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Roughsedge, next day, kindled a passion in the girl's eyes by some tales of the step-daughter. Mrs. Colwood wondered whether, indeed, she could be bored, as Mrs. Minchin had not achieved it. Those who talk easily and well, like Diana, are less keenly aware, she thought, of the platitudes of their neighbors. They are not defenceless, like the shy and the silent.
I feel a terrible pity, but all the same I cannot touch them. And then I become a coward and dare not face them and talk straight as man to man. I repeat my platitudes to the ceiling, and they go away thinking, and thinking rightly, that I am a fool." Wratislaw looked worried. "That is one of my complaints. The other is that on certain occasions you cannot hold yourself in check.
Later in the day, following other party leaders, Herr Haase, spokesman for the Socialists, got up in the House, voiced a few harmless platitudes about Socialist opposition to war on principle, and then pledged the party's 111 votes solidly to the War Credits for which the Government was asking.
He would have preferred action, but not unlike many human beings who strive to appear profound under a broadside of philosophical eloquence, applauding each bursting shrapnel of platitudes by mentally wagging their tails, Chance wagged his tail, impressed more by the detonation than the substance. And Chance was quite a superior dog, as dogs go.
The platitudes of mere chat ensue, the Countess being prolocutrix. But she can be sincerely earnest in speaking of her own concern about the accident, and her family's. Also to the full about the rejoicing of everyone when it was "certain that all would turn out well." She has been bound over to say nothing about the eyesight, and keeps pledges; almost too transparently, perhaps.
These men are still in the age of platitudes, so far as music is concerned; an infantile aria is to them what some foolish rhymed proverb is to the Arabs: a thing of God, a portent, a joy for ever. You may visit the cathedral; there is a fine verde antico column on either side of the sumptuous main portal.
If only the tortured one could rush away to some lonely moor, there to weep and wail to his heart's content, the pain would not be so insufferable; but in life that cannot be, and Valmai smiled and talked platitudes with a martyr's patience. In the drawing-room, after dinner, she buried herself in the old, red arm-chair, setting herself to endure her misery to the bitter end.
Kindly callers hurt her, too, with the well-meant platitudes with which they strove to cover the nakedness of bereavement. A letter from Phil Blake was an added sting. Phil had heard of the baby's birth, but not of its death, and she wrote Anne a congratulatory letter of sweet mirth which hurt her horribly. "I would have laughed over it so happily if I had my baby," she sobbed to Marilla.
Platitudes would not do for this child, he reflected, and to lecture her then even on the A B C's of the social code would be wounding her ingenuous faith. "If this is the way it all turns out, and I can't have your friendship any longer, what is it that you're going to do or I'm going to do?" she insisted. "That's losing too much, just because one is grown up."
Natalie's back was carefully turned to the room, but there was no mistaking her. Audrey wanted madly to get away, but the coffee had come and the young clergyman was talking gentle platitudes in a rather sweet but monotonous voice. Then Rodney saw her, and bowed. Almost immediately afterward she heard the soft rustle that was Natalie, and found them both beside her. "Can we run you up-town?"
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