by Unknown
COMTESSE. But I thought she was such an inspiration to you, Mr.
Shand.
JOHN [going bravely to SYBIL’S side]. She slaved at it with me.
COMTESSE. Strange. [Wickedly becoming practical also] So now there is nothing to detain you. Shall I send for a fly, Sybil?
SYBIL [with a cry of the heart]. Auntie, do leave us.
COMTESSE. I can understand your impatience to be gone, Mr. Shand.
JOHN [heavily]. I promised Maggie to wait till the 24th, and I’m a man of my word.
MAGGIE. But I give you back your word, John. You can go now.
[JOHN looks at SYBIL, and SYBIL looks at JOHN, and the impediment arrives in time to take a peep at both of them.]
SYBIL [groping for the practical, to which we must all come in the end]. He must make satisfactory arrangements about you first. I insist on that.
MAGGIE [with no more imagination than a hen]. Thank you, Lady Sybil, but I have made all my arrangements.
JOHN [stung]. Maggie, that was my part.
MAGGIE. You see, my brothers feel they can’t be away from their business any longer; and so, if it would be convenient to you, John, I could travel north with them by the night train on Wednesday.
SYBIL. I — I —— The way you put things — !
JOHN. This is just the 21st.
MAGGIE. My things are all packed. I think you’ll find the house in good order, Lady Sybil. I have had the vacuum cleaners in. I’ll give you the keys of the linen and the silver plate; I have them in that bag. The carpet on the upper landing is a good deal frayed, but —
SYBIL. Please, I don’t want to hear any more.
MAGGIE. The ceiling of the dining-room would be the better of a new lick of paint —
SYBIL [stamping her foot, small fours]. Can’t you stop her?
JOHN [soothingly]. She’s meaning well. Maggie, I know it’s natural to you to value those things, because your outlook on life is bounded by them; but all this jars on me.
MAGGIE. Does it?
JOHN. Why should you be so ready to go?
MAGGIE. I promised not to stand in your way.
JOHN [stoutly]. You needn’t be in such a hurry. There are three days to run yet. [The French are so different from us that we shall probably never be able to understand why the COMTESSE laughed aloud here.] It’s just a joke to the Comtesse.
COMTESSE. It seems to be no joke to you, Mr. Shand. Sybil, my pet, are you to let him off?
SYBIL [flashing]. Let him off? If he wishes it. Do you?
JOHN [manfully]. I want it to go on. [Something seems to have caught in his throat: perhaps it is the impediment trying a temporary home.] It’s the one wish of my heart. If you come with me, Sybil, I’ll do all in a man’s power to make you never regret it.
[Triumph of the Vere de Veres.]
MAGGIE [bringing them back to earth with a dump]. And I can make my arrangements for Wednesday?
SYBIL [seeking the COMTESSE’s protection]. No, you can’t. Auntie, I am not going on with this. I’m very sorry for you, John, but I see now — I couldn’t face it —
[She can’t face anything at this moment except the sofa pillows.]
COMTESSE [noticing JOHN’S big sigh of relief]. So THAT is all right,
Mr. Shand!
MAGGIE. Don’t you love her any more, John? Be practical.
SYBIL [to the pillows]. At any rate I have tired of him. Oh, best to tell the horrid truth. I am ashamed of myself. I have been crying my eyes out over it — I thought I was such a different kind of woman. But I am weary of him. I think him — oh, so dull.
JOHN [his face lighting up]. Are you sure that is how you have come to think of me?
SYBIL. I’m sorry; [with all her soul] but yes — yes — yes.
JOHN. By God, it’s more than I deserve.
COMTESSE. Congratulations to you both.
[SYBIL runs away; and in the fulness of time she married successfully in cloth of silver, which was afterwards turned into a bedspread.]
MAGGIE. You haven’t read my letter yet, John, have you?
JOHN. No.
COMTESSE [imploringly]. May I know to what darling letter you refer?
MAGGIE. It’s a letter I wrote to him before he left London. I gave it to him closed, not to be opened until his time here was ended.
JOHN [as his hand strays to his pocket]. Am I to read it now?
MAGGIE. Not before her. Please go away, Comtesse.
COMTESSE. Every word you say makes me more determined to remain.
MAGGIE. It will hurt you, John. [Distressed] Don’t read it; tear it up.
JOHN. You make me very curious, Maggie. And yet I don’t see what can be in it.
COMTESSE. But you feel a little nervous? Give ME the dagger.
MAGGIE [quickly]. No. [But the COMTESSE has already got it.]
COMTESSE. May I? [She must have thought they said Yes, for she opens the letter. She shares its contents with them.] ‘Dearest John, It is at my request that the Comtesse is having Lady Sybil at the cottage at the same time as yourself.’
JOHN. What?
COMTESSE. Yes, she begged me to invite you together.
JOHN. But why?
MAGGIE. I promised you not to behave as other wives would do.
JOHN. It’s not understandable.
COMTESSE. ‘You may ask why I do this, John, and my reason is, I think that after a few weeks of Lady Sybil, every day, and all day, you will become sick to death of her. I am also giving her the chance to help you and inspire you with your work, so that you may both learn what her help and her inspiration amount to. Of course, if your love is the great strong passion you think it, then those weeks will make you love her more than ever and I can only say goodbye. But if, as I suspect, you don’t even now know what true love is, then by the next time we meet, dear John, you will have had enough of her. — Your affectionate wife, Maggie.’ Oh, why was not Sybil present at the reading of the will! And now, if you two will kindly excuse me, I think I must go and get that poor sufferer the eau de Cologne.
JOHN. It’s almost enough to make a man lose faith in himself.
COMTESSE. Oh, don’t say that, Mr. Shand.
MAGGIE [defending him]. You mustn’t hurt him. If you haven’t loved deep and true, that’s just because you have never met a woman yet, John, capable of inspiring it.
COMTESSE [putting her hand on MAGGIE’s shoulder]. Have you not, Mr.
Shand?
JOHN. I see what you mean. But Maggie wouldn’t think better of me for any false pretences. She knows my feelings for her now are neither more nor less than what they have always been.
MAGGIE [who sees that he is looking at her as solemnly as a volume of sermons printed by request]. I think no one could be fond of me that can’t laugh a little at me.
JOHN. How could that help?
COMTESSE [exasperated]. Mr. Shand, I give you up.
MAGGIE. I admire his honesty.
COMTESSE. Oh, I give you up also. Arcades ambo. Scotchies both.
JOHN [when she has gone]. But this letter, it’s not like you. By
Gosh, Maggie, you’re no fool.
[She beams at this, as any wife would.]
But how could I have made such a mistake? It’s not like a strong man.
[Evidently he has an inspiration.]
MAGGIE. What is it?
JOHN [the inspiration]. AM I a strong man?
MAGGIE. You? Of course you are. And self-made. Has anybody ever helped you in the smallest way?
JOHN [thinking it out again]. No, nobody.
MAGGIE. Not even Lady Sybil?
JOHN. I’m beginning to doubt it. It’s very curious, though, Maggie, that this speech should be disappointing.
MAGGIE. It’s just that Mr. Venables hasn’t the brains to see how good it is.
JOHN. That must be it. [But he is too good a man to rest satisfied with this.] No, Maggie, it’s not. Somehow I seem to have lost my neat way of saying things.
&nbs
p; MAGGIE [almost cooing]. It will come back to you.
JOHN [forlorn]. If you knew how I’ve tried.
MAGGIE [cautiously]. Maybe if you were to try again; and I’ll just come and sit beside you, and knit. I think the click of the needles sometimes put you in the mood.
JOHN. Hardly that; and yet many a Shandism have I knocked off while you were sitting beside me knitting. I suppose it was the quietness.
MAGGIE. Very likely.
JOHN [with another inspiration]. Maggie!
MAGGIE [again]. What is it, John?
JOHN. What if it was you that put those queer ideas into my head!
MAGGIE. Me?
JOHN. Without your knowing it, I mean.
MAGGIE. But how?
JOHN. We used to talk bits over; and it may be that you dropped the seed, so to speak.
MAGGIE. John, could it be this, that I sometimes had the idea in a rough womanish sort of way and then you polished it up till it came out a Shandism?
JOHN [slowly slapping his knee]. I believe you’ve hit it, Maggie: to think that you may have been helping me all the time — and neither of us knew it!
[He has so nearly reached a smile that no one can say what might have happened within the next moment if the COMTESSE had not reappeared.]
COMTESSE. Mr. Venables wishes to see you, Mr. Shand.
JOHN [lost, stolen, or strayed a smile in the making]. Hum!
COMTESSE. He is coming now.
JOHN [grumpy]. Indeed!
COMTESSE [sweetly]. It is about your speech.
JOHN. He has said all he need say on that subject, and more.
COMTESSE [quaking a little]. I think it is about the second speech.
JOHN. What second speech?
[MAGGIE runs to her bag and opens it.]
MAGGIE [horrified]. Comtesse, you have given it to him!
COMTESSE [impudently]. Wasn’t I meant to?
JOHN. What is it? What second speech?
MAGGIE. Cruel, cruel. [Willing to go on her knees] You had left the first draft of your speech at home, John, and I brought it here with — with a few little things I’ve added myself.
JOHN [a seven-footer]. What’s that?
MAGGIE [four foot ten at most]. Just trifles — things I was to suggest to you — while I was knitting — and then, if you liked any of them you could have polished them — and turned them into something good. John, John — and now she has shown it to Mr. Venables.
JOHN [thundering]. As my work, Comtesse?
[But the COMTESSE is not of the women who are afraid of thunder.]
MAGGIE. It is your work — nine-tenths of it.
JOHN [in the black cap]. You presumed, Maggie Shand! Very well, then, here he comes, and now we’ll see to what extent you’ve helped me.
VENABLES. My dear fellow. My dear Shand, I congratulate you. Give me your hand.
JOHN. The speech?
VENABLES. You have improved it out of knowledge. It is the same speech, but those new touches make all the difference. [JOHN sits down heavily.] Mrs. Shand, be proud of him.
MAGGIE. I am. I am, John.
COMTESSE. You always said that his second thoughts were best,
Charles.
VENABLES [pleased to be reminded of it]. Didn’t I, didn’t I? Those delicious little touches! How good that is, Shand, about the flowing tide.
COMTESSE. The flowing tide?
VENABLES. In the first speech it was something like this—’Gentlemen, the Opposition are calling to you to vote for them and the flowing tide, but I solemnly warn you to beware lest the flowing tide does not engulf you.’ The second way is much better.
COMTESSE. What is the second way, Mr. Shand?
[JOHN does not tell her.]
VENABLES. This is how he puts it now. [JOHN cannot help raising his head to listen.] ‘Gentlemen, the Opposition are calling to you to vote for them and the flowing tide, but I ask you cheerfully to vote for us and DAM the flowing tide.’
[VENABLES and his old friend the COMTESSE laugh heartily, but for different reasons.]
COMTESSE. It IS better, Mr. Shand.
MAGGIE. I don’t think so.
VENABLES. Yes, yes, it’s so virile. Excuse me, Comtesse, I’m off to read the whole thing again. [For the first time he notices that JOHN is strangely quiet.] I think this has rather bowled you over, Shand.
[JOHN’s head sinks lower.]
Well, well, good news doesn’t kill.
MAGGIE [counsel for the defence]. Surely the important thing about the speech is its strength and knowledge and eloquence, the things that were in the first speech as well as in the second.
VENABLES. That of course is largely true. The wit would not be enough without them, just as they were not enough without the wit. It is the combination that is irresistible. [JOHN’s head rises a little.] Shand, you are our man, remember that, it is emphatically the best thing you have ever done. How this will go down at Leeds!
[He returns gaily to his hammock; but lower sinks JOHN’S head, and even the COMTESSE has the grace to take herself off. MAGGIE’s arms flutter near her husband, not daring to alight.]
MAGGIE. You heard what he said, John. It’s the combination. Is it so terrible to you to find that my love for you had made me able to help you in the little things?
JOHN. The little things! It seems strange to me to hear you call me by my name, Maggie. It’s as if I looked on you for the first time.
MAGGIE. Look at me, John, for the first time. What do you see?
JOHN. I see a woman who has brought her husband low.
MAGGIE. Only that?
JOHN. I see the tragedy of a man who has found himself out. Eh, I can’t live with you again, Maggie.
[He shivers.]
MAGGIE. Why did you shiver, John?
JOHN. It was at myself for saying that I couldn’t live with you again, when I should have been wondering how for so long you have lived with me. And I suppose you have forgiven me all the time. [She nods.] And forgive me still? [She nods again.] Dear God!
MAGGIE. John, am I to go? or are you to keep me on? [She is now a little bundle near his feet.] I’m willing to stay because I’m useful to you, if it can’t be for a better reason. [His hand feels for her, and the bundle wriggles nearer.] It’s nothing unusual I’ve done, John. Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that. It’s our only joke. Every woman knows that. [He stares at her in hopeless perplexity.] Oh, John, if only you could laugh at me.
JOHN. I can’t laugh, Maggie.
[But as he continues to stare at her a strange disorder appears in his face. MAGGIE feels that it is to be now or never.]
MAGGIE. Laugh, John, laugh. Watch me; see how easy it is.
[A terrible struggle is taking place within him. He creaks. Something that may be mirth forces a passage, at first painfully, no more joy in it than in the discoloured water from a spring that has long been dry. Soon, however, he laughs loud and long. The spring water is becoming clear. MAGGIE claps her hands. He is saved.]
OLD FRIENDS
Produced at the Duke of York’s Theatre on March 1, 1910, with the following cast:
STEPHEN BRAND...Sydney Valentine
MRS. BRAND...Lena Ashwell
CARRY...Dorothy Minto
REV. J. CARROLL...Hubert Harben
OLD FRIENDS
It is a winter evening, and Mr and Mrs. Brand and their daughter with one guest are sitting round the fire in their small country house near London. He is a prosperous man of about sixty who goes by car to his work in the city daily, and is generally liked. Mrs. Brand, somewhat younger, is knitting and is as quiet as her husband is cheery; she has perhaps used up her emotions long ago. They are both devoted to their daughter, Carry, an engaging girl of twenty, who is very animated at present; she has only been ‘engaged’ since five o’clock. The visitor is a gentle, elderly clergyman, Mr. Carroll, much loved by his parishioners because he never looks trouble in
the face. They have been dining together in honour of the engagement, and Mr. Carroll is sipping a mild glass of whisky and water.
STEPHEN (in his best jocular manner). Well, well, all I can say, Carroll, is, Be thankful that you never had a daughter. Just when one is getting used to them, they give notice.
