Читать книгу The Lucky Number - Major General John Hay Beith - Страница 11

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But Fortune, once she takes a fancy to you, is not readily shaken off, as most successful men are always trying to forget.

A fortnight later Lord Caversham, leaving his hotel in a great northern town—he combined the misfortunes of being both a director of the railway company and a Cabinet Minister, and had spent a harassing fortnight attending inquests and explaining to fervent young counsel why he had not been present upon the footplate of the engine supervising the driver and fireman at the time of the accident—encountered an acquaintance whom he had no difficulty whatever in recognising.

It was Excalibur, jammed fast between two stationary tram-cars—he had not yet shaken down to town life—submitting to a painful but effective process of extrication 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 upon the shoulder.

“Can you kindly inform me where the owner of that dog may be found?” he inquired politely.

“Yass. Se’nty-one Pilgrim Street. But ’e won’t sell ’im.”

“Should I be likely to find him at home if I called now?”

“Yass. Bin in bed since the eccident. 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 instalments. 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. After the grand gentleman had disappeared within the dingy portals of Number Seventy-one in quest of Mr. Gilmore, Mary Ellen and Excalibur remained in the street, chaperoning the chauffeur and footman, and keeping the crowd at a proper distance.

Meanwhile, 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, as 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 incumbency: any old curacy would do—a billet I could marry on?” He flushed scarlet. “I—we have been waiting for a long time now.”

There was a long silence, and the Curate wondered if he had been too mercenary in his request. Then Lord Caversham asked:

“What are you getting at present?”

“Two hundred a year.”

This was about two-thirds of the salary which 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 three 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 said:

“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 fervour.

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 fiancée one day.”

He walked briskly down the stairs and into the street. Mary Ellen, frustrating the footman, darted forward and flung open the door of the car with a magnificent flourish.

Excalibur, mistaking her intention, and anxious to oblige, promptly crawled in.