The Eternal (apologetically, and handing over the crown and sceptre of Heaven): Not at all. Its a pleasure to make this trifling acknowledgment of your genius.
The End of the Play.
THE ENCHANTED ISLAND
(A Fantasy in the manner of J. M. Barrie.)
I
The pink and white drawing-room of Emily Jane’s house—or rather of the house of Emily Jane’s father, Mister Balbus, is so caressingly harmonious to the eye, so surpassingly restful, so eminently a place of happy people, that one knows instinctively it will be visited by a tragedy. It is just a question of time, and this gentle atmosphere will find itself charged with the electricity of conflicting human emotions; dear women’s hearts will break and be laid aside in pot-pourri jars; strong sentimental men will walk their sweet, melancholy way; and we shall all go home the cleaner, mentally, for a refreshing bath of tears. Emily Jane is not yet in the drawing-room. The appropriate atmosphere has first to be created, so that we may catch our breath just a little as Miss Compton or Miss Celli trips on. Emily Jane is really a very ordinary kind of girl, plump, pleasant-looking, and neither very clever nor specially athletic. But to her mother she is still a tiny toddling mite in a knitted woollen coat with pink ribbons, and to Daddy, Mister Balbus, she is a resplendent goddess.
At last, after a preliminary conversation about stamp-collecting, or some other harmless hobby, between McVittie and Price, two old dullards introduced to fill in the few awkward minutes while the latecomers are clambering into their stalls, Mister Balbus comes into the room. There is nothing remarkable about Mister Balbus. In the eyes of his wife he is an irresistibly lovable plexus of male weaknesses; in the eyes of Emily Jane he is closely related to the Almighty. Actually he is nobody in particular, an architect of sorts; but we are to see him through their eyes, and so he appears in the play as a genial and gigantic mixture of a demigod and a buffoon. Mr. Aynesworth is appropriately selected to represent him.
“Good morning,” he says.
“Good morning,” reply McVittie and Price, delighted that any of the principal characters should condescend to speak to them.
“Where’s our little Emily Jane?” he asks, tenderly.