“The Night Cry” was a failure—and a melancholy failure at that. Why this should have been is hard to understand, since, as a play, it compared favourably with many successful productions in Eliphalet Cardomay’s repertoire. Perhaps the truth was that Eliphalet was getting old. The most skilful tricks of lighting and make-up failed to conceal this obvious fact.
“He ought to retire,” said the wise playgoers, as they passed sorrowfully from the theatre. “A fine old chap, but he’s stopping too long.”
There is nothing in the world destroys confidence more quickly than this kind of talk, and nothing is more easily destroyed than an actor’s reputation. People repeat such phrases for want of something better to say, and slowly but surely it comes back to ears that are ever attentive for a hint of the kind—attentive because their owner’s pockets are affected.
For the last five seasons Eliphalet’s receipts had shown a gradual, almost imperceptible decline, but it was not until the production of “The Night Cry” that the fall was considerable. And it was considerable! The vibrations set in motion thereby automatically were felt afar and closed the purses of the four commercial gentlemen who formed his syndicate.
Eliphalet was distressed at the want of success, but philosophical. He reflected with gratification that it had not been his wish to do the play. He had asked for support for a production of “Hamlet,” and had been denied; thus, not unreasonably, he conjectured this might prove a lesson to his syndicate for the future to respect his judgments. Besides which, a certain percentage of failures was inevitable, and in all his career that percentage had been very low.
Every Christmas he and the syndicate met to discuss the past year’s work and make future plans, and this was always the occasion for a little ceremony. Eliphalet brought with him four boxes of Half Coronas, and one of these he solemnly presented to each member of the board. They, although offering no tangible return, would express a surprised gratification and a vote of cordial appreciation for his artistic energies exerted on their behalf. A luncheon-party would follow, which broke up with handshakes and good and seasonable wishes.
But on this particular year Eliphalet felt, no sooner he had entered the room, that there was a strange atmosphere. Each of the four gentlemen showed embarrassment and disinclination to meet his eye. The cigars were presented and accepted, which appeared to heighten the general unease. Then the chairman rose and called upon Dr. Wardluke to address the meeting, as his own powers of speech were affected by a recent cold.
So the doctor, after some rustling of papers and a deal of pulling at his waistcoat, came to his feet and spoke.
It was, he said, a great pleasure to them all to observe that Mr. Cardomay had been spared to attend another of these pleasant annual meetings, and he was sure that none of them contemplated the fact that this was to be the last without sensations of regret. Their association had been more than pleasant—it had been cordial; but sooner or later the best of things came to an end.
“Mr. Cardomay has been a loyal colleague to us, Gentlemen, and I venture to say we have been as loyal to him. But what was it that Æsop said about the bow?” No one appeared to know. “Well, I can’t recall the exact words, but they go to prove that you must not strain anything beyond its limit. It makes us very happy to reflect that, mainly through our support, Mr. Cardomay must now be in a comfortable financial position, and it will be pleasant to think of him spending his autumn years in some quiet little nook, standing back from the road.” He resumed his seat to an encouraging salvo of “Hear, hear!”
Then Eliphalet Cardomay rose, and he looked a little white and drawn.
“I take it,” he said, “by all this preamble, you wish me well, and for that I express my thanks. I was not aware you intended to break up our partnership, and perhaps it would have been more business-like and kinder to have informed me beforehand. However, that may pass. Doubtless, from your point of view, Gentlemen, I am an old pair of shoes to be thrown aside as outworn, but I would remind you that this”—and he pointed with his stick to a play-bill of “The Night Cry” hanging on a wall—“this is the first time they have let in the water. I accept my dismissal, Gentlemen, without demur, but reserve to myself the right to choose the hour of my retirement to that ivy-clad nook Dr. Wardluke painted with such eloquent impertinence in his speech. I would further recommend you to keep an eye on the theatrical columns of your newspapers, where you may see that these old shoes are still capable of covering a good many miles of the road. Good day, Gentlemen, and good-bye.” He swung his hat to his head like a cavalier, and walked proudly from the room.
He booked a ticket to New Brighton, where, at the conclusion of her first film engagement, Mornice had joined him. It had always lived in Eliphalet’s brain that when he retired it would be to dwell within sight of the sea in that most delightful of resorts. The circumstances of staying there at the hour of his dismissal struck him as coldly prophetic.
“But we haven’t finished yet,” he said, as the train bore him westward. “We’ll show ’em there’s stuff in the Old Card still!” No actor properly realises he has outstayed his welcome until his backers forsake him, and even Eliphalet was not convinced.
There was enthusiasm in his voice and fire in his eye. But the train had not travelled many miles before the enthusiasm died and a queer gnawing doubt assailed him. Was it possible, after all, these gentlemen were right? Would it not, perhaps, be better to slip away from the haste and turmoil of active life and seek out that little villa of his own? After all, he had fought nobly and successfully, and surely the right to repose had been well earned?
There was standing to his credit at the bank enough, and more than enough, to assure a comfortable competence to the end of his days. Perhaps, too, he was a little tired. He had run without stopping for so many, many years. Then he thought of his boasts to the syndicate.
“We’ll challenge ’em, old boy, and we must make good!”
There was Mornice, too, to be considered. He had promised her a big chance, and it was up to him to meet the bill.
Ronald Knight had come over to spend the day with Mornice (a not infrequent occurrence), and they rose, apparently from the same chair, as he entered the room. Maybe they were a shade embarrassed, for neither one nor the other asked how the meeting had gone, but, instead, gave themselves over to expressions of almost unnatural delight at his return. Consequently, tea passed without the subject being mentioned.
Glancing from one to the other, Eliphalet was conscious of an air of supreme excitement shared between them.
“Well,” he asked, “has the Mornice film been—what is the word?—released yet?”
Ronald Knight shook his head.
“N-no, not yet. Matter of fact, we’ve had rather bad luck—very bad. No one seems to care for the story.” Eliphalet smiled rather cynically, and the young man hastened to add: “But Morny has made an enormous success. Terrific! We had a private projection.”
“A what?”
“A private show.”
“Ah, yes! Well?”
“With big-wigs from the best firms, and they are absolutely unanimous that she’s it.”
Mornice tried not to look too proud, but the artifice was transparent. Eliphalet frowned a little.
“I am glad,” he said. “She is certainly very capable—of better things.”
“Yes; I know you hate movies,” said Mornice.
He nodded.
Ronald started afresh.
“A success like that, even at a private proj-show, means a great deal, and——”
“And,” Eliphalet cut in, “you are now going to tell me she has had some flattering offers and ask me to let her accept them, knowing very well that the last time I allowed her to do so was on the undertaking that she returned to the legitimate at the end of the engagement.”
Ronald’s reply was unexpected.
“That’s just what I—what she—what I’m sure we all feel she ought to do.”
“I want to, awfully,” exclaimed Mornice; “in something—— Oh, you go on, Ronny.”
“It is only that people—people in the show believe there is such big stuff in her that makes me suggest it.” He hesitated.
Eliphalet leaned back in his chair and smiled indulgently to help him along.
“We all know she is a young Modjeska—a little Bernhardt—eh, Mornice?”
“You needn’t be saucy, Dads. After all, he’s only repeating what they think. I don’t know whether I am great.”
(Very few actors and actresses are absolutely certain on this point, but most of them have a comfortable conviction, even though they may not express it.)
Eliphalet had seen little heads swell large too often to be surprised. He nodded to Ronald Knight to proceed.
“Everybody who saw her in that film believed she’d make a fortune on the legitimate stage.”
The potential gold-mine, and certainly her mass of hair was in itself a large enough nugget, was licking jam from a sticky finger like a child at a school-treat.
“All right, Ron,” she said. “Go on now about the play.”
Thus adjured, Ronald drew breath for fresh adventures.
“D’you remember, sir, a few years ago buying a play?-‘A Man’s Way’ it was called. You never put it on.”
“I remember—yes. A fine, vigorous piece of work. I made some alterations to the text. But somehow it wasn’t satisfactory. But why?”
“It was written by a cousin of mine. I happened to mention your name, and he showed it to me. By Jove, it’s magnificent! Now, as it was in the original form, that play, with Morny as the wife——”
“Oh, come! A very, very difficult part, my dear boy.”
“You haven’t seen her on the film.”
“H’m! Well, I must look it up.”
“It’s here,” said Mornice. “I rummaged it out of your basket.” She produced the MS. from beneath a sofa cushion.
Eliphalet turned over a few pages, stopping here and there. A startling modernity still seemed to spring from every line.
“There is no doubt of its worth,” he mused; “but so very modern!”
“Yes, but, Dads, isn’t that just what it should be? And it is such a wonderful part.”
“I doubt if it would suit me.”
“The wife’s, I mean.”
“I believe,” said Ronald, “people are getting tired of old-fashioned plays.”
“I wonder,” said Eliphalet. “I wonder if that is why——” He stopped, frowned, and struck the table a blow.
“What is it, Dads?”
“Everyone wants to alter the tide of my life to-day.” He rose and started to pace excitedly up and down the room. “Why is it? You want me to break new ground, plough fresh pastures; and they, they say I am done with—finished!”
“Who said that?”
“My syndicate. They spoke of a rustic cottage, standing back from the road, in which to spend the autumn of my life.”
“How dared they! What did you answer?”
“I told them to read the theatrical news—that was all.”
“Bravo!” applauded Ronald, with great sincerity, adding: “Then, by Jove! if you did this play, starring yourself and Morny, wouldn’t it be a terrific smack in the eye for them!”
“I am nearly seventy,” replied Eliphalet, “and I suppose it is wrong and foolish at such an age, but I would like to show ’em something, I would!”
“Why don’t you?” said Ronald and Mornice, in one voice.
When, some three days later, Eliphalet sought Freddie Manning, wisest and most energetic of stage-managers, and told him what had happened and what he intended to do, Freddie spoke up boldly.
“Don’t you, Guv’nor!”
“I shall, Manning. It’s a final cast, and I mean to go out with a flourish. We shall advertise it as a farewell tour. New scenery—posters—everything.”
“And who’s backing you?”
“I am.”
Freddie cast his eyes above, but held his peace.
“I shall star Mornice in equivalent type to my own.”
“Don’t you,” repeated Manning. “If she’s a wash-out, the come-back will be twice as strong.”
“I take the risk. I am going to produce ‘A Man’s Way’ in the original form, and in every respect to rival a West-End production. I shall have wooden doors, and the scenery will be three-ply instead of canvas.”
“And I suppose you’ll have a West-End cast as well?”
Eliphalet shook his head.
“I had thought of it,” he confessed, “but I cannot go back on the Old Crowd. There will be only one newcomer besides Mornice, and that will be Mr. Ronald Knight. For the rest, the Old Cardomay Company will see Old Cardomay out. As regards booking, I shall accept the best No. 1 towns only, and shall book a three months’ tour; not at the drama houses, but at the principal theatres in every case.”
Freddie Manning tilted his bowler hat to the extreme limit of possible angles.
“Guv’nor,” he said, “God alone remembers how long we’ve been together. I was a super-boy in the crowd when you were playing juveniles; and boy, man and veteran, we’ve fought side by side in nearly every shack with footlights from Land’s End to John o’—what’s-’is-name. You’ve stuck by me fine, and I’ll stick by you to the end and past it. I’ve never openly countered a scheme of yours, though I may have pulled a few strings on the quiet; but this time I do, and as man to man, I put it down that you cut it out—right out. If the advice ain’t wanted, say so and I’ll buckle on to the new job for all I’m worth; but those are my feelings, Guv’nor, and I had to speak ’em.”
“I know, Manning, I quite understand. Likely enough you are right, and this is a great folly. But I want to do it—I want to make one final splash.”
“Good enough,” said Freddie. “I’ll get busy straight away.”
When Freddie Manning got busy, busy he undoubtedly was. Eliphalet told him to go ahead with the scene folk, the costumers, the advertising experts, and two thousand pounds.
As a general rule, ladies and gentlemen provide their own modern clothes for provincial tours, but in this case, in the matter of ladies, Eliphalet departed from precedent and undertook the responsibility of providing them. To the gentlemen he addressed the following words:
“I want this production to be memorable, and to that end everyone who appears in it must appear under circumstances most agreeable to the eye. In our profession it is not always possible to maintain one’s wardrobe at a state of perfection, and we are over-liable, perhaps, to run our suitings beyond the limits of appearance and durability. To encourage you all, then, to do justice to me and the play, I propose to pay an additional twenty-five per cent on your ordinary salaries. One more word, Gentlemen, and I have done. We are all tradesmen, with the trade at our finger-tips. Let us show that we, of the provincial theatres, can give, in appearance, intelligence and art, as good (if not better) measure as our brothers in the capital.”
Then the rehearsal began.
At the first reading Eliphalet was delighted. The play seemed to act itself. He experienced an odd sensation that there was little or nothing for the producer to do—that it rested with the company to commit to memory their lines and repeat them from appropriate positions upon the stage. He had not realised that the true human modern play is almost automatic, and that its crises arise from the general team-work of the company, and not by individual effects.
“If it goes so well while they are holding their books, what will it be when I have shaped it up?” he thought.
In the midst of these agreeable reflections he failed to observe a very obvious change had taken place in Mornice. Since persuading him to do this play and place her among the stars, she underwent a complete metamorphosis of manner. She adopted the worst characteristics of a leading lady. She gave the company good-morning each day with an air of great condescension. She trespassed into that forbidden Tom Tiddler’s Ground near the centre of the footlights reserved for producers and the managerial branch. She devoted less attention to her part than to criticisms of other people’s renderings. She would follow members of the company to dark parts of the stage and give advices that were neither desired nor of the smallest value.
You who read these pages, do not be too severe in your judgments upon her. In a scarcely-formed mind certain mental conditions inevitably result from success or prominence upon the stage too soon. A name seen by its owner for the first time on the hoardings in three-inch block type acts as an intoxicant. Mercifully, the condition is transitory, and you will find that your really successful actor or actress is, as a rule, the jolliest and least sidey of individuals.
It was her idea, supported by Ronald Knight, that the women’s costumes should come from Redfern’s—it was she who had seen the magic three-ply scenery at Wyndham’s, that does not vibrate when Mr. du Maurier goes forth and closes the door crisply behind him.
To do the young people justice, they never for an instant thought they were doing otherwise than serving Eliphalet an excellent turn by their exuberant suggestions.
“He’s a darling, Ronnie,” Mornice would say, most days; “but he is old-fashioned, and if we are to make the play go, we must modernise him.”
But window-boxes on the pyramids will not make them resemble art villas at Letchworth, and this fact they learnt too late to be of use.
Naturally, these many preoccupations kept Mornice so busy that the study of her part was almost entirely side-tracked, but it never occurred to her to entertain misgivings on that account.
About this time a slight staleness was discernible in the progress of the play. Eliphalet could not tell whence it arose or how to combat it, but vaguely he wished for the services of some virile brain other than his own to preside at rehearsals. Mr. Raymond Wakefield, for instance, who had tied him up in such painful knots on the occasion of his appearance in London. He would have known in an instant what was required.
There were legions of tiny but vital subtleties that cried out for definition, and in all Eliphalet’s bag of tricks there was no machinery for bringing them into focus. In every scene they bubbled up through the lines, like vortices in quicksand. A thousand fine points of psychology that needed assembling, refining and giving prominence. Eliphalet was bewildered by their numbers; he did not know where or how to start work upon them, and he sat by the footlights, brows contracted, finger-tips together, in silent dissatisfaction with himself and the play. On the seventh day of rehearsals he rose distractedly, and exclaimed:
“We are not getting on, ladies and gentlemen. I am sure we are all doing our best, but we are not getting any forrader.”
Then old Kitterson spoke.
“I know it, Guv’nor; but it’s devilish hard. How are we going to get big effects out of these lines? I’m not saying anything against ’em, mind.”
“It’s so natural, Guv’nor,” complained Mellish, another old-timer.
Miss Fullar shook her head wisely. “That’s it; too natural.”
“It is not for big effects we must try,” said Eliphalet, “but for the little ones. The big effects in this play arise from the little. Therefore we must try to create a standard excellence.”
It was, perhaps, the nearest approach toward expressing the essentials of a modern production he ever made.
“Yes, but how are we to do it?” old Kitterson questioned.
“Oh, we shall see,” said Eliphalet, rather feebly, and subsided into his chair again.
At supper that night he was rather dejected.
“Cheer up, Dads,” said Mornice. “After all, you and I have most of the work to do, and we shall make things go.”
He answered her rather seriously.
“I can see what to do with you,” he said, “for you are far astray from the part. It is the others who perplex me.”
Mornice was taken back.
“I know I am not up to the mark yet,” she replied, “but I’ll let myself go to-morrow.” Then, quite satisfied that her own case was established, she turned to vital matters. “Pummy! you’ll have to get your hair cut, you know. You can’t possibly play a smart doctor, and keep it long.”
“I have realised it, my child.” He looked at her with a queer smile, and said, “Are you Delilah, I wonder?”
It is to be regretted that Mornice had little knowledge of the Old Testament. She asked for particulars.
“A lady who cut off Samson’s hair. Shorn of his locks, his power departed.” Then his mind came from east to west with a vengeance. “I am glad I took you from the Cinema before it was too late.”
“Too late?”
“H’m. You are cinema-acting very alarmingly in ‘A Man’s Way.’ Coding, my dear, coding; I will show you to-morrow.”
On the morrow he was ready for her in earnest, and realising this, Mornice flung herself into the part with startling energy. He did not allow her to go far before holding up his hand.
“My dear,” he said, “try to remember you are playing the part of a married woman who is at variance with her elderly husband. Do not therefore swing an imaginary sun-bonnet, or smile and blink your eyes at the audience, as though each one was a potential lover. You have three acts in which to gain their affections—not thirty feet of film.”
“Oh, you are horrid,” said she.
“Not at all. Believe me, this—this bright stuff is entirely misplaced.”
So she came on again, and this time resembled a woman torn by conscience after rifling a church of its plate.
“And now you go to the opposite extreme—you will have no emotions left for the big moment in the last act, if the opening of a door causes you so much distress.”
When the ordeal was over, Mornice was a trifle piqued.
“I don’t think he ought to have gone for me like that before the company, Ron—do you?”
But Ronald Knight was an honest lad, and answered:
“After all, there was sound stuff in what he said.”
A reply which put him in prompt disfavour for a period of twenty-six hours, at the end of which time they met, by a kind of mutual magnetism, and kissed each other with enthusiasm in the dressing-room corridor.
“You are sorry for what you said?”
“I am sorry it offended you, but I think it is up to us to do what the old chap wants. After all, he’s taking a big risk.”
Ronald Knight was beginning to feel some uneasiness about the wheels he had set in motion. Having some knowledge of what a well-put-on production costs, he wondered if Eliphalet’s resources were up to the strain.
To do them justice, the company worked like Trojans. It is true, some of their energies were misplaced, but they were all well-intentioned. Miss Fullar, for instance, as the duchess, gave the impression that the duke had married far beneath his social station. This impression was partially obliterated when the duke himself appeared in the second act, and gave place to doubts as to how the lady could ever have accepted his addresses. Mellish played a man-about-town, but had the misfortune to choose the wrong town, and never once came within the four-mile radius.
Old Kitterson’s butler was sound—he had specialised in this line for many years—but the part caused him great disappointment, since there was nothing to do or say that was not strictly in the way of domestic service. Not once in any act did he have the opportunity to exclaim, “God! it’s Master Harry!” followed by a stumble forward, a hand-grip and a sobbing “Sir—sir!” He asked Eliphalet whether this popular effect could not have been introduced into the text, but Eliphalet turned a kindly but deaf ear to the appeal.
Ronald Knight was one of the bright features, and took his place becomingly in the general scheme of things.
One regrets to record that Mornice June was neither “great” nor “it.” She divided her rôle into small crumbs of individual effect. It was as though she had installed a mental switchboard, labelled with such tickets as Anger—Remorse—Sarcasm—Gaiety—Malice—(but never aforethought).
Eliphalet Cardomay, although the part was wholly unsuited to his personality, gave the best and most illuminating performance of his whole career. It was totally unlike his usual traditional method, and precisely like it should have been. Quite naturally he seemed to know what to do and how to do it with the least possible effort. It was a queer caprice of fate that this simple method that he had viewed with a kind of disrespectful sour-grapes awe should suddenly have been made clear to him.
He played the part, so to speak, with his hands in his pockets, and marvellous discoveries came his way. For instance, he discovered that when a man is saying to his wife, “You can go—you can get out,” he does not of necessity take a position in the centre of the stage and throw a fine gesture toward the door, but is more likely to scratch his own ear or perform some other minor diversion. That this mantle of naturalness should have descended upon him made him all the more sensitive to the shortcomings of the cast. It was cruel he should have learnt the value of simplicity too late to be able to teach it to others; for that was the bitter truth.
He would lie awake at night, thinking, and his thoughts were far from peaceful. Supposing, after this supreme effort, the play failed? It would mean the loss of everything to him. His capital, his nerve, and his hopes for Mornice would perish at a single blow. “Let it succeed,” he implored, and the words were a prayer. “I want the little girl to have her chance.”
They were not healthy thoughts, and they snatched at him all hours of the day and night. In the night especially they would prod him into wakefulness. He would see pictures of the grey, back-street under-world, where the unwanted actors go. They danced before his eyes like green spots with scarlet centres.
The strain told, after a while, and he came to rehearsals haggard-eyed and irritable.
There is nothing like irritability for getting the worst out of a company—not so much because they resent it as because it makes them nervy and distracts their thoughts.
On the day he had his hair cut he felt that his strength had departed indeed.
He had arranged that there would be dress-rehearsals for a week, that the company might become accustomed to their clothes. The first of these depressed him as nothing had ever done before. The women’s gowns had cost nearly two hundred and fifty pounds, and, beautiful as they were, they looked woefully out of place on the backs of the Old Cardomay Company. Mellish, who had done his best to achieve the outward appearance of a man-about-town, cut a pathetic figure, despite the variety of his checks. He gave the effect of being arrayed in his Sunday suit, and wore a buttonhole of daffodils in the second act. Eliphalet was conscious of something amiss with most of them, but could not lay his finger on the point of offence. On the whole, the extravagances of wardrobe seemed to cause their wearers added uneasiness, and a more ungainly performance he had never beheld.
“What do you think, Manning?” he asked, tentatively, when the curtain fell on the last act.
“Fine,” was the stony rejoinder.
“That’s a lie,” said Eliphalet very softly.
“You’re right, Guv’nor; it is.”
“And the truth?”
“They’re all adrift—’cept you. They’ll drown you between ’em.”
Eliphalet seized him savagely by the arm, and cried:
“We have four days more, Manning. We can’t afford to leave it like this. I shall get a producer from London—at any price.”
He rushed to the nearest Post Office and wired to Raymond Wakefield, begging him to name his terms to attend a rehearsal of ‘A Man’s Way.’ “If not for terms, then come in pity,” he ended.
Wakefield wired to say he would arrive next morning by eleven-thirty.
Eliphalet called a full-dress rehearsal, with lights, for two o’clock, and met Wakefield at the station.
Even though several years had passed since their last meeting, Eliphalet was struck with the same extraordinary appearance of youthfulness borne by the eminent producer.
“I’ve come for love, Mr. Cardomay, and because your wire breathed tragedy. What’s the sorrow?”
“Second childhood,” said Eliphalet pathetically.
“Producing ‘A Man’s Way,’ aren’t you? Must say it surprised me a bit. Plucky of you. Good play. Came to us once.”
“You know it, then?”
“Yes; thought of putting it up.”
“That’s splendid news,” said Eliphalet, with a sudden revival of confidence.
“How’s it shaped?”
“You’ll see,” said Eliphalet; then, with a wail in his voice, “It has gone beyond my powers, Mr. Wakefield, and I feel so old.”
“We all do before a new production,” came the cheerful reply.
“I don’t want anyone to know who is in front,” Eliphalet told Manning, “but tell the company I look to them to do their utmost.”
And so the curtain rose and fell on the three acts of “A Man’s Way,” and when all was over Raymond Wakefield made his way round to Eliphalet’s dressing-room and walked in, whistling cheerfully.
“Well?” queried Eliphalet nervously.
“You old marvel,” said Raymond. “How d’you come to do it?”
“Do what?”
“Act like that?”
Eliphalet flushed like a schoolboy praised for his bowling.
“It is all right, then?”
“You’re all right. You’ve forgotten all you learnt in a theatre, and are playing what you’ve learnt in life. If you were twenty, or even ten, years younger——”
“Yes, I’m too old.”
“ ’Course you are—and too old for this part. But it’s a work. You’ll get no gratitude, though, on that account. I’ll tell you what the public and the papers’ll say. They’ll say you are not serving them with the goods they’re accustomed to receive, and you’ll get slanged for default as sure as there’s an agent in Charing Cross Road.”
“What about the others?”
Raymond Wakefield’s mouth went down at the corners like a child about to cry.
“Won’t do! You’ve committed the unforgivable sin of standing by your pals—oh, I know you have—and art and philanthropy don’t mix and never will. My motto is to sack everyone at the end of a run, and then look round afresh. In consequence, I suppose I’m pretty well hated by every actor on the London stage, and the best-beloved of the public.”
“And Miss Mornice June—the wife?” Eliphalet put the question tentatively.
“Naughty, very naughty indeed. D’you know what I’d do with her?”
“She’s my adopted daughter,” said Eliphalet, to be on the safe side.
“I’d put her in the Cinema business, and live luxuriously on a ten per cent. commission of the salary she earned.”
“Strange you should say that. I gave her this part to keep her away from the Cinema.”
“Then it wasn’t fair to the theatre public—or the Cinema public either.”
“Do you consider our chances of success are remote?”
Raymond dropped his cigarette to the floor, and twisted it out with the heel of his boot.
“God, He knows! It’s all a lottery. You’re of the provinces—you should be able to say.”
“But I ask you.”
“Well, if I had to stake my last farthing in a theatrical venture, it would not be in this one.”
“Thanks,” said Eliphalet. “Mine is.”
“Take no notice,” Raymond hastened to explain. “It was only for something to say. Well, I must be going.”
“You—you won’t stop a day or two and rehearse us a little?”
He shook his head.
“I value the compliment, but I’m too conceited to reveal my weakness.”
“Weakness?”
“Yes, for I shouldn’t be able to help ’em. I’ll let you into a secret. People imagine I can teach anyone to act. I can’t. All I can do is to know who would be right in certain parts. Then I engage ’em, and their combined elements give forth a chemical compound known as a Brilliant Production. That’s the whole secret. Tell that fellow—Mellish, isn’t it?—not to wear daffodils in his buttonhole, and to cut his moustache off if he can’t let it alone—and tell the duchess to let her train take care of itself when she’s in a drawing-room. God bless you, Mr. Cardomay, and good luck.”
He shook hands warmly, and hurried away.
“Poor old devil!” he muttered, as the stage-door swung to behind him. One might have imagined that there was an added moisture in his eyes if the idea were not so absurd. A specialist has no feelings.
About a week later, Doctor Wardluke met Mr. Wilfred Wilfur in the street, and the latter gentleman was in a state of unparalleled excitement. In his hand he flourished a copy of the Bradford Mercury, and he cried:
“Seen the news? Old Cardomay has come an almighty cropper with that production of his—knew he would—knew he would!”
And the two late members of the Cardomay Syndicate congratulated themselves most cordially on the happy insight that led them to “get out of it in time.”
The papers were not kind—they were not even discerning. As Raymond Wakefield foretold, they were mortally offended with Eliphalet for departing from his usual routine and cutting off his hair. Because they were accustomed to see this actor in a “robuster class of work,” they totally ignored the excellent quality of his acting. “There are plenty of companies who can provide us with the modern problem play, without Mr. Cardomay doing so. We look to him to uphold the good old traditions of the drama, and instead——” etc.
The rest of the cast were very properly chewed up, and questions were put as to what reasons existed for advertising a certain unknown and very amateurish young lady as a star.
The receipts for the first week were negligible, and the second showed a substantial margin on the wrong side.
“We have ten more bookings, and I must play them out,” said Eliphalet desperately.
“What are the fines in default of appearance?” suggested Manning.
But Eliphalet shook his head. “It wouldn’t be fair,” he said. “There’s the company to consider. I promised them three months.”
“And d’you think there’s a single damned one of ’em who’d hold you to that?” came the fierce rejoinder.
“Let us lose like gentlemen,” said Eliphalet.
And his savings dripped from him like the sweats of fear.
He was very silent at home those days, and week by week went by without improvement. He would sit with his hands listlessly down-hanging, and his eyes fixed in a vacant, dreamy stare.
Mornice did her best to brighten things up, but she did not understand very well the workings of his mind. Her belief in her own greatness, too, was slow to abate, and it was not until a notice appeared in the Manchester Guardian (most delightfully outspoken of organs) that illumination came, and she realised her own contribution to the tragedy. They gave the play one of its few good notices, but of her they spoke with a frankness that allowed of no misunderstanding.
Being by nature a good-hearted and dear little girl, she put her arms about one of the red fire-pails on a dark landing and wept with such pitiful vibrations that the water spilled over and mingled with her tears. Here Ronald Knight found her, and transposed her head to his shoulder.
“Everyone gets bad notices sooner or later,” he told her. “But listen, Morny, here’s something to cheer you up. My father has had an offer to produce for Raphaeli’s Film Company in America, and he wants you to come out and play ingénues, with a year’s guarantee.”
“D-does he?”
“Yes, and I should be going too. It’s in ten days’ time he’s sailing, just after we close here. There! You’re happy now, aren’t you?”
“N-no,” she sobbed, kissing him to cheer herself up a bit. “I’m miserable—about him.”
“So am I,” said Ronald. “Horribly.”
“He wouldn’t have done it except for me.”
“Don’t forget that I asked him.”
“But I made you, Ronny. What’s going to happen, supposing he’s lost everything. D’you know, I’m beastly frightened.”
“Let us go and talk to him, Morny.”
They went. He was sitting in his dressing-room, idly twisting a fragment of paper that had shown the night’s returns. He looked very old.
“Well?” he said, lifelessly, as they came in.
Then Mornice broke out with:
“Oh, we’re so frightfully sorry—we want to tell how frightfully sorry we are.”
He stretched out a hand, and gathered hers into it.
“Why, my dear,” he said, “you mustn’t take a bad notice to heart.”
“It isn’t that—I know now I ought never to have played the part—but it was my beastly conceit that made you do the play.”
“And I ought to be kicked for pushing it forward,” said Ronald.
“I’ve watched you when you thought you were alone, and seen how dreadfully sad and broken you looked, and I know it’s because I’ve made you lose all your money—isn’t it?”
A something eloquently full of tragedy and sorrow in her voice stung Eliphalet to a sudden need to lie.
“God bless my soul!” he exclaimed. “Whatever put such a fancy into your silly little head?”
“Because it’s true.”
“My dear, dear, dear little girl, you are talking nonsense. I have been sad, I confess it; but my sorrow was for you—I feared you had suffered a great disappointment.”
“D’you mean that?”
“Surely.”
“And you’ll be all right after this?”
He laughed lightly.
“I shouldn’t worry about that.”
“But I do—horribly.”
He disposed himself in a position of some importance.
“Mornice,” he said, “I have figured now in nearly forty productions, most of them successful. Think what that means. Am I to be crippled by a single false move? The idea is absurd. Where is your arithmetic, my dear? Ask young Ronald here, and he’ll show you the sum on paper. Maybe I shall have to cut things a trifle finer in consequence of this, but what of that? No, no, no—my sorrow was all for you, and since yours has ceased to be, why, then, our sorrow is bankrupt, and we are all glad again.”
“You’ve shifted a weight from my mind,” said Ronald, with an outward breath.
And Mornice hugged him ecstatically.
“ ’T’any rate, I’m not going to be a drag on you any more,” she said, and told the tale of the American offer.
“Yes,” said Eliphalet, “I think you ought to accept. It’s a selfish confession, my dear, and I want you to believe I would have done my best for you, but I haven’t the energy for much more work. Years tell, and I doubt if I could stand the strain of another big venture. I mean to do myself well—luxuriously—in that little cottage with the ivy-clad porch that stands back from the road. You’d have found it dull there, living with an old man.”
“I’d have loved it—with you.”
“Not a bit of it. No, you’d be kicking the glass to flinders in a week. I should try a young man instead of an old ’un. I should try him.” He tilted his head toward Ronald Knight.
“I wish to God she would, sir,” said Ronald devoutly.
“I don’t mind,” said Mornice.
“Then do,” said Eliphalet; “and I shall be left without a care in the world, to enjoy an affluent old age.”
“You mean that, Dads?”
“ ’Course I do. But don’t go talking about it in the company, or everyone will be trying to borrow.”
So they went out, laughing, who had entered in tears.
“Manning,” said Eliphalet, when the stage-manager, according to his custom, looked in for final instructions, “what d’you think we could realise on the scenery and costumes?”
“ ’Bout four hundred. Laon’s should be good for that.”
“H’m! not bad. Tell ’em we’ll sell. Good night, Manning.”
“G’night, Guv’nor.”
He turned over the pages of his bank-book, and examined the balance. “Ought just to see me through,” he muttered; “and then—four hundred pounds!”
God sends happy thoughts when most they are needed, and a vision arose of two young people laughing happily as they passed from the room.
“We pulled off that scene, old boy,” he said. “Fairly brought the house down.”