“But no cleric would say such things.”
“Think for yourself—would he, o’ man? ‘Mentally cauterised,’ and all that kind of stuff! Bad form!”
“But Mr. Cardomay expressly asked me to keep the spirit of the play.”
“You took me too literally, Mr. Lennard. No self-respecting member of the Church would turn his wife out of doors in the middle of the night. He would wrestle with her mentally. There is a fine chance in that scene for inspired rhetoric. Think! Something that starts gently and gradually, crescendoes as the wealth of this theme reveals itself. Why, it comes to my brain as easily as if the trouble were my own.” He began to pace up and down, saying, “God gave you into my keeping, and I shall not let you go. For the sake of that great love that once was ours—love consecrated by holy matrimony, cemented by the hands of little children—put behind you these dark thoughts, my dear, these sinful, useless hopes. Shun this evil phantom that rises like a—a—something—in our path. Bear your part in the great trust—the trust of a wife and a mother.” He paused dramatically.
“That’s the stuff,” chipped in Freddie Manning. “And the girl finishes up by crying in his arms, and the house shouts itself sick.”
“According to my way of thinking,” hazarded Mr. Lennard politely, “no woman would stop in the room if her husband talked like that.”
“Well, there you are,” said Manning. “That’s a jolly good way of getting her off—much better than pitching her through the window.”
“Let us approach the matter rationally,” suggested Eliphalet, although he was not a little distressed at the reception given to his oratory. “Having gone so far, I am not anxious to relinquish the play. Even if only on account of the title, I confess I am drawn towards it. I suggest, Mr. Lennard, that you leave the manuscript with me to work upon. It would save much fruitless discussion. I should bring to bear a fresh eye, cultivated to observe and remedy the existing faults. What do you say?”
“Just as you please,” said the young man hopelessly. “I don’t suppose I should ever get what you want.”
During the fortnight in which Eliphalet laboured at “A Man’s Way” he had constant resource to manuscripts of old plays in his repertory, most particularly to one called “The Vespers,” in which a clergyman and his wife passed through troubled waters. In this work Right throve persistently, mainly through the good offices of much Homeric matter delivered from the centre of the stage and etherealised by the influences of the Spot Lime or Red Glow from Fire.