[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 drawing-room (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
gardener--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 good-bye.
[At this his face falls, which does not seem to pain her.]
SYBIL [foreseeing another horrible Scotch scene]. To say good-bye?
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.
COMTESSE. But I thought she was such an inspiration to you, Mr. Shand.
JOHN [going bravely to SYBIL’S side]. She slaved at it with me.
COMTESSE. Strange. [Wickedly becoming practical also] So now there is
nothing to detain you. Shall I send for a fly, Sybil?
SYBIL [with a cry of the heart]. Auntie, do leave us.
COMTESSE. I can understand your impatience to be gone, Mr. Shand.
JOHN [heavily]. I promised Maggie to wait till the 24th, and I’m a man
of my word.
MAGGIE. But I give you back your word, John. You can go now.
[JOHN looks at SYBIL, and SYBIL looks at JOHN, and the impediment
arrives in time to take a peep at both of them.]
SYBIL [groping for the practical, to which we must all come in the end].
He must make satisfactory arrangements about you first. I insist on
that.
MAGGIE [with no more imagination than a hen]. Thank you, Lady Sybil, but
I have made all my arrangements.
JOHN [stung]. Maggie, that was my part.
MAGGIE. You see, my brothers feel they can’t be away from their business
any longer; and so, if it would be convenient to you, John, I could
travel north with them by the night train on Wednesday.
SYBIL. I--I----The way you put things---!
JOHN. This is just the 21st.
MAGGIE. My things are all packed. I think you’ll find the house in good
order, Lady Sybil. I have had the vacuum cleaners in. I’ll give you the
keys of the linen and the silver plate; I have them in that bag. The
carpet on the upper landing is a good deal frayed, but---
SYBIL. Please, I don’t want to hear any more.
MAGGIE. The ceiling of the dining-room would be the better of a new lick
of paint---
SYBIL [stamping her foot, small fours]. Can’t you stop her?
JOHN [soothingly]. She’s meaning well. Maggie, I know it’s natural to
you to value those things, because your outlook on life is bounded by
them; but all this jars on me.
MAGGIE. Does it?
JOHN. Why should you be so ready to go?
MAGGIE. I promised not to stand in your way.
JOHN [stoutly]. You needn’t be in such a hurry. There are three days
to run yet. [The French are so different from us that we shall probably
never be able to understand why the COMTESSE laughed aloud here.] It’s
just a joke to the Comtesse.
COMTESSE. It seems to be no joke to you, Mr. Shand. Sybil, my pet, are
you to let him off?
SYBIL [flashing]. Let him off? If he wishes it. Do you?
JOHN [manfully]. I want it to go on. [Something seems to have caught in
his throat: perhaps it is the impediment trying a temporary home.] It’s
the one wish of my heart. If you come with me, Sybil, I’ll do all in a
man’s power to make you never regret it.
[Triumph of the Vere de Veres.]
MAGGIE [bringing them back to earth with a dump]. And I can make my
arrangements for Wednesday?
SYBIL [seeking the COMTESSE’s protection]. No, you can’t. Auntie, I am
not going on with this. I’m very sorry for you, John, but I see now--I
couldn’t face it---
[She can’t face anything at this moment except the sofa pillows.]
COMTESSE [noticing JOHN’S big sigh of relief]. So THAT is all right, Mr.
Shand!
MAGGIE. Don’t you love her any more, John? Be practical.
SYBIL [to the pillows]. At any rate I have tired of him. Oh, best to
tell the horrid truth. I am ashamed of myself. I have been crying my
eyes out over it--I thought I was such a different kind of woman. But I
am weary of him. I think him--oh, so dull.
JOHN [his face lighting up]. Are you sure that is how you have come to
think of me?
SYBIL. I’m sorry; [with all her soul] but yes--yes--yes.
JOHN. By God, it’s more than I deserve.
COMTESSE. Congratulations to you both.
[SYBIL runs away; and in the fulness of time she married successfully in
cloth of silver, which was afterwards turned into a bed-spread.]
MAGGIE. You haven’t read my letter yet, John, have you?
JOHN. No.
COMTESSE [imploringly]. May I know to what darling letter you refer?
MAGGIE. It’s a letter I wrote to him before he left London. I gave it to
him closed, not to be opened until his time here was ended.
JOHN [as his hand strays to his pocket]. Am I to read it now?
MAGGIE. Not before her. Please go away, Comtesse.
COMTESSE. Every word you say makes me more determined to remain.
MAGGIE. It will hurt you, John. [Distressed] Don’t read it; tear it up.
JOHN. You make me very curious, Maggie. And yet I don’t see what can be
in it.
COMTESSE. But you feel a little nervous? Give ME the dagger.
MAGGIE [quickly]. No. [But the COMTESSE has already got it.]
COMTESSE. May I? [She must have thought they said Yes, for she opens the
letter. She shares its contents with them.] ‘Dearest John, It is at my
request that the Comtesse is having Lady Sybil at the cottage at the
same time as yourself.’
JOHN. What?
COMTESSE. Yes, she begged me to invite you together.
JOHN. But why?
MAGGIE. I promised you not to behave as other wives would do.
JOHN. It’s not understandable.
COMTESSE. ‘You may ask why I do this, John, and my reason is, I think
that after a few weeks of Lady Sybil, every day, and all day, you will
become sick to death of her. I am also giving her the chance to help you
and inspire you with your work, so that you may both learn what her
help and her inspiration amount to. Of course, if your love is the great
strong passion you think it, then those weeks will make you love her
more than ever and I can only say good-bye. But if, as I suspect, you
don’t even now know what true love is, then by the next time we meet,
dear John, you will have had enough of her.--Your affectionate wife,
Maggie.’ Oh, why was not Sybil present at the reading of the will! And
now, if you two will kindly excuse me, I think I must go and get that
poor sufferer the eau de Cologne.
JOHN. It’s almost enough to make a man lose faith in himself.
COMTESSE. Oh, don’t say that, Mr. Shand.
MAGGIE [defending him]. You mustn’t hurt him. If you haven’t loved deep
and true, that’s just because you have never met a woman yet, John,
capable of inspiring it.
COMTESSE [putting her hand on MAGGIE’s shoulder]. Have you not, Mr.
Shand?
JOHN. I see what you mean. But Maggie wouldn’t think better of me for
any false pretences. She knows my feelings for her now are neither more
nor less than what they have always been.
MAGGIE [who sees that he is looking at her as solemnly as a volume of
sermons printed by request]. I think no one could be fond of me that
can’t laugh a little at me.
JOHN. How could that help?
COMTESSE [exasperated]. Mr. Shand, I give you up.
MAGGIE. I admire his honesty.
COMTESSE. Oh, I give you up also. Arcades ambo. Scotchies both.
JOHN [when she has gone]. But this letter, it’s not like you. By Gosh,
Maggie, you’re no fool.
[She beams at this, as any wife would.]
But how could I have made such a mistake? It’s not like a strong man.
[Evidently he has an inspiration.]
MAGGIE. What is it?
JOHN [the inspiration]. AM I a strong man?
MAGGIE. You? Of course you are. And self-made. Has anybody ever helped
you in the smallest way?
JOHN [thinking it out again]. No, nobody.
MAGGIE. Not even Lady Sybil?
JOHN. I’m beginning to doubt it. It’s very curious, though, Maggie, that
this speech should be disappointing.
MAGGIE. It’s just that Mr. Venables hasn’t the brains to see how good it
is.
JOHN. That must be it. [But he is too good a man to rest satisfied with
this.] No, Maggie, it’s not. Somehow I seem to have lost my neat way of
saying things.
MAGGIE [almost cooing]. It will come back to you.
JOHN [forlorn]. If you knew how I’ve tried.
MAGGIE [cautiously]. Maybe if you were to try again; and I’ll just come
and sit beside you, and knit. I think the click of the needles sometimes
put you in the mood.
JOHN. Hardly that; and yet many a Shandism have I knocked off while you
were sitting beside me knitting. I suppose it was the quietness.
MAGGIE. Very likely.
JOHN [with another inspiration]. Maggie!
MAGGIE [again]. What is it, John?
JOHN. What if it was you that put those queer ideas into my head!
MAGGIE. Me?
JOHN. Without your knowing it, I mean.
MAGGIE. But how?
JOHN. We used to talk bits over; and it may be that you dropped the
seed, so to speak.
MAGGIE. John, could it be this, that I sometimes had the idea in a rough
womanish sort of way and then you polished it up till it came out a
Shandism?
JOHN [slowly slapping his knee]. I believe you’ve hit it, Maggie: to
think that you may have been helping me all the time--and neither of us
knew it!
[He has so nearly reached a smile that no one can say what might have
happened within the next moment if the COMTESSE had not reappeared.]
COMTESSE. Mr. Venables wishes to see you, Mr. Shand.
JOHN [lost, stolen, or strayed a smile in the making]. Hum!
COMTESSE. He is coming now.
JOHN [grumpy]. Indeed!
COMTESSE [sweetly]. It is about your speech.
JOHN. He has said all he need say on that subject, and more.
COMTESSE [quaking a little]. I think it is about the second speech.
JOHN. What second speech?
[MAGGIE runs to her bag and opens it.]
MAGGIE [horrified]. Comtesse, you have given it to him!
COMTESSE [impudently]. Wasn’t I meant to?
JOHN. What is it? What second speech?
MAGGIE. Cruel, cruel. [Willing to go on her knees] You had left
the first draft of your speech at home, John, and I brought it here
with--with a few little things I’ve added myself.
JOHN [a seven-footer]. What’s that?
MAGGIE [four foot ten at most]. Just trifles--things I was to suggest to
you--while I was knitting--and then, if you liked any of them you could
have polished them--and turned them into something good. John, John--and
now she has shown it to Mr. Venables.
JOHN [thundering]. As my work, Comtesse?
[But the COMTESSE is not of the women who are afraid of thunder.]
MAGGIE. It is your work--nine-tenths of it.
JOHN [in the black cap]. You presumed, Maggie Shand! Very well, then,
here he comes, and now we’ll see to what extent you’ve helped me.
VENABLES. My dear fellow. My dear Shand, I congratulate you. Give me
your hand.
JOHN. The speech?
VENABLES. You have improved it out of knowledge. It is the same speech,
but those new touches make all the difference. [JOHN sits down heavily.]
Mrs. Shand, be proud of him.
MAGGIE. I am. I am, John.
COMTESSE. You always said that his second thoughts were best, Charles.
VENABLES [pleased to be reminded of it]. Didn’t I, didn’t I? Those
delicious little touches! How good that is, Shand, about the flowing
tide.
COMTESSE. The flowing tide?
VENABLES. In the first speech it was something like this--‘Gentlemen,
the Opposition are calling to you to vote for them and the flowing tide,
but I solemnly warn you to beware lest the flowing tide does not engulf
you.’ The second way is much better.
COMTESSE. What is the second way, Mr. Shand?
[JOHN does not tell her.]
VENABLES. This is how he puts it now. [JOHN cannot help raising his head
to listen.] ‘Gentlemen, the Opposition are calling to you to vote for
them and the flowing tide, but I ask you cheerfully to vote for us and
DAM the flowing tide.’
[VENABLES and his old friend the COMTESSE laugh heartily, but for
different reasons.]
COMTESSE. It IS better, Mr. Shand.
MAGGIE. _I_ don’t think so.
VENABLES. Yes, yes, it’s so virile. Excuse me, Comtesse, I’m off to
read the whole thing again. [For the first time he notices that JOHN is
strangely quiet.] I think this has rather bowled you over, Shand.
[JOHN’s head sinks lower.]
Well, well, good news doesn’t kill.
MAGGIE [counsel for the defence]. Surely the important thing about the
speech is its strength and knowledge and eloquence, the things that were
in the first speech as well as in the second.
VENABLES. That of course is largely true. The wit would not be enough
without them, just as they were not enough without the wit. It is the
combination that is irresistible. [JOHN’s head rises a little.] Shand,
you are our man, remember that, it is emphatically the best thing you
have ever done. How this will go down at Leeds!
[He returns gaily to his hammock; but lower sinks JOHN’S head, and even
the COMTESSE has the grace to take herself off. MAGGIE’s arms flutter
near her husband, not daring to alight.]
MAGGIE. You heard what he said, John. It’s the combination. Is it so
terrible to you to find that my love for you had made me able to help
you in the little things?
JOHN. The little things! It seems strange to me to hear you call me by
my name, Maggie. It’s as if I looked on you for the first time.
MAGGIE. Look at me, John, for the first time. What do you see?
JOHN. I see a woman who has brought her husband low.
MAGGIE. Only that?
JOHN. I see the tragedy of a man who has found himself out. Eh, I can’t
live with you again, Maggie.
[He shivers.]
MAGGIE. Why did you shiver, John?
JOHN. It was at myself for saying that I couldn’t live with you again,
when I should have been wondering how for so long you have lived with
me. And I suppose you have forgiven me all the time. [She nods.] And
forgive me still? [She nods again.] Dear God!
MAGGIE. John, am I to go? or are you to keep me on? [She is now a little
bundle near his feet.] I’m willing to stay because I’m useful to you, if
it can’t be for a better reason. [His hand feels for her, and the bundle
wriggles nearer.] It’s nothing unusual I’ve done, John. Every man who
is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife
smiles, and lets it go at that. It’s our only joke. Every woman knows
that. [He stares at her in hopeless perplexity.] Oh, John, if only you
could laugh at me.
JOHN. I can’t laugh, Maggie.
[But as he continues to stare at her a strange disorder appears in his
face. MAGGIE feels that it is to be now or never.]
MAGGIE. Laugh, John, laugh. Watch me; see how easy it is.
[A terrible struggle is taking place within him. He creaks. Something
that may be mirth forces a passage, at first painfully, no more joy in
it than in the discoloured water from a spring that has long been dry.
Soon, however, he laughs loud and long. The spring water is becoming
clear. MAGGIE claps her hands. He is saved.]
End of Project Gutenberg’s What Every Woman Knows, by James M. Barrie