Eliphalet Cardomay stepped from his first-class compartment to the platform. Potter, his dresser, having descended from the train while it was still in motion, respectfully held open the carriage door lest his august master should soil his beautiful wash-leather gloves.
It was gratifying to observe how the station porters touched their caps.
On the seat of the compartment he had vacated lay an open suit-case, several brown-paper-covered plays, copies of the Era and the Referee, an umbrella and a travelling cap. It was part of the dresser’s duties to clear up the débris occasioned by Mr. Cardomay. A man who carries in his head all the emotions and all the lines—Hamlet, Richard III., The Silver King, and countless other rôles of lesser importance—could hardly be expected to give attention to such a trifling matter as his own personal property.
Eliphalet accepted a bundle of letters from an obsequious advance agent, returned, with condescension, the tentative salutes of several members of his company, and passed down the long grey platform with springing step. The yellow smoke of the Midlands was as violets to his nostrils and as balm to his eyes.
With quiet satisfaction he noted how the ticket-collector at the barrier, instead of demanding his ticket, allowed him to pass with a polite “Good morning, Sir.” After all, it is something to be known.
Mr. Cardomay invariably walked to his lodging, thereby giving a large section of his future public the opportunity of studying his features at close range, unadorned by the artifices of the make-up box or the beneficent influences of limelight. This walk also gave him a chance of seeing whether the effect of his billing justified the cost.
For twenty-five years had Eliphalet Cardomay “featured on the road,” and there was little left for him to learn about Provincial Theatrical Management.
The poster which preceded him to town displayed a well-proportioned man, whose head tilted fearlessly upon broad shoulders, and whose eyes shone as with a smouldering fire. A full growth of hair projected from under the curving brim of a Trilby hat. He wore a flowing tie, a fur-collared coat, and in his right hand carried an ivory-topped Malacca cane of original design. It was a striking poster, executed many years before, and everyone who knew it, and knew Eliphalet, marvelled how the original still continued to realise the picture in every detail.
The reader will have judged, and judged rightly, that our hero is one of the Old School—the school of graceful calisthenics, and meticulous elocution—but let him beware of anticipating too far; for, although Eliphalet Cardomay’s histrionics might savour of the obsolete, he will not find in the man himself those traits usually allied to actors of this calibre.
In all his long career no one had ever heard Eliphalet address a fellow-performer as “laddie,” nor a theatrical landlady as “Ma.” Neither did he borrow half-crowns at the Bodega, nor absorb tankards of Guinness’s stout in the wings. In fact, Eliphalet Cardomay was a very estimable fellow, hedged about and wing-clipped by stale conventions of his calling, which, in spite of his bitterly-learnt knowledge of their existence, he was never able to supersede by modern methods.
The almost impertinent disregard for old stage processes and old accepted technique which brings notoriety and admiration to the actor of to-day was as unattainable to Eliphalet as the peak of Mount Parnassus.
Twenty-five years before, a London newspaper had prophesied that he would mature and become big. He did mature, but on the lines of his beginning, and when at last he returned to London—the Mecca of his dreams—he was driven by laughter back to the provinces whence he had come.
In the hearts of provincial playgoers there were still warm places for Eliphalet Cardomay, and the rich cadences of his voice never failed to arouse strange emotions and irrepressible yearnings in the bosoms of impressionable young ladies, who wrote and confided their admiration with surpassing regularity and singular lack of reserve.
To his own company he was always courteous and considerate, but a trifle remote. He wrapped himself about in mystery, and as no one knew exactly how to take him very few made the attempt.
“The public man should always be an enigma.”
He addressed this statement to a very voluble young member of his company, who frequented bars and lavished cigarettes upon total strangers.
“Be mysterious if you wish to succeed,” he continued, developing the theme. “Your never-ceasing ‘Have a spot,’ and your ever-open cigarette-case, are the most obvious things that ever happened.”
Naturally Eliphalet Cardomay was looked upon as something of a joke. A man with a name like that could hardly expect anything else. Yet to him the name Eliphalet, which his sire, a once-distinguished tragedian, had borne before him, was one of his most cherished possessions. Like a blare of trumpets it rang out from a hundred hoardings. It was electric—original—arresting. A title to juggle with; and yet, so strange is the human mind, so averse to aught but the copper coinage of the language, that his few intimate friends and the inner circles of all provincial Green Rooms knew, spoke and thought of him by no other appellation than “The Old Card.”
Let it be clearly understood that no one called him the Old Card to his face; for, although regarded as a joke, Eliphalet was clearly loved by his fellows, and if at times they indulged in the gentlest of leg-pulling there was not one amongst them who would willingly have caused him the slightest pain or distress.
But to return to our hero, striding briskly over the cobble streets on the particular Sunday morning on which our narrative opens. Every feature of the ugly midland town was familiar to him and every feature good. Taking a turning to the right, he pursued his way through a narrow and deserted alley between two factories. There was an acute angle a little further down, and here on a wall facing him a full-length prototype of himself had been posted.
Eliphalet stopped and saluted his printed image.
“Old boy,” he said, “we are back—back home again. I deserted you for a while—a little while—but I’ve learnt my lesson, old friend, and we will see the rest of the show out together.”
There was a tremor in his voice as he spoke the words and an unnatural mist before his eyes. It was this same mist, perhaps, that delayed his noticing that the billsticker had applied the last sheet of the poster at least ten inches too high, with the result that the feet were practically attached to the knees. Mr. Cardomay made a note of the fact in a small book he carried for the purpose and continued his walk.
Two factory girls nudged each other as he passed them by.
“See who it was? Mister What-you-call Cardomay.”
“Oh, I like ’im. ’E’s good! When’ll we go?”
The rest of their remarks drifted out of earshot, but Eliphalet Cardomay felt a tinge of pride warming his bosom. He was back again—back home.
The excellent Mrs. Booker, best of landladies, greeted him with every indication of respectful devotion.
“It’s a treat to see you again, sir, it is indeed,” she said, opening the door of the comfortable little parlour, where a jolly fire was burning in the grate and reflecting its rays on many framed and autographed photographs of the celebrated artists the room at one time or another had accommodated.
“When I heard you’d gorn to London, I said to Booker, ‘There! we’ve lorst ’im,’ and ’e says, ‘I believe we ’ave,’ and I says, ‘That’s what we ’ave done; for, depend on it, if London gets hold of ’im, it’ll claim ’im as their own and never let ’im go.’ ”
Eliphalet’s lips tightened a little. He drew off his gloves and cast them on the embossed green plush sofa, and quoted:
“The clinging magic runs,
They will return as strangers,
They will remain as sons.”
“I returned as a son—and could not remain as a stranger.” Then, observing that his remarks were entirely lost upon his audience, he concluded:
“Did you get me a small leg of lamb, Mrs. Booker?”
She nodded gravely.
“A beautiful leg,” she replied; “with a black-currant tart to follow. I ’aven’t forgotten your little likes, sir.”
Eliphalet smiled beatifically.
“You are an excellent good woman,” he said. Then, stretching himself luxuriously, “Yes, there is no doubt at all—it is very good to be back again.”
He cast a loving and possessive eye over the homely surroundings, shook out his table napkin, and drew up a chair to the table, as a king might sit at a banquet.
Probably the reader is wondering what this story is all about, and certainly it might have been a distinct advantage to have begun at the beginning rather than the end. Having committed ourselves so far, however, there is no option but to retrace our steps to a period some three months prior to the foregoing incident.
It was at the conclusion of a long tour that Eliphalet Cardomay received a startling proposal from London that he should appear in the title-part in Oscar Raven’s dramatisation of the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini.
For weeks past the production had been boomed in all the dramatic columns, and the advertised cast practically made a corner in the biggest stage stars of the day.
Sir Owen Frazer, Actor-Manager and Knight (with danger of becoming a baronet), was to have appeared as Cellini, and had favoured several reporters with extensive interviews in which he sought to convey to the public mind the depths of his research into Cellini’s character. He had even gone to the length of growing a real beard for the part, rather than relying on the good offices of Mr. Clarkson. Therefore, when at the eleventh hour his voice entirely forsook him, and Harley Street unanimously declared that it would forsake him altogether unless he gave it a rest for a month, consternation in dramatic circles ran very high indeed.
Eight days existed before the much-advertised first night, and the finding of a fitting successor was at once the most baffling and the most urgent affair.
After an all-night sitting, in which the name of every prominent male member of the profession was suggested, and in which Mr. Oscar Raven and his part collaborator, Julian Franks, nearly came to blows with every member of the Syndicate, each other included, the producer, a young man whose youth was only exceeded by his brilliance, rose and standing, flamingo-like, on one leg, addressed the meeting.
“For God’s sake, get to bed,” he said. “You are talking bilge, the whole lot of you. I’ll find someone—in fact, I have already. You will say I am mad,” he continued, in response to a chorus of inquiries which greeted his statement, “but even at so great a risk I will tell you his name. It is Eliphalet Cardomay.”
Raymond Wakefield was quite right when saying they would accuse him of madness. Sir Owen Frazer wrote on a piece of paper the opinion that he was probably dangerous as well. But Wakefield only laughed.
“Commend me to authors for stupidity and to syndicates for lack of intelligence,” he observed. “It is evident none of you have the smallest acquaintance with the character of Cellini or the art of Eliphalet.”
“But the man can’t act.”
“My dear Raven!” expostulated Wakefield. “The man never ceases to act.”
“But not the kind we want,” from Franks.
“It will be my duty to stop him acting.”
“He has no brains,” contributed Sir Owen, more by gesture than sound.
“I, on the other hand, have plenty,” the producer modestly remarked. “Just consider the character of Cellini, and what do we find? Conceit, bombast. Probably he had a beautiful voice, certainly a chivalrous manner, unquestionably an incapacity to realise his own ineffability. Turn to Eliphalet and you find the exact prototype. Compris?”
“By George, yes!” said Julian Franks.
But Oscar Raven stretched out a silencing hand.
“Does this man Cardomay strike you as the kind of personality that could ever have achieved the masterpieces which came from the hand of Cellini?”
“Well, of course, that is pure rot,” returned Wakefield. “That was where Frazer was all over the place in the part. Trying to convey an undercurrent of massive brain-power. Believe me, the work of great artists is entirely spontaneous—they carry no stamp of genius. Look at Raven, for instance! He has written quite a remarkably good play. Does his exterior suggest it? No. Anyone’d mistake him for a haberdasher’s assistant. But I’m off to bed. Fix it up amongst yourselves.”
And that was how Eliphalet Cardomay was dragged from the provinces and hurled into the forefront of the London stage, with a great part and eight days in which to study it.
As the train bore him towards the Metropolis, he repeated over and over to himself:
“It has come at last. They want me.”
His mind flew back to the old press-cutting of twenty-five years ago. “One day this young man will mature and become big.”
“We’ll show ’em, old boy!” he said. Yet behind it all was a strange fear—a queer, nervous doubt—the same doubt which had ever stood between him and his cherished dreams of appearing in the West End with a production of his own. He had never taken the plunge—he had never swum across the Thames from the Surrey side, and it is probable he never would have done. But now the great ones had stretched out their hands and said, “Come over.”
London is a chilling place to the stranger, and Eliphalet felt the chill almost before his foot touched the platform. There was no genial cap-touching from the porters—no polite salutation from the official at the ticket-barrier. He took a cab. There was no particular point in walking—he could scarcely expect to be recognised.
Fur-coated and Trilby-hatted, Eliphalet Cardomay entered the stage-door of the Duke of Connaught’s and mixed with the company. It was curious what little notice was taken of him. He might have been nobody. Presently a business-manager came and asked if he were Mr. Cardomay, and, learning this was the case, carried him off to an office near the roof to sign contracts and discuss details.
“I shall require my own poster to be used,” said Eliphalet.
The business manager shook his head. “Sorry,” was all he said. Then added, “Reiter is doing the posters, you see.” It was said so conclusively that argument was out of the question.
Eliphalet fell back on his second line of defences.
“I take it that my name will come first on the bills.”
“No. Characters in order of their appearance is the way we are working it. Shall we get back to the stage?”
He was led down through countless corridors until they arrived at their destination. Here Oscar Raven came forward and introduced him to several of his fellow-players.
“Let’s get at it,” came a voice from the stalls. “How de do, Mr. Cardomay. You’ve read the part, I suppose?”
“I have not only read the part,” he replied, “I have studied the first act.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Wakefield cheerfully replied. “You may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Here, wait a bit. I’ll come up.”
Eliphalet turned in surprise to the author.
“Who is that very young man?” he demanded.
“Raymond Wakefield—our producer,” replied Raven, as one who spoke of the gods.
“Indeed?” with raised eyebrows.
Just then Wakefield appeared through the iron door and skated on to the stage.
“I meant to read it to you first,” he said, without any preamble. “But never mind. Now, what’s your idea of the part?”
Mr. Cardomay had never been cross-examined before, and didn’t like it; but he replied, politely enough:
“It’s a very good part.”
“Yes, yes; but I mean, how are you taking it? Comedy, tragedy, farce?”
“There can scarcely exist two opinions, Mr. Wakefield, Cellini is a great thinker—a poet—a philosopher.”
“Lord, no! Light comedy is what we want; light comedy to the verge of farce.”
“Mr. Wakefield, I do not appreciate jokes in regard to my work.”
Here Raven intervened with, “You are so extreme, my dear Raymond. After all, Cellini was a great artist, and in my conception——”
“Look here, Raven,” said Wakefield, running his fingers through his pinky-yellow hair, “you’ll have to stop away from rehearsals if you can’t shake those absurd ideas from your brain. The Cellini I want, and mean to have, is the man who had liaisons with his models, committed murders, and yet was an artist malgré lui. You see what I mean?” He fired the query at Eliphalet. “You’ve read the biography, of course?”
“I have little leisure for reading,” replied the actor, feeling a trifle dazed.
“You must do so at once, then. Come on, and I’ll go over some passages with you now at the Savage. Reynolds, take the crowd scenes—we’ll be back by two.” And he gripped Eliphalet to whisk him away.
But Eliphalet Cardomay would not allow himself to be hustled.
“Mr. Wakefield,” he said, “I have eight days in which to study a long and important role. I do not choose to squander any of these precious hours in profitless discussion. Let us proceed to rehearse at once.”
This was mutiny—rank mutiny. It is doubtful whether the great Sir Owen Frazer, at present seated at the back of the stalls, would have presumed to say as much.
Raymond Wakefield’s cherubic face went into a series of straight lines. He had never before been openly defied and his sense of humour deserted him. It deserted him for eight consecutive days, during which time he gave Eliphalet Cardomay every kind of hell. Unmindful of the very characteristics which had prompted him to make the engagement, he caught up every stereotyped inflexion, each elaborate gesture, and subjected it to the most rigorous criticism, analysis and correction. In justice it should be admitted that, according to modern standards, there was a very sound reason for all his suggestions. Raymond Wakefield was never at a loss for reasons. He kept up a running fire of interrogation as to what Eliphalet was driving at, and Eliphalet never could answer.
“Why chant that passage as though it were a hymn, when the whole intention of the line is—Ouch! You speak the stuff like the ancients spoke blank verse. There! When you are telling Pietro to bring you ‘raw gold’—you say ‘raw gold’ as though it were something sacred and divine. My dear fellow, it’s the stuff you’re working in every day of the week. Try and imagine yourself a plumber saying to his mate, ‘Get us a lump of putty, Jack.’ ”
At first Eliphalet resented this treatment hotly, but he was no match for this electric young man. On the third day of rehearsals he had been so ill-advised as to retort.
“You forget that I was acting many years before you were thought of.” He regretted the words almost before he had spoken them.
That night he sat down on his bed and reviewed the whole affair. His belief in himself was shattered. He realised that all the painful years of acquired technique were valueless. His entire stock-in-trade had been exploded and held up to ridicule by a young man who could scarcely need to shave more than twice a week. And the worst of it was that his resentment for that young man had died, and in his heart he confessed that all and everything he had been told was good and true and right, and that his own methods were bad and false and wrong.
Next morning he did a very gracious act. He apologised to Raymond Wakefield and promised to do his best in the future. Unhappily, the apology came at an inopportune moment. Both authors had been reviling Wakefield for letting them down, and had declared that the play would be ruined as a result of his casting. They insisted that Cardomay must be got rid of and the production postponed. Wakefield never admitted himself at fault, and a stormy scene resulted. Eventually Sir Owen Frazer was appealed to, and, to the general astonishment, he wrote on a sheet of paper, his voice being inoperative, that if either or both of the suggestions were carried out he would institute proceedings against everyone concerned. Being lessee of the theatre, nothing more could be said at the time, but subsequently Messrs. Raven and Franks foregathered and spoke hard words anent Sir Owen—who, they declared, being unable to play the part himself, desired nothing better than to see it mutilated.
One can understand, therefore, why Eliphalet’s apology was not so well received as it deserved. In fact, all that Raymond Wakefield said was:
“Glad to hear it, for we’ve any amount of lost ground to make up.”
The hours and days that followed were pitiful to the point of tragedy. The Old Card worked like a dray horse at the new art of being natural, which, despite his utmost effort, further and further eluded him. At the last dress-rehearsal there was not a line nor a movement, from start to finish, which fitted him anywhere.
Both authors left the theatre in a state of speechless fury at the end of the second act, and when the curtain fell on the final scene of the play, Raymond Wakefield just looked at him, shook his head, and followed their example.
Eliphalet Cardomay, a perfect picture in his Florentine robes, stood like a statue in the middle of the deserted stage. An overmastering desire possessed him to hide his head and cry like a child in some dark recess. He moved unsteadily toward the prompt corner. The iron door beside it was open, and there, in the brightly-lit corridor leading to the Royal Box, stood Sir Owen Frazer, and he was laughing—laughing, it seemed, as a man had never laughed before.
Until that moment his feelings had been entirely of self-reproach. He had acquired the bitter knowledge that a great chance had been given him—the chance for which he had waited all his life—and he—he couldn’t deal with it. To-morrow evening the public would witness an exhibition so execrable, so vile, that the veriest tyro might be ashamed of giving it. But the sight of Sir Owen Frazer’s mirth brought about an instant metamorphosis. The self-reproach vanished, to be supplanted by a dull and smouldering rage.
With compressed lips he made as if to approach the Knight; then, turning about, he swept superbly from the stage.
Back at his hotel he came to a great decision. Failure on the morrow was certain. Well, fail he might, but not on the lines of Raymond Wakefield’s laying. London should see Eliphalet Cardomay play Cellini on his own methods—play it, in fact, just as he had played “The Silver King,” and a hundred other creations.
A rehearsal was called for his especial benefit next day, but he telephoned to say that he had no intention of being present.
Raymond Wakefield got into a cab and set forth to see what it was all about. He found his quarry, arrayed in a gorgeous kimono, discussing a late breakfast.
“Look, here, Mr. Cardomay,” he began, “do you consider this is fair?”
Eliphalet motioned him to a chair and placed cigarettes within easy reach.
“My dear young Mr. Raymond Wakefield,” he said, choosing his words with slow deliberation, “I have no intention to rehearse again, because it would be useless. You, with unexampled brilliance—and, believe me, no one is more sensible of your admirable gifts than I am—have devoted an entire week in a fruitless endeavour to teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Doubtless grandmothers should know how to perform this delicate ritual, doubtless it is expedient and is expected of them; but many are too old to learn, and, right or wrong, prefer to decapitate the ova with a table knife and assimilate its albuminous contents with the aid of a teaspoon. I have done my best, and have failed—confessedly, I have proved an inept pupil, and, to complete the metaphor, have dribbled the yolk and the white all over my waistcoat like a child that knows no better.”
“My dear chap,” exclaimed Raymond Wakefield, striking one hand against the other, “if only you would play Cellini as you are talking now, I’d turn into a door-mat for you to wipe your feet on. Now, let’s run over it just once more.”
But Eliphalet Cardomay was adamant.
The Duke of Connaught’s Theatre was packed to overflowing for the opening performance of “Benvenuto Cellini.” Incidentally, every member of the dramatic profession, not otherwise engaged, made it a duty to be present, some even going to the extremity of paying for their seats.
The news that something unusual in the way of acting was likely to occur had spread with the rapidity of a fire. Be it said that most of his fellow-players were heartily sympathetic with Eliphalet for the failure they were confident he would make, but their sympathy did not take the form of staying away.
Before the curtain rose, each member of the company came forward to wish him luck, and he, with old-world courtesy, thanked them all and waited, apparently unmoved, for his cue.
The first scene in which he was to appear was a very Rabelaisian interlude wherein he made love, of a base kind, to his model. At rehearsals he had been worse in this than in any other part of the play. His efforts to acquire a light touch had been little short of bricklayer’s pastry, and the poor girl with whom the scene took place was in an agony of dread at the coming ordeal. What was her amazement, then, when Eliphalet Cardomay acted the whole racy interlude as though he were reading a lesson from the Bible.
At first the audience did not know what to make of it, the reading was so utterly at variance with the lines. Then, like a wave, it struck them that here was originality at its highest. Here in these full-throated accents, these absurd parsonic gestures, was a brilliant satirical reading—a fragment of exquisite characterisation.
There was an ovation when Eliphalet left the stage.
In the author’s box Sir Owen Frazer was heard to say, with extraordinary force, considering he had lost his voice, “I’m damned! Damn it!”
Oscar Raven plucked Wakefield by the sleeve. “What on earth do you make of it?” he said.
“It will make the play,” came the reply.
“But I can’t understand. Does he know what he’s doing?”
“ ’Course not. Our friend Eliphalet is shirking. He couldn’t do what we wanted, so he’s just turning on the old stuff, the old provincial tap.”
“Then please Heaven,” came from Franks, “he keeps up the flow till the end.”
And he did. All the bad provincial fake was reeled off—mere vocalisation and attitudinising, utterly misplaced, fitting the part nowhere, and for that very reason accepted by the high-browed Press and the novelty-seeking public as one of the finest dramatic conceptions of the day.
The Press raved about it. They went into ecstasies over the Art of Eliphalet and his “epic cynicism.” “Why had this marvellous depictor been denied to London?” they cried. “Doubtless,” said one, “much praise is due to the intellect of Mr. Wakefield, the brilliant producer, but for the actor himself no adulation could be too strong.”
And the “brilliant young producer” kicked himself heartily in that the praise should have been due to him for casting Eliphalet as Cellini, but that he had forfeited all claim thereunto by losing sight of his original intention out of pique.
The wonderful notices were brought to Eliphalet on the following morning as he lay in bed, and very gravely he read them through—and understood. There was no triumph in his eyes—the meaning of those cuttings was too clear. To Eliphalet they spelt failure, not fame. The words “epic cynicism” rang through his brain. Epic cynicism?—Yes, it was just that. And instead of rising, as for years he had dreamed he would do, and saying to his image in the glass, “Eliphalet, old boy, we’ve knocked ’em—knocked ’em hard,” he pulled the coverlet over his head and buried his face in the pillow.
“Benvenuto Cellini” ran ten weeks, during which time the secret of Eliphalet’s success was well preserved.
Oddly enough, Sir Owen Frazer, whose voice by this time was restored to him, was singularly free from enthusiasm with regard to the hit his confrère had made. People even went so far as to say that, had he been a lesser man, they would have suspected him of jealousy. Thus there was a good deal of astonishment when it became known that he had offered Eliphalet Cardomay the second lead in his new production.
Eliphalet received the part in company with an invitation to supper. He went over it very carefully and very suspiciously. Then he put it in his pocket and went forth to seek Raymond Wakefield.
“Read this,” he begged, “and open up your wonderful brain as to its potentialities.”
Raymond did so, and explained with fluency and clarity the thousand subtle intricacies with which the part abounded.
Eliphalet Cardomay nodded gravely.
“Sir Owen Frazer is a very clever man,” he remarked.
On his way back he returned the part, with a polite refusal to sup. In a postscript he added:
“I am returning to the provinces for good. One should never destroy an illusion. You have had your laugh. It was generous of you to wish to share it with the masses.”
Eliphalet Cardomay stepped from his first-class compartment to the platform. Potter, his dresser, having descended from the train while it was still in motion, respectfully held open the carriage door lest his august master should soil his beautiful wash-leather gloves.
Dear me! this sounds strangely familiar. Why, of course! That’s the worst of starting a story at the wrong end.