Eliphalet Cardomay was not, in the true sense of the word, a Bohemian. In his own particular way he was rather conventional. He knew he had not been drunk by any intentional intemperance of his own, yet the memory of the affair at Brigan was a nightmare to which even Manning was not permitted to refer.
To a man who has formed for himself certain high standards of behaviour, even the inadvertent collapse of any one of these is a matter of acute distress. Eliphalet Cardomay hated insobriety. The word conjured up in his mind a vision of a last scene in his married life. He regarded drunkenness as the thief of virtue, and with Eliphalet virtue was of supreme account. So far as lay within his power he suppressed any tendency in his company toward what is inaccurately termed by laymen, “theatrical arrangements.”
To prevent some little wanderer from committing a false and foolish step he would take any amount of trouble. Eliphalet Cardomay was, despite the failure of his own marriage, a romanticist. He would gladly walk ten miles to a wedding, and an equal distance on his hands to a christening.
There is a sentimental kink in most childless old men. A wise and loving parent Eliphalet Cardomay would have made, had the fates not willed it otherwise, for he was the very type of sentimentalist who gladly would have given his every possession to have his dress-tie—on the rare occasions he wore one—tied by dainty daughter-fingers. But no daughter bore the name of Cardomay—he was alone and self-contained, and watched all around him a world of apathetic parents seemingly insensible to the happiness that was theirs. And so, in his little way, Eliphalet fathered his flock, guided and ferried them over rough waters, gave them gentle, easy advices, and, without saying much about it, contrived to do a deal of good.
Some girls are always old enough to be on their own—others are never old enough to be on their own, even when middle-age has made their girlhood a sham.
Of the latter order was Miss Eunice Terry, whose real name was Mary Kent. She became Eunice Terry on her accession to the stage because she foolishly believed such verbal extravagances would facilitate her ascent of the ladder of Fame. The foolishness of Eunice did not stop with her choice of a name, for the stage had scarcely claimed her as its own before she adopted the practice of calling everyone “My dear,” of colouring her naturally pretty face with unnatural pigments, and of wearing clothes, and particularly boots, of a type which no man admires, except on evenings of frivolity removed from the home circle.
Had Eunice Terry been a wise little girl she would have remained Mary Kent even though on the stage. For Mary Kent was quite an attractive person, and far more likely to figure in the cast of a play than any amount of Eunice Terrys. But she was not a wise little girl, she was a very foolish one, and her folly was the cause of a growing grief in the heart of Henry Churchill, who had loved her with joy as Mary, and continued to do so with melancholy as Eunice.
Henry Churchill was a big, conventional young man, with a disproportionately small salary derived from an estate agent. He had first met Mary when the latter was employed by the same firm as typist, and had succumbed at once to her fascinations.
They spent four delightful months getting engaged, and, after working hours, would sit on the pebbles of Bognor beach and make delicious plans for the future. There was only one cloud to dim the skies of these pleasant discourses, and that was Mary’s constantly expressed ambition to go on the stage.