Part 8 (1/2)
”Meaningless words, when one is at enmity with the G.o.ds for withholding. What fine spun theories we mortals have!”
To the listener every conversation contains a deal of commonplace: it may be that the speakers really have nothing interesting to say, and it may be that their conversation is so personal as to interest themselves only. The reader occupies the position of a listener, and it is the duty of the author to suppress all commonplace dialogue, unless, as sometimes happens, it a.s.sists in plot or character development.
Conversation like the following is--let us hope--interesting to the parties concerned, but the reader would be delivered from it as from a plague.
”I am so glad to get _one_ desire of my heart.”
”And that is?” said Al.
”Snow!”
”So glad that is all. I thought you had spied my new tie and was planning some 'crazy design' upon it.”
”Oh, let me see! Now, really, that is becoming to your style, but I think it would suit mine better. 'Brown eyes and black hair should never wear blue--that is for grey eyes, the tried and true.' See?”
”Neither the eyes nor the tie,” said Al, as he turned his back and looked up at the ceiling.
The real difficulty with this dialogue is that the writer attempted to make his characters ”smart” and so permitted them to indulge in repartee; but as they were only commonplace people the privilege was too much for them and they merely twaddled. They did succeed in being humorous, but the humor is unconscious.
Yet unconscious humor is preferable to the forced and desperate attempt at fun-making which we have in this extract:
”I don't believe he is proud,” said Joe to Tom, his younger brother. ”But you know he has been to the Holy Land and cannot now a.s.sociate with such wicked sinners as we are. Or else he has turned Jew and thinks we are Samaritans.”
”You two are getting no better fast,” said the doctor, after a hearty laugh. ”Wait until you get sick, I'll give you a pill that will make you repent.”
”We are never going to get sick,” said Joe, ”but expect to live until we are so old that we will dry up and blow away with the wind, or go to heaven in a 'Chariot of Fire.'” Turning to the doctor Joe continued: ”You know Will has a girl, and he is awful pious. If one looks off his book in church, even to wink at his best girl, he thinks it an awful sin. And that the guilty one should be dipped in holy water, or do penitence for a week.”
It is a common trick for the novice to put into the mouths of his characters just such stale jokes and cheap jests, with the idea that he is doing something extremely funny. He is, but his audience is laughing at him, not at his characters.
But most exasperating of all is the author who, while making his characters suffer the most dreadful afflictions, lets them think and talk only commonplaces still, like the poor sawdust dolls that they are:
”What is the matter with you, Annie?” I said one day, about five months after she had come home....
”You will know some time, Cicely,” she answered....
”Why can't you tell me now?” I asked.
”You will know soon enough,” she answered. ”By the by,” she went on, ”I am going to Mr. Denham's to-morrow.”
”Alone?”
”No, I am going with Cousin Ivan.”
”When will you be back?” I asked, for Mr. Denham lived twenty miles away.
”I don't know,” she answered sadly.
The next morning I went over to see Annie off. I had been there but a few minutes when her cousin, Ivan Carleon, came. He was about six feet high, with dark, brown eyes, and black hair and moustache. He was a quiet man and I liked him. When they got ready to start, Annie came and kissed me.
”I am ready now, Ivan.” And then he helped her into the buggy, and they drove off.