"I think I had better go and have a look at those poor folks in the sleeper first," replied the curate. "They may require my services professionally."
"At the Junction, then, perhaps?" suggested Lord Caversham.
At the Junction, however, the curate found a special waiting to proceed north by a loop line; and, being in no mind to receive compliments or waste his substance on a hotel, he departed forthwith, taking his charred confederate, Excalibur, with him.
VIII
Fortune, once she takes a fancy to you, is not readily shaken off, however, as most successful men are always trying to forget. A fortnight later Lord Caversham, leaving his hotel in a great northern town, encountered an acquaintance he had no difficulty whatever in recognizing.
It was Excalibur, jammed fast between two stationary tramcars--he had not yet shaken down to town life--submitting to a painful but effective process of extraction at the hands of a posse of policemen and tram conductors, shrilly directed by a small but commanding girl of the lodging-house-drudge variety.
When this enterprise had been brought to a successful conclusion and the congested traffic moved on by the overheated policemen, Lord Caversham crossed the street and tapped the damsel on the shoulder.
"Can you kindly inform me where the owner of that dog may be found?" he inquired politely.
"Yas. Se"nty-one Pilgrim Street. But "e won"t sell him."
"Should I be likely to find him at home if I called now?"
"Yas. Bin in bed since the accident. Got a nasty arm."
"Perhaps you would not mind accompanying me back to Pilgrim Street in my car?"
After that Mary Ellen"s mind became an incoherent blur. A stately limousine glided up; Mary Ellen was handed in by a footman and Excalibur was stuffed in after her in installments. The grand gentleman entered by the opposite door and sat down beside her; but Mary Ellen was much too dazed to converse with him.
The arrival of the equipage in Pilgrim Street was the greatest moment of Mary Ellen"s life.
Meantime upstairs in the first-floor front the curate, lying in his uncomfortable flock bed, was saying:--
"If you really mean it, sir--"
"I do mean it. If those two children had been burned to death unnoticed I should never have forgiven myself, and the public would never have forgiven the company."
"Well, sir, since you say that, you--well, you could do me a service.
Could you possibly use your influence to get me a billet--I"m not asking for an inc.u.mbency; any old curacy would do--a billet I could marry on?" He flushed scarlet. "I--we have been waiting a long time now."
There was a long silence, and the curate wondered whether he had been too mercenary in his request. Then Lord Caversham asked:--
"What are you getting at present?"
"A hundred and twenty a year."
This was about two thirds of the salary Lord Caversham paid his chauffeur. He asked another question in his curious, abrupt staccato manner:--
"How much do you want?"
"We could make both ends meet on two hundred; but another fifty would enable me to make her a lot more comfortable," said the curate wistfully.
The great man surveyed him silently--wonderingly, too, if the curate had known. Presently he asked:
"Afraid of hard work?"
"No work is hard to a man with a wife and a home of his own," replied the curate with simple fervor.
Lord Caversham smiled grimly. He had more homes of his own than he could conveniently live in, and he had been married three times; but even he found work hard now and then.
"I wonder!" he said. "Well, good-afternoon. I should like to be introduced to your fiancee some day."
IX
A TRAMP opened the rectory gate and shambled up the neat gravel walk toward the house. Taking a short cut through the shrubbery he emerged suddenly on a little lawn.
On the lawn a lady was sitting in a basket chair beside a perambulator, the occupant of which was slumbering peacefully. A small but intensely capable nursemaid, p.r.o.ne on the gra.s.s in a curvilinear att.i.tude, was acting as tunnel to a young gentleman of three who was impersonating a locomotive.
The tramp approached the group and asked huskily for alms. He was a burly and unpleasant specimen of his cla.s.s--a cla.s.s all too numerous on the outskirts of the great industrial parish of Smeltingborough. The lady in the basket chair looked up.
"The rector is out," she said. "If you go into the town you will find him at the Church Hall and he will investigate your case."
"Oh, the rector is out, is he?" repeated the tramp in tones of distinct satisfaction.
"Yes," said Eileen.
The tramp advanced another pace.
"Give us half a crown!" he said. "I haven"t had a bite of food since yesterday, lady--nor a drink neither," he added humorously.
"Please go away!" said the lady. "You know where to find the rector."
The tramp smiled unpleasantly, but made no attempt to move.
"You refuse to go away?" the lady said.
"I"ll go for half a crown," replied the tramp with the gracious air of one anxious to oblige a lady.
"Watch baby for a moment, Mary Ellen," said Eileen.
She rose and disappeared into the house, followed by the gratified smile of the tramp. He was a reasonable man and knew that ladies did not wear pockets.
"Thirsty weather," he remarked affably.