“I mean—I mean——”
He turned in silence and their eyes met. A moment later her fingers relaxed limply in his; their hands were still in contact—but scarcely so; and so remained while the Attitudes of Barnard Haw held the stage.
[ IX]
here was a young wife behind the footlights explaining to a young man who was not her husband that her marriage vows need not be too seriously considered if he, the young man, found them too inconvenient. Which scared the young man, who was plainly a purveyor of heated air and a short sport. And, although she explained very clearly that if he needed her in his business he had better say so quick, the author’s invention gave out just there and he called in the young wife’s husband to help him out.
And all the while the battery of round blue
eyes gazed on unwinking; the poet’s dewlaps quivered with stored emotion, and the spellbound audience breathed as people breathe when the hostess at table attempts to smooth over a bad break by her husband.
“Is that life?” whispered Cybele to Lethbridge, her sensitive mouth aquiver. “Did the author actually know such people? Do you? Is conscience really only an attitude? Is instinct the only guide? Am I—really—bad——”
“No, no,” whispered Lethbridge; “all that is only a dramatist’s attitude. Don’t—don’t look grieved! Why, every now and then some man discovers he can attract more attention by standing on his head. That is all—really, that is all. Barnard Haw on his feet is not amusing; but the same gentleman on his head is worth an orchestra-chair. When a man wears his trousers where other men wear their coats, people are bound to turn around. It is not a new trick. Mystes, the Argive comic poet, and the White Queen, taught this author the value of substituting ‘is’ for ‘is not,’ until, from standing so long inverted, he himself forgets what he means, and at this point the eminent brothers Rogers take up the important work....