HOMEWARE: My sister is an unsuspicious potentate, as you know.
Pretenders to the hand of an inviolate widow bite like waves at a rock.
LYRA: Professor Spiral advances rapidly.
HOMEWARE: Not, it would appear, when he has his audience of ladies and their satellites.
LYRA: I am sure I hear a spring-tide of enthusiasm coming.
ARDEN: I will see.
(He goes up the path.)
LYRA: Now! my own dear uncle, save me from Pluriel. I have given him the slip in sheer desperation; but the man is at his shrewdest when he is left to guess at my heels. Tell him I am anywhere but here. Tell him I ran away to get a sense of freshness in seeing him again. Let me have one day of liberty, or, upon my word, I shall do deeds; I shall console young Arden: I shall fly to Paris and set my cap at presidents and foreign princes. Anything rather than be eaten up every minute, as I am.
May no woman of my acquaintance marry a man of twenty years her senior!
She marries a gigantic limpet. At that period of his life a man becomes too voraciously constant.
HOMEWARE: Cupid clipped of wing is a destructive parasite.
LYRA: I am in dead earnest, uncle, and I will have a respite, or else let decorum beware!
(Arden returns.)
ARDEN: The ladies are on their way.
LYRA: I must get Astraea to myself.
HOMEWARE: My library is a virgin fortress, Mr. Arden. Its gates are open to you on other topics than the coupling of inebriates.
(He enters the house--LYRA disappears in the garden--Spiral"s audience reappear without him.)
SCENE IV
DAME DRESDEN, LADY OLDLACE, VIRGINIA, WINIFRED, ARDEN, SWITHIN, OSIER
LADY OLDLACE: Such perfect rhythm!
WINIFRED: Such oratory!
LADY OLDLACE: A master hand. I was in a trance from the first sentence to the impressive close.
OSIER: Such oratory is a whole orchestral symphony.
VIRGINIA: Such command of intonation and subject!
SWITHIN: That resonant voice!
LADY OLDLACE: Swithin, his flow of eloquence! He launched forth!
SWITHIN: Like an eagle from a cliff.
OSIER: The measure of the words was like a beat of wings.
SWITHIN: He makes poets of us.
DAME DRESDEN: Spiral achieved his pinnacle to-day!
VIRGINIA: How treacherous is our memory when we have most the longing to recall great sayings!
OSIER: True, I conceive that my notes will be precious.
WINIFRED: You could take notes!
LADY OLDLACE: It seems a device for missing the quintessential.
SWITHIN: Sc.r.a.ps of the body to the loss of the soul of it. We can allow that our friend performed good menial service.
WINIFRED: I could not have done the thing.
SWITHIN: In truth; it does remind one of the mess of pottage.
LADY OLDLACE: One hardly felt one breathed.
VIRGINIA: I confess it moved me to tears.
SWITHIN: There is a pathos for us in the display of perfection. Such subtle contrast with our individual poverty affects us.
WINIFRED: Surely there were pa.s.sages of a distinct and most exquisite pathos.
LADY OLDLACE: As in all great oratory! The key of it is the pathos.
VIRGINIA: In great oratory, great poetry, great fiction; you try it by the pathos. All our critics agree in stipulating for the pathos. My tears were no feminine weakness, I could not be a discordant instrument.
SWITHIN: I must make confession. He played on me too.
OSIER: We shall be sensible for long of that vibration from the touch of a master hand.
ARDEN: An accomplished player can make a toy-shop fiddle sound you a Stradivarius.
DAME DRESDEN: Have you a right to a remark, Mr. Arden? What could have detained you?
ARDEN: Ah, Dame. It may have been a warning that I am a discordant instrument. I do not readily vibrate.
DAME DRESDEN: A discordant instrument is out of place in any civil society. You have lost what cannot be recovered.
ARDEN: There are the notes.
OSIER: Yes, the notes.
SWITHIN: You can be satisfied with the dog"s feast at the table, Mr.