THE OLD CARD
THE OLD CARD
BY
ROLAND PERTWEE
[Illustration]
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
NEW YORK 1919
PUBLISHED, 1919,
BY BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
_Printed in the U.S.A._
TO
MY SON
AND HIS GODFATHER
HENRY AINLEY
CONTENTS
PART I
A FEW ELEMENTS
CHAPT PAGE
ER
I. THE BIG CHANCE 1
II. PISTOLS FOR TWO 20
III. A CURE THAT WORKED WONDERS 40
IV. THE ELIPHALET TOUCH 64
V. GETTING THE BEST 96
VI. QUICKSANDS OF TRADITION 113
VII. GAS WORKS 135
PART II
AND A ROUGH COMPOUND
VIII. MORNICE JUNE 155
IX. A REVERSIBLE FAVOUR 178
X. THE DEAR DEPARTED 198
XI. CLOUDS 227
XII. THE LAST CURTAIN 253
FOREWORD
A visit to any modern French Art Gallery will reveal a number of
canvases daubed all over with little patches of primary colours, almost
as though the picture had been painted with confetti. Assuming you are
unaccustomed to this form of application, you will declare against it
with insular promptitude. But give the picture a chance—step back and
view it from the far wall, and like as not you will find that these
chaotic colours have blended and commingled, have ceased to exist as
individual items and become merged in a single statement of meaning the
artist intended to convey.
It is not always want of a single material that persuades the fashioning
of a patchwork quilt. Patchwork, in its way, is as complete as are the
green plush curtains that hang so soberly from the lacquered pole in
your neighbour’s parlour.
There is a motive in this preamble; I did not leap from a canvas to a
patchwork quilt without purpose. When you have read these pages, if so
be you have the patience and inclination, you will perceive what that
motive is. Let me then forestall the inevitable criticism, “Why, this is
but a series of events strung together by a mere thread of personality,”
and say at once, “Agreed; but that was the intention.” And I would ask
you to hold out the book at arm’s length, get a fair perspective, and
admit that it was not possible to deal with the subject otherwise, and
that these disjointed clippings tumble together in a kind of united
whole.
The life of a touring actor is as no other man’s. It is a series of
ever-changing pictures connected only by the Sunday train-journey. The
most we can do is to catch a glimpse here and there as he halts upon the
Road.
Here, then, are a few such glimpses for your approval or contempt.
ROLAND PERTWEE.
B.E.F.,
France, 1917.
THE OLD CARD
_PART I. A FEW ELEMENTS_
CHAPTER I
THE BIG CHANCE
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.