He gave his hand a hardy flip across one side of his dark moustache and passed out. McDowell looked after him sourly. "Damn the brute!" he muttered.
As Vibert's words implied, he had been in McDowell's office once before on the same day. His salary at St. Asaph's now meant more to him than it had meant a month ago, and he had called with reference to it and to the delay in its payment. Hitherto, the financial arrangements of the church had gone on with the same precision as its anthems and its processionals. In the present condition of things delay to Vibert was more than a surprise, more than an embarrassment; it was an exasperation.
"I don't sing for glory," he had declared with an offensive brusqueness. "It's the here and not the hereafter that I'm busy with."
McDowell looked at him uneasily. "I'm going to fix up all the salaries next week in one batch. I don't see why any particular man should be favored."
"Favored!" repeated Vibert, with a loud insolence. "I should say not. I don't feel favored in running my legs off for money three weeks overdue. We can't live on air. We have bills to pay. We ain't singing for the pleasure of it."
McDowell contracted his eyes to a critical narrowness. "You may not be singing much longer for anything else, either."
"That's another matter; it isn't you that put the choir together."
McDowell tapped his fingers on the yellow varnish of his desk. "I don't know about that. From what I hear, you're not making the sort of record for yourself that's useful in a church."
"My private life is nobody's business. I sing; I'm worth the money."
"That may work on the stage; it won't work quite so close to the pulpit. Come, now; I know a little something of your daily doings. Plenty of men sing who don't hang around race-tracks and loaf in pool-rooms. And, from what I hear, you're helping that young Brainard along at a good gait, too. You'd better wait—along with the others."