What Every Woman Knows | Page 3

with difficulty.]
ALICK [with JAMES's crown in his hand]. What's that you're saying,
David?
DAVID [like a public speaker explaining the situation in a few
well-chosen words]. The thing I'm speaking 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