In a moment he was back again on the hearth-rug, beginning his lecture in a tone that was such an exaggeration of his conversational voice, so high-pitched and whistlingly rounded, so extremely careful in enunciation that Miriam could hear nothing but a loud thin hooting, full of the echoes of the careful beginnings and endings of English words.
The first sentence was much longer than his address to her and when it ended she did not know how or where to begin. But he had taken a step forward on the hearth-rug and begun another sentence, on a higher pitch, with a touch of anger in his voice. She checked a spasm of laughter and sat tense, trying to ignore the caricature of his style that gambolled in her mind. The sentence, even longer than the first, ended interrogatively with a fling of the head. It was tragic. She was quick, quicker than anyone she knew, in catching words or meanings through strange disguises. An audience would be either furious or hysterical.
“You don’t want to threaten your audience” she said very quietly in a low tone, hoping by contrast to throw up his clamour.
“I dew not threaten,” he said with suave patience, “doubtless hew are misled. It is a great occasion; and a great subject; of hwich I am master; in these circumstances a certain bravura is imperative. Hew du not propose that I should plead for Cervantes for example? I will continue.”
The sentences grew in length, each one climbing, through a host of dependent clauses, small sharp hammer blows of angry assertion, and increasing in tone to a climax of defiance flung down from a height that left no further possibility but a descent to a level quiet deduction ... and now dear brethren ...... but the succeeding sentence came fresh to the attack, crouching, gathering up the fury of its forerunner, leaping forward, dipping through still longer dependent loops, accumulating, swelling and expanding to even greater emphasis and volume. She gave up all hope of gathering even the gist of the meaning; he seemed to be saying one thing over and over again. You protest too much ..... don’t protest; don’t gesticulate ...... the English don’t gesticulate ...... but he used no gesticulations; he was aware; that was a deliberate attempt to be English. But his whole person was a gesture, expanding, vibrating.
“You mean by intonation only the intonation of single words, not of the whole?”
“Precisely. Correctness of accent and emphasis is my aim. But you imply a criticism” he fluted, unshaken by his storm.
“Yes. First you must not pronounce each word quite so carefully. It makes them echo into each other. Then of course if you want to be quite English you must be less emphatic.”
“I must assume an air of indifference?”
“An English audience will be more likely to understand if you are slower and more quiet. You ought to have gaps now and then.”