The M.F. swoons away....
CURTAIN
The Little Guiggols
II
THE LURCH
[Tyltyl. “It seems hardly worth while, then, to take so much trouble.”—The Betrothal.]
I AM afraid this little Guiggol has somehow got mixed up With M. Maeterlinck; but the two schools have, of course, a good deal in common, so it should work out fairly well.
The play opens in The Place Which is Neither Here nor There; it seems to be a high hill entirely surrounded by fog. The unfortunate Bill Tyl and his sister Methyl[3] are doing their utmost to die, driven on by the sinister figure of Indigestion, which grows larger and larger as the play progresses. They meet with a good deal of opposition in their simple project, and when the play begins they have already been to the House of Uncles and The Abode of the Half-Baked for permission to die; but they always find that before they can do it they have to go to just one more place for information and advice. It is like walking up one of those tiresome mountains which never seem to have a top; or it is like trying to find out which Government Department is really responsible; or it is like.... But enough.
[3] Who afterwards gave her name to the celebrated spirits.
Bill and Methyl have now been told that they cannot die until they have gone down and rescued all the people who have been left in The Lurch during their lives; so they are discovered standing on the hill preparing to go down to The Lurch. Indigestion endeavours to dissuade them, saying that they had much better go down the other side of the hill into The Limbo. But the seductive figure of Food intervenes, gorgeously dressed in aspic, and eventually prevails.