ERNEST: Now, you know you wrote it for me! Don’t you think it was a good idea, to get you to write your diary in French? You’d never have done any French at all but for that, and you’d certainly never have told me. . . . You never tell me your side.
MAGGIE: There’s nothing to tell.
ERNEST (shaking his finger excitedly): That’s just what you say, that’s just what you say! As many things happen for you as for me.
MAGGIE: Oh, but you go to Derby every day, and you see folks, and I —
ERNEST (flinging his hand at her): Piffle! I tell you — do I tell you the train was late? Do I — ?
MAGGIE (interrupting, laughing in confusion and humility): Yes, you do — ah!
He has stopped suddenly with tremendous seriousness and excitement.
ERNEST: When?
MAGGIE (nervous, apologizing, laughing): On Sunday — when you told me you’d have —
ERNEST (flinging her words aside with excited gesture): There you are! — you’re raking up a trifle to save you from the main issue. Just like a woman! What I said was (He becomes suddenly slow and fierce.) you never tell me about you, and you drink me up, get me up like a cup with both hands and drink yourself breathless — and — and there you are — you, you never pour me any wine of yourself —
MAGGIE (watching him, fascinated and a little bit terror-struck): But isn’t it your fault?
He turns on her with a fierce gesture. She starts.
ERNEST: How can it be, when I’m always asking you — ? (He scratches his head with wild exasperation.)
MAGGIE (almost inaudibly): Well —
He blazes at her so fiercely, she does not continue, but drops her head and looks at her knee, biting her finger.
ERNEST (abruptly): Come on — let’s see what hundreds of mistakes . . .
She looks at him; dilates, laughs nervously, and goes to her coat, returning with a school exercise-book, doubled up.
He sits on the sofa, brings her beside him with a swift gesture. Then he looks up at the fire, and starts away round the table.
ERNEST (going into the scullery and crossing the room with dustpan): I must mend the fire. There’s a book of French verse with my books. Be looking at that while I . . .
His voice descends to the cellar, where he is heard hammering the coal. He returns directly.
She stands at the little cupboard, with her face in a book. She is very short-sighted.
He mends the fire without speaking to her, and goes out to wash his hands.
ERNEST (returning): Well, what do you think of it? I got it for fourpence.
MAGGIE: I like it ever so much.
ERNEST: You’ve hardly seen it yet. Come on.
They sit together on the sofa and read from the exercise-book, she nervously.
(Suddenly): Now, look here — Oh, the poor verbs! I don’t think anybody dare treat them as you do! Look here!
She puts her head closer.
He jerks back his head, rubbing his nose frantically, laughing.
Your hair did tickle me!
She turns her face to his, laughing, with open mouth. He breaks the spell.
Well, have you seen it?
MAGGIE (hesitating, peering across the lines): No-o-o.
ERNEST (suddenly thrusting his finger before her): There! I wonder it doesn’t peck your nose off. You are a —
She has discovered her mistake and draws back with a little vibrating laugh of shame and conviction.
You hussy, what should it have been?
MAGGIE (hesitating): “Eurent?”
ERNEST (sitting suddenly erect and startling her up too): What! The preterite? The preterite? And you’re talking about going to school!
She laughs at him with nervous shame; when he glares at her, she dilates with fine terror.
(Ominously): Well — ?
MAGGIE (in the depths of laughing despair, very softly and timidly): I don’t know.
ERNEST (relaxing into pathetic patience): Verbs of motion take être, and if you do a thing frequently, use the imperfect. You are — Well, you’re inexpressible!
They turn to the diary: she covered with humiliation, he aggrieved. They read for a while, he shaking his head when her light springing hair tickles him again.
(Softly): What makes you say that?
MAGGIE (softly): What?
ERNEST: That you are “un enfant de Samedi” — a Saturday child?
MAGGIE (mistrusting herself so soon): Why — it’s what they say, you know.
ERNEST (gently): How?
MAGGIE: Oh — when a child is serious; when it doesn’t play except on Saturdays, when it is quite free.
ERNEST: And you mean you don’t play?
She looks at him seriously.
No, you haven’t got much play in you, have you? — I fool about so much.
MAGGIE (nodding): That’s it. You can forget things and play about. I always think of Francis Thompson’s Shelley, you know — how he made paper boats. . . .
ERNEST (flattered at the comparison): But I don’t make paper boats. I tell you, you think too much about me. I tell you I have got nothing but a gift of coloured words. And do I teach you to play? — not to hold everything so serious and earnest? (He is very serious.)
She nods at him again. He looks back at the paper. It is finished. Then they look at one another, and laugh a little laugh, not of amusement.
ERNEST: Ah, your poor diary! (He speaks very gently.)
She hides her head and is confused.
I haven’t marked the rest of the mistakes. Never mind — we won’t bother, shall we? You’d make them again, just the same.
She laughs. They are silent a moment or two; it is very still.
You know (He begins sadly, and she does not answer.) — you think too much of me — you do, you know.
She looks at him with a proud, sceptical smile.
(Suddenly wroth): You are such a flat, you won’t believe me! But I know — if I don’t, who does? It’s just like a woman, always aching to believe in somebody or other, or something or other.
She smiles.
I say, what will you have? Baudelaire?
MAGGIE (not understanding): What?
ERNEST: Baudelaire.
MAGGIE (nervous, faltering): But who’s — ?
ERNEST: Do you mean to say you don’t know who Baudelaire is?
MAGGIE (defensively): How should I?
ERNEST: Why, I gassed to you for half an hour about him, a month back — and now he might be a Maori — !
MAGGIE: It’s the names — being foreign.
ERNEST: Baudelaire — Baudelaire — it’s no different from Pearson!
MAGGIE (laughing): It sounds a lot better.
ERNEST (laughing, also, and opening the book): Come on! Here, let’s have Maîtresse des Maîtresses; should we?
MAGGIE (with gentle persuasiveness): Yes. You’ll read it?
ERNEST: You can have a go, if you like.
They both laugh. He begins to read Le Balcon in tolerably bad French, but with some genuine feeling. She watches him all the time. At the end, he turns to her in triumph, and she looks back in ecstasy.
There! isn’t that fine?
She nods repeatedly.
That’s what they can do in France. It’s so heavy and full and voluptuous: like oranges falling and rolling a little way along a dark-blue carpet; like twilight outside when the lamp’s lighted; you get a sense of rich, heavy things, as if you smelt them, and felt them about you in the dusk: isn’t it?
She nods again.
Ah, let me read you The Albatross. This is one of the best — anybody would say so — you see, fine, as good as anything in the world. (Begins to read.)
There is a light, quick step outside, and a light tap at the door, which opens.
They frown at each other, and he whispers:
ERNEST: Damn! (Aloud.) Hell, Beat!
There enters a girl of twenty-three or four; short, slight, pale, with dark circles under
her rather large blue eyes, and with dust-coloured hair. She wears a large brown beaver hat and a long grey-green waterproof-coat.
BEATRICE WYLD: Hello, Ernest, how are ter? Hello, Mag! Are they all out?
ERNEST (shutting up the book and drawing away from MAGGIE. The action is reciprocal — BEATRICE WYLD seats herself in the armchair opposite): They’ve gone up town. I don’t suppose Nellie will be long.
BEATRICE (coughing, speaking demurely): No, she won’t see Eddie to-night.
ERNEST (leaning back): Not till after ten.
BEATRICE (rather loudly, sitting up): What! Does he come round after they shut up shop?
ERNEST (smiling ironically): Ay, if it’s getting on for eleven — !
BEATRICE (turning in her chair): Good lawk! — are they that bad? Isn’t it fair sickenin’?
ERNEST: He gets a bit wild sometimes.
BEATRICE: I should think so, at that price. Shall you ever get like that, Mag?
MAGGIE: Like what, Beatrice?
BEATRICE: Now, Maggie Pearson, don’t pretend to be ‘ormin’. She knows as well as I do, doesn’t she, Ernest?
MAGGIE: Indeed I don’t. (She is rather high-and-mighty, but not impressive.)
BEATRICE: Garn! We know you, don’t we, Ernie? She’s as bad as anybody at the bottom, but she pretends to be mighty ‘ormin’.
MAGGIE: I’m sure you’re mistaken, Beatrice.
BEATRICE: Not much of it, old girl. We’re not often mistaken, are we, Ernie? Get out; we’re the “dead certs” — aren’t we, Willie? (She laughs with mischievous exultance, her tongue between her teeth.)
MAGGIE (with great but ineffectual irony): Oh, I’m glad somebody is a “dead cert”. I’m very glad indeed! I shall know where to find one now.
BEATRICE: You will, Maggie.
There is a slight, dangerous pause.
BEATRICE (demurely): I met Nellie and Gertie, coming.
ERNEST: Ay, you would.
MAGGIE (bitterly): Oh, yes.
BEATRICE (still innocently): She had got a lovely rose. I wondered —
ERNEST: Yes, she thought Eddie would be peeping over the mousetraps and bird-cages. I bet she examines those drowning-mouse engines every time she goes past.
BEATRICE (with vivacity): Not likely, not likely! She marches by as if there was nothing but a blank in the atmosphere. You watch her. Eyes Right! — but she nudges Gert to make her see if he’s there.
ERNEST (laughing): And then she turns in great surprise.
BEATRICE: No, she doesn’t. She keeps “Eyes Front”, and smiles like a young pup — and the blushes! — Oh, William, too lov’ly f’r anyfing!
ERNEST: I’ll bet the dear boy enjoys that blush.
BEATRICE: Ra-ther! (Artlessly revenant à son mouton.) And he’ll have the rose and all, to rejoice the cockles of his heart this time.
ERNEST (trying to ward it off): Ay. I suppose you’ll see him with it on Sunday.
BEATRICE (still innocently): It was a beauty, William! Did you bring it for her?
ERNEST: I got it in Derby.
BEATRICE (unmasking): Did you? Who gave it you, Willie?
ERNEST (evasively, pretending to laugh): Nay, it wouldn’t do to tell.
BEATRICE: Oh, William, do tell us! Was it the Dark, or the Athletics?
ERNEST: What if it was neither?
BEATRICE: Oh, Willie, another! Oh, it is shameful! Think of the poor things, what damage you may do them.
ERNEST (uneasily): Yes, they are delicate pieces of goods, women. Men have to handle them gently; like a man selling millinery.
BEATRICE (hesitating, then refraining from answering this attack fully): It’s the hat-pins, Willie dear. But do tell us. Was it the Gypsy? — let’s see, you generally call it her in German, don’t you? — What’s the German for gypsy, Maggie? — But was it the Gypsy, or the Athletic Girl that does Botany?
ERNEST (shaking his head): No. It was an Erewhonian.
BEATRICE (knitting her brows): Is that the German for another? Don’t say so, William! (Sighs heavily.) “Sigh no more, ladies” — Oh, William! And these two are quite fresh ones, and all. Do you like being a mutton-bone, William? — one bitch at one end and one at the other? Do you think he’s such a juicy bone to squabble for, Maggie?
MAGGIE (red and mortified): I’m sure I don’t think anything at all about it, Beatrice.
BEATRICE: No; we’ve got more sense, we have, Maggie. We know him too well — he’s not worth it, is he?
MAGGIE PEARSON does not reply.
BEATRICE WYLD looks at her dress, carefully rubbing off some spot or other; then she resumes:
BEATRICE: But surely it’s not another, Willie?
ERNEST: What does it matter who it is? Hang me, I’ve not spoken to — I’ve hardly said ten words — you said yourself, I’ve only just known them.
BEATRICE: Oh, Willie, I’m sure I thought it was most desperate — from what you told me.
There is another deadly silence. BEATRICE resumes innocently, quite unperturbed.
Has he told you, MAGGIE?
MAGGIE (very coldly): I’m sure I don’t know.
BEATRICE (simply): Oh, he can’t have done, then. You’d never have forgot. There’s one like a Spaniard — or was it like an Amazon, Willie?
ERNEST: Go on. Either’ll do.
BEATRICE: A Spanish Amazon, Maggie — olive-coloured, like the colour of a young clear bit of sea-weed, he said — and, oh, I know! “great free gestures” — a cool clear colour, not red. Don’t you think she’d be lovely?
MAGGIE: I do indeed.
BEATRICE: Too lovely f’r anyfing? — And the other. Oh, yes: “You should see her run up the college stairs! She can go three at a time, like a hare running uphill.” — And she was top of the Inter. list for Maths and Botany. Don’t you wish you were at college, Maggie?
MAGGIE: For some things.
BEATRICE: I do. We don’t know what he’s up to when he’s there, do we?
MAGGIE: I don’t know that we’re so very anxious —
BEATRICE (convincingly): We’re not, but he thinks we are, and I believe he makes it all up. I bet the girls just think: “H’m. Here’s a ginger-and-white fellow; let’s take a bit of the conceit out of him” — and he thinks they’re gone on him, doesn’t he?
MAGGIE: Very likely.
BEATRICE: He does, Maggie; that’s what he does. And I’ll bet, if we could hear him — the things he says about us! I’ll bet he says there’s a girl with great brown eyes —
ERNEST: Shut up, Beat! you little devil — you don’t know when to stop.
BEATRICE (affecting great surprise): William! Maggie! Just fancy!!
There is another silence, not ominous this time, but charged with suspense.
What am I a devil for? (Half timidly.)
ERNEST (flushing up at the sound of her ill-assurance): Look here; you may just as well drop it. It’s stale, it’s flat. It makes no mark, don’t flatter yourself — we’re sick of it, that’s all. It’s a case of ennui. Vous m’agacez les nerfs. Il faut aller au diable. (He rises, half laughing, and goes for the dust-pan.)
BEATRICE (her nose a trifle out of joint): Translate for us, Maggie.
MAGGIE shakes her head, without replying. She has a slight advantage now.
ERNEST crosses the room to go to coal-cellar.
BEATRICE coughs slightly, adjusts her tone to a casual, disinterested conversation, and then says, from sheer inability to conquer her spite:
You do look well, Maggie. I don’t think I’ve seen anybody with such a colour. It’s fair fine.
MAGGIE laughs and pulls a book towards her. There is silence.
ERNEST’S steps are heard descending to the cellar and hammering the coal. Presently he re-mounts. The girls are silent, MAGGIE pretending to read; BEATRICE staring across the room, half smiling, tapping her feet.
ERNEST (hurrying in and putting the coal on the hob): Begum, what about the bread?
MAGGIE (starting up and dilating towards him
with her old brilliance): Oh, what have we — ? Is it — ? Oh!
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 735