In the meanwhile Eliphalet had passed a troubled night. Dispassionately and clear-headedly he had been through “His Prayer” (late “A Man’s Way”) and had given it deep thought.
He had chosen this work because he believed it would lift him from the Old School and place him among the moderns, and lo! it was even as all his other plays. He had been deceived. There was not a spark of originality in it. It was set and stereotyped, lifeless and dull.
“Why, why did I ever believe in the thing?” recurred over and over again in his mind.
So before Manning had a chance to speak a word, he was saying:
“I have made a most grievous error in the matter of ‘A Man’s Way.’ It’s no good, Manning—no good at all, and I cannot conceive how I ever thought it was.”
“We are all liable to mistakes, Guv’nor.”
Eliphalet shook his head. “Perhaps I am getting old,” he said, “and losing my sense of good and ill. Why, even with the alterations I have so laboriously contrived, it does not compare with the poorest play in our repertoire.”
Manning slapped his hat on the table.
“Guv’nor,” he said, “that’s what I’m here to say. It all comes of trying to get off our own railway system. Now what’s wrong with doing ‘The Vespers’ instead?”
“ ’Pon my soul,” said Eliphalet, “I believe it would bear reviving.”