But those who work upon the Road, who have no swing-door offices in the Haymarket or Shaftesbury Avenue, who travel year in and year out dragging their productions from one town to another, who live in cheap hotels or cheaper lodgings, who have neither house nor home nor any household goods to call their own—naught save a succession of ugly theatrical baskets—for these no such luxury as a reader of plays exists. It is part of the price they must pay for billing their names so wide and large on the provincial hoardings that all odd hours and the pleasant magazine-time of the Sunday train journey should be spent in the consideration of unsought-for dramatic effusions.
No one could compete with Eliphalet Cardomay’s energy in this direction. He had made a strict rule to read two plays on week-days and three on Sundays, and he never departed from it. Yet, despite his diligent inquiry into the realms, or rather, reams, of the unknown, never once, in thirty years of provincial management, did he discover and produce a new play. He just went on doing the old repertory routine of revival and re-revival, and then back again to the beginning. Sometimes he would vary the order by purchasing the touring rights of a successful London melodrama, but these ventures were few and far between. Yet always at the back of his head was the belief that one day he would chance upon and present an entirely original and unexploited work.
It was at a time when he was debating on the advisability of making an offer for the latest Lyceum success that a copy of “A Man’s Way” came to hand.
He started to examine it on a journey between Glasgow and Brighton, and before arriving at his journey’s end he had read it three times, and his stage-manager, Freddie Manning, had read it twice.
“What do you think, Manning?” he queried.
“Not too bad,” replied Manning, who was not given to superlatives.
“A good title, ‘A Man’s Way’—an arresting title.”
“Might be worse.”
“And an ingenious plot.”
“M’m!”