Part 5 (1/2)
”Good heavens, a clergyman--and you are come to--that is, you choose to live amidst these dreadful surroundings?”
”I do not choose--death chose for me.”
”My poor boy--”
”Not at all, sir. Give a man a good appet.i.te and enough to gratify it, and I don't know that other circ.u.mstances count much.”
”Trial has made of you an epicurean, I see. Well, well, so much the better. That which I have to offer you will be the more acceptable.”
”Employment, sir?”
”Employment--for a considerable term. Good employment, Mr. Kennedy.
Employment which will take you into the highest society, educate you, perhaps, open a great career to you--that is what I came to speak of.”
The good man had meant to break the news more dramatically; but it flowed on now as a freshet released, while his eyes sparkled and his head wagged as though his whole soul were bursting with it. Alban thought for a moment that he had met one of those pleasant eccentrics who are not less rare in the East End than the West. ”This good fellow has escaped out of an asylum,” he thought.
”What kind of a job would that be, sir?”
”Your own. Name it and it shall be chosen for you. That is what I am commissioned to say.”
”By whom, sir?”
”By my patron and by yours.”
”Does he wish to keep his name back?”
”So little that he is waiting for you at his own house now.”
”Then why shouldn't we go and see him, sir?”
He put the question fully believing that it would bring the whole ridiculous castle down with a crash, as it were, upon the table before him. Its effect, however, was entirely otherwise. The parson stood up immediately.
”My carriage is waiting,” he said; ”nothing could possibly suit me better.”
Alban, however, remained seated.
”Mr. Geary,” he exclaimed, ”you have forgotten to tell me something.”
”I can think of nothing.”
”The conditions of this slap-up job--the high society and all the rest of it! What are the conditions?”
He spoke almost with contempt, and deliberately selected a vulgar expression. It had come to him by this time that some unknown friend had become interested in his career and that this amiable curate desired to make either a schoolmaster or an organist of him. ”Old Boriskoff knew I was going to get the sack and little Lois has been chattering,” he argued--nor did this line of reasoning at all console him. Sidney Geary, meanwhile, felt as though some one had suddenly applied a slab of melting ice to those grammatical nerves which Cambridge had tended so carefully.
”My dear Mr. Kennedy--not 'slap-up,' I beg of you. If there are any conditions attached to the employment my patron has to offer you, is not he the best person to state them? Come and hear him for yourself. I a.s.sure you it will not be waste of time.”
”Does he live far from here?”
”At Hampstead Heath--it will take us an hour to drive there.”