“Don’t you think you are rather wasting your life?” he asked, after I had answered the last of them.
“I am enjoying it.”
“Very likely. People generally do enjoy life when they are young. Hunting is all very well as an amusement, but to have no other object in life seems—what shall we say?—just a little frivolous, don’t you think?”
“Well, perhaps it does; but I mean, after a while, to buy a practice and settle down.”
“But in the mean time your medical knowledge must be growing rather rusty. I have heard physicians say that it is only after they have obtained their degree that they begin to learn their profession. And the practice you get on board these ships cannot amount to much.”
“You are quite right,” I said, frankly, for my conscience was touched. “I am, as you say, living too much for the present. I know less than I knew when I left Guy’s. I could not pass my ‘final’ over again to save my life. You are quite right: I must turn over a new leaf.”
“I am glad to hear you say so, the more especially as I have a proposal to make; and as I make it quite as much in my own interest as in yours, you will incur no obligation in accepting it. I want you to become an inmate of my house, help me in my laboratory, and act as my secretary and domestic physician, and when I am away from home, as my representative. You will have free quarters, of course; my stable will be at your disposal for hunting purposes, and you may go sometimes to London to attend lectures and do practical work at your hospital. As for salary—you can fix it yourself, when you have ascertained by actual experience the character of your work. What do you say?”
Mr. Fortescue put this question as if he had no doubt about my answer, and I fulfilled his expectation by answering promptly in the affirmative. The proposal seemed in every way to my advantage, and was altogether to my liking; and even had it been less so I should have accepted it, for what I had just heard greatly whetted my curiosity, and made me more desirous than ever to know the history of the extraordinary man with whom I had so strangely come in contact, and ascertain the secret of his wealth.
The same day I wrote to Alston announcing the dissolution of our partnership, and leaving him to deal with the horses at Red Chimneys as he might think fit.