CHAPTER III
THE CURE THAT WORKED WONDERS
Of all conventions a happy ending is the most perilous.
It intrigues people into the most improbable situations. It fawns upon the unthinking and offends the thoughtful.
Happiness should arise from natural causes, and never be induced for the purposes of convenience or climax.
Eliphalet Cardomay’s early life was saturated with plots which, passing through a morass of many tribulations, invariably ended with lovers embracing. It was as much the inevitable outcome of this saturation that led him to commit the fatal error of making Blanche Cannon his wife as it was to slacken his waistcoat after a repast and sink, with drooping eyelids, into a chair beneath an open window. The first was the accepted happy ending to a love episode, and the second the plethoric happy ending to a meal; and in neither case did the results justify the action.
His marriage ended sordidly in a cheap divorce; and his siesta, the one on that particular afternoon, in a cold.
Treacherous germs await old gentlemen who sleep beneath open windows. Riding at ease with the army of descending smuts that denote the industry of a Midland town, they enter the system and take command. Wherefore, ten days later, instead of walking with sprightly step down Brigan High Street, Eliphalet Cardomay was lying in bed, contemplating M. Dyson, of the Royal Theatre, Brigan, with a pleading and watery eye. But the manager was not a man to allow sentiment to stand in the way of business.
“Any other night, Mr. Cardomay,” he said, “I’d have bitten on the bullet and said, ‘Stop away’—but this is our biggest business day in the calendar, and if you go out of the bill . . .” He finished the sentence with an expressive gesture.
Poor Eliphalet, propped up with a pillow and two cushions borrowed from the sofa belowstairs, looked pained as well as old.
“Believe me,” he plaintively remarked, “I feel very ill. I don’t think I could play the Reverend Barnard Coles to-night, and I know I couldn’t do him justice. Really—really I should be grateful if you did not press me further.”
“Last thing I should dream of doing. Only it comes a bit hard on me, after booking you solely for that date.”
It being obviously useless to appeal for sympathy, Eliphalet fell back on his second line of defence.
“But, don’t you see, the entire dignity of the part would be gone if he were played with a cold.”
“No, I don’t,” declared Mr. Dyson. “What’s to prevent the Reverend Coles, or old Hamlet himself, for that matter, from blowing his nose like any other mortal? Now, you take my advice—lie in snug all day, and have some rum and milk, and a couple of boiled onions for lunch.”
“I am a teetotaler, Mr. Dyson, and also a rigid abstainer from onions, not so much from personal distaste as from the knowledge that he whose breath is impregnated with the aroma of that vegetable loses both friends and prestige.”
Suddenly Mr. Dyson’s face brightened.
“By Jove,” he exclaimed, “I saw a guaranteed cure in yesterday’s Herald. Tip-top thing. Breaks the back of the worst cold in four hours. No humbug! There are photos of people who’ve benefited by it—in the Ad.” His lynx eye lighted on a copy of the journal in question at the moment Eliphalet was drawing it into concealment beneath the quilt. “Hi! you’ve got it there—half a minute—now, listen.” And, shaking out the folds of the crumpled news-sheet, he began to read.
“Mrs. Baxter’s testimony on Enoch’s Instantaneous Cold Cure.”
There followed a letter in which the good lady set forth, with great lack of reserve, the painful and familiar symptoms of her malady, stating how, after a night of darkness, an angel from Heaven (disguised as a next-door neighbour) appeared, and urged her to try Enoch’s Instantaneous Cold Cure. Whereon she, despaired of by the luminaries of the faculty, secured a phial of the magic decoction, which not only dissipated the cold, but actually relieved her of an almost chronic dyspepsia and a lifelong tendency to sciatic rheumatism.
“What do you think of that?” demanded Mr. Dyson, in conclusion.
“I am too familiar with the form to be greatly impressed.”
“Will you try a bottle?”
“I had very much rather not.”
Mr. Dyson’s mouth shut like a trap. “Comes to this,” he said. “You won’t try to help me out.”
The poor invalid waved his head from side to side.
“Oh, very well,” he conceded. “I’ll take it if it gives you any satisfaction.”
“That’s the style,” cried the manager. “I’ll get you a bottle right away. Mark my words, you’ll be fit for anything by night.” And, slapping a hat on his head, he clattered from the room.
He was back five minutes later with a neat chemist’s parcel in his hand. “Bought one for myself, too,” he said. “Felt a bit snivelly this morning. Now, come on and have a dose at once.”
“I have just had a little beef-tea,” replied Eliphalet, “but I promise to take it in half-an-hour. In the meantime, I believe, with your assistance, I could snatch a few moments’ sleep.”
“Don’t see how I can help in that direction.”
“Perhaps not,” said Eliphalet; “but I daresay if you left me alone I could manage it by myself.”
“Righto! See you at the theatre, then. Don’t forget the physic, mind.”
“I won’t forget.”
But he did forget. It was eleven o’clock when Mr. Dyson left, and it was after five when Eliphalet awoke from a profound slumber.
The room was quite dark, save for the light from a street lamp which percolated through the muslin curtains and cast strange shadows on the ceiling.
He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. The troublesome itching behind them had abated. His nasal passages were clearer—they actually admitted air.
“I believe I am better,” he said. Then, striking a match, he lit the gas-jet by the bed, and looked at his watch.
“A quarter past five! Old boy, if we are going to play to-night, we had better get up.”
Very unwillingly he withdrew his feet from the cosy coverings and, as he came to a sitting posture and made a tentative search with his toes for the carpet slippers, his eyes fell upon the little paper parcel where Mr. Dyson had left it.
“Good gracious, I have broken my promise!” he exclaimed. “I must take the stuff at once.”
He picked up the parcel, broke the pink string and extracted a small blue glass bottle bearing a label covered all over with microscopic print.
“Now, the question is whether I should not be just as well off without this,” he mused. “However!”
He withdrew the cork and smelt the fluid critically. It had rather an agreeable smell—slightly sickly, perhaps, but on the whole pleasant. In placing it to his lips, he observed the label.
“Some people would read that,” ran his thoughts, “but as it probably deals with just such another case as Mrs. Baxter’s, I think I won’t.” And he swallowed the contents of the bottle unto the last drain.
The action was typical of Eliphalet. Small details, not connected with his calling, he invariably ignored. They fidgeted and oppressed him, and it is probable, but for the zealous attentiveness of his dresser, Potter, he would have strode the streets with buttonless clothes and laceless boots.
Certainly Potter would never have allowed his master to consume a bottle full of unexplored liquid without first ascertaining in what measure it should be taken. But Potter had been summoned to the bedside of a departing aunt, and Eliphalet, confronted with the problem of “doing for” himself, had set about it by the shortest route.
Messrs. Enoch had expressly stated on their unread label that not more than thirty drops should be taken at a single dose—and not more than three doses per diem. “Taken in excess,” so ran the legend, “the cure might have effects prejudicial to the system.”
Roughly speaking, Eliphalet Cardomay had consumed some three thousand drops, and already their subtle powers were at work.
Being a strict teetotaler, and unfamiliar with spirituous influences, he was at once sensible of exhilaration and a tingling warmth in his vitals.
With feet dangling, he sat on the edge of the bed, blinking and clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“An original flavour,” he soliloquised. “Yes—I think I like it.” Then, donning a dressing-gown, he crossed to the fireplace and rang the bell.
“Saakes alive,” said the worthy Lancashire landlady, “ye’ll never be goin’ to get oop with that ’eavy cold an’ all?”
“Duty before ailments,” observed Eliphalet gravely. “May I have a can of warm water here, and a plate of soup and a rack of toast when I come downstairs?”
When the water arrived, accompanied by advice to get back to bed, he set about to shave a twenty-hours’ stubble from his chin. It was a spasmodic effort, and he reflected how rapidly his cold had pulled him down.
“We are getting old and palsied,” he confided to his reflection in the mirror.
While washing, he experienced a novel and peculiar sensation—just as if all his nerves were transmitting electric messages to their various centres—messages which seemed to run, “I’m having a riotous time here—what’s the news with you?” Moreover, he had a curious conviction that his brain-cells were opening and closing in the most unusual way. Little glimpses of long-forgotten incidents raced across his mental screen, to disappear or be obliterated by some succeeding impression. During the process of putting on his collar and tie quite right such pictures came and went.
He saw himself as a tiny boy, dressed up in a white suit and white shoes and socks, going to a circus with his father. He remembered how Eliphalet No. 1 had stopped to speak to a friend, and how he had filled in the weary wait by paddling through a four-inch slough of mud, swept up by the roadside. He was on the point of laughing at the recollection when it struck him that there was nothing to laugh at in a man’s last words to his wife—how vividly the trumpery appointments of that room recurred to him, and the silly threats she had made—and how—they applauded on his first appearance in “The Corsican Brothers.” He had held his head high that night, and the pavement outside the stage-door was thronged with an eager and waiting crowd, and—all the theatrical profession were there when Eliphalet senior was laid to rest. “A Great Tragedian,” old Toole had said, and he had replied, “A wonderful father, sir.” And what a night of it they had (the early ’seventies, wasn’t it)—He and a dozen other bloods put a barricade of beer-barrels across the top of the Hay-market—Jermyn and Panton Street—and no one was allowed to go past without a drink. He was not a teetotaler then. That had been proved by the magistrate’s comments at the Police Court on the following morning. How his head had ached. Was his head aching now? Not a bit—a little dizzy, perhaps—that was from the cold—but the cold was better—much better. Fine stuff Enoch’s Instantaneous—Enoch!
“And forty little laughing boys
Came running out of school.”
Was that Enoch Arden—or Eugene Aram? Either or neither? What did it matter? Where was his coat?—where was it?
“Potter!” he called—then, “Dear me! how stupid!” Potter, he remembered, was at his aunt’s funeral—or was it christening?
He found the coat on the far side of the bed, where, careless of everything, ill and miserable, he had cast it before flinging himself between the blankets. Strange he should have felt so ill overnight, when now——
He slapped his chest and sang an arpeggio.
“La-di-da-daa! Resonant, my boy, and of good timbre.”
“Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate.”
He stooped to pick up his hat, and kicked it clown-fashion right across the room. A second effort was more successful, but, oddly enough, the pattern of the carpet photographed itself vividly upon the retina of his eyes. He was still aware of it when he returned to the perpendicular.
There were angles and shapes in yellow and green on a red ground which danced before them as he descended the stairs—the stairs that had such an awkward twist he had never before noticed. “They tell me,” he gravely announced to Mrs. Beecher, who had come into the hall at the sound of his approach, “they tell me that one of the most difficult achievements is to put a spiral staircase into perspective.”
“Aye—well, a’ve put soup on table; you ought to take cab to theatre,” responded the good lady.
Eliphalet was touched to a point of exaggeration.
“What a happy and fortunate man your good husband is to possess such a wife.” And so saying, he took his hat from the hall stand and went out into the street.
The keen evening air felt like a cool hand upon his brow, and Eliphalet hummed to himself as he went. He turned into the High Street as the Town Hall clock struck six.
Six! He was very early. The curtain didn’t rise until 7.30, and a quarter of an hour was ample time to assume the clerical garb of the Reverend Coles. Wherefore he had a full hour to spend as he liked, and it was a delicious evening for a walk.
Beyond the fringe of factory chimneys lay rolling downs and green valleys—valleys with light-hearted brooks chuckling among the stones. Years had passed since he sat beside a brook, with the water thrilling his bare toes—and all of a sudden a great desire possessed him to be alone in a solitude of water and willows.
There was a policeman standing a few paces away, and to him Eliphalet said:
“Could you direct me to a valley with a stream running through it—where I can be all to myself—alone?”
The policeman, a broad-beamed Lancashire lad, regarded him suspiciously.
“I can tell you where you’ll be alone all right,” he responded, “and happen you’ll find yourself there sooner than you expect unless you get a move on.”
“But why?”
“Get off.”
“But, look here,” said Eliphalet very seriously. “When I was a younger man I used to count the buttons on policemen’s coats.” And with this grave admission, he turned away. He had not gone more than twenty yards before his attention was attracted by two small boys and a little girl, their noses glued to the windows of a confectioner’s.
“Are you hungry?” he demanded.
All three turned their attention from the magnetic charms of mince-pies and Maids-of-Honour to the æsthetic and deeply-seamed features of Eliphalet Cardomay. There was something in his countenance which at once dispelled any inclinations to tell untruths. It was such an open and kindly face—like that of an old baby—and the child he had addressed turned from the contemplation of it to judge the effect his words had made upon the other two.
Presently the little girl replied, “Noa, us isn’t ’oongry, but us cud do wi’ soom of they there.”
“So could I,” said Eliphalet. “Come along.”
At the head of this little ragged band he entered the shop and addressed a comfortable looking matron who was arranging macaroons on a glass stand.
“We have come to eat cakes, madam,” he announced. “Chelsea buns, tarts with jam on them, doughnuts and sweet almond biscuits. We are not hungry, you understand, but we want these things, for the children do not know their flavours—and I have forgotten them.”
So the good lady, who was a motherly soul, established them at a little marble-topped table and brought many delicacies, and Eliphalet, an Easter cake in one hand and a marzipan potato in the other, began to talk. He told them many little incidents of his own childhood—his voice sounding very far away. He told them the plot of Julius Cæsar and how he would like to be a grandfather—or a father—and what he intended to put on for this spring season, and about a villa at New Brighton where he would live when he retired.
And all the while the children swallowed the cakes and thought him amiable but mad.
It was seven-fifteen when the feast was suddenly broken up by the violent entry of Mr. Dyson.
He had called at Eliphalet’s rooms and learnt of his unusual departure, and when the actor did not put in an appearance at the theatre, had hastened out in great alarm to search the neighbourhood.
“It was sheer luck that I saw you through the window,” he cried. “Do you know what the time is?”
“How should I, since it waits for no man?” said Eliphalet.
“You’ve got barely ten minutes to get on the stage.”
This startling announcement brought Eliphalet abruptly to his feet.
“Dear me! I had forgotten. There are so few children in my life. Madam, please,” he placed half a sovereign on the counter, and shook his head at the proffered change. “Give it to them in a bag. Come, Dyson. Ten minutes, you said.”
As they hurried from the shop one of the children asked, “Is yon his keeper, missus?”
Mr. Dyson gripped him by the arm and dragged him along.
“Gave me the scare of my life. How did you come to overlook what the hour was?”
“That’s what I must have done,” replied Eliphalet hazily.
“Hope you took that stuff all right?”
“Yes—I think so. Fancy I ought to have another dose. Let’s stop and buy some more.”
“No time. I’ll give you some at the theatre. Hurry along.”
The local dresser was not a man of marked intelligence or great celerity of action, but he contrived to get Eliphalet into the outer coverings of the Reverend Barnard Coles in less than quarter of an hour.
Mr. Dyson, busily employed in the front of the house, sent round his bottle of Enoch’s Instantaneous, half of which Eliphalet drank. He would probably have drunk the rest, had not the cork been pushed inwards and floated across the neck of the bottle before he had finished the contents.
Just before his entrance, Mr. Dyson rushed round with a few words of warning.
“Clinkin’ house,” he said. “Packed out—but they may want holding.”
“Thass all right—we know.”
“Feeling pretty good in yourself?”
Eliphalet took a deep breath, closed his eyes and exhaled heavily. At that instant he heard his cue. Alert at once, he opened the door and walked on to the stage. The lights dazzled him. He was struck with a consciousness of something left undone. What was it? Ah! he had failed to answer Mr. Dyson’s question. Wherefore he promptly replied:
“No, I feel rather funny.”
There was the usual burst of complimentary applause, and in an instant he was the Reverend Barnard Coles, about to be deserted by wife and child.
Eliphalet played the first act of “The Broken Heart” very cautiously. Without suspecting that anything was radically wrong with him, he felt that he must be wary. Once or twice his articulation had struck him as peculiar. He had shied badly over the word “constantly”—“consanny” was the nearest approach he had been able to make to the correct pronunciation. Then again, sundry speeches had become unexpectedly involved. For example, he had to say, “You with your great eyes, your scarlet mouth and your white face, are ever before me, a barrier which shuts me off from God.”
What he actually said was:
“You, with your white eyes—your great mouth—and your scarlet face,” etc. Fortunately he had put so much passion into the lines that no one noticed the slight confusion of adjectives. That is to say, no one on the audience side of the curtain; but Freddie Manning, the stage-manager, who had known Eliphalet as a man of temperance during a constant association of countless years, tipped his bowler hat to the back of his head and quoted briefly from the Bible.
“Syd,” he said, addressing the call-boy, “slip along for a glass of cold water and stand with it at the door the Guv’nor comes off by.”
The call-boy grinned and went on his errand whistling a song, the words of which dealt with the pleasures of alcoholic excess.
Catching the implied suggestion, Mr. Manning, nothing if not loyal, directed the toe of his boot at the seat of the young musician’s trousers.
“I say! What’s wrong with the Guv’nor?” asked the lady who played the villainess.
“Nothing, my dear,” was the curt reply.
“But he’s been saying the most extraordinary things,” she persisted.
“Has ’e? Well, don’t you bother about it.”
This conversation took place just before the series of events leading to the finale of Act I.
The scene, as written, ran thus: The worthy Vicar, deserted by wife and child—beset by an intriguing woman—sinks down before his writing-desk and buries his face in his hands. After a few seconds of silent agony he rises, straightens himself—like a man determined to bear his burden with unbent back—and strides from the room.
No sooner has he gone than two paid desperadoes make burglarious entry by the French windows, and steal from his safe papers proving him to have been guilty of a crime years before. As they are escaping, the Reverend Barnard Coles returns, and cries “Who’s there?” He tries to arrest their flight, and is brutally struck down.—CURTAIN.
Now when the wicked lady left the stage, on this particular night, Eliphalet was perfectly clear about what he had to do. It was the author’s intention he should stagger to his writing-table—and stagger he did, most realistically. He supported himself with one hand and switched off the table lamp with the other, leaving the stage in darkness, save for the crimson rays from the fireplace, which encarmined his form during the few moments of grief and prayer before his exit.
With the reduction of the light Eliphalet experienced a totally unlooked-for sensation in his head—a dizziness, a vertigo. He sank into the chair and buried his face, and then——
I would not dream of suggesting any reader of this story would be likely to have personal knowledge of the sensations which sudden darkness brings to persons who have over-stepped the margins of sobriety. I am credibly informed, however, by contrite, but experienced authorities, that peculiar and various illusions occur. As a general rule, either the floor comes up, or the ceiling descends, and this with a rotary and oscillating motion.
So long as the darkness prevails there is no escape for the unhappy sufferer, and, strange to say, he is seldom wise enough to escape from the darkness.
Eliphalet Cardomay had not been drinking. On the other hand, who but an analyst could say what potent drugs went to the manufacture of Enoch’s Instantaneous?
No sooner had his head fallen into his hands than he felt himself borne aloft—spirally ascending to some giddy pinnacle, rising above and above the level of earthly clay.
He could not combat the forces at work—they were irresistible. He could only cling to the edges of the writing-table and wait—and, waiting, ascend. “And singing, ever soaring—and soaring as thou singest,” he quoted.
A frantic assistant stage-manager deserted the prompt corner and grasped Freddie Manning by the arm.
“The Guv-nor’s stuck on,” he gasped. “Ought to have been off half a minute ago. Looks as if he won’t move.”
Mr. Manning dived into the O.P., and took in the situation at a glance.
“Shall I ring down?” queried the A.S.M.
“No. Check your red arc in the fireplace. Here, you chaps,” he addressed the two burglars. “Go and pretend you don’t see him. Play the scene quiet, and just as you come off, spot him and use the life-preserver. Got it? Right away, then!”
He was Napoleonic in crises, was Mr. Manning. “One could always rely on Freddie,” was a byword in Cardomay’s company.
The two miscreants climbed noiselessly over the window-sill, just as the audience was beginning to find the Reverend Coles’ anguish a shade protracted; with panther steps they approached the safe, inserted the key and withdrew the incriminating papers.
And all the while Eliphalet clung on to the table and wondered where he was and what strange machinery was hoisting him heavenward. He solved the mystery at the exact moment the thieves had finished their work.
He was in a lift, that fierce little lift at the Army and Navy Stores. He was a liftman—he had been a liftman for years. In another half-second they would arrive at the first floor.
He pushed back his chair with a clatter—flung up his head, and the words rang out:
“This is the drapery, stationery and ironmongery departmins——”
The affrighted burglars staggered back as Eliphalet rose to his feet, and cried, “This is the jewelry, toys, games, and saddlery departmins.”
The hindmost burglar pushed his companion forward.
“Slash him, Jake!” he hissed.
The blow was struck—Eliphalet fell, and with him the curtain.
Up went the lights, and Freddie Manning rushed on to the stage.
“No calls,” he shouted. “Clear, everyone. Strike, boys!”
The big scene flats split up into sections and marched miraculously away.
“Come on, Guv’nor.” He stretched out a hand and helped Eliphalet to his feet.
“I think,” said Eliphalet in a dazed sort of way, “I am not very well to-night.”
“You’re all right,” said Manning. “I’ll give you a hand to your dressing-room.”
Half-way down the long stone corridor Eliphalet hung back and resisted.
“Dunno whether iss struck you, but I think we’re having an allfully jolly evening, ol’ boy.”
“You get changed,” remarked Manning grimly, and handed him over to the dresser.
When he returned to the stage he found several members of the company talking together in animated whispers.
He at once projected himself into their midst.
“If I hear man or woman saying the Guv’nor’s drunk,” he said, “he or she gets the sack—quick. Got that?” And, cocking his hat over his right eye, he marched off.
Before the curtain the simple audience were discussing the play.
“What’s he mean when he says that bit about the drapery department?” demanded the young lady.
Her companion shook her head darkly, and volunteered: “It’s the grief ’as turned ’is brain.”
“Ah! that must be it. Gone loopy like.”
Eliphalet, in his dressing-room, was in a fine rage.
“Get that cork out, d’y’hear!” he admonished. “How the deuce am I to take med-cine with the cork in?”
“A didna knaw tha wanted any more,” said the dresser.
“ ’S no excuse. Get it out! My cold’s worse—mush worse. Le’s have it.” And, snatching the bottle, he knocked off its neck and drank what remained of the fluid.
“You don’ seem to—t’understand I’m a ver’ important pers’n—great actor—Eliphalet Card’may. You’re a low feller—but a good chap—one of the nicest and mos’ delightful chaps I ever met——”
“Second act beginners, please,” yelled the call-boy.
Eliphalet passed a hand over his brow. “Dear me!” he said. “I dunno. Yes, yes—I’m coming—I’m all ri’, qui’ all ri’.”
And he made his way to the stage.
By a Herculean effort he struggled through Act II. His voice was a shade thick—his gait a thought unsteady—his rendering distinctly heterodox; but the audience was mainly composed of simple, uninitiated folk who accepted what was placed before them without much questioning. They had been assured for three weeks past, on every hoarding in the city, that Eliphalet Cardomay was a great actor. And since the ways of the great are ever incomprehensible, it behove them, as groundlings, to give genius its due and applaud exceedingly at the end of the act.
Unhappily, Mr. Dyson, manager and part owner of the theatre, did not reflect the feelings of his supporters. He had seen the act, with growing indignation, and realised he was not getting what he had paid for. In short, that Eliphalet Cardomay was giving a rotten show for the simple reason that he was “boosed.” Mr. Dyson was not a man to shirk duty, however unpleasant it might be. Accordingly he hurried round to Eliphalet’s dressing-room, pushed open the door and stalked inside.
“You get out,” he said to the dresser, and when the man had gone, “Look here, Mr. Cardomay. You’re boosed—boosed.”
“Boosed” was a favourite word of Mr. Dyson’s, and, on certain occasions, a favourite pastime. This circumstance, however, did not make him any more tolerant of the failing in others.
Eliphalet was lying full-length in a dilapidated arm-chair, his hands hanging limply over the sides. Certainly his general appearance gave ample excuse for Mr. Dyson’s charge.
Through a mental fog he became vaguely aware of the manager’s presence. With a faint smile he murmured:
“Whassay?”
“You’re boosed.”
“Boosed? Who’s boosed? Wha’s boose?”
“You are—and you’ve got to pull yourself together. See?”
Eliphalet blinked, then sat upright.
“Good God!” he exclaimed. “D’you sugges’ I’m drunk?”
“I know it—and what’s more, the audience’ll know it, too, if you aren’t jolly careful.”
The old actor rose to his feet, his face working as under a great emotion.
“You dare say that t’me! I—I’m a tee-to-tootler—for twenty—twenty-five years. Loathe drink—nev’ touch it. I’m—I’m one—one—”
“You’re one of the rowdy-dowdy boys to-night,” cut in Mr. Dyson crisply.
The fog descended again, and Eliphalet swayed on the back of the chair.
“Tha’s it,” he said. “One of the dowdy boys—all in a row.”
Mr. Dyson flung open the door, shouting:
“Where’s your understudy?”
At that moment Freddie Manning came down the corridor.
“What’s the row?” he demanded.
“He’s drunk!”
“Drop that,” said the loyal S.M.
“Look at him!”
Eliphalet was leaning on the door, and he sang:
“Then next morning before the beak we’re feshed.”
“He’s ill,” came from Manning.
“Ill! He’s boosed, and I won’t have him go on—see?”
Mr. Manning shoved his hat on the back of his head and said:
“If he is, no one is going to say so before me.”
“Where’s his understudy?”
“You look after the front of the house and leave the back to me. Clear out!”
“He’s blind to the wide.”
Mr. Manning jerked back the cuff of his sleeve and shut his teeth tight. The faces of the disputants were barely two inches apart. The dresser came into the room, and Eliphalet passed noiselessly out. Chuckling stupidly, he made his way to the stage.
“Take up the curtain,” he ordered, and the assistant stage-manager, accustomed to years of implicit obedience, touched the bell, and the curtain rose.
“Excuse me,” the dresser was saying. “A doan’t think t’ poor gentleman’s droonk. A think t’is physic as ’as oop-set ’im. ’E’s been taking doases very free from this ’ere.” And he held aloft the empty bottle of Enoch’s Instantaneous.
The stage-manager seized the bottle and read the label.
“Did he take the lot?”
“Aye, and another bottle beside.”
“Drugged!—p’raps he’s killed himself.” Then, in a roar: “Where the hell did he get the stuff?”
Mr. Dyson fell back a step and covered his mouth guiltily.
“You?” Manning jerked out the monosyllable threateningly.
“I did mention—I—I told him it was good,” faltered Mr. Dyson.
“Then,” said Freddie Manning, “you’ll go right on before the curtain and tell the house just exactly what’s happened. The Guv-nor’s going home to bed right now, and, look here again, you’d better state the facts pretty lucid, for I swear I’ll break your neck if it gets about that the Guv’nor was tight.”
From the distance came the sound of a mighty roar of laughter. Simultaneously they turned and saw, for the first time, that Eliphalet Cardomay had gone.
“He’s on!” exclaimed Manning and, followed by Mr. Dyson, made a dash for the wings.
He was on! That was the opinion of the entire audience.
One of the great dramatic moments of the play had been wrecked and lay in splinters on the stage. A scene, the moving nature of which would have wrung tears from a stone, had, by a single line, been turned into an ecstasy of laughter.
The wife and child of the melancholy but Reverend Coles, having seen through the falsity of the life they had chosen, and battered by the glittering villainies of Black Moustache’s patent leather boots and doubtful champagne, had returned weepingly, to implore his forgiveness and his blessing, and he, instead of replying, “I forgive and bless you,” had smiled idiotically and said, “Chase me!”
The house rocked and fell about with laughter.
The unprecedented success of his sally made a profound impression upon Eliphalet. He saw himself as a comedian—a funny man. The last of his self-control fell from him, and he gave himself over to rickety horse-play and clumsy mafficking. He overset chairs and tables, and laughed stupidly, He turned tragedy into farce, and the Reverend Coles from a figure of pathos became a figure of fun.
The “mother” and “daughter,” friends of many preceding tours, strove nobly, but without avail, to keep the scene together, and were eventually driven from the stage in desperation, and genuine tears. Then the temper of the audience, who knew real tears from the acted variety, underwent a complete change, and became nasty.
“ ’Ee! Tha’s droonk, man!”
“Shame to un! Pull un orf.”
“Booooo-booooo!”
“Ought to ’ave our money back.”
“Comin’ on like that.”
“Spoiling of a fine play!”
“Get orf—get orf!”
“Sling summat at un!”
“Shame! Booooo! Ssssss!!”
While the tumult progressed Eliphalet leaned upon a palm pedestal and surveyed the house with a mystified expression. He thought they were applauding him, and bowed his acknowledgment (incidentally knocking over the palm and pedestal!). There was a fresh uproar. Evidently they were not applauding—something must be wrong. What? He held up his hand, and his great bass voice rang out with unexpected volume.
“Silence!” And they were silent. “I was warned you’d want holding, and I’ll hold you.”
A shout of derision was hurled from the gallery.
“I’ll hold you yet,” said Eliphalet, rocking to and fro.
Then a carrot whizzed through the air and fell with a plump at his feet.
A carrot! The vegetable of derision—the symbol of contempt—the food of asses—to him, Eliphalet Cardomay!
And the mists cleared from his brain and the waywardness from his limbs.
“Ladies—gentlemen!” he cried. “I am ill—very ill! I can’t understand—never—never before have I failed my audience. Let me finish the play—give me a hearing, or break my heart.”
There was a lull, and Freddie Manning, in the wings, seized the character with whom the next scene was played, and with, “Get on and don’t give him time to think,” hurled him on to the stage.
Twice before the end of the act the mists rose before Eliphalet’s brain, but he battled them down by sheer force of will, though the effort brought beads of sweat to his brow. With grim determination he hammered out his lines until the last one had been spoken, and there remained naught else but the heart-attack—the clutching at his breast—the broken cry of “Mary!” and the fall into peace—oblivion.
The curtain had barely touched the boards before Mr. Manning had thrust the manager before it.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mr. Dyson, “I have not come here to make an apology, but to say that you have been privileged to-night to witness a performance under, perhaps, the most remarkable circumstances under which a man has ever appeared.” And to the best of his ability he told them what had happened. When he had finished it was obvious to the meanest intelligence that the applause savoured of the sceptical.
“Won’t do,” said Freddie Manning, and pushed his way before the footlights.
“Easy there! You’re not going yet,” he cried. “Some of you believe it was a yarn the manager has just put over. But I tell you it’s true, and if any man here to-night goes home and says that my Guv’nor and my friend, Mr. Cardomay, was drunk, he’ll be steering a straight course for the libel court—and what’s more, he’ll get this,” and he held up a closed first with a row of shiny knuckles turned outward. “He’ll get this between the eyes—an’ that’s a promise I’ll keep.”
Right into the hearts of those hard-bit Lancashire lads went those “straight-flung words,” and such a roar of enthusiasm followed them as would have wakened the dead.
But it failed to waken Eliphalet Cardomay, who lay on his back and snored, with his head on a rolled-up stage cloth and his mouth wide open.