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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 4497 ***
+
+THE SENTIMENTALISTS
+
+An Unfinished Comedy
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+                            DRAMATIS PERSONAE
+
+HOMEWARE.
+
+PROFESSOR SPIRAL.
+
+ARDEN,............. In love with Astraea.
+
+SWITHIN,........... Sympathetics.
+OSIER,
+
+DAME DRESDEN,...... Sister to Homeware.
+
+ASTRAEA,........... Niece to Dame Dresden and Homeware.
+
+LYRA,.............. A Wife.
+
+LADY OLDLACE.
+
+VIRGINIA.
+
+WINIFRED.
+
+
+
+                           THE SENTIMENTALISTS
+
+                           AN UNFINISHED COMEDY
+
+
+The scene is a Surrey garden in early summer.  The paths are shaded by
+tall box-wood hedges.  The--time is some sixty years ago.
+
+
+                                 SCENE I
+
+              PROFESSOR SPIRAL, DAME DRESDEN, LADY OLDLACE,
+                  VIRGINIA, WINIFRED, SWITHIN, and OSIER
+
+(As they slowly promenade the garden, the professor is delivering one of
+his exquisite orations on Woman.)
+
+SPIRAL:  One husband!  The woman consenting to marriage takes but one.
+For her there is no widowhood.  That punctuation of the sentence called
+death is not the end of the chapter for her.  It is the brilliant proof
+of her having a soul.  So she exalts her sex.  Above the wrangle and
+clamour of the passions she is a fixed star.  After once recording her
+obedience to the laws of our common nature--that is to say, by descending
+once to wedlock--she passes on in sovereign disengagement--a dedicated
+widow.
+
+     (By this time they have disappeared from view.  HOMEWARE appears;
+     he craftily avoids joining their party, like one who is unworthy of
+     such noble oratory.  He desires privacy and a book, but is disturbed
+     by the arrival of ARDEN, who is painfully anxious to be polite to
+     'her uncle Homeware.')
+
+
+
+                                 SCENE II
+
+                             HOMEWARE, ARDEN
+
+ARDEN:  A glorious morning, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE:  The sun is out, sir.
+
+ARDEN:  I am happy in meeting you, Mr. Homeware.
+
+HOMEWARE:  I can direct you to the ladies, Mr. Arden.  You will find them
+up yonder avenue.
+
+ARDEN:  They are listening, I believe, to an oration from the mouth of
+Professor Spiral.
+
+HOMEWARE:  On an Alpine flower which has descended to flourish on English
+soil.  Professor Spiral calls it Nature's 'dedicated widow.'
+
+ARDEN: 'Dedicated widow'?
+
+HOMEWARE:  The reference you will observe is to my niece Astraea.
+
+ARDEN:  She is dedicated to whom?
+
+HOMEWARE:  To her dead husband!  You see the reverse of Astraea, says the
+professor, in those world-infamous widows who marry again.
+
+ARDEN:  Bah!
+
+HOMEWARE:  Astraea, it is decided, must remain solitary, virgin cold,
+like the little Alpine flower.  Professor Spiral has his theme.
+
+ARDEN:  He will make much of it.  May I venture to say that I prefer my
+present company?
+
+HOMEWARE:  It is a singular choice.  I can supply you with no weapons for
+the sort of stride in which young men are usually engaged.  You belong to
+the camp you are avoiding.
+
+ARDEN:  Achilles was not the worse warrior, sir, for his probation in
+petticoats.
+
+HOMEWARE:  His deeds proclaim it.  But Alexander was the better chieftain
+until he drank with Lais.
+
+ARDEN:  No, I do not plead guilty to Bacchus.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You are confessing to the madder form of drunkenness.
+
+ARDEN:  How, sir, I beg?
+
+HOMEWARE:  How, when a young man sees the index to himself in everything
+spoken!
+
+ARDEN:  That might have the look.  I did rightly in coming to you, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE: 'Her uncle Homeware'?
+
+ARDEN:  You read through us all, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE:  It may interest you to learn that you are the third of the
+gentlemen commissioned to consult the lady's uncle Homeware.
+
+ARDEN:  The third.
+
+HOMEWARE:  Yes, she is pursued.  It could hardly be otherwise.  Her
+attractions are acknowledged, and the house is not a convent.  Yet, Mr.
+Arden, I must remind you that all of you are upon an enterprise held to
+be profane by the laws of this region.  Can you again forget that Astraea
+is a widow?
+
+ARDEN:  She was a wife two months; she has been a widow two years.
+
+HOMEWARE:  The widow of the great and venerable Professor Towers is not
+to measure her widowhood by years.  His, from the altar to the tomb.  As
+it might be read, a one day's walk!
+
+ARDEN:  Is she, in the pride of her youth, to be sacrificed to a
+whimsical feminine delicacy?
+
+HOMEWARE:  You have argued it with her?
+
+ARDEN:  I have presumed.
+
+HOMEWARE:  And still she refused her hand!
+
+ARDEN:  She commended me to you, sir.  She has a sound judgement of
+persons.
+
+HOMEWARE:  I should put it that she passes the Commissioners of Lunacy,
+on the ground of her being a humorous damsel.  Your predecessors had also
+argued it with her; and they, too, discovered their enemy in a whimsical
+feminine delicacy.  Where is the difference between you?  Evidently she
+cannot perceive it, and I have to seek: You will have had many
+conversations with Astraea?
+
+ARDEN:  I can say, that I am thrice the man I was before I had them.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You have gained in manhood from conversations with a widow in
+her twenty-second year; and you want more of her.
+
+ARDEN:  As much as I want more wisdom.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You would call her your Muse?
+
+ARDEN:  So prosaic a creature as I would not dare to call her that.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You have the timely mantle of modesty, Mr. Arden.  She has
+prepared you for some of the tests with her uncle Homeware.
+
+ARDEN:  She warned me to be myself, without a spice of affectation.
+
+HOMEWARE:  No harder task could be set a young man in modern days.  Oh,
+the humorous damsel.  You sketch me the dimple at her mouth.
+
+ARDEN:  Frankly, sir, I wish you to know me better; and I think I can
+bear inspection.  Astraea sent me to hear the reasons why she refuses me
+a hearing.
+
+HOMEWARE:  Her reason, I repeat, is this; to her idea, a second wedlock
+is unholy.  Further, it passes me to explain.  The young lady lands us
+where we were at the beginning; such must have been her humorous
+intention.
+
+ARDEN:  What can I do?
+
+HOMEWARE:  Love and war have been compared.  Both require strategy and
+tactics, according to my recollection of the campaign.
+
+ARDEN:  I will take to heart what you say, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE:  Take it to head.  There must be occasional descent of lovers'
+heads from the clouds.  And Professor Spiral,--But here we have a belated
+breeze of skirts.
+
+     (The reference is to the arrival of LYRA, breathless.)
+
+
+
+                                SCENE III
+
+                          HOMEWARE, ARDEN, LYRA
+
+
+LYRA:  My own dear uncle Homeware!
+
+HOMEWARE:  But where is Pluriel?
+
+LYRA:  Where is a woman's husband when she is away from him?
+
+HOMEWARE:  In Purgatory, by the proper reckoning.  But hurry up the
+avenue, or you will be late for Professor Spiral's address.
+
+LYRA:  I know it all without hearing.  Their Spiral!  Ah, Mr. Arden!  You
+have not chosen badly.  The greater my experience, the more do I value my
+uncle Homeware's company.
+
+     (She is affectionate to excess but has a roguish eye withal, as of
+     one who knows that uncle Homeware suspects all young men and most
+     young women.)
+
+HOMEWARE:  Agree with the lady promptly, my friend.
+
+ARDEN:  I would gladly boast of so lengthened an experience, Lady
+Pluriel.
+
+LYRA:  I must have a talk with Astraea, my dear uncle.  Her letters breed
+suspicions.  She writes feverishly.  The last one hints at service on the
+West Coast of Africa.
+
+HOMEWARE:  For the draining of a pestiferous land, or an enlightenment of
+the benighted black, we could not despatch a missionary more effective
+than the handsomest widow in Great Britain.
+
+LYRA:  Have you not seen signs of disturbance?
+
+HOMEWARE:  A great oration may be a sedative.
+
+
+LYRA:  I have my suspicions.
+
+HOMEWARE:  Mr. Arden, I could counsel you to throw yourself at Lady
+Pluriel's feet, and institute her as your confessional priest.
+
+ARDEN:  Madam, I am at your feet.  I am devoted to the lady.
+
+LYRA:  Devoted.  There cannot be an objection.  It signifies that a man
+asks for nothing in return!
+
+HOMEWARE:  Have a thought upon your words with this lady, Mr. Arden!
+
+ARDEN:  Devoted, I said.  I am.  I would give my life for her.
+
+LYRA:  Expecting it to be taken to-morrow or next day?  Accept my
+encomiums.  A male devotee is within an inch of a miracle.  Women had
+been looking for this model for ages, uncle.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You are the model, Mr Arden!
+
+LYRA:  Can you have intended to say that it is in view of marriage you
+are devoted to the widow of Professor Towers?
+
+ARDEN:  My one view.
+
+LYRA:  It is a star you are beseeching to descend.
+
+ARDEN: It is.
+
+LYRA:  You disappoint me hugely.  You are of the ordinary tribe after
+all; and your devotion craves an enormous exchange, infinitely surpassing
+the amount you bestow.
+
+ARDEN:  It does.  She is rich in gifts; I am poor.  But I give all I
+have.
+
+LYRA:  These lovers, uncle Homeware!
+
+HOMEWARE:  A honey-bag is hung up and we have them about us.  They would
+persuade us that the chief business of the world is a march to the altar.
+
+ARDEN:  With the right partner, if the business of the world is to be
+better done.
+
+LYRA:  Which right partner has been chosen on her part, by a veiled
+woman, who marches back from the altar to discover that she has chained
+herself to the skeleton of an idea, or is in charge of that devouring
+tyrant, an uxorious husband.  Is Mr. Arden in favour with the Dame,
+uncle?
+
+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:  Scraps 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 passages 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.
+Arden!
+
+OSIER:  Ha!
+
+VIRGINIA:  Never have I seen Astraea look sublimer in her beauty than
+with her eyes uplifted to the impassioned speaker, reflecting every
+variation of his tones.
+
+ARDEN:  Astraea!
+
+LADY OLDLACE:  She was entranced when he spoke of woman descending from
+her ideal to the gross reality of man.
+
+OSIER:  Yes, yes.  I have the words [reads]: 'Woman is to the front of
+man, holding the vestal flower of a purer civilization.  I see,' he says.
+'the little taper in her hands transparent round the light, against rough
+winds.'
+
+DAME DRESDEN:  And of Astraea herself, what were the words?  'Nature's
+dedicated widow.'
+
+SWITHIN:  Vestal widow, was it not?
+
+VIRGINIA:  Maiden widow, I think.
+
+DAME DRESDEN: We decide for 'dedicated.'
+
+WINIFRED:  Spiral paid his most happy tribute to the memory of her late
+husband, the renowned Professor Towers.
+
+VIRGINIA:  But his look was at dear Astraea.
+
+ARDEN:  At Astraea?  Why?
+
+VIRGINIA:  For her sanction doubtless.
+
+ARDEN:  Ha!
+
+WINIFRED:  He said his pride would ever be in his being received as the
+successor of Professor Towers.
+
+ARDEN:  Successor!
+
+SWITHIN:  Guardian was it not?
+
+OSIER:  Tutor.  I think he said.
+
+     (The three gentlemen consult Osier's notes uneasily.)
+
+DAME DRESDEN:  Our professor must by this time have received in full
+Astraea's congratulations, and Lyra is hearing from her what it is to be
+too late.  You will join us at the luncheon table, if you do not feel
+yourself a discordant instrument there, Mr. Arden?
+
+ARDEN (going to her):  The allusion to knife and fork tunes my strings
+instantly, Dame.
+
+DAME DRESDEN:  You must help me to-day, for the professor will be tired,
+though we dare not hint at it in his presence.  No reference, ladies, to
+the great speech we have been privileged to hear; we have expressed our
+appreciation and he could hardly bear it.
+
+ARDEN:  Nothing is more distasteful to the orator!
+
+VIRGINIA:  As with every true genius, he is driven to feel humbly human
+by the exultation of him.
+
+SWITHIN:  He breathes in a rarified air.
+
+OSIER:  I was thrilled, I caught at passing beauties.  I see that here
+and there I have jotted down incoherencies, lines have seduced me, so
+that I missed the sequence--the precious part.  Ladies, permit me to rank
+him with Plato as to the equality of women and men.
+
+WINIFRED:  It is nobly said.
+
+OSIER:  And with the Stoics, in regard to celibacy.
+
+     (By this time all the ladies have gone into the house.)
+
+ARDEN:  Successor!  Was the word successor?
+
+     (ARDEN, SWITHIN, and OSIER are excitedly searching the notes when
+     SPIRAL passes and strolls into the house.  His air of self-
+     satisfaction increases their uneasiness they follow him.  ASTRAEA
+     and LYRA come down the path.)
+
+
+
+                                 SCENE V
+
+                              ASTRAEA, LYRA
+
+
+LYRA:  Oh!  Pluriel, ask me of him!  I wish I were less sure he would not
+be at the next corner I turn.
+
+ASTRAEA:  You speak of your husband strangely, Lyra.
+
+LYRA:  My head is out of a sack.  I managed my escape from him this
+morning by renouncing bath and breakfast; and what a relief, to be in the
+railway carriage alone! that is, when the engine snorted.  And if I set
+eyes on him within a week, he will hear some truths.  His idea of
+marriage is, the taking of the woman into custody.  My hat is on, and on
+goes Pluriel's.  My foot on the stairs; I hear his boot behind me.  In my
+boudoir I am alone one minute, and then the door opens to the inevitable.
+I pay a visit, he is passing the house as I leave it.  He will not even
+affect surprise.  I belong to him, I am cat's mouse.  And he will look
+doating on me in public.  And when I speak to anybody, he is that fearful
+picture of all smirks.  Fling off a kid glove after a round of calls;
+feel your hand--there you have me now that I am out of him for my half a
+day, if for as long.
+
+ASTRAEA:  This is one of the world's happy marriages!
+
+LYRA:  This is one of the world's choice dishes!  And I have it planted
+under my nostrils eternally.  Spare me the mention of Pluriel until he
+appears; that's too certain this very day.  Oh! good husband! good kind
+of man! whatever you please; only some peace, I do pray, for the husband-
+haunted wife.  I like him, I like him, of course, but I want to breathe.
+Why, an English boy perpetually bowled by a Christmas pudding would come
+to loathe the mess.
+
+ASTRAEA:  His is surely the excess of a merit.
+
+LYRA:  Excess is a poison.  Excess of a merit is a capital offence in
+morality.  It disgusts, us with virtue.  And you are the cunningest of
+fencers, tongue, or foils.  You lead me to talk of myself, and I hate the
+subject.  By the way, you have practised with Mr. Arden.
+
+ASTRAEA:  A tiresome instructor, who lets you pass his guard to
+compliment you on a hit.
+
+LYRA:  He rather wins me.
+
+ASTRAEA:  He does at first.
+
+LYRA:  Begins Plurielizing, without the law to back him, does he?
+
+ASTRAEA:  The fencing lessons are at an end.
+
+LYRA:  The duetts with Mr. Swithin's violoncello continue?
+
+ASTRAEA:  He broke through the melody.
+
+LYRA:  There were readings in poetry with Mr. Osier, I recollect.
+
+ASTRAEA:  His own compositions became obtrusive.
+
+LYRA:  No fencing, no music, no poetry!  no West Coast of Africa either,
+I suppose.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Very well!  I am on my defence.  You at least shall not
+misunderstand me, Lyra.  One intense regret I have; that I did not live
+in the time of the Amazons.  They were free from this question of
+marriage; this babble of love.  Why am I so persecuted?  He will not take
+a refusal.  There are sacred reasons.  I am supported by every woman
+having the sense of her dignity.  I am perverted, burlesqued by the fury
+of wrath I feel at their incessant pursuit.  And I despise Mr. Osier and
+Mr. Swithin because they have an air of pious agreement with the Dame,
+and are conspirators behind their mask.
+
+LYRA:  False, false men!
+
+ASTRAEA:  They come to me.  I am complimented on being the vulnerable
+spot.
+
+LYRA:  The object desired is usually addressed by suitors, my poor
+Astraea!
+
+ASTRAEA:  With the assumption, that as I am feminine I must necessarily
+be in the folds of the horrible constrictor they call Love, and that I
+leap to the thoughts of their debasing marriage.
+
+LYRA:  One of them goes to Mr. Homeware.
+
+ASTRAEA:  All are sent to him in turn.  He can dispose of them.
+
+LYRA:  Now that is really masterly fun, my dear; most creditable to you!
+Love, marriage, a troop of suitors, and uncle Homeware.  No, it would not
+have occurred to me, and--I am considered to have some humour.  Of
+course, he disposes of them.  He seemed to have a fairly favourable
+opinion of Mr. Arden.
+
+ASTRAEA:  I do not share it.  He is the least respectful of the
+sentiments entertained by me.  Pray, spare me the mention of him, as you
+say of your husband.  He has that pitiful conceit in men, which sets them
+thinking that a woman must needs be susceptible to the declaration of the
+mere existence of their passion.  He is past argument.  Impossible for
+him to conceive a woman's having a mind above the conditions of her sex.
+A woman, according to him, can have no ideal of life, except as a ball to
+toss in the air and catch in a cup.  Put him aside.  .  .  . We creatures
+are doomed to marriage, and if we shun it, we are a kind of cripple.
+He is grossly earthy in his view of us.  We are unable to move a step
+in thought or act unless we submit to have a husband.  That is his
+reasoning.  Nature!  Nature!  I have to hear of Nature!  We must be above
+Nature, I tell him, or, we shall be very much below.  He is ranked among
+our clever young men; and he can be amusing.  So far he passes muster;
+and he has a pleasant voice.  I dare say he is an uncle Homeware's good
+sort of boy.  Girls like him.  Why does he not fix his attention upon one
+of them; Why upon me?  We waste our time in talking of him .  .  .  .
+The secret of it is, that he has no reverence.  The marriage he vaunts is
+a mere convenient arrangement for two to live together under command of
+nature.  Reverence for the state of marriage is unknown to him.  How
+explain my feeling?  I am driven into silence.  Cease to speak of him
+. . . .  He is the dupe of his eloquence--his passion, he calls it.
+I have only to trust myself to him, and--I shall be one of the world's
+married women!  Words are useless.  How am I to make him see that it is
+I who respect the state of marriage by refusing; not he by perpetually
+soliciting.  Once married, married for ever.  Widow is but a term.  When
+women hold their own against him, as I have done, they will be more
+esteemed.  I have resisted and conquered.  I am sorry I do not share in
+the opinion of your favourite.
+
+LYRA:  Mine?
+
+ASTRAEA:  You spoke warmly of him.
+
+LYRA:  Warmly, was it?
+
+ASTRAEA:  You are not blamed, my dear: he has a winning manner.
+
+LYRA:  I take him to be a manly young fellow, smart enough; handsome too.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Oh, he has good looks.
+
+LYRA:  And a head, by repute.
+
+ASTRAEA:  For the world's work, yes.
+
+LYRA:  Not romantic.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Romantic ideas are for dreamy simperers.
+
+LYRA:  Amazons repudiate them.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Laugh at me.  Half my time I am laughing at myself.  I should
+regain my pride if I could be resolved on a step.  I am strong to resist;
+I have not strength to move.
+
+LYRA:  I see the sphinx of Egypt!
+
+ASTRAEA:  And all the while I am a manufactory of gunpowder in this quiet
+old-world Sabbath circle of dear good souls, with their stereotyped
+interjections, and orchestra of enthusiasms; their tapering delicacies:
+the rejoicing they have in their common agreement on all created things.
+To them it is restful.  It spurs me to fly from rooms and chairs and beds
+and houses.  I sleep hardly a couple of hours.  Then into the early
+morning air, out with the birds; I know no other pleasure.
+
+LYRA:  Hospital work for a variation: civil or military.  The former
+involves the house-surgeon: the latter the grateful lieutenant.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Not if a woman can resist .  .  .  I go to it proof-armoured.
+
+LYRA:  What does the Dame say?
+
+ASTRAEA:  Sighs over me!  Just a little maddening to hear.
+
+LYRA:  When we feel we have the strength of giants, and are bidden to sit
+and smile!  You should rap out some of our old sweet-innocent garden
+oaths with her--'Carnation!  Dame!'  That used to make her dance on her
+seat.--'But, dearest Dame, it is as natural an impulse for women to have
+that relief as for men; and natural will out, begonia! it will!'  We ran
+through the book of Botany for devilish objurgations.  I do believe our
+misconduct caused us to be handed to the good man at the altar as the
+right corrective.  And you were the worst offender.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Was I?  I could be now, though I am so changed a creature.
+
+LYRA:  You enjoy the studies with your Spiral, come!
+
+ASTRAEA:  Professor Spiral is the one honest gentleman here.  He does
+homage to my principles.  I have never been troubled by him: no silly
+hints or side-looks--you know, the dog at the forbidden bone.
+
+LYRA:  A grand orator.
+
+ASTRAEA:  He is.  You fix on the smallest of his gifts.  He is
+intellectually and morally superior.
+
+LYRA:  Praise of that kind makes me rather incline to prefer his
+inferiors.  He fed gobble-gobble on your puffs of incense.  I coughed
+and scraped the gravel; quite in vain; he tapped for more and more.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Professor Spiral is a thinker; he is a sage.  He gives women
+their due.
+
+LYRA:  And he is a bachelor too--or consequently.
+
+ASTRAEA:  If you like you may be as playful with me as the Lyra of our
+maiden days used to be.  My dear, my dear, how glad I am to have you
+here!  You remind me that I once had a heart.  It will beat again with
+you beside me, and I shall look to you for protection.  A novel request
+from me.  From annoyance, I mean.  It has entirely altered my character.
+Sometimes I am afraid to think of what I was, lest I should suddenly
+romp, and perform pirouettes and cry 'Carnation!'  There is the bell.
+We must not be late when the professor condescends to sit for meals.
+
+LYRA:  That rings healthily in the professor.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Arm in arm, my Lyra.
+
+LYRA:  No Pluriel yet!
+
+     (They enter the house, and the time changes to evening of the same
+     day.  The scene is still the garden.)
+
+
+
+                                 SCENE VI
+
+                              ASTRAEA, ARDEN
+
+ASTRAEA:  Pardon me if I do not hear you well.
+
+ARDEN:  I will not even think you barbarous.
+
+ASTRAEA:  I am.  I am the object of the chase.
+
+ARDEN:  The huntsman draws the wood, then, and not you.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               At any instant I am forced to run,
+               Or turn in my defence: how can I be
+               Other than barbarous?  You are the cause.
+
+ARDEN:  No: heaven that made you beautiful's the cause.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Say, earth, that gave you instincts.  Bring me down
+               To instincts!  When by chance I speak awhile
+               With our professor, you appear in haste,
+               Full cry to sight again the missing hare.
+               Away ideas!  All that's divinest flies!
+               I have to bear in mind how young you are.
+
+ARDEN:
+               You have only to look up to me four years,
+               Instead of forty!
+
+ASTRAEA:  Sir?
+
+
+
+ARDEN
+                    There's my misfortune!
+               And worse that, young, I love as a young man.
+               Could I but quench the fire, I might conceal
+               The youthfulness offending you so much.
+
+ASTRAEA:  I wish you would.  I wish it earnestly.
+
+ARDEN:  Impossible.  I burn.
+
+ASTRAEA:  You should not burn.
+
+ARDEN
+               'Tis more than I.  'Tis fire.  It masters will.
+               You would not say I should not' if you knew fire.
+               It seizes.  It devours.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Dry wood.
+
+ARDEN:
+               Cold wit!
+               How cold you can be!  But be cold, for sweet
+               You must be.  And your eyes are mine: with them
+               I see myself: unworthy to usurp
+               The place I hold a moment.  While I look
+               I have my happiness.
+
+ASTRAEA:  You should look higher.
+
+ARDEN:
+               Through you to the highest.  Only through you!
+                    Through you
+               The mark I may attain is visible,
+               And I have strength to dream of winning it.
+               You are the bow that speeds the arrow: you
+               The glass that brings the distance nigh.  My world
+               Is luminous through you, pure heavenly,
+               But hangs upon the rose's outer leaf,
+               Not next her heart.  Astraea!  my own beloved!
+
+ASTRAEA:  We may be excellent friends.  And I have faults.
+
+ARDEN:  Name them: I am hungering for more to love.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               I waver very constantly:  I have
+               No fixity of feeling or of sight.
+               I have no courage: I can often dream
+               Of daring: when I wake I am in dread.
+               I am inconstant as a butterfly,
+               And shallow as a brook with little fish!
+               Strange little fish, that tempt the small boy's net,
+               But at a touch straight dive!  I am any one's,
+               And no one's!  I am vain.
+               Praise of my beauty lodges in my ears.
+               The lark reels up with it; the nightingale
+               Sobs bleeding; the flowers nod; I could believe
+               A poet, though he praised me to my face.
+
+ARDEN:
+               Never had poet so divine a fount
+               To drink of!
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Have I given you more to love
+
+ARDEN:
+               More!  You have given me your inner mind,
+               Where conscience in the robes of Justice shoots
+               Light so serenely keen that in such light
+               Fair infants, I newly criminal of earth,'
+               As your friend Osier says, might show some blot.
+               Seraphs might!  More to love?  Oh!  these dear faults
+               Lead you to me like troops of laughing girls
+               With garlands.  All the fear is, that you trifle,
+               Feigning them.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               For what purpose?
+
+ARDEN:
+                         Can I guess?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+
+               I think 'tis you who have the trifler's note.
+               My hearing is acute, and when you speak,
+               Two voices ring, though you speak fervidly.
+               Your Osier quotation jars.  Beware!
+               Why were you absent from our meeting-place
+               This morning?
+
+
+.
+
+ARDEN:
+                    I was on the way, and met
+               Your uncle Homeware
+
+ASTRAEA:  Ah!
+
+ARDEN:  He loves you.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               He loves me: he has never understood.
+               He loves me as a creature of the flock;
+               A little whiter than some others.
+               Yes; He loves me, as men love; not to uplift;
+               Not to have faith in; not to spiritualize.
+               For him I am a woman and a widow
+               One of the flock, unmarked save by a brand.
+               He said it!--You confess it!  You have learnt
+               To share his error, erring fatally.
+
+ARDEN:  By whose advice went I to him?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                              By whose?
+               Pursuit that seemed incessant: persecution.
+               Besides, I have changed since then: I change; I change;
+               It is too true I change.  I could esteem
+               You better did you change.  And had you heard
+               The noble words this morning from the mouth
+               Of our professor, changed were you, or raised
+               Above love-thoughts, love-talk, and flame and flutter,
+               High as eternal snows.  What said he else,
+               My uncle Homeware?
+
+ARDEN:
+                         That you were not free:
+               And that he counselled us to use our wits.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               But I am free I free to be ever free!
+               My freedom keeps me free!  He counselled us?
+               I am not one in a conspiracy.
+               I scheme no discord with my present life.
+               Who does, I cannot look on as my friend.
+               Not free?  You know me little.  Were I chained,
+               For liberty I would sell liberty
+               To him who helped me to an hour's release.
+               But having perfect freedom .  .  .
+
+ARDEN: No.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Good sir,
+               You check me?
+
+ARDEN: Perfect freedom?
+
+ASTRAEA: Perfect!
+
+ARDEN: No!
+
+ASTRAEA:  Am I awake?  What blinds me?
+
+ARDEN:
+                                   Filaments
+               The slenderest ever woven about a brain
+               From the brain's mists, by the little sprite called
+                    Fancy.
+               A breath would scatter them; but that one breath
+               Must come of animation.  When the heart
+               Is as, a frozen sea the brain spins webs.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               'Tis very singular!
+               I understand.
+               You translate cleverly.  I hear in verse
+               My uncle Homeware's prose.  He has these notions.
+               Old men presume to read us.
+
+ARDEN:
+               Young men may.
+               You gaze on an ideal reflecting you
+               Need I say beautiful?  Yet it reflects
+               Less beauty than the lady whom I love
+               Breathes, radiates.  Look on yourself in me.
+               What harm in gazing?  You are this flower
+               You are that spirit.  But the spirit fed
+               With substance of the flower takes all its bloom!
+               And where in spirits is the bloom of the flower?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               'Tis very singular.  You have a tone
+               Quite changed.
+
+ARDEN:
+               You wished a change.  To show you, how
+               I read you . . .
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Oh!  no, no.  It means dissection.
+               I never heard of reading character
+               That did not mean dissection.  Spare me that.
+               I am wilful, violent, capricious, weak,
+               Wound in a web of my own spinning-wheel,
+               A star-gazer, a riband in the wind .  .  .
+
+ARDEN:
+               A banner in the wind!  and me you lead,
+               And shall!  At least, I follow till I win.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Forbear, I do beseech you.
+
+ARDEN:
+                              I have had
+               Your hand in mine.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Once.
+
+ARDEN:
+                              Once!
+               Once!  'twas; once, was the heart alive,
+               Leaping to break the ice.  Oh!  once, was aye
+               That laughed at frosty May like spring's return.
+               Say you are terrorized: you dare not melt.
+               You like me; you might love me; but to dare,
+               Tasks more than courage.  Veneration, friends,
+               Self-worship, which is often self-distrust,
+               Bar the good way to you, and make a dream
+               A fortress and a prison.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                              Changed!  you have changed
+               Indeed.  When you so boldly seized my hand
+               It seemed a boyish freak, done boyishly.
+               I wondered at Professor Spiral's choice
+               Of you for an example, and our hope.
+               Now you grow dangerous.  You must have thought,
+               And some things true you speak-save 'terrorized.'
+               It may be flattering to sweet self-love
+               To deem me terrorized.--'Tis my own soul,
+               My heart, my mind, all that I hold most sacred,
+               Not fear of others, bids me walk aloof.
+               Who terrorizes me?  Who could?  Friends?  Never!
+               The world? as little.  Terrorized!
+
+ARDEN:
+                              Forgive me.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               I might reply, Respect me.  If I loved,
+               If I could be so faithless as to love,
+               Think you I would not rather noise abroad
+               My shame for penitence than let friends dwell
+               Deluded by an image of one vowed
+               To superhuman, who the common mock
+               Of things too human has at heart become.
+
+ARDEN:
+               You would declare your love?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                              I said, my shame.
+               The woman that's the widow is ensnared,
+               Caught in the toils! away with widows!--Oh!
+               I hear men shouting it.
+
+ARDEN:
+               But shame there's none
+               For me in loving: therefore I may take
+               Your friends to witness?  tell them that my pride
+               Is in the love of you?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                              'Twill soon bring
+               The silence that should be between us two,
+               And sooner give me peace.
+
+ARDEN:
+               And you consent?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               For the sake of peace and silence I consent,
+               You should be warned that you will cruelly
+               Disturb them.  But 'tis best.  You should be warned
+               Your pleading will be hopeless.  But 'tis best.
+               You have my full consent.  Weigh well your acts,
+               You cannot rest where you have cast this bolt
+               Lay that to heart, and you are cherished, prized,
+               Among them: they are estimable ladies,
+               Warmest of friends; though you may think they soar
+               Too loftily for your measure of strict sense
+               (And as my uncle Homeware's pupil, sir,
+               In worldliness, you do), just minds they have:
+               Once know them, and your banishment will fret.
+               I would not run such risks.  You will offend,
+               Go near to outrage them; and perturbate
+               As they have not deserved of you.  But I,
+               Considering I am nothing in the scales
+               You balance, quite and of necessity
+               Consent.  When you have weighed it, let me hear.
+               My uncle Homeware steps this way in haste.
+               We have been talking long, and in full view !
+
+
+
+                                SCENE VII
+
+                         ASTRAEA, ARDEN, HOMEWARE
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               Astraea, child!  You, Arden, stand aside.
+               Ay, if she were a maid you might speak first,
+               But being a widow she must find her tongue.
+               Astraea, they await you.  State the fact
+               As soon as you are questioned, fearlessly.
+               Open the battle with artillery.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               What is the matter, uncle Homeware?
+
+HOMEWARE (playing fox):
+                                   What?
+               Why, we have watched your nice preliminaries
+               From the windows half the evening.  Now run in.
+               Their patience has run out, and, as I said,
+               Unlimber and deliver fire at once.
+               Your aunts Virginia and Winifred,
+               With Lady Oldlace, are the senators,
+               The Dame for Dogs.  They wear terrific brows,
+               But be not you affrighted, my sweet chick,
+               And tell them uncle Homeware backs your choice,
+               By lawyer and by priests! by altar, fount,
+               And testament!
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               My choice!  what have I chosen?
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               She asks?  You hear her, Arden?--what and whom!
+
+ARDEN:
+               Surely, sir!  .  .  . heavens!  have you . . .
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                                   Surely the old fox,
+               In all I have read, is wiser than the young:
+               And if there is a game for fox to play,
+               Old fox plays cunningest.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Why fox?  Oh!  uncle,
+               You make my heart beat with your mystery;
+               I never did love riddles.  Why sit they
+               Awaiting me, and looking terrible?
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               It is reported of an ancient folk
+               Which worshipped idols, that upon a day
+               Their idol pitched before them on the floor
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Was ever so ridiculous a tale!
+
+HOMEWARE
+               To call the attendant fires to account
+               Their elders forthwith sat .  .  .
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                                   Is there no prayer
+               Will move you, uncle Homeware?
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                              God-daughter,
+               This gentleman for you I have proposed
+               As husband.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Arden! we are lost.
+
+ARDEN:
+                                   Astraea!
+               Support him!  Though I knew not his design,
+               It plants me in mid-heaven.  Would it were
+               Not you, but I to bear the shock.  My love!
+               We lost, you cry; you join me with you lost!
+               The truth leaps from your heart: and let it shine
+               To light us on our brilliant battle day
+               And victory
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Who betrayed me!
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                              Who betrayed?
+               Your voice, your eyes, your veil, your knife and fork;
+               Your tenfold worship of your widowhood;
+               As he who sees he must yield up the flag,
+               Hugs it oath-swearingly!  straw-drowningly.
+               To be reasonable: you sent this gentleman
+               Referring him to me .  .  .  .
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                                        And that is false.
+               All's false.  You have conspired.  I am disgraced.
+               But you will learn you have judged erroneously.
+               I am not the frail creature you conceive.
+               Between your vision of life's aim, and theirs
+               Who presently will question me, I cling
+               To theirs as light: and yours I deem a den
+               Where souls can have no growth.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               But when we touched
+               The point of hand-pressings, 'twas rightly time
+               To think of wedding ties?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Arden, adieu!
+
+                    (She rushes into house.)
+
+
+
+                                SCENE VIII
+
+                             ARDEN, HOMEWARE
+
+
+ARDEN:
+               Adieu!  she said.  With her that word is final.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               Strange!  how young people blowing words like clouds
+               On winds, now fair, now foul, and as they please
+               Should still attach the Fates to them.
+
+ARDEN:
+                              She's wounded
+               Wounded to the quick!
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                         The quicker our success: for short
+               Of that, these dames, who feel for everything,
+               Feel nothing.
+
+ARDEN:
+                         Your intention has been kind,
+               Dear sir, but you have ruined me.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                         Good-night. (Going.)
+
+ARDEN:
+               Yet she said, we are lost, in her surprise.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               Good morning.  (Returning.)
+
+ARDEN:
+                         I suppose that I am bound
+               (If I could see for what I should be glad!)
+               To thank you, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                         Look hard but give no thanks.
+               I found my girl descending on the road
+               Of breakneck coquetry, and barred her way.
+               Either she leaps the bar, or she must back.
+               That means she marries you, or says good-bye.
+                                        (Going again.)
+
+ARDEN:
+               Now she's among them.  (Looking at window.)
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               Now she sees her mind.
+
+ARDEN:
+               It is my destiny she now decides!
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               There's now suspense on earth and round the spheres.
+
+ARDEN:
+               She's mine now: mine!  or I am doomed to go.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               The marriage ring, or the portmanteau now!
+
+ARDEN:
+               Laugh as you like, air!  I am not ashamed
+               To love and own it.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               So the symptoms show.
+               Rightly, young man, and proving a good breed.
+               To further it's a duty to mankind
+               And I have lent my push, But recollect:
+               Old Ilion was not conquered in a day.
+                                   (He enters house.)
+
+ARDEN:
+               Ten years!  If I may win her at the end!
+
+
+                                 CURTAIN
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A great oration may be a sedative
+A male devotee is within an inch of a miracle
+Above Nature, I tell him, or, we shall be very much below
+As in all great oratory!  The key of it is the pathos
+Back from the altar to discover that she has chained herself
+Cupid clipped of wing is a destructive parasite
+Excess of a merit is a capital offence in morality
+His idea of marriage is, the taking of the woman into custody
+I am a discordant instrument  I do not readily vibrate
+I like him, I like him, of course, but I want to breathe
+I who respect the state of marriage by refusing
+Love and war have been compared--Both require strategy
+Peace, I do pray, for the husband-haunted wife
+Period of his life a man becomes too voraciously constant
+Pitiful conceit in men
+Rejoicing they have in their common agreement
+Self-worship, which is often self-distrust
+Suspects all young men and most young women
+Their idol pitched before them on the floor
+Were I chained,    For liberty I would sell liberty
+Woman descending from her ideal to the gross reality of man
+Your devotion craves an enormous exchange
+
+
+[The End]
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 4497 ***
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Sentimentalists (Play)
+by George Meredith
+#103 in our series by George Meredith
+
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+Title: The Sentimentalists (Play)
+
+Author: George Meredith
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+Release Date: September, 2003 [Etext #4497]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 5, 2002]
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext The Sentimentalists (Play) by Meredith
+*******This file should be named 4497.txt or 4497.zip*******
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are often created from several printed
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+
+
+
+
+THE SENTIMENTALISTS
+
+An Unfinished Comedy
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+                            DRAMATIS PERSONAE
+
+HOMEWARE.
+
+PROFESSOR SPIRAL.
+
+ARDEN,............. In love with Astraea.
+
+SWITHIN,........... Sympathetics.
+OSIER,
+
+DAME DRESDEN,...... Sister to Homeware.
+
+ASTRAEA,........... Niece to Dame Dresden and Homeware.
+
+LYRA,.............. A Wife.
+
+LADY OLDLACE.
+
+VIRGINIA.
+
+WINIFRED.
+
+
+
+                           THE SENTIMENTALISTS
+
+                           AN UNFINISHED COMEDY
+
+
+The scene is a Surrey garden in early summer.  The paths are shaded by
+tall box-wood hedges.  The--time is some sixty years ago.
+
+
+                                 SCENE I
+
+              PROFESSOR SPIRAL, DAME DRESDEN, LADY OLDLACE,
+                  VIRGINIA, WINIFRED, SWITHIN, and OSIER
+
+(As they slowly promenade the garden, the professor is delivering one of
+his exquisite orations on Woman.)
+
+SPIRAL:  One husband!  The woman consenting to marriage takes but one.
+For her there is no widowhood.  That punctuation of the sentence called
+death is not the end of the chapter for her.  It is the brilliant proof
+of her having a soul.  So she exalts her sex.  Above the wrangle and
+clamour of the passions she is a fixed star.  After once recording her
+obedience to the laws of our common nature--that is to say, by descending
+once to wedlock--she passes on in sovereign disengagement--a dedicated
+widow.
+
+     (By this time they have disappeared from view.  HOMEWARE appears;
+     he craftily avoids joining their party, like one who is unworthy of
+     such noble oratory.  He desires privacy and a book, but is disturbed
+     by the arrival of ARDEN, who is painfully anxious to be polite to
+     'her uncle Homeware.')
+
+
+
+                                 SCENE II
+
+                             HOMEWARE, ARDEN
+
+ARDEN:  A glorious morning, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE:  The sun is out, sir.
+
+ARDEN:  I am happy in meeting you, Mr. Homeware.
+
+HOMEWARE:  I can direct you to the ladies, Mr. Arden.  You will find them
+up yonder avenue.
+
+ARDEN:  They are listening, I believe, to an oration from the mouth of
+Professor Spiral.
+
+HOMEWARE:  On an Alpine flower which has descended to flourish on English
+soil.  Professor Spiral calls it Nature's 'dedicated widow.'
+
+ARDEN: 'Dedicated widow'?
+
+HOMEWARE:  The reference you will observe is to my niece Astraea.
+
+ARDEN:  She is dedicated to whom?
+
+HOMEWARE:  To her dead husband!  You see the reverse of Astraea, says the
+professor, in those world-infamous widows who marry again.
+
+ARDEN:  Bah!
+
+HOMEWARE:  Astraea, it is decided, must remain solitary, virgin cold,
+like the little Alpine flower.  Professor Spiral has his theme.
+
+ARDEN:  He will make much of it.  May I venture to say that I prefer my
+present company?
+
+HOMEWARE:  It is a singular choice.  I can supply you with no weapons for
+the sort of stride in which young men are usually engaged.  You belong to
+the camp you are avoiding.
+
+ARDEN:  Achilles was not the worse warrior, sir, for his probation in
+petticoats.
+
+HOMEWARE:  His deeds proclaim it.  But Alexander was the better chieftain
+until he drank with Lais.
+
+ARDEN:  No, I do not plead guilty to Bacchus.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You are confessing to the madder form of drunkenness.
+
+ARDEN:  How, sir, I beg?
+
+HOMEWARE:  How, when a young man sees the index to himself in everything
+spoken!
+
+ARDEN:  That might have the look.  I did rightly in coming to you, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE: 'Her uncle Homeware'?
+
+ARDEN:  You read through us all, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE:  It may interest you to learn that you are the third of the
+gentlemen commissioned to consult the lady's uncle Homeware.
+
+ARDEN:  The third.
+
+HOMEWARE:  Yes, she is pursued.  It could hardly be otherwise.  Her
+attractions are acknowledged, and the house is not a convent.  Yet, Mr.
+Arden, I must remind you that all of you are upon an enterprise held to
+be profane by the laws of this region.  Can you again forget that Astraea
+is a widow?
+
+ARDEN:  She was a wife two months; she has been a widow two years.
+
+HOMEWARE:  The widow of the great and venerable Professor Towers is not
+to measure her widowhood by years.  His, from the altar to the tomb.  As
+it might be read, a one day's walk!
+
+ARDEN:  Is she, in the pride of her youth, to be sacrificed to a
+whimsical feminine delicacy?
+
+HOMEWARE:  You have argued it with her?
+
+ARDEN:  I have presumed.
+
+HOMEWARE:  And still she refused her hand!
+
+ARDEN:  She commended me to you, sir.  She has a sound judgement of
+persons.
+
+HOMEWARE:  I should put it that she passes the Commissioners of Lunacy,
+on the ground of her being a humorous damsel.  Your predecessors had also
+argued it with her; and they, too, discovered their enemy in a whimsical
+feminine delicacy.  Where is the difference between you?  Evidently she
+cannot perceive it, and I have to seek: You will have had many
+conversations with Astraea?
+
+ARDEN:  I can say, that I am thrice the man I was before I had them.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You have gained in manhood from conversations with a widow in
+her twenty-second year; and you want more of her.
+
+ARDEN:  As much as I want more wisdom.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You would call her your Muse?
+
+ARDEN:  So prosaic a creature as I would not dare to call her that.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You have the timely mantle of modesty, Mr. Arden.  She has
+prepared you for some of the tests with her uncle Homeware.
+
+ARDEN:  She warned me to be myself, without a spice of affectation.
+
+HOMEWARE:  No harder task could be set a young man in modern days.  Oh,
+the humorous damsel.  You sketch me the dimple at her mouth.
+
+ARDEN:  Frankly, sir, I wish you to know me better; and I think I can
+bear inspection.  Astraea sent me to hear the reasons why she refuses me
+a hearing.
+
+HOMEWARE:  Her reason, I repeat, is this; to her idea, a second wedlock
+is unholy.  Further, it passes me to explain.  The young lady lands us
+where we were at the beginning; such must have been her humorous
+intention.
+
+ARDEN:  What can I do?
+
+HOMEWARE:  Love and war have been compared.  Both require strategy and
+tactics, according to my recollection of the campaign.
+
+ARDEN:  I will take to heart what you say, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE:  Take it to head.  There must be occasional descent of lovers'
+heads from the clouds.  And Professor Spiral,--But here we have a belated
+breeze of skirts.
+
+     (The reference is to the arrival of LYRA, breathless.)
+
+
+
+                                SCENE III
+
+                          HOMEWARE, ARDEN, LYRA
+
+
+LYRA:  My own dear uncle Homeware!
+
+HOMEWARE:  But where is Pluriel?
+
+LYRA:  Where is a woman's husband when she is away from him?
+
+HOMEWARE:  In Purgatory, by the proper reckoning.  But hurry up the
+avenue, or you will be late for Professor Spiral's address.
+
+LYRA:  I know it all without hearing.  Their Spiral!  Ah, Mr. Arden!  You
+have not chosen badly.  The greater my experience, the more do I value my
+uncle Homeware's company.
+
+     (She is affectionate to excess but has a roguish eye withal, as of
+     one who knows that uncle Homeware suspects all young men and most
+     young women.)
+
+HOMEWARE:  Agree with the lady promptly, my friend.
+
+ARDEN:  I would gladly boast of so lengthened an experience, Lady
+Pluriel.
+
+LYRA:  I must have a talk with Astraea, my dear uncle.  Her letters breed
+suspicions.  She writes feverishly.  The last one hints at service on the
+West Coast of Africa.
+
+HOMEWARE:  For the draining of a pestiferous land, or an enlightenment of
+the benighted black, we could not despatch a missionary more effective
+than the handsomest widow in Great Britain.
+
+LYRA:  Have you not seen signs of disturbance?
+
+HOMEWARE:  A great oration may be a sedative.
+
+
+LYRA:  I have my suspicions.
+
+HOMEWARE:  Mr. Arden, I could counsel you to throw yourself at Lady
+Pluriel's feet, and institute her as your confessional priest.
+
+ARDEN:  Madam, I am at your feet.  I am devoted to the lady.
+
+LYRA:  Devoted.  There cannot be an objection.  It signifies that a man
+asks for nothing in return!
+
+HOMEWARE:  Have a thought upon your words with this lady, Mr. Arden!
+
+ARDEN:  Devoted, I said.  I am.  I would give my life for her.
+
+LYRA:  Expecting it to be taken to-morrow or next day?  Accept my
+encomiums.  A male devotee is within an inch of a miracle.  Women had
+been looking for this model for ages, uncle.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You are the model, Mr Arden!
+
+LYRA:  Can you have intended to say that it is in view of marriage you
+are devoted to the widow of Professor Towers?
+
+ARDEN:  My one view.
+
+LYRA:  It is a star you are beseeching to descend.
+
+ARDEN: It is.
+
+LYRA:  You disappoint me hugely.  You are of the ordinary tribe after
+all; and your devotion craves an enormous exchange, infinitely surpassing
+the amount you bestow.
+
+ARDEN:  It does.  She is rich in gifts; I am poor.  But I give all I
+have.
+
+LYRA:  These lovers, uncle Homeware!
+
+HOMEWARE:  A honey-bag is hung up and we have them about us.  They would
+persuade us that the chief business of the world is a march to the altar.
+
+ARDEN:  With the right partner, if the business of the world is to be
+better done.
+
+LYRA:  Which right partner has been chosen on her part, by a veiled
+woman, who marches back from the altar to discover that she has chained
+herself to the skeleton of an idea, or is in charge of that devouring
+tyrant, an uxorious husband.  Is Mr. Arden in favour with the Dame,
+uncle?
+
+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:  Scraps 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 passages 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.
+Arden!
+
+OSIER:  Ha!
+
+VIRGINIA:  Never have I seen Astraea look sublimer in her beauty than
+with her eyes uplifted to the impassioned speaker, reflecting every
+variation of his tones.
+
+ARDEN:  Astraea!
+
+LADY OLDLACE:  She was entranced when he spoke of woman descending from
+her ideal to the gross reality of man.
+
+OSIER:  Yes, yes.  I have the words [reads]: 'Woman is to the front of
+man, holding the vestal flower of a purer civilization.  I see,' he says.
+'the little taper in her hands transparent round the light, against rough
+winds.'
+
+DAME DRESDEN:  And of Astraea herself, what were the words?  'Nature's
+dedicated widow.'
+
+SWITHIN:  Vestal widow, was it not?
+
+VIRGINIA:  Maiden widow, I think.
+
+DAME DRESDEN: We decide for 'dedicated.'
+
+WINIFRED:  Spiral paid his most happy tribute to the memory of her late
+husband, the renowned Professor Towers.
+
+VIRGINIA:  But his look was at dear Astraea.
+
+ARDEN:  At Astraea?  Why?
+
+VIRGINIA:  For her sanction doubtless.
+
+ARDEN:  Ha!
+
+WINIFRED:  He said his pride would ever be in his being received as the
+successor of Professor Towers.
+
+ARDEN:  Successor!
+
+SWITHIN:  Guardian was it not?
+
+OSIER:  Tutor.  I think he said.
+
+     (The three gentlemen consult Osier's notes uneasily.)
+
+DAME DRESDEN:  Our professor must by this time have received in full
+Astraea's congratulations, and Lyra is hearing from her what it is to be
+too late.  You will join us at the luncheon table, if you do not feel
+yourself a discordant instrument there, Mr. Arden?
+
+ARDEN (going to her):  The allusion to knife and fork tunes my strings
+instantly, Dame.
+
+DAME DRESDEN:  You must help me to-day, for the professor will be tired,
+though we dare not hint at it in his presence.  No reference, ladies, to
+the great speech we have been privileged to hear; we have expressed our
+appreciation and he could hardly bear it.
+
+ARDEN:  Nothing is more distasteful to the orator!
+
+VIRGINIA:  As with every true genius, he is driven to feel humbly human
+by the exultation of him.
+
+SWITHIN:  He breathes in a rarified air.
+
+OSIER:  I was thrilled, I caught at passing beauties.  I see that here
+and there I have jotted down incoherencies, lines have seduced me, so
+that I missed the sequence--the precious part.  Ladies, permit me to rank
+him with Plato as to the equality of women and men.
+
+WINIFRED:  It is nobly said.
+
+OSIER:  And with the Stoics, in regard to celibacy.
+
+     (By this time all the ladies have gone into the house.)
+
+ARDEN:  Successor!  Was the word successor?
+
+     (ARDEN, SWITHIN, and OSIER are excitedly searching the notes when
+     SPIRAL passes and strolls into the house.  His air of self-
+     satisfaction increases their uneasiness they follow him.  ASTRAEA
+     and LYRA come down the path.)
+
+
+
+                                 SCENE V
+
+                              ASTRAEA, LYRA
+
+
+LYRA:  Oh!  Pluriel, ask me of him!  I wish I were less sure he would not
+be at the next corner I turn.
+
+ASTRAEA:  You speak of your husband strangely, Lyra.
+
+LYRA:  My head is out of a sack.  I managed my escape from him this
+morning by renouncing bath and breakfast; and what a relief, to be in the
+railway carriage alone! that is, when the engine snorted.  And if I set
+eyes on him within a week, he will hear some truths.  His idea of
+marriage is, the taking of the woman into custody.  My hat is on, and on
+goes Pluriel's.  My foot on the stairs; I hear his boot behind me.  In my
+boudoir I am alone one minute, and then the door opens to the inevitable.
+I pay a visit, he is passing the house as I leave it.  He will not even
+affect surprise.  I belong to him, I am cat's mouse.  And he will look
+doating on me in public.  And when I speak to anybody, he is that fearful
+picture of all smirks.  Fling off a kid glove after a round of calls;
+feel your hand--there you have me now that I am out of him for my half a
+day, if for as long.
+
+ASTRAEA:  This is one of the world's happy marriages!
+
+LYRA:  This is one of the world's choice dishes!  And I have it planted
+under my nostrils eternally.  Spare me the mention of Pluriel until he
+appears; that's too certain this very day.  Oh! good husband! good kind
+of man! whatever you please; only some peace, I do pray, for the husband-
+haunted wife.  I like him, I like him, of course, but I want to breathe.
+Why, an English boy perpetually bowled by a Christmas pudding would come
+to loathe the mess.
+
+ASTRAEA:  His is surely the excess of a merit.
+
+LYRA:  Excess is a poison.  Excess of a merit is a capital offence in
+morality.  It disgusts, us with virtue.  And you are the cunningest of
+fencers, tongue, or foils.  You lead me to talk of myself, and I hate the
+subject.  By the way, you have practised with Mr. Arden.
+
+ASTRAEA:  A tiresome instructor, who lets you pass his guard to
+compliment you on a hit.
+
+LYRA:  He rather wins me.
+
+ASTRAEA:  He does at first.
+
+LYRA:  Begins Plurielizing, without the law to back him, does he?
+
+ASTRAEA:  The fencing lessons are at an end.
+
+LYRA:  The duetts with Mr. Swithin's violoncello continue?
+
+ASTRAEA:  He broke through the melody.
+
+LYRA:  There were readings in poetry with Mr. Osier, I recollect.
+
+ASTRAEA:  His own compositions became obtrusive.
+
+LYRA:  No fencing, no music, no poetry!  no West Coast of Africa either,
+I suppose.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Very well!  I am on my defence.  You at least shall not
+misunderstand me, Lyra.  One intense regret I have; that I did not live
+in the time of the Amazons.  They were free from this question of
+marriage; this babble of love.  Why am I so persecuted?  He will not take
+a refusal.  There are sacred reasons.  I am supported by every woman
+having the sense of her dignity.  I am perverted, burlesqued by the fury
+of wrath I feel at their incessant pursuit.  And I despise Mr. Osier and
+Mr. Swithin because they have an air of pious agreement with the Dame,
+and are conspirators behind their mask.
+
+LYRA:  False, false men!
+
+ASTRAEA:  They come to me.  I am complimented on being the vulnerable
+spot.
+
+LYRA:  The object desired is usually addressed by suitors, my poor
+Astraea!
+
+ASTRAEA:  With the assumption, that as I am feminine I must necessarily
+be in the folds of the horrible constrictor they call Love, and that I
+leap to the thoughts of their debasing marriage.
+
+LYRA:  One of them goes to Mr. Homeware.
+
+ASTRAEA:  All are sent to him in turn.  He can dispose of them.
+
+LYRA:  Now that is really masterly fun, my dear; most creditable to you!
+Love, marriage, a troop of suitors, and uncle Homeware.  No, it would not
+have occurred to me, and--I am considered to have some humour.  Of
+course, he disposes of them.  He seemed to have a fairly favourable
+opinion of Mr. Arden.
+
+ASTRAEA:  I do not share it.  He is the least respectful of the
+sentiments entertained by me.  Pray, spare me the mention of him, as you
+say of your husband.  He has that pitiful conceit in men, which sets them
+thinking that a woman must needs be susceptible to the declaration of the
+mere existence of their passion.  He is past argument.  Impossible for
+him to conceive a woman's having a mind above the conditions of her sex.
+A woman, according to him, can have no ideal of life, except as a ball to
+toss in the air and catch in a cup.  Put him aside.  .  .  . We creatures
+are doomed to marriage, and if we shun it, we are a kind of cripple.
+He is grossly earthy in his view of us.  We are unable to move a step
+in thought or act unless we submit to have a husband.  That is his
+reasoning.  Nature!  Nature!  I have to hear of Nature!  We must be above
+Nature, I tell him, or, we shall be very much below.  He is ranked among
+our clever young men; and he can be amusing.  So far he passes muster;
+and he has a pleasant voice.  I dare say he is an uncle Homeware's good
+sort of boy.  Girls like him.  Why does he not fix his attention upon one
+of them; Why upon me?  We waste our time in talking of him .  .  .  .
+The secret of it is, that he has no reverence.  The marriage he vaunts is
+a mere convenient arrangement for two to live together under command of
+nature.  Reverence for the state of marriage is unknown to him.  How
+explain my feeling?  I am driven into silence.  Cease to speak of him
+. . . .  He is the dupe of his eloquence--his passion, he calls it.
+I have only to trust myself to him, and--I shall be one of the world's
+married women!  Words are useless.  How am I to make him see that it is
+I who respect the state of marriage by refusing; not he by perpetually
+soliciting.  Once married, married for ever.  Widow is but a term.  When
+women hold their own against him, as I have done, they will be more
+esteemed.  I have resisted and conquered.  I am sorry I do not share in
+the opinion of your favourite.
+
+LYRA:  Mine?
+
+ASTRAEA:  You spoke warmly of him.
+
+LYRA:  Warmly, was it?
+
+ASTRAEA:  You are not blamed, my dear: he has a winning manner.
+
+LYRA:  I take him to be a manly young fellow, smart enough; handsome too.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Oh, he has good looks.
+
+LYRA:  And a head, by repute.
+
+ASTRAEA:  For the world's work, yes.
+
+LYRA:  Not romantic.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Romantic ideas are for dreamy simperers.
+
+LYRA:  Amazons repudiate them.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Laugh at me.  Half my time I am laughing at myself.  I should
+regain my pride if I could be resolved on a step.  I am strong to resist;
+I have not strength to move.
+
+LYRA:  I see the sphinx of Egypt!
+
+ASTRAEA:  And all the while I am a manufactory of gunpowder in this quiet
+old-world Sabbath circle of dear good souls, with their stereotyped
+interjections, and orchestra of enthusiasms; their tapering delicacies:
+the rejoicing they have in their common agreement on all created things.
+To them it is restful.  It spurs me to fly from rooms and chairs and beds
+and houses.  I sleep hardly a couple of hours.  Then into the early
+morning air, out with the birds; I know no other pleasure.
+
+LYRA:  Hospital work for a variation: civil or military.  The former
+involves the house-surgeon: the latter the grateful lieutenant.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Not if a woman can resist .  .  .  I go to it proof-armoured.
+
+LYRA:  What does the Dame say?
+
+ASTRAEA:  Sighs over me!  Just a little maddening to hear.
+
+LYRA:  When we feel we have the strength of giants, and are bidden to sit
+and smile!  You should rap out some of our old sweet-innocent garden
+oaths with her--'Carnation!  Dame!'  That used to make her dance on her
+seat.--'But, dearest Dame, it is as natural an impulse for women to have
+that relief as for men; and natural will out, begonia! it will!'  We ran
+through the book of Botany for devilish objurgations.  I do believe our
+misconduct caused us to be handed to the good man at the altar as the
+right corrective.  And you were the worst offender.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Was I?  I could be now, though I am so changed a creature.
+
+LYRA:  You enjoy the studies with your Spiral, come!
+
+ASTRAEA:  Professor Spiral is the one honest gentleman here.  He does
+homage to my principles.  I have never been troubled by him: no silly
+hints or side-looks--you know, the dog at the forbidden bone.
+
+LYRA:  A grand orator.
+
+ASTRAEA:  He is.  You fix on the smallest of his gifts.  He is
+intellectually and morally superior.
+
+LYRA:  Praise of that kind makes me rather incline to prefer his
+inferiors.  He fed gobble-gobble on your puffs of incense.  I coughed
+and scraped the gravel; quite in vain; he tapped for more and more.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Professor Spiral is a thinker; he is a sage.  He gives women
+their due.
+
+LYRA:  And he is a bachelor too--or consequently.
+
+ASTRAEA:  If you like you may be as playful with me as the Lyra of our
+maiden days used to be.  My dear, my dear, how glad I am to have you
+here!  You remind me that I once had a heart.  It will beat again with
+you beside me, and I shall look to you for protection.  A novel request
+from me.  From annoyance, I mean.  It has entirely altered my character.
+Sometimes I am afraid to think of what I was, lest I should suddenly
+romp, and perform pirouettes and cry 'Carnation!'  There is the bell.
+We must not be late when the professor condescends to sit for meals.
+
+LYRA:  That rings healthily in the professor.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Arm in arm, my Lyra.
+
+LYRA:  No Pluriel yet!
+
+     (They enter the house, and the time changes to evening of the same
+     day.  The scene is still the garden.)
+
+
+
+                                 SCENE VI
+
+                              ASTRAEA, ARDEN
+
+ASTRAEA:  Pardon me if I do not hear you well.
+
+ARDEN:  I will not even think you barbarous.
+
+ASTRAEA:  I am.  I am the object of the chase.
+
+ARDEN:  The huntsman draws the wood, then, and not you.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               At any instant I am forced to run,
+               Or turn in my defence: how can I be
+               Other than barbarous?  You are the cause.
+
+ARDEN:  No: heaven that made you beautiful's the cause.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Say, earth, that gave you instincts.  Bring me down
+               To instincts!  When by chance I speak awhile
+               With our professor, you appear in haste,
+               Full cry to sight again the missing hare.
+               Away ideas!  All that's divinest flies!
+               I have to bear in mind how young you are.
+
+ARDEN:
+               You have only to look up to me four years,
+               Instead of forty!
+
+ASTRAEA:  Sir?
+
+
+
+ARDEN
+                    There's my misfortune!
+               And worse that, young, I love as a young man.
+               Could I but quench the fire, I might conceal
+               The youthfulness offending you so much.
+
+ASTRAEA:  I wish you would.  I wish it earnestly.
+
+ARDEN:  Impossible.  I burn.
+
+ASTRAEA:  You should not burn.
+
+ARDEN
+               'Tis more than I.  'Tis fire.  It masters will.
+               You would not say I should not' if you knew fire.
+               It seizes.  It devours.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Dry wood.
+
+ARDEN:
+               Cold wit!
+               How cold you can be!  But be cold, for sweet
+               You must be.  And your eyes are mine: with them
+               I see myself: unworthy to usurp
+               The place I hold a moment.  While I look
+               I have my happiness.
+
+ASTRAEA:  You should look higher.
+
+ARDEN:
+               Through you to the highest.  Only through you!
+                    Through you
+               The mark I may attain is visible,
+               And I have strength to dream of winning it.
+               You are the bow that speeds the arrow: you
+               The glass that brings the distance nigh.  My world
+               Is luminous through you, pure heavenly,
+               But hangs upon the rose's outer leaf,
+               Not next her heart.  Astraea!  my own beloved!
+
+ASTRAEA:  We may be excellent friends.  And I have faults.
+
+ARDEN:  Name them: I am hungering for more to love.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               I waver very constantly:  I have
+               No fixity of feeling or of sight.
+               I have no courage: I can often dream
+               Of daring: when I wake I am in dread.
+               I am inconstant as a butterfly,
+               And shallow as a brook with little fish!
+               Strange little fish, that tempt the small boy's net,
+               But at a touch straight dive!  I am any one's,
+               And no one's!  I am vain.
+               Praise of my beauty lodges in my ears.
+               The lark reels up with it; the nightingale
+               Sobs bleeding; the flowers nod; I could believe
+               A poet, though he praised me to my face.
+
+ARDEN:
+               Never had poet so divine a fount
+               To drink of!
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Have I given you more to love
+
+ARDEN:
+               More!  You have given me your inner mind,
+               Where conscience in the robes of Justice shoots
+               Light so serenely keen that in such light
+               Fair infants, I newly criminal of earth,'
+               As your friend Osier says, might show some blot.
+               Seraphs might!  More to love?  Oh!  these dear faults
+               Lead you to me like troops of laughing girls
+               With garlands.  All the fear is, that you trifle,
+               Feigning them.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               For what purpose?
+
+ARDEN:
+                         Can I guess?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+
+               I think 'tis you who have the trifler's note.
+               My hearing is acute, and when you speak,
+               Two voices ring, though you speak fervidly.
+               Your Osier quotation jars.  Beware!
+               Why were you absent from our meeting-place
+               This morning?
+
+
+.
+
+ARDEN:
+                    I was on the way, and met
+               Your uncle Homeware
+
+ASTRAEA:  Ah!
+
+ARDEN:  He loves you.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               He loves me: he has never understood.
+               He loves me as a creature of the flock;
+               A little whiter than some others.
+               Yes; He loves me, as men love; not to uplift;
+               Not to have faith in; not to spiritualize.
+               For him I am a woman and a widow
+               One of the flock, unmarked save by a brand.
+               He said it!--You confess it!  You have learnt
+               To share his error, erring fatally.
+
+ARDEN:  By whose advice went I to him?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                              By whose?
+               Pursuit that seemed incessant: persecution.
+               Besides, I have changed since then: I change; I change;
+               It is too true I change.  I could esteem
+               You better did you change.  And had you heard
+               The noble words this morning from the mouth
+               Of our professor, changed were you, or raised
+               Above love-thoughts, love-talk, and flame and flutter,
+               High as eternal snows.  What said he else,
+               My uncle Homeware?
+
+ARDEN:
+                         That you were not free:
+               And that he counselled us to use our wits.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               But I am free I free to be ever free!
+               My freedom keeps me free!  He counselled us?
+               I am not one in a conspiracy.
+               I scheme no discord with my present life.
+               Who does, I cannot look on as my friend.
+               Not free?  You know me little.  Were I chained,
+               For liberty I would sell liberty
+               To him who helped me to an hour's release.
+               But having perfect freedom .  .  .
+
+ARDEN: No.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Good sir,
+               You check me?
+
+ARDEN: Perfect freedom?
+
+ASTRAEA: Perfect!
+
+ARDEN: No!
+
+ASTRAEA:  Am I awake?  What blinds me?
+
+ARDEN:
+                                   Filaments
+               The slenderest ever woven about a brain
+               From the brain's mists, by the little sprite called
+                    Fancy.
+               A breath would scatter them; but that one breath
+               Must come of animation.  When the heart
+               Is as, a frozen sea the brain spins webs.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               'Tis very singular!
+               I understand.
+               You translate cleverly.  I hear in verse
+               My uncle Homeware's prose.  He has these notions.
+               Old men presume to read us.
+
+ARDEN:
+               Young men may.
+               You gaze on an ideal reflecting you
+               Need I say beautiful?  Yet it reflects
+               Less beauty than the lady whom I love
+               Breathes, radiates.  Look on yourself in me.
+               What harm in gazing?  You are this flower
+               You are that spirit.  But the spirit fed
+               With substance of the flower takes all its bloom!
+               And where in spirits is the bloom of the flower?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               'Tis very singular.  You have a tone
+               Quite changed.
+
+ARDEN:
+               You wished a change.  To show you, how
+               I read you . . .
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Oh!  no, no.  It means dissection.
+               I never heard of reading character
+               That did not mean dissection.  Spare me that.
+               I am wilful, violent, capricious, weak,
+               Wound in a web of my own spinning-wheel,
+               A star-gazer, a riband in the wind .  .  .
+
+ARDEN:
+               A banner in the wind!  and me you lead,
+               And shall!  At least, I follow till I win.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Forbear, I do beseech you.
+
+ARDEN:
+                              I have had
+               Your hand in mine.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Once.
+
+ARDEN:
+                              Once!
+               Once!  'twas; once, was the heart alive,
+               Leaping to break the ice.  Oh!  once, was aye
+               That laughed at frosty May like spring's return.
+               Say you are terrorized: you dare not melt.
+               You like me; you might love me; but to dare,
+               Tasks more than courage.  Veneration, friends,
+               Self-worship, which is often self-distrust,
+               Bar the good way to you, and make a dream
+               A fortress and a prison.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                              Changed!  you have changed
+               Indeed.  When you so boldly seized my hand
+               It seemed a boyish freak, done boyishly.
+               I wondered at Professor Spiral's choice
+               Of you for an example, and our hope.
+               Now you grow dangerous.  You must have thought,
+               And some things true you speak-save 'terrorized.'
+               It may be flattering to sweet self-love
+               To deem me terrorized.--'Tis my own soul,
+               My heart, my mind, all that I hold most sacred,
+               Not fear of others, bids me walk aloof.
+               Who terrorizes me?  Who could?  Friends?  Never!
+               The world? as little.  Terrorized!
+
+ARDEN:
+                              Forgive me.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               I might reply, Respect me.  If I loved,
+               If I could be so faithless as to love,
+               Think you I would not rather noise abroad
+               My shame for penitence than let friends dwell
+               Deluded by an image of one vowed
+               To superhuman, who the common mock
+               Of things too human has at heart become.
+
+ARDEN:
+               You would declare your love?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                              I said, my shame.
+               The woman that's the widow is ensnared,
+               Caught in the toils! away with widows!--Oh!
+               I hear men shouting it.
+
+ARDEN:
+               But shame there's none
+               For me in loving: therefore I may take
+               Your friends to witness?  tell them that my pride
+               Is in the love of you?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                              'Twill soon bring
+               The silence that should be between us two,
+               And sooner give me peace.
+
+ARDEN:
+               And you consent?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               For the sake of peace and silence I consent,
+               You should be warned that you will cruelly
+               Disturb them.  But 'tis best.  You should be warned
+               Your pleading will be hopeless.  But 'tis best.
+               You have my full consent.  Weigh well your acts,
+               You cannot rest where you have cast this bolt
+               Lay that to heart, and you are cherished, prized,
+               Among them: they are estimable ladies,
+               Warmest of friends; though you may think they soar
+               Too loftily for your measure of strict sense
+               (And as my uncle Homeware's pupil, sir,
+               In worldliness, you do), just minds they have:
+               Once know them, and your banishment will fret.
+               I would not run such risks.  You will offend,
+               Go near to outrage them; and perturbate
+               As they have not deserved of you.  But I,
+               Considering I am nothing in the scales
+               You balance, quite and of necessity
+               Consent.  When you have weighed it, let me hear.
+               My uncle Homeware steps this way in haste.
+               We have been talking long, and in full view !
+
+
+
+                                SCENE VII
+
+                         ASTRAEA, ARDEN, HOMEWARE
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               Astraea, child!  You, Arden, stand aside.
+               Ay, if she were a maid you might speak first,
+               But being a widow she must find her tongue.
+               Astraea, they await you.  State the fact
+               As soon as you are questioned, fearlessly.
+               Open the battle with artillery.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               What is the matter, uncle Homeware?
+
+HOMEWARE (playing fox):
+                                   What?
+               Why, we have watched your nice preliminaries
+               From the windows half the evening.  Now run in.
+               Their patience has run out, and, as I said,
+               Unlimber and deliver fire at once.
+               Your aunts Virginia and Winifred,
+               With Lady Oldlace, are the senators,
+               The Dame for Dogs.  They wear terrific brows,
+               But be not you affrighted, my sweet chick,
+               And tell them uncle Homeware backs your choice,
+               By lawyer and by priests! by altar, fount,
+               And testament!
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               My choice!  what have I chosen?
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               She asks?  You hear her, Arden?--what and whom!
+
+ARDEN:
+               Surely, sir!  .  .  . heavens!  have you . . .
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                                   Surely the old fox,
+               In all I have read, is wiser than the young:
+               And if there is a game for fox to play,
+               Old fox plays cunningest.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Why fox?  Oh!  uncle,
+               You make my heart beat with your mystery;
+               I never did love riddles.  Why sit they
+               Awaiting me, and looking terrible?
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               It is reported of an ancient folk
+               Which worshipped idols, that upon a day
+               Their idol pitched before them on the floor
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Was ever so ridiculous a tale!
+
+HOMEWARE
+               To call the attendant fires to account
+               Their elders forthwith sat .  .  .
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                                   Is there no prayer
+               Will move you, uncle Homeware?
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                              God-daughter,
+               This gentleman for you I have proposed
+               As husband.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Arden! we are lost.
+
+ARDEN:
+                                   Astraea!
+               Support him!  Though I knew not his design,
+               It plants me in mid-heaven.  Would it were
+               Not you, but I to bear the shock.  My love!
+               We lost, you cry; you join me with you lost!
+               The truth leaps from your heart: and let it shine
+               To light us on our brilliant battle day
+               And victory
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Who betrayed me!
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                              Who betrayed?
+               Your voice, your eyes, your veil, your knife and fork;
+               Your tenfold worship of your widowhood;
+               As he who sees he must yield up the flag,
+               Hugs it oath-swearingly!  straw-drowningly.
+               To be reasonable: you sent this gentleman
+               Referring him to me .  .  .  .
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                                        And that is false.
+               All's false.  You have conspired.  I am disgraced.
+               But you will learn you have judged erroneously.
+               I am not the frail creature you conceive.
+               Between your vision of life's aim, and theirs
+               Who presently will question me, I cling
+               To theirs as light: and yours I deem a den
+               Where souls can have no growth.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               But when we touched
+               The point of hand-pressings, 'twas rightly time
+               To think of wedding ties?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Arden, adieu!
+
+                    (She rushes into house.)
+
+
+
+                                SCENE VIII
+
+                             ARDEN, HOMEWARE
+
+
+ARDEN:
+               Adieu!  she said.  With her that word is final.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               Strange!  how young people blowing words like clouds
+               On winds, now fair, now foul, and as they please
+               Should still attach the Fates to them.
+
+ARDEN:
+                              She's wounded
+               Wounded to the quick!
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                         The quicker our success: for short
+               Of that, these dames, who feel for everything,
+               Feel nothing.
+
+ARDEN:
+                         Your intention has been kind,
+               Dear sir, but you have ruined me.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                         Good-night. (Going.)
+
+ARDEN:
+               Yet she said, we are lost, in her surprise.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               Good morning.  (Returning.)
+
+ARDEN:
+                         I suppose that I am bound
+               (If I could see for what I should be glad!)
+               To thank you, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                         Look hard but give no thanks.
+               I found my girl descending on the road
+               Of breakneck coquetry, and barred her way.
+               Either she leaps the bar, or she must back.
+               That means she marries you, or says good-bye.
+                                        (Going again.)
+
+ARDEN:
+               Now she's among them.  (Looking at window.)
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               Now she sees her mind.
+
+ARDEN:
+               It is my destiny she now decides!
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               There's now suspense on earth and round the spheres.
+
+ARDEN:
+               She's mine now: mine!  or I am doomed to go.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               The marriage ring, or the portmanteau now!
+
+ARDEN:
+               Laugh as you like, air!  I am not ashamed
+               To love and own it.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               So the symptoms show.
+               Rightly, young man, and proving a good breed.
+               To further it's a duty to mankind
+               And I have lent my push, But recollect:
+               Old Ilion was not conquered in a day.
+                                   (He enters house.)
+
+ARDEN:
+               Ten years!  If I may win her at the end!
+
+
+                                 CURTAIN
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A great oration may be a sedative
+A male devotee is within an inch of a miracle
+Above Nature, I tell him, or, we shall be very much below
+As in all great oratory!  The key of it is the pathos
+Back from the altar to discover that she has chained herself
+Cupid clipped of wing is a destructive parasite
+Excess of a merit is a capital offence in morality
+His idea of marriage is, the taking of the woman into custody
+I am a discordant instrument  I do not readily vibrate
+I like him, I like him, of course, but I want to breathe
+I who respect the state of marriage by refusing
+Love and war have been compared--Both require strategy
+Peace, I do pray, for the husband-haunted wife
+Period of his life a man becomes too voraciously constant
+Pitiful conceit in men
+Rejoicing they have in their common agreement
+Self-worship, which is often self-distrust
+Suspects all young men and most young women
+Their idol pitched before them on the floor
+Were I chained,    For liberty I would sell liberty
+Woman descending from her ideal to the gross reality of man
+Your devotion craves an enormous exchange
+
+
+[The End]
+
+
+
+
+**********************************************************************
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Sentimentalists (Play), by Meredith
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+End of the Project Gutenberg etext of The Sentimentalists (Play)
+by George Meredith
+
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