What Every Woman Knows - Sir James Matthew Barrie (top books to read .txt) 📗

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 to-night 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 glimpse 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.]

COMTESSE. Tell me since when has my dear Sybil become one of these ladies? It is not like her.

[MAGGIE is obviously not clever enough to understand the woman question. Her eye rests longingly on a half-finished stocking as she innocently but densely replies:]

MAGGIE. I think it was about the time that my husband took up their cause.

[The COMTESSE has been hearing tales of LADY SYBIL and the barbarian; and after having the grace to hesitate, she speaks with the directness for which she is famed in Mayfair.]

COMTESSE. Mrs. Shand, excuse me for saying that if half of what I hear be true, your husband is seeing that lady a great deal too often. [MAGGIE is expressionless; she reaches for her stocking, whereat her guest loses patience.] Oh, mon Dieu, put that down; you can buy them at two francs the pair. Mrs. Shand, why do not you compel yourself to take an intelligent interest in your husband's work?

MAGGIE. I typewrite his speeches.

COMTESSE. But do you know what they are about?

MAGGIE. They are about various subjects.

COMTESSE. Oh!

[Did MAGGIE give her an unseen quizzical glance before demurely resuming the knitting? One is not certain, as JOHN has come in, and this obliterates her. A 'Scotsman on the make,' of whom DAVID has spoken reverently, is still to be read--in a somewhat better bound volume--in JOHN SHAND's person; but it is as doggedly honest a face as ever; and he champions women, not for personal ends, but because his blessed days of poverty gave him a light upon their needs. His self-satisfaction, however, has increased, and he has pleasantly forgotten some things. For instance, he can now call out 'Porter' at railway stations without dropping his hands for the barrow. MAGGIE introduces the COMTESSE, and he is still undaunted.]

JOHN. I remember you well--at Glasgow.

COMTESSE. It must be quite two years ago, Mr. Shand.

[JOHN has no objection to showing that he has had a classical education.]

JOHN. Tempus fugit, Comtesse.

COMTESSE. I have not been much in this country since then, and I return to find you a coming man.

[Fortunately his learning is tempered with modesty.]

JOHN. Oh, I don't know, I don't know.

COMTESSE. The Ladies' Champion.

[His modesty is tempered with a respect for truth.]

JOHN. Well, well.

COMTESSE. And you are about, as I understand, to introduce a bill to give women an equal right with men to grow beards [which is all she knows about it. He takes the remark literally.]

JOHN. There's nothing about beards in it, Comtesse. [She gives him time to cogitate, and is pleased to note that there is no result.] Have you typed my speech, Maggie?

MAGGIE. Yes; twenty-six pages. [She produces it from a drawer.]

[Perhaps JOHN wishes to impress the visitor.]

JOHN. I'm to give the ladies' committee a