What Every Woman Knows Part 19

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 s.h.i.+vers 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 wors.h.i.+pful 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 that, now in the first moment that you tell me of it.