The Luminaries

energies tended to span a very short duration, if the project to which he was assigned was not a project of his own devising. His imagination gave way to impatience , and his optimism to an extravagant breed of neglect. He seized an idea only to discard it immediately, if only for the reason that it was no longer novel to him; he started in all directions at once. This was not at all the mark of a fickle temper, but rather, of a temper that is accustomed to enthusiasm of the most genuine and curious sort, and so will accept no form of counterfeit—but it was, nevertheless, something of an impediment to progress.
    Balfour was ready to rise from the table and quit the Palace Hotel when suddenly it struck him that it would be a great shame to leave a pitcher of perfectly good wine half-filled. He poured the last of it into his glass and was raising it to his lips—and then he saw, over the rim of the glass, that the clergyman at the nearby table had put aside his tract and folded his hands. He was looking at Balfour intently.
    Like a child caught thieving, Balfour put down the glass.
    ‘Reverend,’ he said. (It was, on reflection, rather early in the day to be drunk.)
    ‘Good morning,’ returned the reverend man, and from his accent Balfour knew at once that he was Irish; he relaxed, and allowed himself to be rude. He picked up his glass again, and drank deeply.
    The clergyman said, ‘Your friend is a lucky man, I think.’
    What an unfortunate face he had—caught in a perennial boyhood , with that bunched mouth, that pouting bottom lip, those teeth like nubbins. One envisaged him in shorts and gaiters, munching on a slab of bread-and-dripping, carrying a parcel of books that had been buckled together with an old belt of his father’s, slapping it against his leg as he ate. But he was thirty, perhaps forty in age.
    Balfour narrowed his eyes. ‘Don’t recall we were speaking for your benefit.’
    The man inclined his head, as if conceding a point. ‘No, indeed,’ he said. ‘And to the benefit of no other man either, I should hope.’
    ‘Meaning what, precisely?’
    ‘Merely that no man ought to profit from overhearing bad news. Least of all a member of the clergy.’
    ‘Bad news, you call it? Thought you just said he was lucky.’
    ‘Lucky to have you,’ the clergyman said, and Balfour blushed.
    ‘You know,’ he said angrily, ‘it doesn’t count as a confession, just because it sounds like a secret, and you heard it on the sly.’
    ‘You are quite right to make that distinction,’ the clergyman said, still in pleasant tones. ‘But I did not overhear you by design.’
    ‘As to your design—as to what’s intentioned and what’s not. Who’s to know it?’
    ‘You were talking very loud.’
    ‘Who’s to know your design, I meant?’
    ‘With respect to my intentions, I’m afraid you’ll have to trust in my word—or in my cassock, if my word is not enough.’
    ‘Trust what in your word and your cassock? Trust what enough?’
    ‘Trust that I did not mean to eavesdrop,’ said the clergyman patiently. ‘Trust that I can keep a secret, when I’m asked.’
    ‘Well,’ Balfour said, ‘you’ve been asked. I’m asking. And you ought to leave off mentioning luck and bad news. That’s your opinion —that’s not what you heard.’
    ‘You’re right. I do apologise.’
    ‘Unsolicited, you know. And not appreciated.’
    ‘I do apologise. I shall be silent.’
    Balfour waved his finger. ‘But you should leave off because I’ve asked you—not because of the confessing rule. Because it wasn’t a confession.’
    ‘No indeed: we agree on that.’ He added, in a different voice, ‘In any case, confession is a Catholic practice.’
    ‘But you’re Catholic.’ All of a sudden Balfour was feeling very drunk.
    ‘Free Methodist,’ the reverend man corrected, without offence; but he added, as a gentle reprimand, ‘You can’t tell a great deal about a man from his accent, you know.’
    ‘It’s Irish,’ said Balfour, stupidly.
    ‘My father hails from the county Tyrone. Before I came here, I was in Dunedin; before that, I was in New York.’
    ‘New York—now there’s a place!’
    The reverend shook his head. ‘Everywhere is a place,’ he said.
    Balfour faltered. After this admonishment, he felt that he could not pursue the subject of New York—but he could not think of anything else to speak about, beyond the subject he had already forbidden the reverend man to pursue. He sat a