The Sentimentalists | Page 2

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