CHAPTER XVII
CONDITIONS
"Dr. Leigh," said President Renshaw, in his gentle and measured utterance, "I sent for you on a little matter of business, for a few minutes of conversation, if you are at leisure."
The young astronomer signified that his time was the president's, and waited for his next words with an oppressive sense of vague foreboding. They were sitting in the room he had first entered, and Dr. Renshaw occupied the chair in which he then sat. As Leigh glanced about the room and back again at the old man's face, that first meeting seemed but yesterday, so unaltered was the scene. The tall clock, the old chair, the black cloth mitre with its tarnished gold insignia, the framed plans of St. George's Hall, were all in the same places. The president had not changed in the interim; it even seemed that he had not moved. But beyond the shapely oval of the old man's head a glimpse of wintry landscape was framed by the narrow window, instead of that earlier vision of the September morning.
In Leigh's alert and sensitive mood, these relics taunted him with their own permanence in the face of change. Those sticks of wood, those drawings, that piece of black cloth, were as ancient in a sense as the pyramids, and would retain their places while generations came before them, laboured their brief day, and then vanished as a puff of steam vanishes into blue sky. The clock had long since run down for good, and seemed by virtue of this very fact to have gained a victory over time.
"You remember, doubtless," the president resumed, "that your appointment was for this year only, and I asked you to come in to—in short, I should like to inquire whether you have made any plans for the future."
The form of the question was such that it might have been merely a preface to an offer of a permanent appointment, but Leigh divined too clearly the doctor's inward distress to give it such an interpretation. The dismissal of which he now felt assured was scarcely a surprise. It seemed but natural that the greater loss of Felicity should include the lesser loss of his position, and he smiled bitterly.
"You mean to suggest, sir, that some such plans on my part are advisable?"
"We might say it amounts to that," Dr. Renshaw returned reluctantly. His age, the kindness of his manner and tone, were disarming, and his listener entertained no more personal resentment toward him than if he were an ancient sibyl uttering of necessity the will of the Fates.