I Am Your Brother by G. S. Marlowe

Author:G. S. Marlowe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2016-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

That’s a dreary sound—most uninspired—and it doesn’t pearl out of the instruments. Sir Desmond Castle, like a haggard school-teacher, drags question and answer from violin, horn, harp, violoncello, and stupid tympani. He doesn’t know the music. He’s never seen the score before, but hell! why wear black spectacles now?

Julian watches everything through the half-closed door of the “No Admittance” room. He sees: one—two, one—two. Sir Desmond’s arm and bâton like the pendulum of an old grandfather-clock. And sometimes Sir Desmond almost stops, and sniffs, and then on he goes again. One—two, one—two. But suddenly he turns around, bâton in his left hand, and, pushing his spectacles off his nose with his right hand, looks down at the first row where his beloved piece of pink meat, Lady Castle, is sitting, her head bent. Smiles, sniffs, puts his spectacles back. One—two, one—two.

Half the audience are asleep, some of them open-mouthed, with closed eyes, legs stretched out. One man—yes, of course, he looks a little bit like that old devil Robert—you remember the little flat off Portman Square?—rests his head on the décolletée shoulder of his undisguisedly bored neighbour, and the four boys from Magdalen College are huddled together, sleeping in a delicate and oh, so sweetly perfect manner. Farther up, in the gallery—now this goes too far! The man with the look of a Thames angler, the one with the splotched glasses, is throwing dice with the musical Bolshevik, and the woman clad in sour wool is sound asleep. Two or three people are reading their evening papers, Standard, Star, Evening News. That’s impertinent: but this is the climax! An usher is secretly selling evening papers hidden under his bundle of programmes, and two gentlemen are talking quite loudly: “So we went to see Henry VIII. What a film, what a film!”

“Right,” says the other one, and takes a sip from a beer bottle, “but you didn’t see King Kong.”

“What a picture, what a picture,” says the other, “great art, I call it. I haven’t seen it.”

The other one laughs. “Monster films. I don’t like them.”

“Ridiculous. Will you have a sandwich? Monsters,” he continues. “Absurd. Crazy. Insane. It’s against the law,” he shouts suddenly. “Children shouldn’t be permitted to see such things. Where’s the censor? We tax-payers——”

Whereupon the other man tries to silence him: “Pssss,” he says, “you’re not at home now.”

“My home is my castle,” shouts the other one, whereupon the whole row wakes up and all clap their hands violently, thinking it’s an ovation for Sir Desmond.

“Silence!” shouts a man in a dinner-jacket from the first row of the stalls.

“Quiet, please!” cries an oldish-looking woman, her hands clasped imploringly. “It’s a first night. It’s a young man.”

At this the entire audience bursts into laughter and the woman stands up on her seat, pleading again: “It might be your or my brother and——” Oop! suddenly she shoots down in a dead faint.

This is the signal for a general outburst of terrific insanity, in which the orchestra joins. Mr. Schafitz jumps

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