“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.