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Updated: May 17, 2025
I sat and talked in dumb-show with Lady Duns-combe, was fittingly snubbed by Lord Dre-lincourt, and at length found myself alone with my confederate. The scene before me I knew to be one of the strongest of its class in the whole range of modern drama. I knew, impotent as I was, that I could play it I could feel the sense of power tingling through my own impuissance.
From this lofty perch she would take her spirited part in the conversation of the 'faithful, and would revel in all their fun; but, since the accident to her jaw, she had abandoned the effort involved in real hilarity, and had substituted a kind of symbolical dumb-show which signified, without endangering or even fatiguing her in any way, that she was 'laughing until she cried. At the least witticism aimed by any of the circle against a 'bore, or against a former member of the circle who was now relegated to the limbo of 'bores' and to the utter despair of M. Verdurin, who had always made out that he was just as easily amused as his wife, but who, since his laughter was the 'real thing, was out of breath in a moment, and so was overtaken and vanquished by her device of a feigned but continuous hilarity she would utter a shrill cry, shut tight her little bird-like eyes, which were beginning to be clouded over by a cataract, and quickly, as though she had only just time to avoid some indecent sight or to parry a mortal blow, burying her face in her hands, which completely engulfed it, and prevented her from seeing anything at all, she would appear to be struggling to suppress, to eradicate a laugh which, were she to give way to it, must inevitably leave her inanimate.
He made an exception, however, of little Edith, whom he not only permitted to clap him to any extent, but deliberately invited her to do so by laying his great head in her lap, rubbing himself against her, and wagging his bushy tail, as if to say, "Now, little girl, do what you will with me!" And Eda never refused the animal's dumb-show request.
I left him gabbling to himself, sometimes grinning as if greatly diverted, sometimes lifting a trembling hand to help his ghostly recital by an equally ghostly dumb-show, and went on deck, satisfied that he was too weak to get to the fire and meddle with it, but sufficiently invigorated by his long night's rest to sit up without tumbling off the bench.
The phrasing may be exquisite, the thought well-knit, the emotion genuine, yet all is, as it were, dumb-show where no community of feeling exists between the speaker and his audience.
At length the Sheriff, Hungerford Penruddock, Esq. who looked ready to faint with shame at what he was about to do, dissolved the meeting, and ordered the Riot Act to be read, which, I believe, little whiffling Mr. Salmon made a sort of dumb-show or pretence to do, and then immediately gave orders to have me taken into custody.
"You are such a little one!" she said. "Father's would never fit." And having poured out fresh water and bidden me wash my body, she stole out. She returned with a white garment in her hand and real mirth now in her eyes. My toilet done, she slipped the garment over me. It fell to my feet in long folds, yet so lightly that I scarcely felt I was clothed: and she clapped her hands in dumb-show.
"Oh!" cried Lillian, springing to her feet as she watched the dumb-show at the distance. "They want Archie to go to drive. Oh, how can I make them hear me? I am sure Ned will not take him without permission." She waved her hand, but the distance was obviously too great for the signal to be understood, and Briscoe's attitude was doubtful and perplexed.
O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-show and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod; pray you, avoid it.
Calico and sheep's wool and painted flowers went down the room under the low gas brackets, and her eyes, avoiding his, looked out from a little personal silence into the far-off whirl of the room, and heard the dimmed music and the scrape of feet. For him the world was a pale dumb-show, and she the absorbing centre.
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