CHAPTER XV
The musicians were not missed, and it is safe to say that, for some time, their melody was unheard; not even the lovers on the verandah lent ear to it, for Mabel was gathering her forces for an attack upon all the conventions of maidenly reserve, while Howard was seeking through the shallows of his diplomacy for some acceptable method of writing “finis” across their romance. Each felt the secret strain and battle within the other. They became silent, each waiting and guarding against the other’s first move.
At the card table, as usual, the first rounds were played in silence. The players were, as the saying is, “feeling one another out.” Judge Giffen was not distracted, therefore, from the opening columns which the Digest had allotted to an “exclusive” bit of information supplied by the young gentleman who acted as its special correspondent on the Balkan peninsula. There was a page and a half of it. The Judge took off his glasses—rubbed, and was replacing them, when Mrs. Lee addressed him.
“I do hope you will find some charming item to regale us with, Judge Giffen. I saw you tear off the wrapper so I know it is a new Digest.”
“Ah, yes—ah—just come, you know. A remarkable paper, the Digest. Gives one the—ah—news of the world every week without a superfluous word—ah—journalism in these days has become—ah—debauched. The simplest events are distorted for sensationalism—ah—to wring tears from the sentimentalists.”
“I’ve heard others say the same thing. What a pity, is it not?”
Mrs. Lee, finding that she could not turn a corner successfully, took the kerchief out of the frame and drew the point of lace taut over her thumb. Her motion attracted the judge’s attention and he watched her deft fingers as he continued his strictures on journalism.
“A pity? A scandal! Does a celebrity die? We are intruded into the most intimate details of his family history; what—ah—shaving soap he used and whether he—ah—preferred to kiss his lady love on the—ah—nose or behind the ear; and—ah—who cried, and how many, when he—ah—in vulgar phrase—ah—‘kicked the bucket.’ And, mind you, not a word of truth in the whole story! Whereas the Digest merely states with terseness and accuracy: ‘the—ah—Emperor of China died on Sunday, of—ah—an overdose of—ah—bird’s-nest soup.’ It leaves you to infer that, in the case of the death of a celebrated personage who met thousands of people in his public life, there were some who cried and some who—ah—did not. Any fool knows that, so why waste print on it?”
“My husband used to tell his students that, in literary composition, sincerity was more important than rhetoric and that only a fine feeling could dictate the making of a truly fine phrase. He said that pure English had come with the spiritual development of the race; and that a forceful and intimate use of it must come about through the individual writer’s spiritual evolution. Otherwise he claimed no man could write with real power.”