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

enjoy herself very much]. Then you are pleased to know that he means to, as you say, go to a division?

VENABLES. Delighted. The courage of it will be the making of him.

COMTESSE. I see.

VENABLES. Had he been to hedge we should have known that he was a pasteboard knight and have disregarded him.

COMTESSE. I see.

[She desires to catch the eye of MAGGIE, but it is carefully turned from her.]

VENABLES. Mrs. Shand, let us have him in at once.

COMTESSE. Yes, yes, indeed.

[MAGGIE's anxiety returns, but she has to call JOHN in.]

JOHN [impressed]. Mr. Venables! This is an honour.

VENABLES. How are you, Shand?

JOHN. Sit down, sit down. [Becoming himself again.] I can guess what you have come about.

VENABLES. Ah, you Scotsmen.

JOHN. Of course I know I'm harassing the Government a good deal--

VENABLES [blandly]. Not at all, Shand. The Government are very pleased.

JOHN. You don't expect me to believe that?

VENABLES. I called here to give you the proof of it. You may know that we are to have a big meeting at Leeds on the 24th, when two Ministers are to speak. There is room for a third speaker, and I am authorised to offer that place to you.

JOHN. To me!

VENABLES. Yes.

JOHN [swelling]. It would be--the Government taking me up.

VENABLES. Don't make too much of it; it would be an acknowledgment that they look upon you as one of their likely young men.

MAGGIE. John!

JOHN [not found wanting in a trying hour]. It's a bribe. You are offering me this on condition that I don't make my speech. How can you think so meanly of me as to believe that I would play the women's cause false for the sake of my own advancement. I refuse your bribe.

VENABLES [liking him for the first time]. Good. But you are wrong. There are no conditions, and we want you to make your speech. Now do you accept?

JOHN [still suspicious]. If you make me the same offer after you have read it. I insist on your reading it first.

VENABLES [sighing]. By all means.

[MAGGIE is in an agony as she sees JOHN hand the speech to his leader. On the other hand, the COMTESSE thrills.]

But I assure you we look on the speech as a small matter. The important thing is your intention of going to a division; and we agree to that also.

JOHN [losing his head]. What's that?

VENABLES. Yes, we agree.

JOHN. But--but--why, you have been threatening to excommunicate me if I dared.

VENABLES. All done to test you, Shand.

JOHN. To test me?

VENABLES. We know that a division on your Bill can have no serious significance; we shall see to that. And so the test was to be whether you had the pluck to divide the House. Had you been intending to talk big in this speech, and then hedge, through fear of the Government, they would have had no further use for you.

JOHN [heavily]. I understand. [But there is one thing he cannot understand, which is, why VENABLES should be so sure that he is not to hedge.]

VENABLES [turning over the pages carelessly]. Any of your good things in this, Shand?

JOHN [whose one desire is to get the pages back]. No, I--no--it isn't necessary you should read it now.

VENABLES [from politeness only]. Merely for my own pleasure. I shall look through it this evening. [He rolls up the speech to put it in his pocket. JOHN turns despairingly to MAGGIE, though well aware that no help can come from her.]

MAGGIE. That's the only copy there is, John. [To VENABLES] Let me make a fresh one, and send it to you in an hour or two.

VENABLES [good-naturedly]. I could not put you to that trouble, Mrs. Shand. I will take good care of it.

MAGGIE. If anything were to happen to you on the way home, wouldn't whatever is in your pocket be considered to be the property of your heirs?

VENABLES [laughing]. Now there is forethought! Shand, I think that after that--! [He returns the speech to JOHN, whose hand swallows it greedily.] She is Scotch too, Comtesse.

COMTESSE [delighted]. Yes, she is Scotch too.

VENABLES. Though the only persons likely to do for me in the street, Shand, are your ladies' committee. Ever since they took the horse out of my brougham, I can scent them a mile away.

COMTESSE. A mile? Charles, peep in there.

[He softly turns the handle of the dining-room door, and realises that his scent is not so good as he had thought it. He bids his hostess and the COMTESSE good-bye in a burlesque whisper and tiptoes off to safer places. JOHN having gone out with him, MAGGIE can no longer avoid the COMTESSE's reproachful eye. That much injured lady advances upon her with accusing finger.]

COMTESSE. So, madam!

[MAGGIE is prepared for her.]

MAGGIE. I don't know what you mean.

COMTESSE. Yes, you do. I mean that there IS some one who 'helps' our Mr. Shand.

MAGGIE. There's not.

COMTESSE. And it IS a woman, and it's you.

MAGGIE. I help in the little things.

COMTESSE. The little things! You are the Pin he picked up and that is to make his fortune. And now what I want to know is whether your John is aware that you help at all.

[JOHN returns, and at once provides the answer.]

JOHN. Maggie, Comtesse, I've done it again!

MAGGIE. I'm so glad, John.

[The COMTESSE is in an ecstasy.]

COMTESSE. And all because you were not to hedge, Mr. Shand.

[His appeal to her with the wistfulness of a schoolboy makes him rather attractive.]

JOHN. You won't tell on me, Comtesse! [He thinks it out.] They had just guessed I would be firm because they know I'm a strong man. You little saw, Maggie, what a good turn you were doing me when you said you wanted to make another copy of the speech.

[She is dense.]

MAGGIE. How, John?

JOHN. Because now I can alter the end.

[She is enlightened.]

MAGGIE. So you can!

JOHN. Here's another lucky thing, Maggie: I hadn't told the ladies' committee that I was to hedge, and so they need never know. Comtesse, I tell you there's a little cherub who sits up aloft and looks after the career of John Shand.

[The COMTESSE looks not aloft but toward the chair at present occupied by MAGGIE.]

COMTESSE. Where does she sit, Mr. Shand?

[He knows that women are not well read.]

JOHN. It's just a figure of speech.

[He returns airily to his committee room; and now again you may hear the click of MAGGIE's needles. They no longer annoy the COMTESSE; she is setting them to music.]

COMTESSE. It is not down here she sits, Mrs. Shand, knitting a stocking.

MAGGIE. No, it isn't.

COMTESSE. And when I came in I gave him credit for everything; even for the prettiness of the room!

MAGGIE. He has beautiful taste.

COMTESSE. Good-bye, Scotchy.

MAGGIE. Good-bye, Comtesse, and thank you for coming.

COMTESSE. Good-bye--Miss Pin.

[MAGGIE rings genteelly.]

MAGGIE. Good-bye.

[The COMTESSE is now lost in admiration of her.]

COMTESSE. You divine little wife. He can't be worthy of it, no man could be worthy of it. Why do you do it?

[MAGGIE shivers a little.]

MAGGIE. He loves to think he does it all himself; that's the way of men. I'm six years older than he is. I'm plain, and I have no charm. I shouldn't have let him marry me. I'm trying to make up for it.

[The COMTESSE kisses her and goes away. MAGGIE, somewhat foolishly, resumes her knitting.]

[Some days later this same room is listening--with the same inattention--to the outpouring of JOHN SHAND's love for the lady of the hiccoughs. We arrive--by arrangement--rather late; and thus we miss some of the most delightful of the pangs.

One can see that these two are playing no game, or, if they are, that they little know it. The wonders of the world [so strange are the instruments chosen by Love] have been revealed to JOHN in hiccoughs; he shakes in SYBIL's presence; never were more swimming eyes; he who has been of a wooden face till now, with ways to match, has gone on flame like a piece of paper; emotion is in flood in him. We may be almost fond of JOHN for being so worshipful of love. Much has come to him that we had almost despaired of his acquiring, including nearly all the divine attributes except that sense of humour. The beautiful SYBIL has always possessed but little of it also, and what she had has been struck from her by Cupid's flail. Naked of the saving grace, they face each other in awful rapture.]

JOHN. In a room, Sybil, I go to you as a cold man to a fire. You fill me like a peal of bells in an empty house.

[She is being brutally treated by the dear impediment, for which hiccough is such an inadequate name that even to spell it is an abomination though a sign of ability. How to describe a sound that is noiseless? Let us put it thus, that when SYBIL wants to say something very much there are little obstacles in her way; she falters, falls perhaps once, and then is over, the while her appealing orbs beg you not to be angry with her. We may express those sweet pauses in precious dots, which some clever person can afterwards string together and make a pearl necklace of them.]

SYBIL. I should not ... let you say it, ... but ... you ... say it so beautifully.

JOHN. You must have guessed.

SYBIL. I dreamed ... I feared ... but you were ... Scotch, and I didn't know what to think.

JOHN. Do you know what first attracted me to you, Sybil? It was your insolence. I thought, 'I'll break her insolence for her.'

SYBIL. And I thought... 'I'll break his str...ength!'

JOHN. And now your cooing voice plays round me; the softness of you, Sybil, in your pretty clothes makes me think of young birds. [The impediment is now insurmountable; she has to swim for it, she swims toward him.] It is you who inspire my work.

[He thrills to find that she can be touched without breaking.]

SYBIL. I am so glad... so proud...

JOHN. And others know it, Sybil, as well as I. Only yesterday the Comtesse said to me, 'No man could get on so fast unaided. Cherchez la femme, Mr. Shand.'

SYBIL. Auntie said that?

JOHN. I said 'Find her yourself, Comtesse.'

SYBIL. And she?

JOHN. She said 'I have found her,' and I said in my blunt way, 'You mean Lady Sybil,' and she went away laughing.

SYBIL. Laughing?

JOHN. I seem to amuse the woman.

[Sybil grows sad.]

SYBIL. If Mrs. Shand--It is so cruel to her. Whom did you say she had gone to the station to meet?

JOHN. Her father and brothers.

SYBIL. It is so cruel to them. We must think no more of this. It is mad... ness.

JOHN. It's fate. Sybil, let us declare our love openly.

SYBIL. You can't ask