“No—no—no. Of course not.”
But nevertheless there was a cheque for forty pounds in the letter he posted. Perhaps subconsciously, he was paying for a lesson and not for a play.
It was the Eliphalet touch. He, too, had had his disappointments, and maybe, this was one of them. No man should raise hopes and dash them to the ground.
CHAPTER VII
GAS WORKS
The effects of international politics are far-reaching. But for them Eliphalet Cardomay would certainly have produced “The Vespers.” The declaration of peace in South Africa was the direct cause of his abandoning the project. A wave of patriotism seized him, and on its impulse he purchased the touring rights of a great military melodrama, entitled “The Flag,” which had been accorded considerable success in a London theatre.
In this play he figured as a dashing, if rather improbable Colonel, whose courage was to be relied upon in any extremity. The extremities were many and dire, but never failed to find our hero alert, sententious, resourceful and with an inexhaustible supply of cigarettes.
Truth to tell, the part was not eminently suited, either to his personality or method. Colonels do not, as a rule, wear much hair upon the temples or nape of the neck, nor do they engage unduly in gesture or vocalisation. Eliphalet, on the other hand, did all these things—declining to sacrifice his established traditions on the shrine of convention. His “Colonel,” therefore, was an indifferent impersonation less like unto a soldier than unto Van Biene in “The Broken Melody.”
In the last scene of the play there was a great “to do”; nothing less, in short, than a bombardment and assault upon the Consulate which the Colonel and his brave followers were defending. With heavy odds against them, these gallant few contrived to hold out until the opportune arrival of a rescue-party headed by the Colonel’s young and lovely daughter, and heralded by a fife-and-drum band.
While the bombardment was in progress the Colonel and a faithful orderly had the stage to themselves. The courageous soldier spent his time between an open cigarette-box and an open window, from which latter vantage he was able to control the movements of his troops, and supply the audience with details of the attack.
Eliphalet Cardomay had been at great pains to make the sounds of the battle convincing. He had bought large drums and employed extra hands to beat the stage with canes. As a final tour de force half a dozen squibs were let off, a single maroon was exploded in an iron bucket, and red fire was burnt with liberality in an adjacent frying-pan.