“I am quite willing to hear the story,” said the rector gravely. Looking more closely at the man, he saw that his neatness was only on the surface. His white cravat was creased, and his wrists displayed no linen. An air of seediness marked him in the full light of the windows, and, pale as his face was, it wore here and there a delicate flush. Perhaps the man’s admission that he was in trouble helped the rector to see this.
“Well, sir, it was this way,” the servant began. “I was not very well out there, sir, and his lordship—he is an independent kind of man—thought he would be better by himself. So he gave me my passage-money and board wages for three months, and told me to come home and take a holiday until he returned to England. So far it was all right, sir.”
“But on board the boat—I am not excusing what I did, sir; but there are others have done worse,” continued the man, with another of his sudden upward glances—“I was led to play cards with a set of sharpers, and—and the end of it was that I landed at Liverpool yesterday without a halfpenny.”
“Yes, it was, sir. I do not know that I ever felt so bad in my life,” replied the servant earnestly. “And now you know my position, sir. There are several people in the town—but they have no means to help me—who can tell you I am his lordship’s valet, and my name Charles Felton.”
“I have not a halfpenny, sir! I want something to live on until his lordship comes back.”
His tone changed as he said this, growing hard and almost defiant. The rector noted the alteration, and did not like it. “But why come to me?” he said, more coldly than he had yet spoken. “Why do you not go to Lord Dynmore’s steward, or agent, or his solicitor, my man?”
“They would tell of me,” was the curt answer. “And likely enough I should lose my place.”
“Still, why come to me?” Lindo persisted—chiefly to learn what was in the man’s mind, for he had already determined what he would do.
“Because you are rector of Claversham, sir,” the applicant retorted at last. And he rose suddenly and confronted the parson with an unpleasant smile on his pale face—“which is in my lord’s gift, as you know, sir,” he continued, in a tone rude and almost savage—a tone which considerably puzzled his companion, who was not conscious of having said anything offensive to the man. “I came here, sir, expecting to meet an older gentleman, a gentleman of your name, a gentleman known to me, and I find you—and I see you, do you see, where I expected to find him.”