Part 34 (1/2)

(_Kisses her behind music._)

_Ma.s.sey._ (_Looking around._) Take a bigger sheet.

(_Sybil sits at piano quickly and plays the chorus to ”Count Your Many Blessings.” To which they all sing:_)

Count your many blessings, count them one by one, Count your blessings, see what G.o.d has done.

Count your blessings, count them one by one, And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.[55]

Is not the irony of this group of unsatisfied or dissatisfied people singing ”Count your many blessings,” fully climactic?

Not quietness of speech or action, then, but appropriateness makes any of these approved endings climactic and artistic.

There can hardly be any question that the original ending of _Still Waters Run Deep_ is theatrical in the sense that it is climactic only by the dramatic convention of its time. Except when theatricality is intentionally part of the artistic design, it is, of course, undesirable. Rostand, letting the figures in _The Romancers_ comment on their own play as a kind of epilogue, has a really artistic though theatrical climax.

_Sylvette._ (_Summoning the actors about her._) And now we five--if Master Straforel please-- Let us expound the play in which we've tried to please.

(_She comes down stage and addresses the audience, marking time with her hand._)

Light, easy rhymes; old dresses, frail and light; Love in a park, fluting an ancient tune. (_Soft music._)

_Bergamin._ A fairy-tale quintet, mad as Midsummer-night.

_Pasquin._ Some quarrels. Yes!--but all so very slight!

_Straforel._ Madness of sunstroke; madness of the moon!

A worthy villain, in his mantle dight.

_Sylvette._ Light, easy rhymes; old dresses, frail and light; Love in a park, fluting an ancient tune.

_Percinet._ A Watteau picture--not by Watteau, quite; Release from many a dreary Northern rune; Lovers and fathers; old walls, flowery-bright; A brave old plot--with music--ending soon.

_Sylvette._ Light, easy rhymes; old dresses, frail and light.

(_The stage gradually darkens; the last lines are delivered in voices that grow fainter as the actors appear to fade away into mist and darkness._)

_Curtain._[56]

So light the finale, as in London, that the figures fade from sight till only their voices are faintly heard, and theatricality helps to place the play as a mere bit of fantasy. On the other hand, there is something like genuine theatricality at the end of Sudermann's _Fritzschen_. Fritz is going to his death in a prospective duel with a man who is an unerring shot. Though the others present suspect or know the truth, his mother thinks he is going to new and finer fortunes. Isn't the following the real climax?

_Fritz._ (_Stretching out his hand to her cheerfully._) Dear Ag--(_Looks into her face, and understands that she knows. Softly, earnestly._) Farewell, then.

_Agnes._ Farewell, Fritz!

_Fritz._ I love you.

_Agnes._ I shall always love you, Fritz!

_Fritz._ Away, then, Hallerpfort! Au revoir, papa! Au revoir! Revoir!

(_Starts for the door on the right._)