CHAPTER III
THE CURE THAT WORKED WONDERS
Of all conventions a happy ending is the most perilous.
It intrigues people into the most improbable situations. It fawns upon the unthinking and offends the thoughtful.
Happiness should arise from natural causes, and never be induced for the purposes of convenience or climax.
Eliphalet Cardomay’s early life was saturated with plots which, passing through a morass of many tribulations, invariably ended with lovers embracing. It was as much the inevitable outcome of this saturation that led him to commit the fatal error of making Blanche Cannon his wife as it was to slacken his waistcoat after a repast and sink, with drooping eyelids, into a chair beneath an open window. The first was the accepted happy ending to a love episode, and the second the plethoric happy ending to a meal; and in neither case did the results justify the action.
His marriage ended sordidly in a cheap divorce; and his siesta, the one on that particular afternoon, in a cold.
Treacherous germs await old gentlemen who sleep beneath open windows. Riding at ease with the army of descending smuts that denote the industry of a Midland town, they enter the system and take command. Wherefore, ten days later, instead of walking with sprightly step down Brigan High Street, Eliphalet Cardomay was lying in bed, contemplating M. Dyson, of the Royal Theatre, Brigan, with a pleading and watery eye. But the manager was not a man to allow sentiment to stand in the way of business.
“Any other night, Mr. Cardomay,” he said, “I’d have bitten on the bullet and said, ‘Stop away’—but this is our biggest business day in the calendar, and if you go out of the bill . . .” He finished the sentence with an expressive gesture.
Poor Eliphalet, propped up with a pillow and two cushions borrowed from the sofa belowstairs, looked pained as well as old.
“Believe me,” he plaintively remarked, “I feel very ill. I don’t think I could play the Reverend Barnard Coles to-night, and I know I couldn’t do him justice. Really—really I should be grateful if you did not press me further.”