Lady D. Yes, that’s what she wrote me. Now, my dear, you’re her oldest friend. You’ll help me to persuade her to—to look over it and hush it up.
Inez. Oh, certainly. It’s the advice everybody gives in such cases, so I suppose it must be right. What are the particulars?
Lady D. I don’t know. But with a man like Harabin—a gentleman in every sense of the word—it can’t be a very bad case.
Enter Lady Susan.[25]
If the voice does not deftly stress “now” in Lady Darby’s first speech, and the “upstairs” and the “downstairs” of the footman, this opening will fail of its desired effect. Everything in this well-written beginning of an interesting play depends on bringing to the delivery of the lines right use of the dramatist’s greatest aids: gesture, facial expression, pantomime, and above all the exquisite intonations of which the human voice is capable. Write this scene as a novelist would handle it, and see to what different proportions it will swell. Note in the final result how much less connotative, how much more commonplace the dialogue probably is. Contrasting two passages—one from a novel, the other in a play drawn from it—will perhaps best illustrate that the dialogue of the novel and of the play treating the same story usually differ greatly.
And when it became clear that somebody, good or bad, was without, Patty, having regard to the lateness of the hour and the probability of supernatural visitations, was much disposed to make as though the knocking were unheard, and to creep quietly off to bed. But Mistress Beatrice prevailed upon her to depart from this prudent course; and the two peered from an upper window to see who stood before the door.
At first they could see no one; but presently a little figure stepped back from the shadow, looking up to the window above, and Beatrice Cope, although she discerned not the face, felt more than ever certain that this summons was for her.
“’Tis but a child there without, Patty,” she said. “Maybe ’tis some poor little creature that has lost its way, and come here for help and shelter. Heaven forbid that we should leave it to wander about, all the dreary night through!”
Patty’s fears were not much calmed by the sight of this lonely child. “’Twas the Phantom Child,” she murmured, “who comes wailing piteously to honest folks’ doors o’ nights; and if they take it in and cherish it, it works them grievous woe.”