The company draped itself in attitudes more or less graceful all over the furniture and the window-ledges, and assumed expressions of gloomy concentration. Mrs. De Frizac-Jones cleared her throat two or three times in a silvery way, and then began to read in a deadly monotone of the soul-freezing sort which villains used to employ in the "ten-twenty-thirt's" before the movies killed the spoken drama.
Personally, we feared the worst from the very moment that the name of Mæterlinck was mentioned. It acts like a spell. We have seen big, bouncing matrons, accustomed to bully their husbands and run large families, turn pale and tremble at the sound of it. We have known it to reduce to silence even the sort of prosperous business person who talks continually in a loud voice about his new car, and the cost of its tires, and the number of its cylinders, and the oceans of gasoline it consumes every time it runs around the block. The word makes them feel like a greenhorn at a Spiritist sceance watching a visitor from another plane materialize in the corner of the room.
The only people who seem to thrive on a diet of Mæterlinck are the æsthetes like Mrs. De Frizac-Jones. The gloomier the twilight of his scene, the more mournful the voices that float down the wind, the more the real enthusiasts expand and burgeon. Just give them a nice poetic strangling or something like that, and they are perfectly happy. Certainly, Mrs. De Frizac-Jones seemed to get a lot of fun out of "The Death of Tintagiles."
It was a cheerful little piece, all about a dear child and a black castle and a vampire queen. His young sisters try to shield him in their arms, but the queen's servants tear him away, and she slowly strangles him to death behind a big iron door while his sisters beat in despair upon it.
The reader will recognize at once how much better and stronger one feels when a play like this is over. Personally we almost gave three cheers when the poor little beggar was finally and completely killed. It put him out of pain—us, too. But fortunately Mrs. De Frizac-Jones checked us in time.
"No applause!" she commanded the company. "No applause! Silence is best."
We heroically restrained our desire to clap with our hands and pound with our feet on the rug; and everyone else sat still and frowned in intense thought. While they were wrestling with their souls, we slipped out into the hall. There we found one of the other men slipping away, too. Neither spoke a word, till we were both safely out on the sidewalk. Then he turned and pointed with his thumb to the house.
"Don't they beat hell!" he said.
BEAUTY IN THE BANK