by Unknown
ALICK. Exactly, and when —
[Here MAGGIE enters, and all three are suddenly engrossed in the dambrod. We could describe MAGGIE at great length. But what is the use? What you really want to know is whether she was good-looking. No, she was not. Enter MAGGIE, who is not good-looking. When this is said, all is said. Enter MAGGIE, as it were, with her throat cut from ear to ear. She has a soft Scotch voice and a more resolute manner than is perhaps fitting to her plainness; and she stops short at sight of JAMES sprawling unconsciously in the company chair.]
MAGGIE. James, I wouldn’t sit on the fine chair.
JAMES. I forgot again.
[But he wishes she had spoken more sharply. Even profanation of the fine chair has not roused her. She takes up her knitting, and they all suspect that she knows what they have been talking about.]
MAGGIE. You’re late, David, it’s nearly bedtime.
DAVID [finding the subject a safe one]. I was kept late at the public meeting.
ALICK [glad to get so far away from Galashiels]. Was it a good meeting?
DAVID. Fairish. [with some heat] That young John Shand WOULD make a speech.
MAGGIE. John Shand? Is that the student Shand?
DAVID. The same. It’s true he’s a student at Glasgow University in the winter months, but in summer he’s just the railway porter here; and I think it’s very presumptuous of a young lad like that to make a speech when he hasn’t a penny to bless himself with.
ALICK. The Shands were always an impudent family, and jealous. I suppose that’s the reason they haven’t been on speaking terms with us this six years. Was it a good speech?
DAVID [illustrating the family’s generosity]. It was very fine; but he needn’t have made fun of ME.
MAGGIE [losing a stitch]. He dared?
DAVID [depressed]. You see I can not get started on a speech without saying things like ‘In rising FOR to make a few remarks.’
JAMES. What’s wrong with it?
DAVID. He mimicked me, and said, ‘Will our worthy chairman come for to go for to answer my questions?’ and so on; and they roared.
JAMES [slapping his money pocket]. The sacket.
DAVID. I did feel bitterly, father, the want of education. [Without knowing it, he has a beautiful way of pronouncing this noble word.]
MAGGIE [holding out a kind hand to him]. David.
ALICK. I’ve missed it sore, David. Even now I feel the want of it in the very marrow of me. I’m ashamed to think I never gave you your chance. But when you were young I was so desperate poor, how could I do it, Maggie?
MAGGIE. It wasn’t possible, father.
ALICK [gazing at the bookshelves]. To be able to understand these books! To up with them one at a time and scrape them as clean as though they were a bowl of brose. Lads, it’s not to riches, it’s to scholarship that I make my humble bow.
JAMES [who is good at bathos]. There’s ten yards of them. And they were selected by the minister of Galashiels. He said —
DAVID [quickly]. James.
JAMES. I mean — I mean —
MAGGIE [calmly]. I suppose you mean what you say, James. I hear,
David, that the minister of Galashiels is to be married on that Miss
Turnbull.
DAVID [on guard]. So they were saying.
ALICK. All I can say is she has made a poor bargain.
MAGGIE [the damned]. I wonder at you, father. He’s a very nice gentleman. I’m sure I hope he has chosen wisely.
JAMES. Not him.
MAGGIE [getting near her tragedy]. How can you say that when you don’t know her? I expect she is full of charm.
ALICK. Charm? It’s the very word he used.
DAVID. Havering idiot.
ALICK. What IS charm, exactly, Maggie?
MAGGIE. Oh, it’s — it’s a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don’t need to have anything else; and if you don’t have it, it doesn’t much matter what else you have. Some women, the few, have charm for all; and most have charm for one. But some have charm for none.
[Somehow she has stopped knitting. Her menfolk are very depressed.
JAMES brings his fist down on the table with a crash.]
JAMES [shouting]. I have a sister that has charm.
MAGGIE. No, James, you haven’t.
JAMES [rushing at her with the watch and chain]. Ha’e, Maggie.
[She lets them lie in her lap.]
DAVID. Maggie, would you like a silk?
MAGGIE. What could I do with a silk? [With a gust of passion] You might as well dress up a little brown hen.
[They wriggle miserably.]
JAMES [stamping]. Bring him here to me.
MAGGIE. Bring whom, James?
JAMES. David, I would be obliged if you wouldn’t kick me beneath the table.
MAGGIE [rising]. Let’s be practical; let’s go to our beds.
[This reminds them that they have a job on hand in which she is not to share.]
DAVID [slily]. I don’t feel very sleepy yet.
ALICK. Nor me either.
JAMES. You’ve just taken the very words out of my mouth.
DAVID [with unusual politeness]. Goodnight to you Maggie.
MAGGIE [fixing the three of them]. ALL of you unsleepy, when, as is well known, ten o’clock is your regular bedtime?
JAMES. Yes, it’s common knowledge that we go to our beds at ten.
[Chuckling] That’s what we’re counting on.
MAGGIE. Counting on?
DAVID. You stupid whelp.
JAMES. What have I done?
MAGGIE [folding her arms]. There’s something up. You’ve got to tell me, David.
DAVID [who knows when he is beaten]. Go out and watch, James.
MAGGIE. Watch?
[JAMES takes himself off, armed, as MAGGIE notices, with a stick.]
DAVID [in his alert business way]. Maggie, there are burglars about.
MAGGIE. Burglars? [She sits rigid, but she is not the kind to scream.]
DAVID. We hadn’t meant for to tell you till we nabbed them; but they’ve been in this room twice of late. We sat up last night waiting for them, and we’re to sit up again tonight.
MAGGIE. The silver plate.
DAVID. It’s all safe as yet. That makes us think that they were either frightened away these other times, or that they are coming back for to make a clean sweep.
MAGGIE. How did you get to know about this?
DAVID. It was on Tuesday that the polissman called at the quarry with a very queer story. He had seen a man climbing out at this window at ten past two.
MAGGIE. Did he chase him?
DAVID. It was so dark he lost sight of him at once.
ALICK. Tell her about the window.
DAVID. We’ve found out that the catch of the window has been pushed back by slipping the blade of a knife between the woodwork.
MAGGIE. David.
ALICK. The polissman said he was carrying a little carpet bag.
MAGGIE. The silver plate IS gone.
DAVID. No, no. We were thinking that very likely he has bunches of keys in the bag.
MAGGIE. Or weapons.
DAVID. As for that, we have some pretty stout weapons ourselves in the umbrella stand. So, if you’ll go to your bed, Maggie —
MAGGIE. Me? and my brothers in danger.
ALICK. There’s just one of them.
MAGGIE. The polissman just saw one.
DAVID [licking his palms]. I would be very pleased if there were three of them.
MAGGIE. I watch with you. I would be very pleased if there were four of them.
DAVID. And they say she has no charm!
[JAMES returns on tiptoe as if the burglars were beneath the table. He signs to every one to breathe no more, and then whispers his news.]
JAMES. He’s there. I had no sooner gone out than I saw him sliding down the garden wall, close to the rhubarbs.
ALICK. What’s he like?
JAMES. He’s an ugly customer. That�
�s all I could see. There was a little carpet bag in his hand.
DAVID. That’s him.
JAMES. He slunk into the rhodydendrons, and he’s there now, watching the window.
DAVID. We have him. Out with the light.
[The room is beautified by a chandelier fitted for three gas jets, but with the advance of progress one of these has been removed and the incandescent light put in its place. This alone is lit. ALICK climbs a chair, pulls a little chain, and the room is now but vaguely lit by the fire. It plays fitfully on four sparkling faces.]
MAGGIE. Do you think he saw you, James?
JAMES. I couldn’t say, but in any case I was too clever for him. I looked up at the stars, and yawned loud at them as if I was tremendous sleepy.
[There is a long pause during which they are lurking in the shadows. At last they hear some movement, and they steal like ghosts from the room. We see DAVID turning out the lobby light; then the door closes and an empty room awaits the intruder with a shudder of expectancy. The window opens and shuts as softly as if this were a mother peering in to see whether her baby is asleep. Then the head of a man shows between the curtains. The remainder of him follows. He is carrying a little carpet bag. He stands irresolute; what puzzles him evidently is that the Wylies should have retired to rest without lifting that piece of coal off the fire. He opens the door and peeps into the lobby, listening to the wag-at-the-wall clock. All seems serene, and he turns on the light. We see him clearly now. He is JOHN SHAND, age twenty-one, boots muddy, as an indignant carpet can testify. He wears a shabby topcoat and a cockerty bonnet; otherwise he is in the well-worn corduroys of a railway porter. His movements, at first stealthy, become almost homely as he feels that he is secure. He opens the bag and takes out a bunch of keys, a small paper parcel, and a black implement that may be a burglar’s jemmy. This cool customer examines the fire and piles on more coals. With the keys he opens the door of the bookcase, selects two large volumes, and brings them to the table. He takes off his topcoat and opens his parcel, which we now see contains sheets of foolscap paper. His next action shows that the ‘jemmy’ is really a ruler. He knows where the pen and ink are kept. He pulls the fine chair nearer to the table, sits on it, and proceeds to write, occasionally dotting the carpet with ink as he stabs the air with his pen. He is so occupied that he does not see the door opening, and the Wylie family staring at him. They are armed with sticks.]
ALICK [at last]. When you’re ready, John Shand.
[JOHN hints back, and then he has the grace to rise, dogged and expressionless.]
JAMES [like a railway porter]. Ticket, please.
DAVID. You can’t think of anything clever for to go for to say now,
John.
MAGGIE. I hope you find that chair comfortable, young man.
JOHN. I have no complaint to make against the chair.
ALICK [who is really distressed]. A native of the town. The disgrace to your family! I feel pity for the Shands this night.
JOHN [glowering]. I’ll thank you, Mr. Wylie, not to pity my family.
JAMES. Canny, canny.
MAGGIE [that sense of justice again]. I think you should let the young man explain. It mayn’t be so bad as we thought.
DAVID. Explain away, my billie.
JOHN. Only the uneducated would need an explanation. I’m a student, [with a little passion] and I’m desperate for want of books. You have all I want here; no use to you but for display; well, I came here to study. I come twice weekly. [Amazement of his hosts.]
DAVID [who is the first to recover]. By the window.
JOHN. Do you think a Shand would so far lower himself as to enter your door? Well, is it a case for the police?
JAMES. It is.
MAGGIE [not so much out of the goodness of her heart as to patronise the Shands]. It seems to me it’s a case for us all to go to our beds and leave the young man to study; but not on that chair. [And she wheels the chair away from him.]
JOHN. Thank you, Miss Maggie, but I couldn’t be beholden to you.
JAMES. My opinion is that he’s nobody, so out with him.
JOHN. Yes, out with me. And you’ll be cheered to hear I’m likely to be a nobody for a long time to come.
DAVID [who had been beginning to respect him]. Are you a poor scholar?
JOHN. On the contrary, I’m a brilliant scholar.
DAVID. It’s siller, then?
JOHN [glorified by experiences he has shared with many a gallant soul]. My first year at college I lived on a barrel of potatoes, and we had just a sofa-bed between two of us; when the one lay down the other had to get up. Do you think it was hardship? It was sublime. But this year I can’t afford it. I’ll have to stay on here, collecting the tickets of the illiterate, such as you, when I might be with Romulus and Remus among the stars.
JAMES [summing up]. Havers.
DAVID [in whose head some design is vaguely taking shape]. Whist, James. I must say, young lad, I like your spirit. Now tell me, what’s your professors’ opinion of your future.
JOHN. They think me a young man of extraordinary promise.
DAVID. You have a name here for high moral character.
JOHN. And justly.
DAVID. Are you serious-minded?
JOHN. I never laughed in my life.
DAVID. Who do you sit under in Glasgow?
JOHN. Mr. Flemister of the Sauchiehall High.
DAVID. Are you a Sabbath-school teacher?
JOHN. I am.
DAVID. One more question. Are you promised?
JOHN. To a lady?
DAVID. Yes.
JOHN. I’ve never given one of them a single word of encouragement.
I’m too much occupied thinking about my career.
DAVID. So. [He reflects, and finally indicates by a jerk of the head that he wishes to talk with his father behind the door.]
JAMES [longingly]. Do you want me too?
[But they go out without even answering him.]
MAGGIE. I don’t know what maggot they have in their heads, but sit down, young man, till they come back.
JOHN. My name’s Mr. Shand, and till I’m called that I decline to sit down again in this house.
MAGGIE. Then I’m thinking, young sir, you’ll have a weary wait.
[While he waits you can see how pinched his face is. He is little more than a boy, and he seldom has enough to eat. DAVID and ALICK return presently, looking as sly as if they had been discussing some move on the dambrod, as indeed they have.]
DAVID [suddenly become genial]. Sit down, Mr. Shand, and pull in your chair. You’ll have a thimbleful of something to keep the cold out? [Briskly] Glasses, Maggie.
[She wonders, but gets glasses and decanter from the sideboard, which JAMES calls the chiffy. DAVID and ALICK, in the most friendly manner, also draw up to the table.]
You’re not a totaller, I hope?
JOHN [guardedly]. I’m practically a totaller.
DAVID. So are we. How do you take it? Is there any hot water, Maggie?
JOHN. If I take it at all, and I haven’t made up my mind yet, I’ll take it cold.
DAVID. You’ll take it hot, James?
JAMES [also sitting at the table but completely befogged]. No, I —
DAVID [decisively] I think you’ll take it hot, James.
JAMES [sulking]. I’ll take it hot.
DAVID. The kettle, Maggie.
[JAMES has evidently to take it hot so that they can get at the business now on hand, while MAGGIE goes kitchenward for the kettle.]
ALICK. Now, David, quick, before she comes back.
DAVID. Mr. Shand, we have an offer to make you.
JOHN [warningly]. No patronage.
ALICK. It’s strictly a business affair.
DAVID. Leave it to me, father. It’s this — [But to his annoyance the suspicious MAGGIE has already returned with the kettle.] Maggie, don’t you see that you’re not wanted?
MAGGIE [sitting down by the fire and resuming her knitting]. I do,