you, Maggie? [A small voice—’I’m here.’ A hundred great voices—’Where — where — where?’ The small voice—’I’m so little none of you can see me.’]
[Three men, name of Wylie, buffet their way forward.]
DAVID. James, father, have you grip of her?
ALICK. We’ve got her.
DAVID. Then hoist her up.
[The queer little elated figure is raised aloft. With her fingers she can just touch the stars. Not unconscious of the nobility of his behaviour, the hero of the evening points an impressive finger at her.]
JOHN. Gentlemen, the future Mrs. John Shand! [Cries of ‘Speech, speech!’] No, no, being a lady she can’t make a speech, but —
[The heroine of the evening surprises him.]
MAGGIE. I can make a speech, and I will make a speech, and it’s in two words, and they’re these [holding out her arms to enfold all the members of the Cowcaddens Club] — My Constituents! [Dementia.]
ACT III
[A few minutes ago the Comtesse de la Briere, who has not recently been in England, was shown into the London home of the Shands. Though not sufficiently interested to express her surprise in words, she raised her eyebrows on finding herself in a charming room; she has presumed that the Shand scheme of decoration would be as impossible as themselves.
It is the little room behind the dining-room for which English architects have long been famous; ‘Make something of this, and you will indeed be a clever one,’ they seem to say to you as they unveil it. The Comtesse finds that John has undoubtedly made something of it. It is his ‘study’ (mon Dieu, the words these English use!) and there is nothing in it that offends; there is so much not in it too that might so easily have been there. It is not in the least ornate; there are no colours quarrelling with each other (unseen, unheard by the blissful occupant of the revolving chair); the Comtesse has not even the gentle satisfaction of noting a ‘suite’ in stained oak. Nature might have taken a share in the decorations, so restful are they to the eyes; it is the working room of a man of culture, probably lately down from Oxford; at a first meeting there is nothing in it that pretends to be what it is not. Our visitor is a little disappointed, but being fair-minded blows her absent host a kiss for disappointing her.
He has even, she observes with a twinkle, made something of the most difficult of his possessions, the little wife. For Maggie, who is here receiving her, has been quite creditably toned down. He has put her into a little grey frock that not only deals gently with her personal defects, but is in harmony with the room. Evidently, however, she has not ‘risen’ with him, for she is as ever; the Comtesse, who remembers having liked her the better of the two, could shake her for being so stupid. For instance, why is she not asserting herself in that other apartment?
The other apartment is really a correctly solemn dining-room, of which we have a glim
pse through partly open folding-doors. At this moment it is harbouring Mr. Shand’s ladies’ committee, who sit with pens and foolscap round the large table, awaiting the advent of their leader. There are nobly wise ones and some foolish ones among them, for we are back in the strange days when it was considered ‘unwomanly’ for women to have minds. The Comtesse peeps at them with curiosity, as they arrange their papers or are ushered into the dining-room through a door which we cannot see. To her frivolous ladyship they are a species of wild fowl, and she is specially amused to find her niece among them. She demands an explanation as soon as the communicating doors close.]
