"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."

"And did he send the char a bancs especially for my benefit?"

"Not really--but naturally he did."

"Then I will go with you, sir."

He put on his cap slowly and followed the curate into the street--one of the girls racing after them to say that they had forgotten to pay the bill. "And a pretty sort of clergyman you must be, to be sure," was her reflection--to the curate's blushing annoyance and his quite substantial indignation.

"I find much impertinence in this part of the world," he remarked as they retraced their steps toward the West; "as if the girl did not know that it was an accident."

"We pay for what we eat down here," Alban rejoined dryly; "it's a good plan as you would discover if you tried it, sir."

Mr. Geary looked at the boy for an instant as though in doubt whether he had heard a sophism or a mere impertinence. This important question was not, however, to be decided; for a neat single brougham edged toward the pavement at the moment and a little crowd collected instantly to remark so signal a phenomenon.

"Your carriage, sir?" Alban asked.

"Yes," said the curate, quietly, "my carriage. And now, if you please, we will go and see Mr. Gessner. He is a Pole, Mr. Kennedy, and one of the richest men in London to-day."

CHAPTER VII

THE HOUSE OF THE FIVE GABLES

It was six o'clock as the carriage pa.s.sed Swiss Cottage station and ten minutes later when they had climbed the stiff hill to the Heath. Alban had not often ridden in a carriage, but he would have found his sensations very difficult to set down. The glossy cushions, the fine ivory and silver fittings, were ornaments to be touched with caressing fingers as one touches the coat of a beautiful animal or the ripe bloom upon fruit. Just to loll back in such a vehicle, to watch the houses and the people and the streets, was an experience he had not hitherto imagined. The smooth motion was a delight to him. He felt that he could continue such a journey to the ends of the earth, resting at his ease, untroubled by those never ended questions upon which poverty insisted.

"Is it far yet, sir--is Mr. Gessner's house a long way off?"

He asked the question as one who desired an affirmative reply. The parson, however, believed that his charge was already wearied; and he said eagerly:

"It is just over there between the trees, my lad. We shall be with our good friend in five minutes now. Perhaps you know that you are on Hampstead Heath?"

"I came here once with little Lois Boriskoff--on a Bank Holiday. It was not like this then. If Mr. Gessner is rich, why does he live in a place where people come to keep Bank Holiday? I should have thought he would have got away from them."

"He is not able to get away. His business takes him into town every day--he goes by motor-car and comes back at night to breathe pure air.

Bank Holidays do not occur every day, Mr. Kennedy. Fortunately for some of us they are but four a year."

"Of course you don't like going amongst all those poor people, Mr.

Geary. That's natural. I didn't until I had to, and then I found them much the same as the rest. You haven't any poor in Hampstead, I am told."

Mr. Geary fell into the trap all unsuspectingly.

"Thank heaven"--he began, and then checking himself clumsily, he added, "that is to say we are comparatively well off as neighborhoods go. Our people are not idlers, however. Some of the foremost manufacturers in the country live in Hampstead."

"While their work-people starve in Whitechapel. It's an odd world, isn't it, Mr. Geary--and I don't suppose we shall ever know much about it. If I had made a fortune by other people's work, I think I should like some of them to live in Hampstead too. But you see, I'm prejudiced."

Sidney Geary looked at the boy as though he had heard a heresy. To him the gospel of life meant a yearly dole of coals at Christmas and a bout of pleasant "charity organizations" during the winter months. He would as soon have questioned the social position of the Archbishop of Canterbury as have criticised the conduct and the acts of the manufacturers who supported his church so generously.