by Unknown
MAGGIE. She’s very keen. Comtesse, I could come for a day by and by to see how you are getting on. Yes — yes — certainly. [To JOHN] She says she’ll be delighted.
JOHN [thoughtfully]. You’re not doing this, Maggie, thinking that my being absent from Sybil for a few weeks can make any difference? Of course it’s natural you should want us to keep apart, but —
MAGGIE [grimly]. I’m founding no hope on keeping you apart, John.
JOHN. It’s what other wives would do.
MAGGIE. I promised to be different.
JOHN [his position as a strong man assured]. Then tell her I accept.
[He wanders back into the dining-room.]
SYBIL. I think — [she is not sure what she thinks] — I think you are very wonderful.
MAGGIE. Was that John calling to you?
SYBIL. Was it? [She is glad to join him in the dining-room.]
MAGGIE. Comtesse, hold the line a minute. [She is alone, and she has nearly reached the end of her self-control. She shakes emotionally and utters painful little cries; there is something she wants to do, and she is loth to do it. But she does it.] Are you there, Comtesse? There’s one other thing, dear Comtesse; I want you to invite Lady Sybil also; yes, for the whole time that John is there. No, I’m not mad; as a great favour to me; yes, I have a very particular reason, but I won’t tell you what it is; oh, call me Scotchy as much as you like, but consent; do, do, do. Thank you, thank you, goodbye.
[She has control of herself now, and is determined not to let it slip from her again. When they reappear the stubborn one is writing a letter.]
JOHN. I thought I heard the telephone again.
MAGGIE [looking up from her labours]. It was the Comtesse; she says she’s to invite Lady Sybil to the cottage at the same time.
SYBIL. Me!
JOHN. To invite Sybil? Then of course I won’t go, Maggie.
MAGGIE [wondering seemingly at these niceties]. What does it matter? Is anything to be considered except the speech? [It has been admitted that she was a little devil.] And, with Sybil on the spot, John, to help you and inspire you, what a speech it will be!
JOHN [carried away]. Maggie, you really are a very generous woman.
SYBIL [convinced at last]. She is indeed.
JOHN. And you’re queer too. How many women in the circumstances would sit down to write a letter?
MAGGIE. It’s a letter to you, John.
JOHN. To me?
MAGGIE. I’ll give it to you when it’s finished, but I ask you not to open it till your visit to the Comtesse ends.
JOHN. What is it about?
MAGGIE. It’s practical.
SYBIL [rather faintly]. Practical? [She has heard the word so frequently to-day that it is beginning to have a Scotch sound. She feels she ought to like MAGGIE, but that she would like her better if they were farther apart. She indicates that the doctors are troubled about her heart, and murmuring her adieux she goes. JOHN, who is accompanying her, pauses at the door.]
JOHN [with a queer sort of admiration for his wife]. Maggie, I wish I was fond of you.
MAGGIE [heartily]. I wish you were, John.
[He goes, and she resumes her letter. The stocking is lying at hand, and she pushes it to the floor. She is done for a time with knitting.]
ACT IV
[Man’s most pleasant invention is the lawn-mower. All the birds know this, and that is why, when it is at rest, there is always at least one of them sitting on the handle with his head cocked, wondering how the delicious whirring sound is made. When they find out, they will change their note. As it is, you must sometimes have thought that you heard the mower very early in the morning, and perhaps you peeped in neglige from your lattice window to see who was up so early. It was really the birds trying to get the note.
On this broiling morning, however, we are at noon, and whoever looks will see that the whirring is done by Mr. Venables. He is in a linen suit with the coat discarded (the bird is sitting on it), and he comes and goes across the Comtesse’s lawns, pleasantly mopping his face. We see him through a crooked bowed window generously open, roses intruding into it as if to prevent its ever being closed at night; there are other roses in such armfuls on the tables that one could not easily say where the room ends and the garden begins.
In the Comtesse’s pretty comic drawingroom (for she likes the comic touch when she is in England) sits John Shand with his hostess, on chairs at a great distance from each other. No linen garments for John, nor flannels, nor even knickerbockers; he envies the English way of dressing for trees and lawns, but is too Scotch to be able to imitate it; he wears tweeds, just as he would do in his native country where they would be in kilts. Like many another Scot, the first time he ever saw a kilt was on a Sassenach; indeed kilts were perhaps invented, like golf, to draw the English north. John is doing nothing, which again is not a Scotch accomplishment, and he looks rather miserable and dour. The Comtesse is already at her Patience cards, and occasionally she smiles on him as if not displeased with his long silence. At last she speaks:]
COMTESSE. I feel it rather a shame to detain you here on such a lovely day, Mr. Shand, entertaining an old woman.
JOHN. I don’t pretend to think I’m entertaining you, Comtesse.
COMTESSE. But you ARE, you know.
JOHN. I would be pleased to be told how?
[She shrugs her impertinent shoulders, and presently there is another heavy sigh from JOHN.]
COMTESSE. Again! Why do not you go out on the river?
JOHN. Yes, I can do that. [He rises.]
COMTESSE. And take Sybil with you. [He sits again.] No?
JOHN. I have been on the river with her twenty times.
COMTESSE. Then take her for a long walk through the Fairloe woods.
JOHN. We were there twice last week.
COMTESSE. There is a romantically damp little arbour at the end of what the villagers call the Lovers’ Lane.
JOHN. One can’t go there every day. I see nothing to laugh at.
COMTESSE. Did I laugh? I must have been translating the situation into French.
[Perhaps the music of the lawn-mower is not to JOHN’s mood, for he betakes himself to another room. MR. VENABLES pauses in his labours to greet a lady who has appeared on the lawn, and who is MAGGIE. She is as neat as if she were one of the army of typists [who are quite the nicest kind of women], and carries a little bag. She comes in through the window, and puts her hands over the COMTESSE’s eyes.]
COMTESSE. They are a strong pair of hands, at any rate.
MAGGIE. And not very white, and biggish for my size. Now guess.
[The COMTESSE guesses, and takes both the hands in hers as if she valued them. She pulls off MAGGIE’s hat as if to prevent her flying away.]
COMTESSE. Dear abominable one, not to let me know you were coming.
MAGGIE. It is just a surprise visit, Comtesse. I walked up from the station. [For a moment MAGGIE seems to have borrowed SYBIL’S impediment.] How is — everybody?
COMTESSE. He is quite well. But, my child, he seems to me to be a most unhappy man.
[This sad news does not seem to make a most unhappy woman of the child. The COMTESSE is puzzled, as she knows nothing of the situation save what she has discovered for herself.]
Why should that please you, O heartless one?
MAGGIE. I won’t tell you.
COMTESSE. I could take you and shake you, Maggie. Here have I put my house at your disposal for so many days for some sly Scotch purpose, and you will not tell me what it is.
MAGGIE. No.
COMTESSE. Very well, then, but I have what you call a nasty one for you. [The COMTESSE lures MR. VENABLES into the room by holding up what might be a foaming glass of lemon squash.] Alas, Charles, it is but a flower vase. I want you to tell Mrs. Shand what you think of her husband’s speech.
[MR. VENABLES gives his hostess a reproachful look.]
VENABLES. Eh — ah — Shand will prefer to do that himself. I promised the garde
ner — I must not disappoint him — excuse me —
COMTESSE. You must tell her, Charles.
MAGGIE. Please, Mr. Venables, I should like to know.
[He sits down with a sigh and obeys.]
VENABLES. Your husband has been writing the speech here, and by his own wish he read it to me three days ago. The occasion is to be an important one; and, well, there are a dozen young men in the party at present, all capable of filling a certain small ministerial post. [He looks longingly at the mower, but it sends no message to his aid.] And as he is one of them I was anxious that he should show in this speech of what he is capable.
MAGGIE. And hasn’t he?
[Not for the first time MR. VENABLES wishes that he was not in politics.]
VENABLES. I am afraid he has.
COMTESSE. What is wrong with the speech, Charles?
VENABLES. Nothing — and he can still deliver it. It is a powerful, well-thought-out piece of work, such as only a very able man could produce. But it has no SPECIAL QUALITY of its own — none of the little touches that used to make an old stager like myself want to pat Shand on the shoulder. [The COMTESSE’s mouth twitches, but MAGGIE declines to notice it.] He pounds on manfully enough, but, if I may say so, with a wooden leg. It is as good, I dare say, as the rest of them could have done; but they start with such inherited advantages, Mrs. Shand, that he had to do better.
MAGGIE. Yes, I can understand that.
VENABLES. I am sorry, Mrs. Shand, for he interested me. His career has set me wondering whether if I had begun as a railway porter I might not still be calling out, ‘By your leave.’
[MAGGIE thinks it probable but not important]
MAGGIE. Mr. Venables, now that I think of it, surely John wrote to me that you were dissatisfied with his first speech, and that he was writing another.
[The COMTESSE’s eyes open very wide indeed.]
VENABLES. I have heard nothing of that, Mrs. Shand. [He shakes his wise head.] And in any case, I am afraid — [He still hears the wooden leg.]
MAGGIE. But you said yourself that his second thoughts were sometimes such an improvement on the first.
[The COMTESSE comes to the help of the baggage.]
COMTESSE. I remember you saying that, Charles.
VENABLES. Yes, that has struck me. [Politely] Well, if he has anything to show me — In the meantime —
[He regains the lawn, like one glad to escape attendance at JOHN’S obsequies. The COMTESSE is brought back to speech by the sound of the mower — nothing wooden in it.]
COMTESSE. What are you up to now, Miss Pin? You know as well as I do that there is no such speech.
[MAGGIE’s mouth tightens.]
MAGGIE. I do not.
COMTESSE. It is a duel, is it, my friend?
[The COMTESSE rings the bell and MAGGIE’s guilty mind is agitated.]
MAGGIE. What are you ringing for?
COMTESSE. As the challenged one, Miss Pin, I have the choice of weapons. I am going to send for your husband to ask him if he has written such a speech. After which, I suppose, you will ask me to leave you while you and he write it together.
[MAGGIE wrings her hands.]
MAGGIE. You are wrong, Comtesse; but please don’t do that.
COMTESSE. You but make me more curious, and my doctor says that I must be told everything. [The COMTESSE assumes the pose of her sex in melodrama.] Put your cards on the table, Maggie Shand, or — [She indicates that she always pinks her man. MAGGIE dolefully produces a roll of paper from her bag.] What precisely is that?
[The reply is little more than a squeak.]
MAGGIE. John’s speech.
COMTESSE. You have written it yourself!
[MAGGIE is naturally indignant.]
MAGGIE. It’s typed.
COMTESSE. You guessed that the speech he wrote unaided would not satisfy, and you prepared this to take its place!
MAGGIE. Not at all, Comtesse. It is the draft of his speech that he left at home. That’s all.
COMTESSE. With a few trivial alterations by yourself, I swear. Can you deny it?
[No wonder that MAGGIE is outraged. She replaces JOHN’s speech in the bag with becoming hauteur.]
MAGGIE. Comtesse, these insinuations are unworthy of you. May I ask where is my husband?
[The COMTESSE drops her a curtsey.]
COMTESSE. I believe your Haughtiness may find him in the Dutch garden. Oh, I see through you. You are not to show him your speech. But you are to get him to write another one, and somehow all your additions will be in it. Think not, creature, that you can deceive one so old in iniquity as the Comtesse de la Briere.
[There can be but one reply from a good wife to such a charge, and at once the COMTESSE is left alone with her shame. Anon a footman appears. You know how they come and go.]
FOOTMAN. You rang, my lady?
COMTESSE. Did I? Ah, yes, but why? [He is but lately from the ploughshare and cannot help her. In this quandary her eyes alight upon the bag. She is unfortunately too abandoned to feel her shame; she still thinks that she has the choice of weapons. She takes the speech from the bag and bestows it on her servitor.] Take this to Mr. Venables, please, and say it is from Mr. Shand. [THOMAS — but in the end we shall probably call him JOHN — departs with the dangerous papers; and when MAGGIE returns she finds that the COMTESSE is once more engaged in her interrupted game of Patience.] You did not find him?
[All the bravery has dropped from MAGGIE’s face.]
MAGGIE. I didn’t see him, but I heard him. SHE is with him. I think they are coming here.
[The COMTESSE is suddenly kind again.]
COMTESSE. Sybil? Shall I get rid of her?
MAGGIE. No, I want her to be here, too. Now I shall know.
[The COMTESSE twists the little thing round.]
COMTESSE. Know what?
MAGGIE. As soon as I look into his face I shall know.
[A delicious scent ushers in the fair SYBIL, who is as sweet as a milking stool. She greets MRS. SHAND with some alarm.]
MAGGIE. How do you do, Lady Sybil? How pretty you look in that frock.
[SYBIL rustles uncomfortably.] You are a feast to the eye.
SYBIL. Please, I wish you would not.
[Shall we describe SYBIL’S frock, in which she looks like a great strawberry that knows it ought to be plucked; or would it be easier to watch the coming of JOHN? Let us watch JOHN.]
JOHN. You, Maggie! You never wrote that you were coming.
[No, let us watch MAGGIE. As soon as she looked into his face she was to know something of importance.]
MAGGIE [not dissatisfied with what she sees]. No, John, it’s a surprise visit. I just ran down to say goodbye.
[At this his face falls, which does not seem to pain her.]
SYBIL [foreseeing another horrible Scotch scene]. To say goodbye?
COMTESSE [thrilling with expectation]. To whom, Maggie?
SYBIL [deserted by the impediment, which is probably playing with rough boys in the Lovers’ Lane]. Auntie, do leave us, won’t you?
COMTESSE. Not I. It is becoming far too interesting.
MAGGIE. I suppose there’s no reason the Comtesse shouldn’t be told, as she will know so soon at any rate?
JOHN. That’s so. [SYBIL sees with discomfort that he is to be practical also.]
MAGGIE. It’s so simple. You see, Comtesse, John and Lady Sybil have fallen in love with one another, and they are to go off as soon as the meeting at Leeds has taken place.
[The COMTESSE’s breast is too suddenly introduced to Caledonia and its varied charms.]
COMTESSE. Mon Dieu!
MAGGIE. I think that’s putting it correctly, John.
JOHN. In a sense. But I’m not to attend the meeting at Leeds. My speech doesn’t find favour. [With a strange humility] There’s something wrong with it.
COMTESSE. I never expected to hear you say that, Mr. Shand.
JOHN [wondering also]. I never expected it myself. I meant to make it the speech
of my career. But somehow my hand seems to have lost its cunning.
COMTESSE. And you don’t know how?
JOHN. It’s inexplicable. My brain was never clearer.
COMTESSE. You might have helped him, Sybil.
SYBIL [quite sulkily]. I did.