What Every Woman Knows | Page 3

about is Love.
JAMES [keeping control of himself]. Do you stand there and say you're in love, David Wylie?
DAVID. Me; what would I do with the thing?
JAMES [who is by no means without pluck]. I see no necessity for calling it a thing.
[They are two bachelors who all their lives have been afraid of nothing but Woman. DAVID in his sportive days--which continue--has done roguish things with his arm when conducting a lady home under an umbrella from a soiree, and has both chuckled and been scared on thinking of it afterwards. JAMES, a commoner fellow altogether, has discussed the sex over a glass, but is too canny to be in the company of less than two young women at a time.]
DAVID [derisively]. Oho, has she got you, James?
JAMES [feeling the sting of it]. Nobody has got me.
DAVID. They'll catch you yet, lad.
JAMES. They'll never catch me. You've been nearer catched yourself.
ALICK. Yes, Kitty Menzies, David.
DAVID [feeling himself under the umbrella]. It was a kind of a shave that.
ALICK [who knows all that is to be known about women and can speak of them without a tremor]. It's a curious thing, but a man cannot help winking when he hears that one of his friends has been catched.
DAVID. That's so.
JAMES [clinging to his manhood]. And fear of that wink is what has kept the two of us single men. And yet what's the glory of being single?
DAVID. There's no particular glory in it, but it's safe.
JAMES [putting away his aspirations]. Yes, it's lonely, but it's safe. But who did you mean the poetry for, then?
DAVID. For Maggie, of course.
[You don't know DAVID and JAMES till you know how they love their sister MAGGIE.]
ALICK. I thought that.
DAVID [coming to the second point of his statement about Love]. I saw her reading poetry and saying those words over to herself.
JAMES. She has such a poetical mind.
DAVID. Love. There's no doubt as that's what Maggie has set her heart on. And not merely love, but one of those grand noble loves; for though Maggie is undersized she has a passion for romance.
JAMES [wandering miserably about the room]. It's terrible not to be able to give Maggie what her heart is set on.
[The others never pay much attention to JAMES, though he is quite a smart figure in less important houses.]
ALICK [violently]. Those idiots of men.
DAVID. Father, did you tell her who had got the minister of Galashiels?
ALICK [wagging his head sadly]. I had to tell her. And then I--I-- bought her a sealskin muff, and I just slipped it into her hands and came away.
JAMES [illustrating the sense of justice in the Wylie family]. Of course, to be fair to the man, he never pretended he wanted her.
DAVID. None of them wants her; that's what depresses her. I was thinking, father, I would buy her that gold watch and chain in Snibby's window. She hankers after it.
JAMES [slapping his pocket]. You're too late, David; I've got them for her.
DAVID. It's ill done of the minister. Many a pound of steak has that man had in this house.
ALICK. You mind the slippers she worked for him?
JAMES. I mind them fine; she began them for William Cathro. She's getting on in years, too, though she looks so young.
ALICK. I never can make up my mind, David, whether her curls make her look younger or older.
DAVID [determinedly]. Younger. Whist! I hear her winding the clock. Mind, not a word about the minister to her, James. Don't even mention religion this day.
JAMES. Would it be like me to do such a thing?
DAVID. It would be very like you. And there's that other matter: say not a syllable about our having a reason for sitting up late to- night. When she says it's bed-time, just all pretend we're not sleepy.
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 bed-time.
DAVID [finding the subject a safe one]. I was kept late at the public meeting.
ALICK [glad to get so