Eliphalet Cardomay stretched himself luxuriously on a green-painted arm-chair by the Achilles Statue in Hyde Park.
He was wearing a new broad-brimmed grey felt hat, and the seasonableness of his attire spread to a pair of dark felt spats, below which the bright spring sunshine reflected itself on the surface of his well-blacked boots.
It was pleasing to lounge under the new-foliaged plane trees and watch fashionable London sedately disporting itself on the gravel paths—to see the riders cantering in the Row, and to hear the “clot-clot” and pleasant jingle of harness as the smart people drove by. Something in the pageantry of it all appealed to his dramatic sense. Piccadilly—the Strand—Oxford Street—awoke no sympathetic chords in his being—he was more at ease and happier in any of the great thoroughfares of Manchester, Leeds or Glasgow, but this great meeting-place of England’s noblest-born stirred him strangely.
The tide of well-dressed men and beautifully-gowned women set his mind upon a sad train of thought. They were not for him, these select; his poster on a hoarding they would pass by without a second glance. They belonged to the great ones of the London stage—that mighty little clique whose doors were barred to such as he. That very morning he had seen a few of the upper theatrical ten walking in the Park, and, even as the thought crossed his mind, Sir Charles Cleeve, an actor knight, and his fashionable wife, drove past in a high phaeton drawn by a pair of piebalds. A real live duchess turned in her carriage to smile a greeting to them. (Eliphalet knew she was a duchess, for he had often seen her portrait in the illustrated weeklies, hanging on Smith’s book-stalls in the Midland stations.) A clever woman Sir Charles’s wife. All the world knew that the high ground he now held unchallenged had in part been won for him by her tireless energy, tact and charm.
It was a great thing for an actor to possess such a wife. He fell to wondering whether, had his choice been as happy, he, too, might not have been a member of the Garrick Club, a driver of phaetons, a recipient of smiles from duchesses. He could hardly refrain from smiling at the thought of the figure his wife would have cut in polite society. Yet she had been an able enough actress in her day. Poor Blanche—poor, empty-headed, self-centred, easy-virtued Blanche. It required an effort to reconstruct her picture in his mind. Twenty-seven years is a long time, and even pleasant pictures had faded in less. Once he had loved her, like a very Romeo, and set her on a pinnacle higher than any balcony. He shivered, as with horrible clarity he saw the night when, returning late from the theatre (there had been a rehearsal after the show), he had found her in their wretched little parlour, drinking a wretched brand of champagne with Harrington May, the leading-man. The same Harrington May who had fled from the field of honour—to return later, as a fly returns to a pot of jam.
Everyone has supper with everyone else on the provincial stage. It is one of the best and friendliest traditions of the Road, and Eliphalet, born and bred of the Boards, would have thought no ill to find her entertaining one or a dozen men at any hour of the night. But this was different. It was not the friendly little repast with its scrambled eggs and rattle of theatrical shop; it was frankly a carouse. There were empty tinselled bottles on the table, and those down whose throats the liquid had passed were drunk—Harrington May dully, and his wife stupidly. She had her head on the man’s shoulder, and was laughing in a loose, trumpery way.
It was useless to talk to them, for May was not in a state to distinguish between flattery and abuse, while she was in a mood to say things no man would desire a third person to hear. Accordingly, he postponed his observations until next morning, and when that came it appeared she had the more to say. With bitter emphasis she stated that, as a husband, Eliphalet fell far short of her ideals. Apart from the miserable salary he earned, which, in itself, was an insult to a woman who was earning a larger one (for Blanche was playing the villainess and he the juvenile, and in those days virtue was cheaper than crime), she abhorred his studious nature, his ridiculous name, and his attitude towards life in general. She was of a lively temperament—a temperament calling for plenty of sparkle and sunshine (he had thought of those empty bottles downstairs), and accordingly had decided to leave him for good.
Eliphalet offered little or no opposition. He had known for a long while that sooner or later their ill-assorted union would come to an end.
“Very well,” he had said; “I won’t stand in the way of your happiness. You shall have a divorce as soon as it can be arranged.”
Instead of regarding this as a token of goodwill, Blanche had reviled him. It was obvious, she cried, he had no love for her, and merely made her his wife for the sake of the better salary she earned; and—now he seized the chance of a divorce in the hope of wringing heavy damages from Harrington.
“I want no damages,” he replied. “Maybe I shall find my reward without.”
Eliphalet did not have a speaking part in the scene that followed. His first line was “Thank God,” and that was after the door had slammed.
So Harrington May assumed responsibilities for Eliphalet Cardomay’s matrimonial obligations, and when the decree nisi was made absolute, he took “Miss Blanche Cannon” to be his lawful wedded wife.
How the union had turned out Eliphalet never knew, since from the hour she left his house he had met neither the one nor the other. Indirectly he heard that as fruit of their love a daughter had been born—and that was the only thing for which he envied Harrington May. He might have saved himself the trouble, for poor Harrington, possibly from ecstasy at the sight of this miniature edition of her faultless mother, shortly afterwards gave up the ghost. Blanche, whose appreciation for a change of diet had not waned with his decease, took unto herself a lover, and fades from view in a mist of misguided emotions.
“Dear me! Surely I am not mistaken—it is Mr. Cardomay?”
At the sound of his own name Eliphalet’s mind came back to the present with a jolt.
Standing before him, leaning on an ebony cane, stood a middle-aged gentleman, faultlessly dressed and of aristocratic bearing.
Eliphalet rose. “I am,” he said, “but for the moment——”
“No—no—no,” hastily interposed the other, “you could hardly be expected to remember me. Both you and I, Mr. Cardomay, in our separate spheres, are engaged in catering for these.” He made a slight gesture toward the passers-by. “We met but once, and that on the occasion of your very admirable performance of Cellini.”
Eliphalet blushed at the words, although no undercurrent of satire was conveyed. That same “very admirable performance of Cellini” stood for him as a door that barred him from London theatres for all time.
“Yes, yes,” he said, to hide his confusion, “I do remember you. Mr. Bridge Deansgate, who owns the Mall Theatre, is it not?”
Mr. Deansgate smiled affably.
“But please don’t stand,” he begged. “And, if I may, I will sit beside you. That’s better. Yes, yes, yes; I often wonder why we see so little of you in town, Mr. Cardomay—but perhaps your presence here betokens——”
“No,” came the hasty assurance. “I am spending a few weeks’ holiday before my next tour.”
“Indeed. I understand your recent production was a great success—great. You are stopping in Mayfair—near the Park—yes?”
“I have some rooms in Camden Town.”
“Ah. I have often heard it spoken of as a most healthy district. For the moment I forget the nature of the soil—gravel, I believe. And so you are taking a few weeks’ immunity from work? Umhum! Yes—yes. Now I wonder—but still, if you are resting, perhaps not.”
“You were about to suggest?”
“Nothing, nothing. A fleeting idea, that is all, prompted by this happy encounter. As doubtless you have heard, we are producing ‘Hamlet’ for four weeks, and it occurred to me—but perhaps I should offend you. We have an admirable cast, and in many ways it would be a pleasant engagement. You see, nowadays it is so hard to find actors who still understand the grand old method.”
He inclined his head gracefully to Eliphalet, who bowed in response.
“I am disposed to be interested,” he said.
“For the Ghost, now, where is a manager to turn? That very thought was possessing my brain when I chanced to look up and see you. If you are not otherwise engaged, how would it be to stroll to the Corner and pick up a hansom? They have a chef at the Garrick with a true appreciation of how a Châteaubriand should be cooked.”
The upshot of this conversation and an excellent lunch was to find Eliphalet Cardomay, at three o’clock the same afternoon, discussing terms with the business manager of the Mall.
“I never talk about money,” Mr. Deansgate had said. “Tell Dawson to give you what you want.”
Winslow Dawson was an agreeable little man, who had the habit of paying less than you intended to accept, at the same time conveying the impression that you had bested him all along the line. He carried his hands permanently in his trousers pockets, from whence they never appeared to emerge, even when a door had to be opened or shut or a contract signed. He performed these functions, so it seemed, by some balancing feat of prestidigitation. He had a habit of balancing on his heels and contemplating his patent-leather toes. He would remain thus during a long discussion, then look up with the sunniest of smiles and say, “Then that’s settled, isn’t it?”
When Eliphalet left the theatre it was in a very happy mood. After all, he would appear in London again, and—what was better still—in a part regarding the rendering of which he could scarcely be at fault.
Mr. Deansgate had said, “Do just as you like with it, my dear Cardomay; we have every confidence in you.”
In honour of the occasion he stood himself tea at Fuller’s and ate quite a large piece of walnut cake.
“A delightful management,” he reflected. “This is better than a holiday, old boy.”
Perhaps he felt a shade awkward at the rehearsal next morning to find the stage thronged with so many unfamiliar faces, but for the most part they were a friendly company, and very soon he was quite at ease with the men.
The ladies he found difficult, being so totally dissimilar to the homely, good-natured souls who played with him on his hundred tours.
There was a Miss Helen Winter, who played the Queen and whose personality caused him alarm. She seemed far more like a duchess than the real example he had seen in the Park. Her clothes were severe to a fault, and she used lorgnettes with awful precision. Somehow the sense of these instruments pervaded her even in the Castle of Elsinore.
When they were introduced she said:
“How do you do, dear Mr. Cardomay. I have heard so much about you.” Then departed quickly, as though fearing he might be tempted to tell her more.
For Ophelia one of London’s younger emotional actresses had been secured. Her emotions were more acutely demonstrated off the stage than on, for it appeared, despite a healthy exterior, she was racked with torments arising from an ailment described as “my neuralgia.” She spoke of her neuralgia as others might say “My Mother.” It was indeed her most cherished possession, and only through the good offices of smelling-salts and aspirin was she able to encompass the calls made upon her artistry.
Eliphalet, having made the acquaintance of the young lady and her neuralgia, and being attracted by neither, sought for someone to talk with during his long waits. In so doing he espied Miss Mornice June.
Mornice was absurdly pretty. She had big black-lashed eyes and a mass of whitey-gold fluffy hair. She played the part of the Player Queen, and held sway over the hearts of the small-part young gentlemen and those engaged as “extras.”
They gathered about her in the wings and sought the favour of her smile. Neither did they seek in vain, for Mornice had a quality of responsiveness that caused all who came in contact with her to believe themselves vital to her well-being. Did they come with jests, her laughter was light-hearted and unstinted; did they come in sorrow, she was quick to sympathise, and real tears would moisten her lashes. An extremely sensitive person was Mornice, who answered every vibration about her—be it grave or gay. Not in mood alone but in outline, her entire being seemed to impregnate itself with the spirit of the moment. She would break off suddenly in the merriest laugh to respond to a bar of music wailing pathetically from a hidden violin.
“Just listen! Isn’t it wonderful!” she would say, transformed into a picture of rapt adoration. Then in a second she was back again to her faun-like merriment, exchanging jokes that a properly brought up young lady would have failed to understand.
“Who is the little lady yonder?” Eliphalet asked.
Miss Helen Winter threw a flickering glance in the direction of his gaze.
“I really couldn’t tell you, dear Mr. Cardomay, for I don’t know. A nice little thing, no doubt, but hardly a lady. She gives me the impression of being on the stage for the purpose of earning a living.”
This was too subtle for Eliphalet, and he asked for an explanation.
“I mean she has no people—no money. She acts for a livelihood. Of course that is purely a surmise, but I am sure I am right. The stage is full of young girls who are trying to earn their living. It is very sad, when one comes to think of it.”
Being herself a dweller in Park Street, with no real occasion to act, Miss Winter was one of the rapidly increasing class who make it impossible for the really needy to find employment.
Eliphalet was blissfully ignorant of the methods London managers had begun to use. He did not know that it had become quite de rigueur to engage society ladies to play leading parts, irrespective of talent and merely for the sake of the smart friends they attracted. It is the Box Office that counts, first, last and always. Remember that, some of you clever young ladies, before you abandon the typewriter or the comfortable certainty of the Insurance Office.
“To me,” he said, “that stands to her credit. She strikes me as a most charming little girl.”
“Oh, quite—quite, dear Mr. Cardomay, but provincial—very, very provincial.” And having delivered this two-edged thrust, she sailed away to pastures new.
So Eliphalet asked the same question of Polonius.
“Mornice June, her name is. Something in her, I fancy. Forget who told me she’s been earning her living since she was fourteen. Her people were a bad lot—deserted her—so they say.”
Eliphalet did not need to introduce himself, for the very next day Mornice marched up and gave him a cheery smile.
“Do you mind if I talk?” she said. “You look so homish to me. I can’t get on with these London people a bit.”
He made room for her on the roll of carpet, and she sat beside him.
“Yet, my dear,” he answered, “you seem to be very popular.”
“With those silly boys, yes! But even they are different. I say, I’m sure you know all about playing in Shakespeare. I do wish you’d be an absolute dear, and hear me my lines. I’m certain I shall get a fearful ‘bird’ from his Nibs.” (His Nibs was her name for the eminent producer.) “It’s the blank verse that does me. I’ve never tackled verse before, except ‘I am Lily, called the Flowers’ Queen, the goodest, sweetest fairy ever seen.’ You know—you flip up through a star trap and get it off your chest, where the white limes meet.”
She delivered the cheap couplet with perfect mimicry of pantomime style, then clapped her hands and laughed gaily. Eliphalet caught the infection of her spirit, and laughed too.
“But you will be a dear, and help me, won’t you?” she appealed, picking a speck of fluff from the knee of his trousers. “I say, you didn’t brush yourself very carefully this morning, did you?”
“I stand corrected,” said Eliphalet; “but my dresser is away on his holiday.”
“Aren’t you married, then?”
“No—not now.”
Mornice’s face became serious at once.
“You poor dear, I am so sorry. Is she——?”
But Eliphalet took the book from her hand.
“Come,” he said, “let us hear those lines. We will go down this corridor, where we shall be undisturbed.”
As a rule, when you hold the book for someone who is almost a stranger they are anxious and awkward, but it was not so with Mornice.
“It’s just here where she enters with the Player King. There! Got it? Right-o.”
In a second she flung herself into the spirit of the scene. Gesture, voice and feature were alike unchained to the emergency of the situation. At the right moment she dropped to her knees and with outstretched arms poured forth the protestations of undying fidelity with ringing vibrations of emotion. When she had finished, she sprang to her feet and exclaimed:
“There! that’s the best I can do!”
Eliphalet was amazed. Never before had he seen anyone more liberally endowed with natural ability. And yet he knew this ability was misguided—that Mornice June suffered from a fatal facility.
Spontaneous ease of obtaining effects is perhaps the most dangerous asset an artist may possess. You will find it in legions of draughtsmen, who will dash off what is seemingly the cleverest sketch and actually a mere tangle of inaccuracy—wrong in every line and detail. They are born with a box of tricks—any one of which may be drawn from its docket at a second’s notice.
Reach-me-down art—and as unlike the real thing as a city tailor’s ready-for-wear garments to the creations of a Savile Row expert.
It was beyond Eliphalet Cardomay’s skill to point out the fundamental fault in the girl’s acting, and it was beyond his skill to indicate the fortune to which her facile skill directed her. Had one of those wise and energetic gentlemen been present, those gentlemen who project their three-reel productions upon a white screen and who speak of “Close-ups,” “Eyes that register well,” “Panoraming the Camera,” and so forth, he would have recognised at once the great future awaiting Miss Mornice June in the broad estates of Filmland.
“I have nothing but admiration,” said Eliphalet. “You must have studied hard to do so well.”
“Studied! I just swotted up the lines, that’s all. How does one study?”
“By considering the relative values of what one is saying and inflecting the lines accordingly.”
“Oh, I should never be able to do that. I just get a thing, or I don’t get it. But d’you really think it’ll do?”
“I imagine it will do more than well.”
“Oh, you are a dear! I was sure you’d give me the ‘bird.’ ”
“Tell me: you have been on the stage for some long while?”
“Um. Donkeys’ years; but I’m thinking of chucking it.”
“Giving it up?”
“Yes; for the ‘movies.’ ”
Eliphalet was aghast. To him the Cinema was a very degrading profession.
“I think, my dear,” he said, “you would find that a very poor alternative to our beautiful art.”
“But I love the ‘movies,’ and I’m sure I should be able to blink myself to fame. I can cry like old Billy-oh when I want to—and the wet-lash stunt is half the battle, y’know.”
Just then one of her many admirers came down the corridor. He was a smooth-haired, self-satisfied looking fellow, who played the Second Player.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said. “We shall have to go on in a minute.”
Eliphalet moved away and left them together.
“You are a rotter, Morny, to talk to that old blighter and leave me in the lurch.”
“He’s a duck,” said Mornice, “and I love him.”
“I think you love everyone except me.”
“Darling,” she exclaimed with outstretched arms, “I love you to distraction. Without you the world would be a desert track, or tract, whichever it is.”
“Then for God’s sake give me a kiss!”
Mornice considered the proposition in pouting perplexity. Then she laughed and said:
“Don’t be such a stupid little fool, Ken.”
“You always say that when I come to the point.”
“Avoid the point then, darling, and you won’t get your pretty little puds pricked.”
“Look here, will you come out to lunch with me?”
“Will I—will I? No. I won’t, but I’ll come to tea instead, and pay my own share.”
“Won’t you let me kiss you? I’m in deadly earnest, Morny.”
“If you’re in deadly earnest you shall kiss me. Oh, but not now. You shall kiss me on the back of the ear when it comes to the cue for the kiss in our scene.” And so saying, she ducked her head and bolted down the corridor as fast as she could run.
During the fortnight of rehearsals Eliphalet saw a great deal of Mornice, and they became inseparable friends. She told him her name was really Alice May, but she couldn’t endure Alice, so had achieved Mornice from the deeps of her imagination. She had elected the riper month of June instead of May because it sounded jollier after Mornice. Of her people she scarcely ever spoke. Once, in the course of conversation, she chanced to remark:
“Oh yes, he did a vamoose—like mother.”
“What is a ‘vamoose’?” he asked.
“When you skip off and leave everything to look after itself.”
“And that is what happened with you?”
“Umps! I’ve been on my own since I wore pigtails.”
Eliphalet was silent, thinking of the risks to which this child must have been exposed in her struggle for a living. Intuitively she read his thoughts, and said:
“I can look after myself, though. Don’t you worry!”
“I am quite confident of that,” he replied. Then, after a slight hesitancy, “But aren’t you a shade unwise to encourage the admiration of all these young men? That Mr. Kenneth Luke, for instance?”
“Oh, Ken’s all right. He went to Oxford College, so he ought to know how to behave.”
Eliphalet smiled and shook his head dubiously. It seemed to him that her reasoning was not quite conclusive.
To tell the truth, Master Kenneth had been a little too importunate of late, and Mornice had been considering the advisability of “choking him off.” However, since her one scene had to be played with him, she had thought it better to keep on friendly terms.
Eliphalet Cardomay was more than pleased with the notices the press gave him after the first night. “A rendering full of the best traditions of Shakespeare,” said one. “Mr. Cardomay’s beautiful voice was heard to advantage,” said another.
It was gratifying to hear his “beautiful voice” spoken of as though the whole world knew of its existence. He began to regain some of the confidence lost after his last London appearance. He fell to wondering what they would have said had he appeared as Hamlet instead of the Ghost, and concluded, erroneously, the papers would have been equally flattering.
He had never played Hamlet, and the idea of doing so on some future tour possessed him. Little Mornice June should be given the part of Ophelia, and would certainly outshine the neuralgic young lady in her rendering. All she needed was guidance.
Eliphalet had quite made up his mind to engage Mornice on a long contract, not only for her talent, but because he could not endure the thought of losing sight of her. Somehow she filled an empty space in his heart that long had craved for a tenant. It is good for a man to have some interests in life outside his work, and he had none.
There was something in Mornice that awoke a queer familiarity with another episode of his life, but when he tried to place the impression it would not develop. Was it perhaps with scatter-brained little Eunice Terry, whom he had disillusioned about the stage? No! For beyond the “Nice” at the ends of their Christian names there was little enough semblance. Mornice had her head screwed on the right way, whereas Eunice had nearly had hers screwed off.
One morning a rehearsal had been called for some minor alterations, and Eliphalet was sitting with his back against a scene-flat, when he heard Mornice’s voice on the other side.
“Poor Ken,” she was saying. “Oh, dear, what a sad and gloomy face!”
“You know how to cure it,” came the answer.
“I? I only seem to make it worse.”
“That’s true. You’re playing with me, Morny, and I’ve had enough of it.”
“Well, if you’re too old to play, go and sit in the corner with a book.”
“For God’s sake chuck fooling. After all, you can’t afford to turn me down like this, and I’m not the chap to put up with it for ever.”
It was a graceless speech, and Eliphalet was astonished at the girl’s answer.
“You old silly, I don’t want to turn you down. I’d like you to be happy as the rest are.”
“Well, make me happy, then.”
“ ’Course I will—if I can.”
“If you can! Look here, Morny; come and have supper with me after the show to-night.” She did not reply, and he went on: “Why, hang it, you must have been out to supper scores of times.”
“Yes, I have—scores and scores.”
“Will you come, then?” There was more than eagerness in his tone.
“I may as well, I suppose. Very well, then—yes.”
“At last! And that’s a bargain, isn’t it? There’s no going back now? Where would you like to go? Cecil?—Savoy? Just say, and I’ll ring up for a room at once.”
“A room! What for?”
“We shan’t want to be disturbed.”
“Shan’t we? Now look here, Ken; if I come to supper with you we sup in the main restaurant, or not at all.”
“Oh, yes, I know all about that. You can safely leave the arrangements to me.”
“Right; I will. And I’ll leave you the supper, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve taken a very intense dislike to you. I think you are an absolute low little rotter.”
Eliphalet, on the other side of the piece of scenery, murmured a prayer of thanksgiving.
“You do?” said Kenneth. “Well, if that’s so, you won’t be disappointed. I may not be great shakes in the company, but I can promise to make it none too pleasant a place for you—unless you say you are sorry.”
It was all very ill-conditioned and childish.
“The only thing I’m sorry about,” said Mornice, “is that I didn’t smack your face days ago.” She marched off, the picture of outraged dignity.
And Eliphalet, as a student of nature, reflected that the young man had received a more valuable lesson than all his ’Varsity training had provided, and, when the rancour had abated, would profit very greatly therefrom.
It is always disappointing when one’s opinions prove to be at fault. Possibly this in some measure added to Eliphalet’s cold fury at what took place that evening.
He had gone down earlier than usual and was standing in the wings, watching the Play Scene. Mornice and Kenneth Luke as the Player King and Queen, with arms interlaced, came on to the stage within the stage and began to speak their lines, and there followed the most paltry piece of meanness Eliphalet had ever beheld. A deliberate effort to “queer” a fellow-player.
Seemingly Kenneth Luke had profited nothing by his lesson of the morning and was determined to take it out of his mentor by the unkindest method.
He ended his first speech with so inconclusive an inflection that it was well-nigh impossible for her to speak her lines. Not satisfied with this, he introduced long pauses in the wrong places and when she, believing he had forgotten his part, began to speak, he spoke also, with the result that the words jumbled together unintelligibly.
Mornice did her best, but had lost the thread of the scene and broke down. So Kenneth prompted her audibly, and no sooner had she started than he essayed to “queer” her afresh. But that was not all, for when, in the course of the scene, he lay down for his afternoon repose, or “secure hour,” he contrived to lie upon the train of her gown. Certainly he did it very discreetly, and none but Eliphalet saw. It appeared from the front to be mere carelessness when Mornice, in backing from the stage, stumbled, tried to recover herself and fell noisily down the rostrum steps.
The effect of a roar of laughter in that part of the play can be imagined. The act, in the vulgar parlance, was “dished.”
Even through his make-up of ghostly green Eliphalet Cardomay went quite purple.
To trifle with one’s art was to him an unforgivable offence—but when that trifling was done in a Shakespearian production, a London theatre, and as a piece of sheer malice against a young girl——!
The muscles of his hands knotted convulsively. This was a matter that could be dealt with in only one way. He made a movement toward the back of the stage, then checked himself. He would be wanted for his last scene in a moment. He must wait until after that, and then——!
It is to be feared that Eliphalet Cardomay’s countenance did not wear that expression of seraphic benignity it should when he appeared behind the gauzy curtain and Hamlet spoke the lines, “Look here upon this picture and on this.” He contrived to impart the full measure of appeal into the final words, “Speak to her, Hamlet,” then hurried from the stage, stripping off his draperies and breathing through the nose.
On the first dressing-room landing Mornice was standing, and before her, looking very different from his usual placid self, was Mr. Winslow Dawson.
“That sort of thing may do for the provinces,” he was saying, “but it won’t do in the Mall Theatre. I have never seen such an exhibition.”
“I didn’t forget my cue,” said Mornice pathetically. “Really and truly, I didn’t—and it wasn’t my fault I fell down.”
Mr. Dawson made an impatient gesture with his head.
“Mr. Luke,” he said. Kenneth Luke stepped out of the shadows, “you play the scene together—what have you to say?”
“Well. I certainly noticed Miss June seemed rather all over the place, and——”
“One minute,” said Eliphalet, steering into the middle of the group.
Mr. Dawson turned.
“We are rather busy,” he began.
“And so am I,” said Eliphalet, “and my business won’t wait.” Then, addressing Kenneth Luke, “Now, you—put up your hands.”
“What do you mean?”
“Put them up. I’m going to give you a thrashing. Do you understand that?”
“No, I don’t,” replied Kenneth insolently. “And what the devil are you interfering for?”
“For the pleasure of doing that,” said Eliphalet, and hit him with surprising vigour on the end of the nose.
“Damn!” roared the youngster, and drew back his arm with intention of countering. But somehow it entangled in his cloak and before he had freed it, Eliphalet had pranced in and rained upon him a veritable tornado of blows. More by luck than judgment one of them took Kenneth on the point of the jaw, and put him to sleep behind a curtain of falling stars.
“I say! whatever is all this about?” exclaimed Mr. Dawson.
“A—piece of—just retribution and N-nemesis. Tell him, my dear—I—I’m——”
Then very gracefully, as he was graceful in all things, Eliphalet Cardomay tottered and collapsed across the body of his prostrate foe.
It is not a wise proceeding for a man on the wrong side of sixty to engage in a rough-and-tumble. The results are apt to produce cardiac disturbances. The doctor, who was called in, said afterwards there was a time when he doubted whether Mr. Cardomay’s heart was equal to the task of adjusting itself. Certainly the old actor was in a sorry way when he was placed in Mr. Deansgate’s private brougham and driven off to Camden Town under the guardianship of a very anxious Mornice. She had explained how the circumstances came about, and Mr. Deansgate sent a polite request to Kenneth Luke to call at his office before leaving.
The result of this interview was significantly betrayed by the presence of Kenneth Luke’s “card” in the following Thursday’s issue of the Daily Telegraph, with the words “At Liberty” following his name.
Mornice and the landlady put Eliphalet to bed and tucked him in as though he were a child. He complained of being thirsty and very tired, and hardly seemed aware of his surroundings.
“I shan’t leave him to-night,” whispered Mornice. “Perhaps you’d give me a comfy chair, Ma dear, then I can watch restfully.”
And as the good Mrs. Albion liked being addressed as “Ma dear,” she produced her best armchair (a forbidding affair of varnished walnut, American cloth and brass-headed nails), and set it beside the bed. She also put a match to the fire and, on the principle of “If you’re not going to sleep, you must eat,” cooked up “a bit o’ supper.” She did not leave the room until satisfied that Mornice had done justice to the grilled herring and jug of hot coffee. Then she gave her a “nice” kiss and a whispered good night.
Mornice lowered the gas, and, taking Eliphalet’s hand, sat beside him.
The Old Card was very restless, and rambled in his mind and speech. Fragments of disjointed sentences and long out-of-use quotations came from his lips. Once he snatched away his hand and cried “Put them up!”
Very gently Mornice soothed him and regained his hand.
“I’m sure I was right—a blackguard,” muttered Eliphalet. “And she little more than a child—clever—dear child! With a little training, a little care—‘Have you a daughter? Let her not walk in the sun.’ I’ve no daughter—no child—nothing. That’s so, old boy; that’s so.”
“Ssh!” whispered Mornice. “You must go to sleep. Ssh!”
“Who’s that?” He spoke in a startled tone.
“It’s me—Mornice.”
“ ‘Me, Mornice’—No—‘I,’ Mornice, ‘I’—a little training—a little guidance.” His voice trailed away into silence. When next he spoke it was to ask:
“What’s the time?”
“Three o’clock.”
“Three at night—and that was a woman’s voice, I don’t understand. Who are you?”
She told him again.
“Three o’clock at night—No, not Mornice—you’re Blanche—poor old Blanche! And yet so much seems to have happened since—and Blanche—I don’t know!”
Mornice started violently.
“Why do you call me Blanche?”
The quick sound of her voice roused the old man from his wanderings, for he turned, rose on his elbow, and looked at her.
“What’s the matter, my dear?” he said. “Why are you here?”
“You’ve been ill,” she replied. “Don’t you remember?”
“Ah, yes, yes, I remember now.”
“Tell me,” she begged. “A moment ago you called me Blanche.”
“I did!—good God, yes! That’s where the resemblance lies.”
“Who were you speaking of?”
“Blanche Cannon. Before you were born she was my wife.”
“But she is my mother. Then am I——?”
Eliphalet had taken her hands and was looking at her with wide-opened eyes.
“How I wish you were!” he said. “But you came after, my dear.”
“Then,” said Mornice very positively but very tenderly, “whether I am, or whether I’m not, whether you like it or whether you don’t, I’m going to be your daughter—See!” And she kissed him as a daughter should.
At the theatre a week later the Lady of the Lorgnettes addressed She of the Neuralgia.
“My dear,” she said. “Have you heard the news? That Mr. Cardomay has taken that Miss Something-or-other June to live with him. Really, it is extraordinary what these stage people will do.”
And She of the Neuralgia was constrained to take two aspirins in rapid succession to recover from the tidings, while the Lady of the Lorgnettes turned aside to congratulate that Mr. Cardomay on his speedy recovery.