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Title: Emmanuel Burden, merchant of Thames st., in the city of London, exporter of hardware : A record of his lineage, speculations, last days and death
Author: Belloc, Hilaire
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Emmanuel Burden, merchant of Thames st., in the city of London, exporter of hardware : A record of his lineage, speculations, last days and death" ***
THAMES ST., IN THE CITY OF LONDON, EXPORTER OF HARDWARE ***
Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
EMMANUEL BURDEN
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
PARIS
MARIE ANTOINETTE
THE PYRENEES
HILLS AND THE SEA
ON NOTHING AND KINDRED SUBJECTS
ON EVERYTHING
ON SOMETHING
FIRST AND LAST
THIS AND THAT AND THE OTHER
A CHANGE IN THE CABINET
[Illustration: A SKETCH OF MR BURDEN—FROM MEMORY]
EMMANUEL BURDEN
MERCHANT
OF THAMES ST., IN THE CITY OF
LONDON, EXPORTER OF HARDWARE
A RECORD OF
HIS LINEAGE, SPECULATIONS,
LAST DAYS AND DEATH
BY
HILAIRE BELLOC
WITH THIRTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
BY G. K. CHESTERTON
THIRD AND CHEAPER EDITION
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published_ _September 1904_
_Second Edition_ _December 1904_
_Third Edition (2s. net)_ _April 1915_
TO
HERBERT A. L. FISHER
INTRODUCTION
Though no prominent citizen is now-a-days permitted to pass “beyond
the veil” without an account of him being drawn up for posterity, yet
books of this sort have recently grown so common that some warrant
for the publication of a new biography may well be demanded.
Mr Burden’s public position, combined with his sterling piety and
considerable wealth, would alone merit such recognition: to these
must be added the fact that he was a Justice of the Peace for the
County of Surrey. His connection, moreover, with Imperial Finance
has, through the medium of the Press, lent a very general interest to
his name even in those parts of London with which he was personally
unfamiliar.
I am well aware that the task of writing this history could have
fallen into abler hands, but it could have been achieved by no
one more devoted to his subject, or more familiar with the final
catastrophe of this singularly beautiful and modest life. That I
possessed the qualifications necessary for a work of this kind, was
so evident to writers like Charles Egton, T. T. Batworthy, George K.
Morrel, and Mrs Hooke as to cause them to withdraw voluntarily from
a field in which they had already—I regret to say—laboured with some
assiduity.
If, in the face of such a testimony, Mr and Mrs O’Rourke persist in
issuing their ill-informed and prejudiced version of the last sad
months, I fear I am powerless to dissuade them.
I had at first intended my notes for the perusal of friendly
eyes alone: to my astonishment, I find them praised almost
enthusiastically by two powerful critics (—journalists; valued
friends; men whose fingers are ever upon the pulse of the nation),
and a little later I learnt that the Directors of the M’Korio Delta
Development Company would not be displeased to see printed such a
vindication of their methods as my pen had produced. I was assured
by Lord Benthorpe, in person, that no salaried agent upon the daily
press, nor any professional author they had employed—not even
“Ultor”—had given them the full satisfaction they had received from
my manuscript. I, therefore, reluctantly consented to rewrite and
publish the whole, with such added embellishments of style and fancy,
as a wider public deserves.
It has eagerly been enquired by many clergymen and others whether I
had before me a moral purpose in the compilation of this work.
I cannot pretend that I had intended it at the outset to convey any
great religious or political lesson to the world, but I will confess
that long before my monograph was perfected a conscious meaning
inspired my pen. Rather let me put it more humbly, and say that I
became vividly sensitive to a Guiding Power of which I was but the
Instrument. Each succeeding phrase, though intended for nothing but
a statement of fact, pointed more and more to the Presence of some
Mysterious Design, and I arose from the Accomplished Volume with the
certitude that more than a mere record had been achieved. The very
soul of Empire rose before me as I re-read my simple chronicle. I was
convinced of the Destiny of a People; I was convinced that every man
who forwarded this Destiny was directly a minister of Providence. I
was convinced that the Intrepid Financier, the Ardent Peer—nay, the
Soldier of Fortune, whom twenty surrenders cannot daunt—had in them
something greater than England had yet known.
To such convictions the reader owes those snatches of hymns, those
citations from the sermons of eminent divines, and those occasional
ethical digressions which diversify and enliven the pages now before
him.
* * * * *
Of the form of the book I have little to say. Type, paper, and
binding I left to the choice of specialists, as did I also the
impagination, the size of the margin, the debate as to whether the
leaves should be uncut, and the proportion of public advertisement
requisite to a merited fame.
The proofs I read myself.
The question of illustration was discussed at some length. An
excellent photograph of Mr Burden was unfortunately discovered to
be the property of a firm who had flattered him by making it a
complimentary portrait during the last short period of his public
fame. They demand for its reproduction a sum I have certainly no
intention of paying. No other picture of him exists save a faded
daguerreotype taken many years ago on the occasion of a fancy dress
ball. It represents Mr Burden in the character of Charles I., and
seemed to me wholly unsuitable.
The principal characters connected with the M’Korio have, however,
consented to sit to a mutual friend, and his sharp if rapid
impressions of their strong features coupled with a few sketches
of Mr Burden, drawn from memory, will aid my readers to a fuller
comprehension of my work.
My thanks are due to Messrs Marian, solicitors, who procured for
me the best advice of counsel upon passages since omitted; to Mr
Banks, Lord Benthorpe’s butler, who has provided me with much of my
material. To the anonymous author of “A History of Upper Norwood”;
to Mr English, sometime editor of _The Patriot_, now manager of
“The Feathers” Tavern, Greenwich; to the Master of St Barnabas
College, Oxford; to the chaplain and especially to the porter of
the same college; to Mr Carey employed at St Catherine’s College,
long a servant of Mr Cosmo Burden’s; to Lord Garry, to Mr Tammin,
to Mrs Gough, to Charles Parker, Henry Grimm, Peter Cowdrey, C. T.
Knowles, T. Cummins, Loring, Gibbs, Hepton, Rubble and Tuke, and to
many others of lesser note who will, I trust, accept this general
recognition in place of a more personal expression of gratitude.
The MSS. and correspondence which have reached me from all parts of
the world have been of the utmost service. I cannot congratulate
myself too warmly on the receipt of Mr Barnett’s blotting-pad which
his office-keeper had the courtesy to retain for me. The autograph
letters from Prince Albert and Baron Grant to the first Lord
Benthorpe have proved most useful material; his grandson, the present
peer, who figures so prominently in these pages, was good enough to
sell them at an astonishingly cheap rate to a gentleman who was my
agent.
Such notes, memoranda of obligations and short agreements as have
reached Mr Cosmo Burden through me, he is indeed happy to have
received, and he begs me to render thanks for him most heartily in
this place. I am further to assure all who read these lines that any
further scraps in his handwriting that may be received—especially
any letters addressed to Miss Capes—will be warmly and substantially
acknowledged.
It will be noticed that I have alluded throughout these pages to
Lord Lambeth under his original name as Mr Barnett. The public are
more familiar with him in this form, for Barnett is and remains the
name he has rendered famous; and, moreover, his acceptance of the
Peerage was not announced till half this edition had been struck
off. I have his permission for the retention of his simple English
surname. Similarly I speak throughout my work of the Right Rev. the
Right Honourable,[1] the Lord Mauclerc, Bishop of Shoreham, as “the
Rev. the Honourable Peregrine Mauclerc.” The death of his lordship’s
brother, and his own induction to the See of Shoreham, occurred too
late for me to make the requisite alteration.
* * * * *
One word more.
I trust I have nowhere forgotten that delicacy in mentioning the
private affairs of others which is the mark of the gentleman.
If I have spoken strongly of Mr Abbott, it must be remembered that a
patriotic duty has claims superior to those of convention: moreover,
Mr Abbott has himself made a verbal declaration of the strongest
kind, accompanied with an oath, that he is indifferent to my opinions.
It may be mentioned in this connection that the unhappy difficulties
of the Benthorpe family, on which I was compelled (however
reluctantly) to touch, are of no further moment, since young Mr
Benthorpe has wooed and won Antigua, the only daughter of the Count
Brahms de la Torre de Traicion y Crapular, a Spanish nobleman of
immense resources.
For the rest, I have throughout striven earnestly—and I believe
successfully—to avoid giving the slightest pain to any sentient being.
“He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the great God who loveth us,
He made and loves them all.”
—COLERIDGE
Or words to that effect.
CHELSEA, 1904
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The phrase used by “Asterisk” in the _Daily American_ of April
9th has no meaning. _Very Rev._, _Very Honourable_, are titles that
cannot exist in combination. As to the “_Most_”: “_Most_ Honourable,
_Most_ Rev.,” of “Clara,” in the _Evenudg German_, it is not
impossible, but is here inaccurate. His Lordship is not a marquis,
nor has he any intention of ascending the steps of the Archiepiscopal
throne.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A Sketch of Mr Burden—from memory _Frontispiece_
Mr Burden’s Nephew, Hildebrand Worthing, whose
inheritance of gentle blood sadly unfitted him
for a commercial life _To face page_ 7
Mrs Burden at the age of forty-three. From a miniature ” ” 12
Spiritual anxiety of Mr Legros. An impression from
the pencil of a friend and pastor, whose house he
would frequent for the solution of doctrinal doubts ” ” 15
Mrs Burden. An interpretation by Miss M^cKee, long
a governess in the family ” ” 16
Cosmo Burden. From the only photograph which
adequately renders the restrained but permanent
sadness of his features ” ” 23
Mr Capes. (A chance study made for the publishers
of “Rural England.” No other portrait was
obtainable) ” ” 34
Mr Harbury ” ” 42
Mr Ashington, from a portrait—(under his country
name of Mr Curlew)—in “Hosts and Hostesses
of Rutlandshire” ” ” 53
Lord George Hampton, Pioneer and Explorer, of
whom mention is made on page 60. (From a
sketch very kindly communicated by the artist,
his sister, Lady Oona Hampton) ” ” 55
Captain Ronald. (By the kind permission of the Author
and Publisher of “Rulers of Men”) ” ” 60
A “Moro-Kanu,” or member of the upper class of the
Yaba. This class possesses most of the land, and
obtains all the political direction of the Delta.
Indeed it is from their domination of a closely
aristocratic policy that the principal hopes of an
imperial education of that province depend ” ” 62
Lord Lambeth (Mr Barnett). From the portrait by
Sir Henry Moseley, R.A., K.V.O. ” ” 67
The Editor of “The Doctrinaire.” (As he appeared
reading his paper—“Causes of our success in
South Africa,” to the Royal Society) ” ” 95
Lord Benthorpe preventing the disruption of the
Empire ” ” 116
Mrs Warner’s retreating figure ” ” 149
Lord Benthorpe recognising the importance of business
men to the Empire ” ” 151
The Smile ” ” 158
The Bishop of Shoreham (the Honourable the Rev.
Peregrine Mauclerc) sitting as an assessor at the
trial of Canon Cone for heresy, piracy, conspiracy
and schism. An excellent likeness, which we take
from the “Cone Trial Illustrated Supplement”
of “Christian Soldiers” ” ” 169
Mr Burden offering to subscribe whatever may be
necessary ” ” 181
The Rev. Charles Gapworthy, B.A. (From a block
very kindly lent by “The St Lazarus Hys Hostel
Magazine: a Review of Social Progress”) ” ” 183
Canon Cone in repose, discussing matters unconnected
with dogma at the Duchess of Lavington’s. (A
sketch purchased from her Grace’s secretary at
the time, now door-keeper at the Variety, Bismark,
P.A., U.S.A.) ” ” 184
Canon Cone delivering his chivalrous attack upon the
Incarnation. (A thumbnail sketch taken by the
reporter of “Christendom,” and called by him,
“Canon Cone in Action”) ” ” 184
Dr Mohl. From the oil painting presented to the
University of Dorpott by His Majesty William
II., Emperor and King ” ” 187
Baron Bloch. (From a photograph by M. M. Ballaru
et Cie, 147 _bis_, Rue St Loup. Les Clichés sont
la propriété exclusive de la Maison) ” ” 188
Major Pondo. (An extract from the picture of the
reception at Barnett House. By the courtesy of
the proprietors of “Social Sketches,” a weekly
magazine) ” ” 192
“Competition, sir! competition!” ” ” 199
Mr Barnett thoroughly at home ” ” 211
The Porter of the M’Korio Delta Development Co.
(From a group) ” ” 221
“And then the band played” ” ” 250
The Three Doctors ” ” 258
The unexpected Appearance of Mr Burden ” ” 268
Mr Burden in his last unfortunate fit of passion. (From
a sketch very kindly provided by Mr Harbury) ” ” 297
The serious indisposition of Mr Burden in the train ” ” 302
MR BURDEN
CHAPTER I
It is remarkable, and a little saddening, to find how few people have
heard of Mr Burden, who recently died at his residence, Avonmore, 37
Alexandrovna Road, Upper Norwood. He was, all his life, a man whose
influence, though indirect, was considerable; a man certainly not
without weight in the foreign policy of this country, and one that
affected still more profoundly its social structure.
The assiduity and the regularity of his demeanour forbade him,
perhaps, the notoriety that is so prized by many lesser men. His
ambitions, where they were not domestic, regarded his business
and the preservation of the fortune he had honestly acquired. His
judgment, which was excellent, he exercised upon problems connected
with the commercial interests into which he had been born, and from
which he had never, during a useful life of sixty-four years, desired
to dissociate himself.
To the administration of the suburb in which his villa was situated
he was far from indifferent; but he had never attempted to enter
the House of Commons, though his station, means, and connections
would have afforded him ample opportunities in middle age for a
career which Englishmen justly regard as among the most honourable,
lucrative and eminent.
Such men, happily, exercise, under the orderly conditions of modern
England, a far deeper influence upon the fortunes of our great
empire than their lack of public fame might argue in less favoured
communities. It would be an impertinence to insist upon the many
friendships which bound Mr Burden by the closest ties to men who
direct no small part of our national fortunes. To those who knew
him well it would appear redundant, and, to those who had not heard
of him, beside the mark, were an account of all his financial,
philanthropic, or religious activity to occupy any part of the
following pages. Those pages were called forth under the strong and
painful impression of his recent death, and it is their only object
to trace a rapid sketch of his family and social position, to make
some mention of the last few days of his life, and at the same time
to leave some permanent record, lest the memory of such a character
and of its trials should perish.
The name of Burden is first seen in the beginning of the seventeenth
century, when a Henry Burden appears in the court rolls of Beccles,
in Suffolk, in connection with sundry sales of wool to Ghent.
It is not certain whether this Henry was an ancestor or no; but
within ten years the name twice reoccurs, once in the form of Burdyn,
and once in that of Bird.
A receipt presented at Bungay, dated in the year 1616, when our
Shakespeare died, and acknowledging payment for wood used in burning
a witch, bears the signature Barton: and a deed of 1638 conveys and
devises 47 hogsheads of mild ale to Zachary Pyorden, who is later
known for a zealous defender of the public liberties.
It is interesting to note that a Master Barreden sailed for Holland
from Yarmouth, in company with some fifteen or twenty of “God’s
servants,” shortly afterwards, with a large and very valuable cargo
of wool. He was presumably a nephew of the foregoing. There is
a family of Bourdons in Bradford, Mass., who, though claiming a
Canadian origin, are very possibly descended from this early champion
of religious liberty.
No mention of the Burdens during the Civil Wars remains. We may
imagine them, if we will, following the Parliamentary cause; whether
passively—as did so many of the sturdy East-Anglian stock—or
actively; accepting the wage, and loyally fighting the battles of the
great Protector. However that may be, the name reappears with another
John Burden in 1672, a religious enthusiast who preached the Word to
the people of Saxmundham during the hot summer of that year.
He seems to have been an honest God-fearing man, devoted to the cause
of true religion in the first period of his ministry.
A government which could permit the entry of the Dutch into the
Medway, and produce the infamous shorthand notes of a Pepys, did not
tolerate the mystical zeal of Bunyan’s contemporary. He was thrown
into Ipswich gaol, on his release from which place he proceeded to
Aldeburgh, and declared himself the Messiah—at some time between
April and June 1684.
Few believed him, but he suffered nothing further from the
authorities, and died peacefully in the occupation of cobbling, at
Orford, on the 5th or 6th of January 1701/1700.
The race of Burden is then lost sight of for nearly a century. There
is almost certainly some connection between Mr Burden’s ancestry and
that of Sir Algernon Burden, of Pelham Thorpe, near Norwich, for Mr
Cosmo Burden (Mr Burden’s surviving son) has recently borne the same
crest as the baronet.
The College of Heralds, who, under the able direction of Lion d’Or,
have accumulated these details at a considerable expense, trace
continuous filiation from John Burden, whose mother may have boasted
gentle birth, and who established himself as a corn chandler at
Colchester in the year 1785. John Burden, confining himself strictly
to the wheat market, drove a prosperous business in Colchester during
the Napoleonic wars. His subscriptions to the charities which were
so necessary in those times of high prices and public famine appear
no less than six times between 1801 and 1815. He was an Alderman of
his town, and died in 1833, leaving a son, George Burden, whom he had
established as a large ironmonger at 106 Thames Street, in the City
of London, and who was the father of the remarkable Englishman this
memoir commemorates.
Mr George Burden, of Thames Street, married on March 8th, 1835, at
his parish church of St Catherine’s, Jane Elizabeth, the daughter of
Ezechiel Cranby, a shipmaster of Wapping. The union was blessed with
two still-born and eleven living children, of whom my own friend, the
Mr Burden with whom these pages deal, was the third, born on January
19th, 1841, and baptised the next day under the scriptural name of
Emmanuel.
As is so often mysteriously the case with even numerous families,
the name of the Burdens survived in but a single member. Of the
three other sons, James, Thomas, and Cranby, the first died while
yet a child; the second was drowned at sea as first mate of one of
his grandfather’s vessels; and the third, whose intellect had always
been deficient, did not long survive his thirtieth year, but passed
away, unmarried, in Dr Milford’s private home at Reading. Two of the
sisters also perished in tender years. Of the five that survived,
Charlotte and Victoria remained unmarried, Patience was early left a
childless widow and retired to Bournemouth, while Esther, who wedded
a wealthy Australian in June 1865, sailed with him to Melbourne some
months later, and has never since been heard of by her family.
[Illustration: MR BURDEN’S NEPHEW, HILDEBRAND WORTHING, WHOSE
INHERITANCE OF GENTLE BLOOD SADLY UNFITTED HIM FOR A COMMERCIAL LIFE]
The youngest, however, who was christened Maria, but was known in
the family as “Baby,” made, when barely twenty-six, an alliance with
the younger son of Mr Arthur Worthing, of Worthing Court, Bucks.
This marriage, whatever social attractions it may have offered
to the younger members of the household, proved unfortunate. Her
husband was dissipated and improvident and encountered repeated
difficulties in the society of Boulogne sur Mer, in France, where
his father-in-law supported him on a small pension for some years.
After the premature death of his young wife in 1873, he returned to
England, led a random and useless life among his old associates,
but had upon his deathbed the satisfaction of knowing that his
brother-in-law (Emmanuel) had paid the greater part of his debts,
and had renovated his wife’s grave in the Protestant cemetery of the
French seaport town where she lay at rest in God’s acre. Hildebrand,
the only fruit of this marriage, was placed as a clerk in the office
of Bowler & Co., by Mr Burden—for he was ever solicitous of the
honour of his blood.
At the suitable age of thirty-one, Emmanuel Burden, who was thus
destined to centre in himself the greater part of his father’s
fortune, married a lady for whom he had felt an unvarying attachment,
and to whom he had indeed been engaged for some eight years.
She was a person of modest but engaging demeanour, the fourth
daughter of the Rev. Harward Sefton of Hagden Courtney, in the county
of Huntingdon, and of Miriam Davis, his wife; from whom, perhaps,
Mrs Burden inherited her power of rapid calculation and her acute
judgment of human weakness. Mr Burden’s father, while fully accepting
his son’s choice of Eliza (for such was the lady’s name), was wisely
opposed to an improvident marriage, and deemed it prudent to make the
young people wait until his son had thoroughly learnt and taken on
the business he was to inherit in Thames Street.
Their courtship, though protracted, was peaceable and happy. They
learnt to know each other fully in the long walks which they would
take together over Hampstead or Putney heaths. Their families even
permitted sometimes a more intimate intercourse. Young Mr Burden (as
he then was) would receive his affianced wife in the social evenings
of his father’s house (they then resided above the shop in Thames
Street) or, in turn, would appear as an honoured guest from Saturday
to Monday at the Rev. Mr Sefton’s vicarage: taking the train from
Liverpool Street at 1.15 on the former and returning to town by the
9.20 from Hagden Courtney upon the latter day.
They were married, as his father had been, at St Catherine’s. Miss
Sefton had accepted the hospitality of her aunt for the occasion.
Rice was thrown;—and a shoe. Jests were exchanged. The honeymoon was
spent in Wales.
Mr Burden, senior, judged it well that the newly-married couple
should take, on their return, a house at some distance from London.
His business had largely increased; the first floor had already been
invaded for some years by the wares necessary to a show-room, and the
whole premises should properly have long been given up to the storage
of his goods and the accommodation of his offices. Mrs Burden,
senior, had died during the engagement of her son, and so at last it
was arranged that a new household should be formed on the heights to
the south of London, where the fresh air and larger spaces of the
country could be combined with the exigencies of a daily train to
town.
Mr Burden’s father decided therefore upon Norwood.
The suburb was indeed somewhat changed since the reign of George
IV.; but nothing could obliterate the charms which still clung to
it in the mind of the old man. In deference to the wishes of the
bride, he consented to purchase a property in a somewhat new and
outlying portion of the Ringwell estate. He settled upon a half acre
of land, whereon a new house already stood awaiting a tenant. It was
surrounded by gravel paths and newly transplanted shrubs, several of
which had died. Though it still stood isolated in the midst of bare
land and fields it already bore the number 37 in Alexandrovna Road,
a circumstance which lent an additional pleasure to its acquirement.
Some slight debate arose between the old father-in-law and young
Mrs Burden as to what the name of the new domain should be; the
former favouring the designation of “Chatsleigh,” the latter that
of “Avonmore,” which last, in graceful deference to her wishes, was
finally painted upon either gate in white letters picked out with
green, upon a grey ground.
The house stood high, and commanded, upon fine days, a view of London
to the north. Many familiar points in the landscape attached Mr
Burden’s father to the memories of his laborious and successful life:
the shot tower, St Paul’s, and the roof of Cannon Street Station were
clearly visible; and he had but to turn his gaze to rest it upon the
Crystal Palace, to which the memories of Prince Albert and Hyde Park,
his natural patriotism, and a sense of the magnificent, made him
incline with pleasure.
His father having thus installed them in a commodious and modern
residence, took up his abode with Mr Burden and his young wife. Still
maintaining his full proprietorship in the business in Thames Street,
he would at first visit the premises from time to time, while he
insisted that his son should leave punctually for town by the first
train after breakfast, and at evening discuss with him the business
of the day and whatever matters of general interest might have
appeared in the morning paper.
Certain of the old man’s habits would have jarred upon a man and
woman of less regular habits, or possessed of less self-control
than were Mr Burden and his wife. Thus he had taken, of a sudden,
a considerable interest in gardening, a matter upon which neither
of the young people felt any great concern; he became weather-wise,
and he was forever fetching in an artizan whom he patronised,
to rearrange those bells and hinges, wherewith his son and his
daughter-in-law were already perfectly contented. A more serious
difficulty was the attachment which Mr Burden, senior, unexpectedly
conceived for the policy of Mr Disraeli; whereas young Mr Burden
could not disguise his loyalty to Mr Gladstone, a sentiment in which
his wife supported him with a zeal only tempered by her repeated
references to the Irish Church.
Indeed, when Mr Gladstone’s windows in Harley Street were broken by
a mob, nothing but Mr Burden’s filial piety restrained him from
rebuking the excessive glee of his now aged father; and when Mr
Disraeli was promoted to the peerage and offered a golden wreath by
a co-religionist, Mr Burden went so far as to take Mrs Burden to the
seaside for a week, until the storm should have blown over.
It would be unjust to insist upon these trivial inconveniences. The
respect due to his father’s years was soon enhanced by Mr Burden’s
anxiety for his health. In the January of 1880, Mrs Burden having by
that time given birth to three children (their grandfather’s delight
and pride), her husband, who had long become the sole head of the
great business in Thames Street, had the pain of seeing the old man
take to his bed, whereon, some eight months later, he very peacefully
expired.
It needs but little space to follow the existence led by Mr Burden
after this revolution in his fortunes; for it is the purpose of these
few pages rather to record the impression of his own much more recent
demise, and to leave some record of his character, than to follow at
any length the history of his life.
[Illustration: MRS BURDEN AT THE AGE OF FORTY-THREE FROM A MINIATURE]
The three children, Ermyntrude, Cosmo, and Gwynnys, were trained in
those excellent traditions which the family had inherited for now
three generations of decent affluence; but Mr Burden and his wife
justly considered that the steady increase of their fortunes (which
they naturally ascribed to their considerable capacity, but which
were perhaps, more due to the evolution of modern industry) permitted
them to entertain some legitimate ambitions for the future of their
offspring.
Certain developments in the structure of our English society made it
increasingly difficult to continue the custom of taking high tea at
half-past six. This meal had already been supplanted by a set dinner
at the more fashionable hour of seven, when Mrs Burden introduced
the change whereby her two daughters, aged respectively fourteen and
twelve years, were withdrawn from Mrs Cathcart’s seminary at Dulwich,
and put under the care of a private governess, a Miss M’Kee, of whom
Mrs Burden had heard from a friend who was intimate with the niece of
Lady Bagshawe.
Thanks to the able guidance of this lady, Ermyntrude and Gwynnys very
rapidly acquired an acquaintance with all that best suited the part
they would be called upon to play in their social rank. A thorough
knowledge of German, some elements of French, and a good grounding in
psychology and practical nursing, left them at the ages of eighteen
and twenty all that charming, simple English girls should be.
They came out together (for Ermyntrude looked, if anything, younger
than her sister) at the Jubilee Ball given in the Town Hall of
Sydenham in 1897.
Mr Burden had never disguised his intention of portioning his
daughters. The elder was soon married to a young doctor of
considerable ability, who emigrated with his wife to Winnipeg, in
which distant capital he still pursues a prosperous career. Long
a president of the Orange Lodge[2] in that city, he was recently
returned to the Dominion Parliament on the Manitoba Catholic schools
question; his career will doubtless be familiar to many who may read
these lines.
[Illustration: SPIRITUAL ANXIETY OF MR LEGROS AN IMPRESSION FROM THE
PENCIL OF A FRIEND AND PASTOR, WHOSE HOUSE HE WOULD FREQUENT FOR THE
SOLUTION OF DOCTRINAL DOUBTS]
Gwynnys, on the contrary, during a visit to her sister in Canada,
married, somewhat abruptly, Karl P. Legros, a dark young officer in
the local army. The captain (for such was his rank) was unfortunate
in his business of butter-brokering. He became involved, through
no fault of his own, in the collapse and subsequent trial of the
Milwaukee Butter-King. Driven by the mysterious instinct resident
in all scions of our race beyond the seas, Karl P. Legros sought
England in the hour of his need; nor did England fail him. After
a short period of hesitation, and, it must be confessed, of some
spiritual anxiety, he took Holy Orders, and was soon installed, by
the efforts of his father-in-law, as rector of the small living of
Benthanger, in Kent. He has continued, for many years, to fulfil the
duties of his sacred calling in this place, and has been supported
unwaveringly throughout a life of arduous and unremitting labour by
his noble and devoted wife; a true Christian matron, to whom her
father made, till his death, a small yearly allowance.
Mrs Burden was laid to rest less than a year after Gwynnys Legros’
return to England. She had the satisfaction, before dying, of hearing
that Ermyntrude’s husband had been elected to the Parliament of his
colony, while her visit to the vicarage of Benthanger had at once
consoled her with the vision of her daughter’s content, and permitted
her to breathe the atmosphere of her early years: the sober comfort
of a country parsonage to which, for all her wealth, she had so long
been a stranger.
This excellent woman sleeps in the Cemetery Park of Norwood, in a
dry, roomy, and well-built vault which, with the exception of a
yearly rental of five guineas, is the unencumbered property of her
husband’s family.
Having thus described the fortunes of the two daughters, it is my
duty to indicate, however briefly, the youth of their brother, Cosmo.
His participation in the last efforts of his father’s life, and the
fact that he became, after the mother’s death, his father’s sole
companion, make it necessary to follow the young man’s training, if
we are to comprehend the failing spirit of which he was so long the
unique support and comrade.
[Illustration: MRS BURDEN
AN INTERPRETATION BY MISS M’KEE, LONG A GOVERNESS IN THE FAMILY]
Cosmo had never enjoyed such health as had his sisters. The first
months of his life had been marred by the use of an artificial food
improper to the sustenance of infants, but honestly recommended by
the old family doctor, who had so firm a faith in its virtues as to
have accepted an interest in its sale. One effect of this nutriment
was to make the child large and heavy beyond his years, a physical
characteristic which he preserved throughout his life. It had also,
however, the result of weakening his heart, and permanently impairing
his digestion. From these causes he developed as a boy a nervous and
irritable temper, which his parents thought it imprudent to correct.
When he had passed through the excellent discipline of an English
Public School, these faults disappeared in his general demeanour,
and were observable only in the occasional friction that inevitably
accompanies the incidents of home-life; abroad they were replaced by
a certain indolence and indecision of manner, far preferable to the
peevishness which had formerly given his family so much anxiety and
pain.
As a boy of ten, when his sisters were barely out of the schoolroom,
he was placed in the preparatory school of Dr Stanton at Henley.
Many as are the applications for admission to this fashionable
establishment, and difficult as it was to find room for the boy, Dr
Stanton had far too much sense to hesitate upon his reception, or
to consider for one moment the slight difference of social position
between Cosmo’s family and those of the bulk of his pupils. The
excellent divine was of that new and vigorous school in English
Pedagogy, which rightly regards the great commercial activities of
the country as co-equal with its territorial interests. The name
of Burden was already familiar to him, not only from the enamelled
advertisements in blue and white which frequently met his eyes as he
paced the platforms of the Great Western Railway, but also from the
part taken by Mr Burden in the Mansion House reception of the Sadar
of Nak’, when that potentate was visiting England during his late
embroilment with the Russians.
The schoolmaster was, therefore, delighted to receive Cosmo, and
permitted the delicate boy certain extras which the parents of the
more robust of his pupils saw no occasion to command. These included
a plate of cold meat at breakfast, and a weekly visit from Dr Byle,
an old and valued friend of the schoolmaster’s, and the medical
attendant of Lord Bannering of Marlsford Park.
Careful as was the training which the boy received at this excellent
academy, his life was not happy; he recovered somewhat in the
refined atmosphere of Radley, but it was not till his entry into the
University, towards the age of twenty, that his life began to assume
a normal aspect.
The wealth which he would inherit, his reserved and self-centred
temperament, his readiness to meet men of all kinds, and his
detestation of friction and quarrel, save with those nearest to him,
deservedly secured him a number of friends of that sort which is
most prominent in our national life. He was a member of the Club, he
could ride without discomfort, and though not himself attracted to
any games save golf and hockey, he was the associate of men who were
distinguished in whatever the University has to teach.
He possessed, to a remarkable degree, that art of compromise
upon which the characters, not only of our statesmen, but of our
commonwealth itself are based. He had an instinct for the feeling of
his peers; and, if a certain lack of energy forbade him to attempt
to mould his contemporaries, he was at least able to receive with
remarkable fidelity the general impress of the forces around him.
Though not proficient in the pastime, he was yet able, upon occasion,
to write verse; and his style in prose, which, as a Freshman,
had been somewhat inchoate and abrupt, very soon developed that
“viscosity which is more potent than fluency” (I quote the Bishop
of Shoreham), and that “power of condensing truth into metaphor” (I
quote the same authority) which distinguishes our modern English from
the less plastic manner of the earlier century.
Indeed, there is little doubt that, had he turned his attention
towards politics, or (what would perhaps have suited his nature
better) the Church, he would have found, after a little experience of
the outer world, every opportunity, as he had every qualification for
success.
In the School of Modern Languages he carried off, after four years’
study, a Second, which was very near to being a First Class. His
father, my friend Mr Burden, already sufficiently gratified by his
son’s success, was assured by his tutor in a private letter I have
myself seen, that Cosmo only failed to obtain the highest distinction
from a curious inaccuracy in the spelling of Latin quotations, “a
subject,” as this careful and popular young Don[3] very properly
remarked, “alien to the spirit of the School.”
At this period of life Cosmo had grown to the manhood which his
youth had promised. His frame was soft from that fault in his
early nutrition to which I have already alluded, but his careful
grooming, his constant and regular shaving, and his close curling
hair, gave an impression of alacrity. He stood over six feet in
height. This stature was of little advantage to him, save with first
acquaintances; it very probably developed a weakness of the heart,
and a persistent supineness of demeanour which, with an intellect
less trained, might have gravely affected his life. His features
were somewhat devoid of meaning, the mouth especially: indeed he
found it difficult to control a looseness of lip and expression,
which marred what would otherwise have been a well-set face; but he
boasted a healthy colour, red, white, and, in our colder seasons,
blue. The contour of his nose was not accentuated. His eyes, which
were of a pale grey, were restless, and seemed always to betray a
certain anxiety. These, added to his cleanliness and heavy gait, must
complete a picture which should be framed by the judgment of the
Master of his College: “Whatever else he is, he is a gentleman.”
Those whose interest in Mr Burden has proved sufficient to carry
them thus far in my relation will excuse, I hope, the insistence I
have laid upon Cosmo’s character and early life. It was through his
son that my friend Mr Burden came into touch with those forces of
the modern world, which might have been of such value to him, but
which proved so fatal. It was Cosmo’s facility and social character
which had made him the intimate friend of Charles Benthorpe, for
example, of the Master of his own College (a man most marvellously
able to estimate social influence of every kind),[4] and especially
of Mr Harbury, whose considerable public reputation, though he is
not directly connected with the University, is in itself the best
recommendation that can be given to his University friends.
For Mr Harbury had not only known Cosmo, he had sought to know him;
and in the multitude of Cosmo’s acquaintance there was no one, except
perhaps himself, who did not understand what an honour and what a
passport such a friendship would become.
[Illustration: COSMO BURDEN
FROM THE ONLY PHOTOGRAPH WHICH ADEQUATELY RENDERS THE RESTRAINED BUT
PERMANENT SADNESS OF HIS FEATURES]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Also a P.M. of the A.O.B., V. of the T. S. and Third Illuminate.
[3] Mr, now the Rev. S—— Fafner.
[4] The Master of St Katherine’s is nowhere more vividly portrayed
than in a phrase of the late Duchess of Buckingham’s, in her book of
reminiscences, ‘The Life Serene’ (Bischoffheim & Co., 31s nett, 3
vols., cr. 8vo, uncut, with 8 photogravures), vol. iii., p. 127, “He
was what I call a _good_ man.” There is a charming description of her
grace’s visit to the University town. She passed the night at the
Magpie.
CHAPTER II
It is never possible to assign to any one cause a great catastrophe.
It is even difficult to pick out the strongest of the many threads
which go to weave a destiny. It is, perhaps, because I knew him
so well and was so shocked by his recent death, that I find this
difficulty peculiarly apparent in the case of Mr Burden.
It is necessary, however, to make a beginning, and I would beg my
readers to consider one of the earliest sources of that tragedy,
the unfortunate entanglement into which his son, Cosmo, fell while
yet an undergraduate. This entanglement had, indeed, the effect of
earning Cosmo the lifelong friendship of such men as Mr Barnett and
Mr Harbury, but it proved indirectly a deathblow to his father.
Hints and suspicions have magnified and distorted a story simple
enough in itself, and one which in its bare truth throws no dishonour
upon the young man whose whole life it has embittered. He may
himself read these lines. He will (I am sure) think it no treason
in his father’s friend, if I set down briefly and exactly facts,
the misapprehension of which alone would injure him. Indeed, it is
necessary that I should do so if a comprehension is to be had of what
follows.
There lay about eight miles from the University a village of the name
of Mallersham. Like Wynthorne, Gapton, Rupworth, Bilscombe, Gorle and
many others, it is the most beautiful in England: its cottages and
peasants have about them an indefinable air of security and content,
and are the property of the Howley family.
Before the recent national invention of the bicycle, Mallersham was
a place of resort for the wealthier undergraduates; it retains the
character to this day, nor is the annual dinner of the Brummel Club
held elsewhere than at the Malden Arms.
For, of course, Mallersham was originally Malden land, and the sign
of the inn is a touching example of the deep roots which our English
families strike into the soil. For though the Gayles, who sold the
estate to the Howleys last year, had originally purchased it in 1857
from the Marlows, who were heirs by marriage of the Hindes, yet the
Hindes themselves had bought it from the Kempes of Hoverton, whose
early efforts in finance bring us directly through the Rinaldos to
Geoffry Malden, the famous soldier husband of Maria Van Huren, the
witty Dutch companion of William of Orange.
When Cosmo was at the University the Malden Arms was held as a
tied house by a family of the name of Capes, whose only daughter,
Hermione, grew to inspire Cosmo with an immature and temporary, but
profound, affection.
It is no purpose of these pages to make excuses for the lad. The
example of Athletes, who often mentioned and praised the daughter of
the inn, may perhaps have led away a temperament easily impressed by
the customary or the fashionable. Nor was the powerful stimulus of
universal and incessant rumour the only attraction Hermione wielded.
The young woman herself could partly furnish cause for Cosmo’s
passion. She was some nine years older than he, a circumstance which
lent to her conversation with the youth of the gentry and middle
classes a charm of experience and arch intelligence rare enough
under the conditions of her birth. She was of a large and commanding
presence, her manner was active and determined, her step vigorous.
Her voice, which was somewhat loud and unpleasing, was redeemed by
features in which the conventional prudery of her rank had long been
vanquished, while her eyes, remarkable for the length and darkness
of their lashes, had achieved a fixed expression of confident
affection.
During Cosmo’s fifth and last year at the University, the young
people met, if anything, more frequently than before. Mr and Mrs
Capes put no obstacles in the way of their growing intimacy, and,
towards the end of what his father well designated his “career,”
Cosmo had the incredible folly to open with Hermione a frequent and
regular correspondence.
Some lawyers have maintained that this correspondence contained
as many as seven distinct expressions equivalent to an offer of
marriage. It is a matter upon which I can express no opinion. Nor
would I dream of adding, by an impertinent discussion, to the chagrin
which a man of Cosmo’s sensitive temperament cannot but experience if
he should read these lines. What is certain is, that when the time
had come to sever his connection with the Malden Arms, these letters
took on an aspect of their own.
He had seen Hermione for the last time (as he hoped) upon a Wednesday
towards the end of term. A natural reticence had forbidden him to
break it to her that they would not meet again; he had affected in
every recent visit an increasing carelessness of demeanour, and
had attempted to drag out this final interview to so dull and
purposeless a conclusion as might properly let die a wearisome
attachment. He neglected in nothing those artifices by which a man
of refinement and honour softens the pain he may be compelled to
inflict. I record it with the utmost pleasure of my old friend’s son,
that he showed such true delicacy in the crisis of this lamentable
story.
But her woman’s instinct, aided perhaps by a more general
acquaintance with such matters, forbade Hermione to be deceived. Her
tenderness increased with every conversation, until, in this last,
it became a kind of assiduity whose tone repelled the young man,
and lent him, if possible, a yet stronger determination to be free;
with her protestations of affection, her enquiries and her detailed
reminiscence, was commingled a perpetual record of his cherished
letters, of their place in her heart, and of how they seemed to keep
him with her always.
He recalled them as she spoke. He could find nothing in them to
warrant so extravagant a devotion. There were many recent notes
excusing his absence, many earlier ones of appointment; he remembered
not a few written from abroad, longer letters full of description.
They reflected, of course, his regard; but he could not understand
the large part they had played in her simple life, nor why they
formed in these days the staple of her fond and persistent memories.
He was troubled and returned on the morrow.
The letters loomed larger than ever across the sunset of their loves.
On the Friday (for in his anxiety he came daily) her conversation
was of nothing else, and when he showed plainly how insignificant
he thought them, she offered to read him the passages that had most
comforted her. She whispered their purport and drew closer to him as
she told it.
Then indeed this topic, which had at first only wearied and annoyed,
grew to alarm him. He dared not withdraw. He came again and again:
on the Saturday, the Sunday, the Monday; he no longer avoided the
mention of these documents, or turned her away with careless replies.
On the contrary, they seemed suddenly—by I know not what morbid
possession of his delicate mind—to be of even greater moment to
himself than to her. He would have touched them, held them, borne
them away with him. She only refused, with a look of possession and
pride in her eyes.
Tuesday and Wednesday offered no solution, Thursday was dangerous,
and Friday sombre.
In this final phase of their duel, he had at last determined upon a
desperate solution of what had grown to be a menace; he would tell
her frankly that they must part; it followed that he would receive
his letters, and he hoped, by the aid of that tact which he justly
believed himself to exercise, to prevent a scene which could only be
painful to them both.
With the afternoon of Saturday he set off once more to the Malden
Arms.
His spirit as he went was oppressed and confused. I have said
that Cosmo was and is (if he will forgive me the phrase) pursued
by the accidents of his childhood. His body, too bulky and too
slow, suffered from the necessity of these daily journeys; their
inconclusive irritation preyed also upon his clear, but retiring
mind. For no reason, save that care breeds care, and that his general
tone had fallen with the strain of these days, he saw his future
blackly as he went wearily up the hill of Mallersham in the summer
evening.
A healthy man of his position and inheritance does not consider his
debts, for instance; he himself had never given them a thought till
now; he had seen them vaguely at the back of his mind, two or three
hundred pounds (£250 was the figure at which he averaged them in more
careful moments):—he had dismissed them for more immediate things.
But this evening their list seemed interminable! His father’s hearing
of them, which he had put off to some future moment of success
or necessity, seemed suddenly grown terrible—a thing not to be
approached. He recalled this and that obligation which were almost
matters of honour, and he got colder as he recalled them. He began to
imagine how men whom he knew spoke of him in his absence. He felt as
it were enmeshed and held, though hitherto no such imaginary follies
had oppressed him in all his youth—so much can one note of friction
enfeeble all the soul.
In a wiser moment he would have known that rasp and depression of
this sort would weaken him in negotiation. It did indeed weaken him
now when he met Hermione. He so conducted his demand that a woman of
less strength might have been guilty of a quarrel. She fell to no
such weakness. She told him what she had told him a hundred times—all
that his letters were to her. If he himself chose to begone, she
would retain them as the only thing remaining to her.
In all this her voice was finely self-possessed, she spoke as of
a property in land, a fortune; and as she did so, discovered an
unexpected exactitude and dignity of demeanour. She seemed—perhaps
from affectation—unmoved by his sudden gesture and his assurance
that he would not return. The letters were still her theme, and
their nature, or at least her interpretation of them, were the last
words he heard from her lips as, much more clearly than he wished,
she still called after him across the twilight. He would not turn
his head. He left her and pushed homeward, taxing his strength
unwittingly, and attempting a desperate hope that she would indeed
so cherish his writing that he should hear neither of it nor of her
again.
He reached college in utter weariness. June was not yet ended; the
weather was still cold; he lit a fire for company, and stared at it
for an hour or more, in that terror of the future which will oppress
men of his temperament upon any considerable accident.
His large, fair, Viking body seemed to grow weak and to sink upon
itself, as he sat there tortured by thought. His face, though
heavy, was too young for this care to alter it; but all energy had
disappeared from his eyes: and his brain, in a kind of lethargy,
sought no solution.
The letters and his debts, his debts and the letters, mixed in a
confused nightmare. He sat up as though determined to shake off a
mere obsession, and to seek refuge in reality.
He took a sheet of paper on which he had written the heading “Saxon
Origins.” He wasted perhaps thirty seconds gazing at this, then
he put his pen through it, and began to draw up an alphabetical
list. He could remember no creditor in A——. There was Barlton, the
tobacconist; ... he could think of no other “Ba,” except Bazeley,
and “Baz” comes after “Bar.” So he wrote “Barlton” down at the top
of the paper. Now how much did he owe Barlton? He had a vague idea
in his head that it was something over thirty-three pounds; indeed,
he seemed to remember the figure quite clearly. He wrote down “33.”
Then, to satisfy himself more fully, he went to a drawer, and by good
luck hit upon the bill before he had looked ten minutes; there it
was, “£33, 14s. 7d.; but it was nearly two years old. He pondered.
There seemed to float before his mind another bill—more recent; he
could not be at the pains of seeking it. He “averaged” his present
debt to Mr Barlton at £55. He scratched out the 33 and wrote “55”—he
was not so far wrong; Mr Barlton had his name on his books for
exactly £58, 19s. 6d.
Then came Bazeley. How much did he owe the Bazeley stable? He
certainly could not be bothered to look up all these details; he knew
about what it would be. It would be about sixty, or, say, seventy
pounds. He would write down “75” to be on the safe side—and he was.
For Mr Bazeley, who was a poor hand at book-keeping, had written
out a bill at random that very afternoon, and this bill, after some
thought, he had put at £73, 15s. 9d., an addition which he had
simplified by the formula, “Act. rendered.”
Cosmo was searching mentally among the “B’s,” and had found
Belper—say, twenty-eight pounds, when he suddenly remembered Bailey
the Bookbinder. The bill was a small one, not more than four or
five pounds at the outside—say six—but it annoyed him because “Bai”
comes before “Bar.” He squeezed it in at the top and went on with
his work. Within an hour, after many erasures and transpositions,
he had completed the “B’s.” There were sixteen of them, for B is
the commonest of initials; still, there were sixteen. They came
between them to a trifle over £300, did the “B’s.” He was turning
to the letter C with a heavy heart, when he suddenly remembered two
“A’s”—Alfred the photographer, and Aiken, of whom he had bought the
saddles. He took up a fresh sheet to make a new list, wrote down
their names, and then angrily crumpled up the whole and threw it
into the fire. What could all this do for him? He owed five hundred,
perhaps six—probably nearer seven—call it seven.... Anyhow he had the
prospect and the power of paying.... But as he looked fixedly at the
paper, burning before him like an expiation, a lumbering step came
up the stone stairs without, he answered a heavy uncertain knock,
and there entered something of more moment even than his debts: the
considerable form and purpose of Mr Capes.
He had his hat in his hand and bore a sapling to walk with; his
gaiters were muddy and so were his heavy boots; but he was dressed in
his best, his scanty hair was very carefully oiled, and a fine new
comforter adorned his neck. He came in with respectful hesitation,
and stood a moment near the door.
Cosmo stood up at once. “Come in, Mr Capes,” he said, “what is it?”
“Why,” said Mr Capes slowly; “thank you, sir, it’s just a little
matter.... I”; and here he looked down at the carpet and followed the
pattern with the end of his sapling.
“Come up to the fire and sit down,” said Cosmo. “Have something.”
It was a nervous peculiarity of his, common enough in our
Universities with their years of arduous study, that he could not
keep his eyes on anyone’s face; but he spoke cheerfully enough. Mr
Capes came up and sat down by the fire.
“What do you drink, Mr Capes?” said Cosmo.
[Illustration: MR CAPES
(A CHANCE STUDY MADE FOR THE PUBLISHERS OF “RURAL ENGLAND.” NO OTHER
PORTRAIT WAS OBTAINABLE)]
“Claret wine, thank you, sir,” answered Mr Capes.
Cosmo brought out some College claret and poured it into a tumbler.
Mr Capes took a gulp of it; his expression changed and he put it down
again.
“Would you rather have some port, Mr Capes?” said Cosmo anxiously.
“Thank you, sir,” said Mr Capes, “I don’t care if I do.” There was
an assurance beneath the deference of his manner which Cosmo could
hardly bear in silence. As he stood and poured out the port for Mr
Capes in his easy chair, he said, “Well?”
“Well ...” said Mr Capes, holding his glass poised and staring at the
fire ... “I’ve been talking to my ’Ermione”; he pronounced these two
last words as though they were but one, and he put into them a very
mournful emphasis.
“Now I know what you’re going to say, sir,” he went on, putting up a
large wooden palm, while Cosmo kept his lips tight and drawn; “I know
what you’re going to say, an’ I say nothing.... I don’t want _to make
any unpleasantness_—but there! ... my poor girl!” He shook his head
up and down, and then from side to side, still gazing at the fire.
Cosmo sat quite silent with his hands clasped before him. He was
under a considerable strain, and every word that fell from Mr Capes
increased the strain till it became almost intolerable.
Mr Capes continued his monologue in the very tone and with all the
pathos of a street preacher. “She’s told me all, sir, she has. Quite
straightforward; she always was that!” He wagged his head again from
side to side, and then up and down, “and all I can say is,”—his voice
rose, he turned round and faced Cosmo squarely—“you owe her some
com-pen-sa-tion.” Having said that with a victorious scansion, Mr
Capes brought one open hand down smack upon the table, and then with
the other very carefully put down his empty glass.
He had expected Cosmo to speak, but Cosmo only rose and filled Mr
Capes’ glass. Then he sat down again, still silent with compressed
lips.
Mr Capes, like all men whose eloquence is natural and untaught, found
transition in speech a very difficult matter. He began to repeat
himself a good deal. He said twice that Mrs Capes agreed with him,
and insisted at least four times that he did not want to make any
unpleasantness. He uttered the profound truth, that his Hermione
would never be the same again. And at each pause he still made it
clear that he understood Cosmo’s position, he still maintained his
attitude of respect, and he still came back to the only solution
that had presented itself to his rustic mind. And still through this
torture Cosmo was silent.
Mr Capes was not ignorant of affairs. He had often purchased young
pigs for fattening, and would do, from time to time, a little
horse-jobbing. He perceived that the matter of the bargain must be
touched if this scene was ever to find an end.
“There are a few little things of hers, perhaps you have by you, sir.
I know there was that pop’lar history of the war she lent you for the
maps; a rug and a brooch she says you had—she does. Now if _you_ send
these back by _me_, why, it’ll be fitting like; and then I can bring
you back some few things of _yourn_ what _she_ has; there was a pin,
I know, and a book of something, and all your letters and all; if I
bring all that back to you, sir, why _that_’ll be fitting too, so it
will—and, of course,” rather more firmly, “such com-pen-sa-tion as is
fitting also.”
Mr Capes was standing as though to go. Cosmo also stood, his eyes
cast down and something like decision in his low voice.
“What do you want?” he said.
There is nothing in the world of business more difficult to estimate
than the sum of ready money which the son of a rich man may have at
his disposal at any moment. Legally he has often nothing; practically
he may have anything at all. The problem is doubly hard for a father
whose judgment is confused by the image of a beloved and injured
daughter, and handicapped by grave imperfections of early training.
Mr Capes had only one thing in his favour—he had made up his mind and
he was free from hesitation. He had made enquiries some weeks ago of
a tobacconist and an ostler, and his honest mind was too robust for
indecision.
“Seven hundred and fifty pounds,” said he. Then he added, by way of
rounding off the crudeness of the figures, “and not a penny less!”
Cosmo had been desperate for at least twenty minutes: there had
rushed through his mind scheme after scheme. In the last resort an
appeal to his father—flight, even, if nothing was left but to fly. He
could not bear this interview a moment longer. He would dare anything.
“Come here, to this room, at eight to-morrow evening and you shall
have it,” he said.
“To-morrow’s Sunday,” answered Mr Capes, with a touch of reproach in
his hard breathing.
“Ten o’clock on Monday morning then,” said Cosmo in better control of
himself—“and—Mr Capes, will you have some more wine?”
Mr Capes drank a conclusion to that evening: pleased with Cosmo’s
consistent courtesy (he had come prepared for worse), pleased with
his own great tact, pleased with the simplicity of himself and the
world; the whole mellowed by so much port as almost drowned in him
the memory of his poor child and her irreparable loss.
That night Cosmo did not sleep; he heard the rain falling on the
flags without, and it mingled with his despair. Towards five, the
broad daylight wearying him beyond words, he fell into a deep,
unhappy slumber, in which he neither dreamt nor was refreshed. It
was past midday when he woke. He dressed as carelessly as may be,
breakfasted, and spun out all the hours of the afternoon in silence,
imagining nothing, seeking no issue. He could not even read. There
had fallen on him the dead spirit which very often falls upon men in
their evil hour, and especially upon men by nature heavy and unalert.
With the evening he wandered round to the club, purposeless and
blank; but as he came into the main room he saw Mr Harbury reading
in one of the deep chairs, and the sight comforted him. For Mr
Harbury’s very appearance suggested the world of methodical action,
decision, and ordered things.
Mr Harbury, who was to play so large a part in Cosmo’s life and his
father’s, was a man such as our manifold Empire alone produces.
He was tall and cleanly made, his dark hair, just touched with a
metallic grey, lay close to his head, his features were very regular
and hard; his nose was thin and slightly curved. It possessed the
more character from a flat downward turn at the tip, as though
some one had tapped it gently with a hammer. His mouth especially
was firm, and two strong lines, as though of a slight but just and
permanent contempt, flanked it upon either side. The bronzed colour
of his skin, his long, clear eyes well wrinkled at the corners, the
decision of his step, all spoke of the experience of travel and of a
balanced and ready knowledge of men.
He was a silent man. That modesty which is the chief charm of our
race in its highest governing type was so ingrained in him, that
he had been heard in the last four years to speak but twice of his
family or of his own adventures. The short and sufficient notice
which he supplied to books of reference told the world that he came
of good Lincolnshire stock, and indeed the arms which appeared,
small and decent, upon his silver, were those of the now extinct
Harburys of Lanby; it was presumably a cadet of this family who had
established himself as a merchant in the Isles of the Levant two
generations ago. There, acting, we may suppose, as a chaplain or
missionary, Mr Harbury’s father had taken Holy Orders, but at what
period in his life, and whether in the English or Maronite communion,
is unknown. Old Lady Maring has told me that she thinks it was he
whom she once met in her father’s office when he was Consul at
Smyrna. For the rest, the few lines dedicated to Mr Harbury’s life in
“Who’s Who” tell us that he has visited Persia and Afghanistan, that
he is very familiar with Egypt—on which province of the Empire he has
written many articles in the _Times_ and the _Financial News_—and
that his favourite recreations are shooting, fishing, yachting,
golfing, hunting, pig-sticking, polo, and travel. He has also several
clubs: among others the _Devonshire_.
Men of this stamp cannot but influence upon every side the destiny of
our Race; the nature of their activity is not easy to define, but it
is apparent and beneficent. His power certainly did not consist in
mere wealth—indeed, Mr Harbury’s fortune, the decent competence of a
Levantine clerical family, cannot have exceeded a hundred and fifty
thousand pounds—but from his pleasant home within a short distance
of the University he radiated, as it were, through twenty different
departments of Imperial life.
[Illustration: MR HARBURY]
The more serious organs of the Press, from the _Times_ to “M.M.M.”
(_Money Makes Money_), regarded him as a specialist upon Imperial
problems; he would leave England some three times a year for Africa
or the near East; he had lectured upon the fauna of Socotra; he was
the friend and associate, in a sense, the _link_ between those very
varied types of administrators, soldiers, and financiers, who between
them build up that which the world has not seen since Rome decayed.
Two men who would mutually suspect or despise each other—for example,
a somewhat narrow though upright general officer, and a brilliant
and daring speculator—would each be friends of Mr Harbury. Mr
Harbury knew how to use what was best in each for the common good of
England. Lord Hayshott—a man by nature contemptuous of finance; Sir
Jules Barraud, of the Canadian Copper Syndicate and the Anglo-French
Quick-silver Group; Henry Borsan, of Leeds; Mrs Warberton, who
perhaps had more influence in British East Africa than any other
white woman; were each indebted to him for services and friendship.
What is more significant, it was Mr Harbury who had first pointed
out to Mr Barnett all that the University meant to the Empire; how
through the University the Empire could best be trained to its last
ventures, and, I believe—no one can prove it—that the idea of the
Mercantile Scholarships was Mr Harbury’s rather than Mr Barnett’s
creation. If Mr Barnett was at that moment the guest of the Principal
of Barnabas, it was Mr Harbury who had introduced him to that new
world.
With the name of Mr Barnett, however—a name which calls up to all
Englishmen affairs of far greater moment—I am touching upon the
principal subject of these few pages: that unhappy misunderstanding
concerning the M’Korio Delta, and its fatal issue for Mr Burden, my
friend. Let me leave these to their proper order, and return to Cosmo
in his despair.
Mr Harbury knew Cosmo and liked him. He wished to know and like him
better. He saw in a moment into what mood the young man had fallen,
and he guessed at once—if not the exact cause of it—at least the
general nature of Cosmo’s necessity. He saw “money” there quite
plainly, like a written thing.
Cosmo attempted conversation and failed. Mr Harbury threw his paper
to the floor and turned a trifle towards him.
“Burden,” he said.
“Yes,” said Cosmo.
“Dine with me to-night.”
“I’m not fit to dine with anyone ...” said Cosmo, and as he said it
he mentally added 700 to 750, and rose uneasily and then sat down
again, leaning back with his hands dropping listlessly on the arm of
the chair.
Cosmo prided himself—and justly—upon his reticence: but then Cosmo
had never been tortured till now ... he said to himself that Harbury
was an older man ... he knew him for a silent and a wise man ... he
looked at his companion, a side-long look, and said, blurting it
out as though to get it over, but putting on the conventional smile
wherein very inexperienced men of breeding hide all extremity and
confusion:
“I’ve got to make a payment to-morrow at ten o’clock—and I must spend
my time looking for it—but I sha’n’t find it, Harbury. It isn’t
there, you know.” Then he paused, glad to have found words of a
virile flippancy.
Mr Harbury wanted to laugh, but he looked grave. “How much, Burden?”
he said.
“I didn’t sleep all night,” answered Cosmo savagely.
“Yes—but how much is it?” pressed Mr Harbury with patience.
“Oh!... It doesn’t matter—so long as it’s out of reach, anyhow.”
Mr Harbury was decisive:
“It’s never any good mentioning the _word_ money unless you speak
of exact sums,” he said. Mr Harbury knew what he was talking about,
and Cosmo’s hesitation began to yield: he wavered a moment, and Mr
Harbury sat quite still, as fishermen do over dark smooth waters at
evening.
Young men are often timorous in the presence of great sums of money;
they do not understand the modern ease and fluidity, the come and go,
of wealth.
Cosmo rather whispered than said, “A thousand.”
Mr Harbury smiled, so spontaneously and so brightly, that he seemed
for a moment hardly older than Cosmo himself.
“My dear fellow...!” he said. “My dear fellow.”
Then his smile broke into an honest little laugh. He sat up in the
deep padded chair and put one hand upon Cosmo’s knee:
“Is that what has been worrying you, Cosmo?”
Cosmo Burden started at the noise of his own name. He had taken Mr
Harbury’s popularity for granted during full four years, but he
had not quite understood why that quiet, dark-haired man had made
so many friends, nor why he had lost none; why, living at some
distance, travelling much, appearing only as a visitor or guest, he
had increased his value till he seemed a kind of centre for all that
counted most in the University. He knew now: Mr Harbury had used his
travels; he could help.
Mr Harbury also felt a kind of gladness at the same moment; for he
knew that he had gained one more friend, and friends to all such men
are (if we only knew it!) the dearest part of the comfort they so
easily attain.
He said it again, laughing in the goodness of his heart:
“Is that what has been worrying you, Cosmo?”
“It is enough to worry about,” said Cosmo. He said it with his head
still down, and he said it miserably. But there was hope in his voice.
Mr Harbury lay back in the attitude of a man wearied by repetition.
“There are fifty men who would give it to you within the next two
hours,” he said.
Cosmo, who had read many books, shook his head with a certain
firmness, answering:
“I am determined not to borrow from my friends.”
Then he got up, and walked towards the window, and gazed out into
the rain with that expression upon his face upon which depends the
manliness of our youth.
Mr Harbury looked at him as he stood those few feet off in the grey
light, with his face averted. He turned in his mind all that he knew
of men embarrassed, of young men who did not know the nature of the
world, and then he said quietly:
“I will let you have it myself.”
But Cosmo repeated the phrase he thought best:
“I have already told you, I will not borrow from my friends,” and he
deepened the expression of manliness, and stood quite firm where he
was. Mr Harbury was genuinely impatient.
“Then borrow it in the regular way,” he said, “but whatever you do
don’t get a sum like that on your nerves ... people are so funny
about money when there’s any hurry....”
Then he turned round sharply and cried:
“Good Lord, it isn’t worth all this fuss. Borrow it from some
regular man—De Vere, or Ashington, or Massingberd, or somebody....
They know who you are.”
“I know what happens when people do _that_,” said Cosmo, for he had
read a thousand things; and then he added, “_Sixty per cent._,” as
though it was a kind of secret password, showing him to have a vast
experience of mankind.
In spite of his good nature, Mr Harbury was almost angry with a young
man aghast at a thousand pounds, using fine phrases and bringing in
the 60 per cent. of the police-courts and the novelists; the 60 per
cent. which farmers pay, and poor widows, and insignificant officers
of the line, and men hiding, and all who have no backing.
“Cosmo,” he said firmly, so that he made himself obeyed, “you say
this man is coming at ten to-morrow. I will come at nine and bring
you the money—in notes, mind you—in notes. Then, since your nerves
are in that state, we will go up to town and I will take you to
Ashington. I know him as well as I know you; he will lend it you at
15 per cent. at the very most, and I will see that he does it; and if
you must clear your mind, you can pay me then. Sixty per cent.! Oh,
Cosmo, Cosmo, what a lot you have to learn.”
Cosmo waited a little, as they do in story books, and then Mr
Harbury saw by his face that he had consented, and Mr Harbury laughed
again a clear laugh, and put his hand upon his shoulder, and Cosmo,
from whom certainly a great weight had gone, asked him where he was
dining, and said he would come too.
At Mr Harbury’s dinner, half academic and half political, Cosmo met a
group of those men who are in the very core of our lives to-day, and
who principally direct our State and its great destinies, and heard
in silence the Master of Barnabas, Charles Gayne and a dozen other
people who were arranging the new Mercantile Scholarships; Professor
Ezekiel K. Goode, Ph.D., was there, the creator of Hylomorphism as a
system of thought-being; and next to him there sat a man named Ragge,
whose mother had done a great work in the East End.
But especially he noticed at the other end of the table the large and
ponderous face, the dominating gesture, and the lethargic eyes of a
man whose very name betokened something great; it was Mr Barnett,
upon whose direction the scheme depended. And that evening he heard
also for the first time, casually mentioned, a phrase that was
to have great power over his life—the Development of the M’Korio
Delta. He heard it appearing and reappearing at intervals in the
conversation, as fire-flies dart in and out of trees.
* * * * *
Next morning Mr Capes came, still respectful and still determined.
But Cosmo’s manner was all renewed and strong: he met Mr Capes with a
vigorous, sharp manner that astonished him, and spoke the first words
loudly:
“You know what I think, Capes. It’s blackmail. You know that as well
as I do. He pulled out the money as he spoke. “Where’s your packet?”
“I don’t like to be spoken to like that, sir,” said Mr Capes.
Cosmo in his relief insisted more strongly.
“I can’t help that, Capes; you must hear it now, for I hope never to
see you again. It’s blackmail. I said I would pay it, and I will keep
my word; but it’s blackmail, and it shall be remembered against you
till I die.”
Mr Capes was foolish enough to say at this point, that he hoped there
would be no unpleasantness.
“Count them,” said Cosmo.
Mr Capes took the notes and turned each carefully over as though he
feared a trick. Then he ran through them again by the aid of his
great thumb, which he put to his mouth from time to time as he
counted half aloud. He was satisfied.
“You owe it us, sir,” said he slowly, “certain you do.”
Then he put the price of a comfortable life into his pocket-book,
wagged his head sadly, and brought out from his tails a package
wrapped up in a very dirty old newspaper. He unfolded it and produced
an inner packet tied with a thick and greasy string, and Cosmo sighed
slightly as he felt his own hand on the envelopes, and took back the
letters and with them his peace of mind.
“I hope,”—began Mr Capes.
“I don’t want to have any more words with you, Capes,” said Cosmo,
trying to set his mouth, and still speaking with depth and loudly.
“Oh! very well, sir,” said Mr Capes respectfully, “very well, sir,”
and he moved slowly to the door and shut it after him very gently, as
he had ever been taught was good manners. And Cosmo heard his shamble
on the stone stairs, and felt as though peril had gone with him, and
as though in some way his own manhood had returned.
He took the packet and had just untied the string, when his eye
caught the clock, and he saw he had barely the time to meet Mr
Harbury at the station. He put the letters into his desk, locked it,
and went out free.
* * * * *
That morning Mr Harbury took Cosmo to town, to Jermyn Street; and
there the two went up a flight of stairs and came to a door which
bore, on a brass plate, the name of “Ashington.”
There was a decent clerk of middle-age writing at a desk. He came
forward courteously, and took from Mr Harbury’s hand a note which was
addressed to his master. It was to introduce Cosmo and himself, and
to tell their business. The clerk came out again at once. He first
bowed out a very old man, a client whose hands were shaking, and then
bowed in through the green baize door the two new visitors. Then
he shut the green baize door, and Cosmo, in some awe, sat down and
looked about him.
[Illustration: MR ASHINGTON, FROM A PORTRAIT—(UNDER HIS COUNTRY NAME
OF MR CURLEW) IN “HOSTS AND HOSTESSES OF RUTLANDSHIRE”]
There was a large table with two novels upon it, and a great inkpot,
and two silver candlesticks, and a piece of sealing wax, and a lovely
little statuette of Napoleon in bronze. There were also some letters
upon the table, and two envelopes waiting for the post. And, sitting
at the table, was a little elderly man, with kind keen eyes and a
kind smile, but coughing and weak in health, who blinked his eyes
and twiddled his mouth as he spoke. And when he spoke he had another
nervousness, which was to repeat his phrases; and he began by saying:
“Well, well,” and then he said it again, and smiled and added: “it’s
very simple, Harbury, it’s very simple. I suppose that this gentleman
is of age?—is of age?” He looked kindly again at Cosmo, and added:
“is of age?”
Cosmo said that he was twenty-three. He was afraid it might have been
bad form, or he would have mentioned birth certificates and proofs;
but this statement appeared enough; he was astonished at the ease
with which these mysterious things were settled in this new great
world which he had never known.
The little old man got up, walking with knees rather bent, and with
short steps, saying:
“I’ll get a form, I’ll get a form, Harbury; I’ll get a form.” And he
went to another door at the end of his little room.
In the silence Cosmo looked at the walls, he noted their taste and
comfort: the excellent English mezzotints of Italian workmanship, and
the air, in every subdued decoration, of harmony with the English air
and manner, the old dignified English quarter in which this English
house had been built two hundred years before. His mind was still
upon these charming characters of security and repose, when Mr
Harbury said to him quietly and with a smile:
“Cosmo, I have asked for £1250.... I am determined that you shall
have something in hand; you must have your mind quite free ... when
the work you may have to do begins.”
And Cosmo did nothing but smile in answer a little sadly, and nod
once or twice.
Then old Mr Ashington came toddling back, put on gold spectacles with
great elaboration, laid the form on the table by Cosmo, and, bending
over it, followed down its few clauses with his delicate white
finger, and Cosmo read them, murmuring their words; and then old Mr
Ashington said:
“That’s where you sign; that’s where you sign; that’s where you
sign.” And Cosmo signed, and the thing was done.
[Illustration: LORD GEORGE HAMPTON, PIONEER AND EXPLORER (FROM A
SKETCH VERY KINDLY COMMUNICATED BY THE ARTIST, HIS SISTER, LADY OONA
HAMPTON)]
CHAPTER III
The M’Korio Delta lies, as its name implies,[5] at the mouth of the
M’Korio river.
This protracted and beneficent stream was first seen on the 10th July
1863, by the noble-hearted Garry, who, coming across it in the rainy
season, and mistaking the character of the waterway, christened it
“Lake Coburg.” He crossed it, and pursued his way without discovering
his error.
It was next visited (unless we accept the very doubtful story of
Van Arlst two years before) by the intrepid Matherson in 1867.
Matherson had the misfortune to cross it in the middle of the dry
season, and was wholly unaware of its importance. On his historic
map, which is still preserved by the Royal Geographical Society in
Burlington Gardens, the spot is marked with the words “pools here”;
and there is a marginal reference to a carrier, recently converted to
Christianity, but devoured in this neighbourhood by a crocodile.
The true discoverer of the river, the first to recognise its nature
and to map its course was the saintly Basingstoke, a pupil of the
N.K.C.B.
Basingstoke was very probably born in Murphy county, N.S.W., on the
river Thames a few miles above Tarára. On reaching England he did
what his right hand finded to do and displayed in several houses a
devoted and God-fearing manner which earned him a written character
from his last master, Mr Heck, of the Lindens, Fulham. Armed with
this he passed to the Continent, worked for some time in what is now
the Grand Hotel at Assisi and so encountered the chief adventure of
his life.
It was due to a recommendation from this hotel that Basingstoke
started from Naples in March 1873, in the company of an Italian named
Mucciani, who boasted some foreign title or other, and was possessed
of ample means.
This man died; how and where will never be known, for in the awful
days of fever that followed nothing but a most exceptional valour
saved Basingstoke himself from destruction. We have it in his own
hand that “he had no conception where he was or what he did,” and
that the clothes and personal effects of Mucciani (which it had
been his business to brush and clean) were “lost in the period of
delirium.” But, he finely adds, “I must succeed; I know when God is
on my side.” The phrase is typical of the man’s true humility, and
helps us to understand his power.
The blacks put an absolute trust in him. Just above the Harra rapids
(below which point the Italian notes on the map are first misspelt
and then cease altogether) he was compelled to shoot two of his
carriers for prevarication—to call it by no harsher name. The whole
company fled into the woods, and he was left alone with one man,
Mahmoud, whose devotion had in it something of hero worship. They
had no weapons left, save one rifle, fifteen cartridges, and a heavy
whip; all these Basingstoke, as the stronger of the two men, carried
without complaint to the journey’s end. Roped together, lest they
should lose touch in the thick brushwood, these gallant fellows
stumbled on, till they emerged at Háli (or Gambetta as the place is
now called) more dead than alive, and received aid from a friendly
tribe who knew and trembled at the English name.
Miracles, if one may use the term with reverence, were worked for
them upon their journey down the river from this spot to the coast, a
hundred and fifty miles away. At one place their canoe was surrounded
by a clamorous horde of natives, who were silenced by the reading of
that magnificent passage, Genesis xxxvi. 22-28 inclusive. At another
they were pursued by a she-hippopotamus of enormous dimensions; at
a third they dared not land for fear of lions; at a fourth they
touched at a native village in the very nick of time barely three
hours after the death of a mighty serpent. Upon reaching the mouth
of the river they had every reason to fear that they would be fired
upon by a Portuguese gunboat. Basingstoke quietly stretched his white
handkerchief upon a reed; the emblem was recognised and he passed in
safety. Three days at sea exhausted their provisions. Basingstoke has
recorded the generous struggle between himself and Mahmoud and told
us in unforgettable language how the servant slid into the water by
night to save his master.
Many of us can still remember his reception in Europe, his plea at
Exeter Hall for those millions whom he had found in darkness, his
decoration by the King of Italy, and his successful lawsuit against
the family of Mucciani.
The end of this great man is less well known. Years after, when
unfortunate speculations had dissipated his considerable fortune,
he returned to Gambetta, but he only returned to die. His life was
wasted. The valuable deposits of mineral oil, upon which he had
pinned his hopes were already in the hands of a foreign concession.
His heart broke. He lies buried in a field just outside the limits of
Gambetta, under a fine monument bearing the simple inscription:
_C. M. Basingstoke,
Born at Beatrice, N.S.W., on the 6th July 1841,
Educated at the Mason’s Orphans’ College, Clapham,
Died Jan. 6th, 1895._
“_I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer upon the earth._”
It is to Mr Barnett’s honour that he paid for the monument, which is
of Cornish granite inlaid with plain black. The whole is of British
workmanship, designed in Battersea by one of the Chelsea artists,
executed in Camberwell, transported by the well-known firm, B. L.
Jowel & Co. of Holborn Viaduct, shippers, etc. It was set up by
Burroughs. Photographs of the same are to be obtained of Mr Gale,
742 Strand, and a tablet has been erected in Westminster Abbey by
American subscription.
After Basingstoke’s great effort, several travellers appeared in
succession in the M’Korio valley, and completed his work. Each
entered after incredible exertions through the Kuru gorge; each
descended the river to its mouth, bearing his life in his hands, each
survived, and each published a book upon his return to England.
Bayley Pasha in 1876, the indomitable Higgs in the same year, poor
Lord Charles Hampton in 1878-79, and “Hell or Glory” Powell, in 1880,
achieved the exploration of the country. These, together with a few
rather noisy continental claimants to similar honours, were the
pioneers. Sir Henry Jeorz signed the first treaty with the Noyo of
Naya in 1882, thereby overriding the previous arrangement which that
sovereign had signed with some German adventurer. Next year a similar
footing was obtained in the town of Saràka and the surrounding
district by the genius of Captain Ronald, who deposed and exiled the
Alemami, forbade polygamy, put down the slave trade with a rigorous
hand, publicly burned the Sacred Umbrella, and was on the point of
executing a Belgian botanist, when news of his exploits reached
England, and he was suddenly recalled by the Secretary of State for
War, a personal friend who had long mourned him as dead.
Ronald was given an excellent post, and has since enjoyed all that
public repute and a wealthy marriage can afford, but the error of his
recall was the beginning of a series of official blunders, which all
but forfeited the fruit of so much private heroism.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN RONALD (BY THE KIND PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR
AND PUBLISHER OF “RULERS OF MEN”)]
So long as Mr Gladstone continued by his marvellous personal
influence to concentrate English opinion upon parochial matters,
the valley of the M’Korio remained upon the map as British
territory; it was taken by our neighbours and rivals to be in some
vague way attached to the British Empire, the Portuguese claim to
the settlement at the mouth of the river was tamely submitted to
arbitration, upheld, and finally bought out for the monstrous sum
of eighty-three thousand seven hundred and forty-six pounds. A few
stations scattered along the eleven hundred miles of the stream,
each occupied by a mere handful of troops—these and the missionary
enterprise peculiar to our race alone maintained the prestige of
Great Britain.
With the great national movement of 1886, this dangerous and unworthy
state of affairs came to an end. A Government which comprehended the
meaning of the word Imperial proceeded to the partition of Africa.
So far as the M’Korio was concerned, that partition was marked by
a majestic simplicity. The whole of the right bank was recognised
as falling within the sphere of influence of the French, with whose
acknowledged possessions in Africa these districts ultimately merged.
The whole of the left bank, right up-country as far as the Cameroons,
was similarly adjudged to Germany. We retained for our portion no
useless shadowy sovereignty over the immense spaces of the interior,
but the solid and tangible possession of the Delta. The future may
yet show that we there established our power over one of the most
valuable territories of the earth.
This Delta has a frontage upon the sea of some 145 miles. It is
contained between two main branches of the river, which meet at a
distance of about ninety miles from the coast; but, as is nearly
always the case in such formations, the M’Korio also finds its way to
the ocean by a very great number of smaller channels.
[Illustration: A “MORO-KANU,” OR MEMBER OF THE UPPER CLASS OF THE
YABA. THIS CLASS POSSESSES MOST OF THE LAND, AND OBTAINS ALL THE
POLITICAL DIRECTION OF THE DELTA. INDEED IT IS FROM THEIR DOMINATION
OF A CLOSELY ARISTOCRATIC POLICY THAT THE PRINCIPAL HOPES OF AN
IMPERIAL EDUCATION OF THAT PROVINCE DEPEND]
By no means the whole of this province is permanently under water.
There are several considerable islands of firm earth, sufficient
to afford sustenance for a sparse but combative population which
is split up into some five or six distinct tribes, but is known to
the surrounding natives under the collective name of the Yaba. The
reduction of these our fellow-citizens, “half devil and half child,”
would probably have proved too heavy a task for any troops save those
who had been trained in our own magnificent and permanent school of
colonial warfare. As it was, a short campaign sufficed to establish
that _Pax_ which the commander in his despatches cleverly termed
_Britannica_. Before the month of December 1887, the army was able
to re-embark upon the _Princess Mary_; its task was accomplished.
The rising of 1888 was more difficult to deal with, and that of 1889
(which may be regarded as one with the disturbances of 1890) put the
local resources of our power to a very severe strain. Three officers,
seven white non-commissioned officers, and no less than 120 native
troops perished of fever before order could be finally restored.
The rebellion of 1891 was a small matter, purposely exaggerated
by the unpatriotic section of the House of Commons, and by the
jealousy or ignorance of the Continental press; indeed, for three
full years no military operations were necessary, and even the armed
disaffection which appeared in 1894 could hardly be dignified with
the name of a rising; while the obscure movement of 1897, of which we
heard so much in this country, appears to have been little more than
an outbreak of intertribal bickering, which it was our easy duty to
suppress.
The general upheaval, which began in January 1900, was a far more
serious matter. The temporary difficulties which we were then
experiencing in the south of the African continent were not without
their re-echo in the central north, and, ludicrous as it seems, the
Yaba may have thought, in company with more serious competitors,
that a term had come to our national mission. They were undeceived.
Difficult as it was to spare men, a sharp campaign, lasting into the
first months of 1901, and unfortunately neglected in the noise of
greater events, finally pacified the country. At the same moment the
Delta was formally annexed and a governor appointed.
With the rebellion of 1902 it is not my purpose to deal. The event
is too near us in time to permit of an impartial estimate, while
the disturbances of 1903 have not yet been reported upon, and those
of 1904 are but their sequel. Moreover, the events with which this
chronicle has to deal date from an accident prior to this last
campaign. That accident was the presence upon this coast of Mr I. Z.
Barnett.
It is time that I presented to my readers a presentment of this
remarkable man with whom so much of the following pages are concerned.
It may seem an impertinence in me to do so. His name is familiar
enough to the whole world for such a description to seem superfluous.
It must be remembered, however, that I have frequently come into
personal contact with his genius, that he was for some months
the financial guide of the dear friend whose record I desire to
establish, and that he would—had that friend’s weakness permitted
it—have remained his guide to the end. Indeed, the just description
of this great Builder of Empire is a duty which I owe, not only to
the memory of Mr Burden, but to Mr Barnett himself. He has furnished
me with many of the materials of this work, and he will be the first,
not only to endorse, but to applaud my confidences.
Mr Barnett’s offices in Broad Street are well known to everyone in
the City. Under the name of the M’Korio Delta Development Co., they
are, as Mr Barnett has himself strikingly put it in the _Intellectual
Review_, “a household word.” They occupy, of course, Nos. 73, 75, 77,
79 and 81 of Golden Square House. It is not so generally known that,
under the business name of the “British and Levantine,” they stretch
over Nos. 83, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, 97 and 99 of the same building.
Five rooms of the ground floor (under the name of Bury & Co.) and a
considerable part of the basement devoted to the XXth Century Wine
Company are in the same hands.
But this position was not immediately reached. The brain and the
manhood which were capable of such an achievement merit a brief
biography, were it only to show by what virtues of steadfastness and
application our country has come to stand where she does.
Mr Barnett was born at Frankfort a/M., somewhere between June 1840
and March 1845. In youth he must have been strikingly handsome. A
photograph, taken at Mayence in 1863, shows us a mass of black crisp
hair, glittering eyes, promising a singular depth and power; full and
somewhat sensuous lips, comprising between them a mouth of immense
tenacity; a broad, high forehead of a startling paleness; and a nose
of that full pendulous type which is invariably associated with
organising ability and staying-power. The prominence of the cheek
betrays some strong potentiality for emotion; but it is especially
the attitude of the whole figure that indicates the mind within.
[Illustration: LORD LAMBETH (MR BARNETT) FROM THE PORTRAIT BY SIR
HENRY MOSELEY, R.A., K.V.O.]
The young man is shown supported by a small pilaster, in the German
manner of the period. The right hand is thrust negligently into the
pocket of the trousers; the left grasps, in fingers of a certain
obesity, a book which we believe to be an English Bible.... There is
something further—something which a written description can hardly
convey, but which carries one away as one gazes at the magnificent
coloured enlargement which hangs to-day in the hall of Mr Barnett’s
house in Charles Street.... It is an impression—a conviction
rather—that this man is in some inscrutable way linked with the
fate of England. Such an assertion in cold print means little;
made in the presence of the man or his emblem, it has the force of
prophecy.
To-day the figure and the face are changed. Forty-five years do
not pass without leaving their mark, even upon the Heroes of our
strenuous epoch. An increasing stoutness—the hereditary enemy of his
family—has affected the gait and figure of Mr I. Z. Barnett. His
once luxuriant black curls are fallen. His head is surrounded by a
short ring of reverend grey hairs, still crisp, however, and still
admirably barbered. The clean-shaven face of the Mayence photograph
boasts the whiskers of later middle age that meet above the mouth in
a manner luxuriant, but quaintly foreign still. The chins are heavier
and more rumpled, and the whole face softer and more drooping.
Failing eyesight, coupled with a keen regard for dignity, have
compelled Mr Barnett to the use of plain gold eye-glasses held by
a simple tape. These, with a couple of rings upon the left hand, a
heavy signet, a bunch of curious old family seals at his watch chain,
some large pin or other, a well-chosen stud, and two cuff links
of Russian opals, comprised the whole of his ornament. In dress,
however, he is careful and even scrupulous—a habit that accompanies
the excessive personal self-respect which is an only, and a most
forgivable, weakness. In colour he affects the maroon; in pattern,
a quiet check; and he is careful to hide the ungainly join between
the trouser and the boot by a pair of snowy spats. Gloves he rarely
wears. His hat is modish.
His philosophy and manner are perhaps of greater import. Himself
an agnostic, he has ever extended his religious sympathies beyond
the narrow boundary of creed. His spiritual outlook from of old was
frank and tedious at times, yet always genial and always helpful in
intention. His deeper conviction was best expressed by the phrase he
invariably used upon completing the complicated formulæ of some legal
document: “My word,” he would say upon such occasions, “is as good as
my bond.” At some considerable distance one would have recognised the
man who had succeeded and who had deserved success.
But that success had not come easily. Indeed, until the last
magnificent piece of daring upon the M’Korio it could not be said to
have come permanently at all.
His birth was a continual drawback: the change of name necessary
to his career in England was another: the slight accent which he
retained throughout his career a third. We are a conservative and
jealous people, and it is with difficulty that we will admit the
genius of an alien, even when that genius flatters or would enrich us.
That Mr Barnett should suffer from such a prejudice was in his case
a peculiar hardship. His mother, the daughter of an Englishman
settled in Lisbon, was related in some way to Admiral Sir J. Cowen.
His father, though technically a German, was one to whom our fullest
sympathy should extend. A patriot and idealist of the noblest type,
he saw in the occupation of Frankfort in 1866, the advent at once
of militarism and of foreign rule. He determined to abandon a town
still dear to him, but intolerable since it supported an oppressor.
Too just, however, to enforce this decision upon his two sons, he
gave them the choice: he that remained should continue the business
subject to a half-charge upon all discount and advances, the other
might accompany him to freedom and to England. David elected, with
reluctance, to accept the Prussian domination; Mr I. Z. Barnett, the
younger son, departed with his father to this country, to the no
small delight of his mother, who intended, if possible upon their
arrival to renew the family ties with Admiral Sir J. Cowen.
This legitimate purpose she did not live to fulfil. She died soon
after her establishment in London, and her husband did not long
survive her.
Mr Barnett has often pointed out to me the little room in the Albany
where he began his long and difficult struggle with fortune. He spent
little, he lived laboriously; within ten years he had accumulated
a sufficient capital to devise and launch the Haymarket Bank. The
scheme of this speculation, risked by a comparatively poor man,
yet in the early thirties, should be enough to stamp the genius of
its creator. The Bank depended upon a principle which, had it but
proved successful, would have revolutionised the financial world.
All depositors were paid interest yearly upon the average of their
current accounts at the rate of eight per cent. At first it was
difficult to persuade a public wedded, wherever money was concerned,
to formal routine; but when, at the end of the first year, the eight
per cent. was duly paid (for Mr Barnett would accept no more than his
original capital could meet), timidity gave place to enthusiasm, for
eighteen months the institution increased as though by magic. If ever
the ordinary operations of the bank failed, on occasion, to earn the
stipulated interest, fresh depositors could always be depended on:
their accounts furnished the funds necessary for the satisfaction
of the yearly dividend. These in turn received at the end of twelve
months, the eight per cent., which yet another band of new investors
had delightedly furnished.
Upon lines so original and so daring, a new system of banking seemed
destined to arise. No limit threatened the expansion of the business,
till a venomous article, inspired perhaps wholly by political hatred,
suggested that the interest already paid could only come out of the
new capital daily furnished to the concern. A panic followed this
abominable insinuation (the scoundrel had not the courage to set it
down for a fact), and within twenty-four hours, the Haymarket Bank
was ruined.
Had Mr Barnett alone suffered by this underhand attack, he would have
felt it less; he was still a young man and might retrieve his own
fortunes. But the thought of decent middle-class ladies, of poor and
struggling clergymen ruined, not through their own fault, but because
they had trusted too thoroughly in him, was more than he could bear.
I have often heard him speak of those painful days, and he has never
failed to point out that the same hands which wantonly destroyed the
Haymarket Bank are responsible for the pestilent Little-Englandism
which would (if it could) drag him down from the great place he holds
to-day. The same spite that blasted the high promise of his ambitions
in pure finance, would—had it the power—wither that climax of applied
finance which is but another word for Imperial endeavour: but the
M’Korio Delta and all it means is now beyond the power of such
enemies.
For years Mr Barnett lay silent and obscure under the stigma of
this failure. He visited Vienna, Constantinople, and Calcutta: he
was concerned with the Anatolian Railway extension: it failed, and
he again withdrew. Passing through Cairo he enjoyed the simple
hospitality of the devout Harburys, and learnt from the morning,
noontide, and evening prayers of that secluded household, a peace
he had not yet known. He attached the younger Harbury to himself as
secretary, and set out with a higher heart to retrieve his fortunes.
He was instrumental in procuring a very necessary sum of money for
the Vidame de Sorral: that nobleman, with the careless generosity
of his rank, disbursed a considerable portion of his new found
wealth upon a yacht, wherein, overcoming a senseless and unchristian
repugnance, he took his benefactor for a short cruise upon the
African coast.
It was in these circumstances that Mr I. Z. Barnett, these few short
years since, first set eyes upon the land he was to render famous.
They were anchored off the western mouth of the M’Korio. The morning
was intensely hot, without a breath of wind. The trees that marked
the swampy edge of the Delta shimmered in a kind of mirage, and to
the left, on the high land some three miles away, a few white dots
marked the settlement and the governor’s house.
How often has not Mr Barnett told the story! His idle curiosity, the
two days’ shooting which his host and he took in the marshes, the
slight fever, the British flag at morning, and then suddenly, an
inspiration wholly new, the vision of what this place was to be!
The yacht was welcome to sail without him—he was closeted day
after day with officials and such travellers as were waiting for
the English mail. He travelled: in a fashion he surveyed. He even
obtained an interview with the governor, who, sceptical as he is,
has recently confessed how impressed he was with the enthusiasm of
this strange man, and has himself largely invested in the Company.
Mr Barnett was convinced—he knew not how: it was a kind of faith—he
was convinced of the presence of gold. He saw the banks dyked, the
marshes drained, a province immensely fertile, teeming with wealth,
standing at the door of the vast M’Korio valley, the very key of
Africa: and all that for England!
He stayed as long as his health would permit, Harbury by his side,
meeting the native chiefs, questioning old hunters, obtaining
options, and using such legitimate influence as lay in his power with
the local agent of Reuter. Almost bereft of capital, he yet secured
some few concessions (for they were thought worthless)—he so disposed
them that their sites commanded the best of the territory. Above all,
he learnt that the paltry trade of the place, its reputation in the
City, and in some sense its economic future, were in the hands of two
men, two friends, a shipowner and an importer of hardware. He learnt
that of all men they were most contemptuous towards the M’Korio. He
learnt that the shipowner thought to know it more thoroughly than any
other man, and was not to be persuaded of its great destiny: that the
merchant, who had never visited it, had for years driven so weak a
trade as to give him the smallest opinion of its chances: that they
were both men old, hard in routine, and difficult. He learnt their
names. The shipowner was a Mr Abbott; the name of Mr Abbott’s friend,
the hardware merchant, was Burden.
He learnt that without them nothing could be done: this he learnt
thoroughly: this of all the things most impressed him.
He returned to England, and for one year or two he perfected his
plans.
* * * * *
Those who will deny the working of a conscious Providence in human
affairs, are led into their errors through an inability to grasp the
complexity of the world around them. They would have each good deed
immediately rewarded, and rewarded after its own kind; they would
have every evil punished in some direct and manifest way, forgetting
that such a punishment would not complete the episode, but would
itself originate a chain of further effects.
It is not thus that Immanent Justice informs and balances the lives
of men. But if we observe a group of human activities for any length
of time, we discover a network of reactions in which is soon manifest
an astonishing unity of design. This charity, that heroism will bear
far off, and in some wholly unexpected portion of the scheme, a fruit
which is also its compensation; such and such a piece of cruelty or
weakness, seemingly unrequited, may be traced through a succession of
consequences, ever creating of itself its own retribution until at
last it has paid, just where the payment was most needed, the full
debt incurred to whatever governs the world.
This novel and illuminating thought, for which I am indebted to
Dr M’Manus’ “Persecution of the Irish Protestants,” has thrown a
religious light over all the chief experiences of my life. The
learned divine exemplifies his philosophy by references to James II.
and the history of his own romantic Belfast: I prove its truth by a
consideration of the only considerable political movement with which
I have been brought into touch, I mean the Development of the M’Korio
Delta.
Mr Barnett, meeting Mr Harbury years ago in his father’s quiet
Oriental vicarage, had recognised his talents, and had attached him
to his fortunes. It was an accident, but an accident of kindness.
Mr Burden, my friend, acquired long ago, with little thought of gain,
the control of such small trade as could be driven with the naked and
debased aborigines of a fetid African river. It barely affected the
considerable profits of his business; he gave it little thought. It
was an accident, but that accident had in it a vein, however slight,
of patriotic motives destined in time to yield, even in this life, a
thousandfold.
Mrs Burden had ever desired that Cosmo should be sent to the
University. Before his fifth birthday, she had discovered in her
child aptitudes of no common order. His father had nourished a
secret design to put him at once from school into the business;
during his wife’s last illness he had abandoned his own will, and
promised her that the boy should enjoy the advantages she implored.
That also was an active, if a slight, example of self-denial and of
love.
Lastly, and most especially, Mr Harbury, by one fine act of
enlightened good nature, had bound in gratitude the reserved and
somewhat difficult affections of the lad upon whom so much depended.
Observe how great an issue lay in these little things: these little
and obscure good deeds! What man save Mr Barnett had understood, or
could understand, the full meaning of the M’Korio? What chances had
any vision of his against the opposition of all that limited, monied,
hard “good sense” whereby Mr Burden despised the wealth latent in
the colony with which he alone traded? And yet Mr Burden’s voice in
this matter would certainly lead the city! What ambassador could have
been found to persuade a merchant of Mr Burden’s kind that the future
of a great province depended upon such a man as Mr Barnett, whose
character could not but have affected him as alien, and perhaps as
repulsive?
Cosmo alone could bridge that gulf. His lethargy, if I may use the
term, would have proved an insuperable obstacle, and all that he had
heard from his young associates of “honour” would have confused his
judgment, had not that closer tie been created in a few predestined
hours by Mr Harbury’s trained, courteous, and ready heart.
Each of us to-day in whatever way we have immixed with that
Imperial adventure as shareholders or plain citizens; as preachers,
journalists, or perhaps in some sweet womanly way; every soldier
who has returned without stain from the Delta; every administrator
of every grade, nay, every holder of every salaried office in the
M’Korio, owes something to that half hour when so considerable a sum
as £1250 was lent without any kind of fee or troublesome inquiry at
a nominal rate of fifteen per cent. to rescue a fellow-being from
dishonour.
How truly does not the poet put it in a verse, the sense of which I
shall always retain, though many of its words escape me:—
“_Let others ...
... or play the meaner part;
But the little seed of one good deed
Can...._”
I remember no more than the last word, which is “_heart_.”
FOOTNOTES:
[5] “... As its name implies,” Butterworth’s “Geography of the
Empire,” p. 224.
CHAPTER IV
In every tragedy connected with old age, the hardening which is the
curse of age appears.
The picture which Mr Burden presented at this moment is the
more vivid in my memory from the suddenness with which it was
extinguished. I desire to describe him as accurately as I may for the
sake of that posterity which must learn, not only what his virtues
were, but also in what way, and through what weakness, he failed upon
the chief occasion of his life. It is a lesson of the highest moment.
Tall, erect, somewhat pompous, but withal very active in his
carriage, he carried all the remains of a strong manhood. Of his
face I can only say that it was typical of his class: square with a
large firm mouth kept closely shut, and carrying, from long habit,
an affectation of purpose and determination which was far from the
habitual tenor of his mind. His hair was quite white but abundant;
he parted it with care upon the left side, and brushed it up clear
from his forehead as befitted his sure sense of what was decent in
such things. His eyebrows were contracted into a slight mechanical
frown, acquired perhaps in the habit of attention, but certainly
expressing no anxiety nor even any particular keenness in bargaining.
His hands were remarkably steady, his gestures firm and sure. I have
heard it said, with a colonial exaggeration, that to see him open
his umbrella was to comprehend England from the Reform Bill to Home
Rule. The young gentleman who composed this facile epigram, a student
with a nasal accent and weak in every organ, was born and bred in
Port Elizabeth, to which distant centre of African loyalty he has
returned. Let me forget him and continue the description of my friend.
His eyes, of a pale grey, were alight with so singular an honesty
as to border upon ignorance of the world. He had perhaps never in
his life deceived a human being. His business, founded upon ample
capital, demanding no credit, existing as a wholesale resource for
the trade and independent of advertisement, never required it of him
to lie, to cheat, to gamble, or to destroy another’s wealth. Its
expansion had been automatic; if his success had raised in him any
evil, it was certainly nothing worse than a slight tincture of pride.
Of his patriotism I fear to speak lest I should destroy by too
violent a praise the impression I desire to produce. It was abundant,
it was like a perennial spring; it was the deepest thing in the man.
I am certain that had England been in danger he would cheerfully
have sacrificed his fortune. He had known nothing but his country;
his very religion was in some odd way muddled up with her vices, her
spirit, and the peculiar beauties of her landscapes, the less obvious
effects of her towns. Indeed, he would have died for her ... perhaps
in a sense he _did_ die for her ... his name, manner, and habit of
life seemed to me who knew him to be always England, England.
With all this there was a failing, which neither I nor even those who
were in more daily intimacy with him, could hope to eradicate. The
national life, to which he was so deeply attached, had stood still
with him for many years.
Let me not be misunderstood. He had followed with a certain eagerness
the development of England and of the Empire. He was an assiduous
reader of the _Daily Telegraph_, _The Gleam_, _The Orb_, _The
Globe_, _The Times_, and _The Meteor_; he received _The Spectator_,
_The Economist_, _The Doctrinaire_ upon every Saturday morning, and
occasionally looked at them; and when he went abroad, according to
his custom, during the month of August, he was careful to make such
arrangements as caused these standard weekly organs of opinion to
reach him not later than the following Tuesday.
The mere facts, therefore, he knew. He was gratified, and
occasionally enthusiastic, over the expansion of our dominion. He
had a grasp of the various stages by which the jealousy of foreign
nations had been stilled, and their competition annulled. He had
appreciated in latter years the decline of English commerce, the ruin
of our agriculture, and the upbuilding of a Greater Britain beyond
the seas.
All the manifest destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race he had seen as
clearly as the humblest clerk; he had received it with as religious
an emotion as had the poorest and most vulgar of our electorate.
Nevertheless all this had been for him but a pageant. He had never
comprehended the great change in our method of thought which this new
fact in the life of the world involved. He was like a man who hears
of this or that catastrophe—of this or that triumph, suffers in the
catastrophe or glories in the triumph, but suffers and glories as in
a thing apart: a thing read or seen upon the stage. He never really
got it into his mind that _he_ was an actor in the drama; that _he_,
as a citizen, was making the new world.
It is a paradox, but a paradox ever present in our contemporary life;
we owe to it the extreme reluctance with which each new and necessary
idea is accepted by a people born, after all, to Empire. It is in our
blood.
Did space permit me, I could give many instances of this failing:
let me be content with two. Mr Burden had voted honourably and
straightforwardly for that small taxation of our food supplies,
which was necessary for the consolidation of the Empire. Of the
direct effect of that vote he never complained; but he would not or
could not connect with his opinion upon this matter, the necessary
depreciation which it involved in his investments. Again, he had read
and applauded Mr Chamberlain’s great speech just after the Australian
Commonwealth cancelled the “loans previous”; he also appreciated that
Australia must have new capital, and that, in the actual state of her
credit, this capital could only come from Great Britain; yet in the
meeting in the Cannon Street Hotel six months later, he had described
the reconstruction of the Waga-Murri mine as “un-English.”
Mr Burden’s dissociation from the underlying philosophy of his
time went deeper still. He would have maintained, in a kind of
abstract way, that the connection between finance and politics
was dangerous—it is difficult to say whether he saw that it was
necessary. At any rate he dreaded and avoided that necessity. He
would have admitted that a Cabinet drawn from the ranks of rich men
was a purer and better government than one formed upon the less
stable models of democratic nations, but in some vague way he must
have thought of their wealth as exclusively territorial, for he would
not only have expressed, but would have felt a very genuine horror at
hearing that a Cabinet minister had held, or had been given, such and
such shares in a company connected with our Imperial development.
When he was asked, as I once asked him, how a man could be rich
and yet not mixed up with the principal source of modern wealth in
England, he replied with a simple affirmation; he said that any
one in office should sell whatever shares he had possessed in such
concerns. He refused to follow the logical consequences of his creed.
It was precisely upon this point that a greater mind, a mind more
necessary to England, though not perhaps more English, found the
principal difficulty of contact. Mr Barnett knew that the M’Korio
Delta was a touchstone for the future of England. I do not pretend
that his only motive lay there. His motives were largely economic.
But, at anyrate, the fulfilment of his own legitimate ambition
demanded that he should persuade English opinion of what the M’Korio
Delta was.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, there was not at that time in the
city any name whose influence would have a more immediate effect
towards converting the investor in W. African securities than that
of Mr Burden; and yet every avenue of Mr Burden’s mind was closed
to such methods of approach as Mr Barnett comprehended. He could
not offer shares, and that sharp imaginative power which would have
turned the M’Korio Delta into the great province it must become in
the future, he knew that Mr Burden did not and could not possess.
The very circumstances by which Mr Burden came to be the sole arbiter
(as it were) of M’Korian trade made Mr Barnett’s advance the more
difficult.
Charles Abbott, who by a curious anachronism, remains to this day
the chief proprietor of the Abbott Line of steamers, had (and has)
about him something of the explosive radicalism which was often to be
discovered in the older sort of English officials and business men;
the men who helped, in their unconscious way, to build that which
we now direct towards such astounding destinies. Of the New Empire
he had a shallow, but a curiously robust disgust. He loved things
as he had seen them—as they were: for dreams, for anticipations, he
had as profound a contempt as for debt. He had never owed any man
a farthing; he had never done business with the future. In feature
he was red and a little over-eager; in gestures abrupt and strong;
but his violence was balanced by a deep and emphatic voice which
possessed a strange power of persuasion, especially over men less
hearty than himself.
Such a man had not founded his fleet of ships to deal with “niggers.”
He had developed it upon the South American trade. A Government
subsidy had persuaded him to touch once a month at the M’Korio. He
had travelled there once in person, and had carried away nothing but
an added contempt for the policy that could deal with such things.
Through this unsympathetic channel had Mr Burden been introduced to
the Delta.
Mr Abbott, though ten years Mr Burden’s junior, had been, almost
from boyhood, his most intimate friend; it was an intimacy born of
perpetual daily association, meals in common, and a long life spent
with few other opportunities for expansion than that afforded by
each other’s society. When he had last returned to Europe from a
voyage to the Delta he had suggested to Mr Burden—with no great
enthusiasm—that there was some little dealing to be had with the
aborigines of that marsh, in goods of the sort that Mr Burden
handled. Iron rings of a sort known to the trade as “Large Nines,”
were in that district not only a rarity but an object of political
necessity. Long the symbol of authority upon the heads of the
chiefs, they had been manufactured with infinite pains from old
ship nails by the natives, or imported at considerable expense from
the neighbouring Sultanate of Botu. Our excellent English article,
cheaper, more reliable, and more accurately made, soon settled the
competition of these rivals. It was impossible, indeed, to accept as
currency the valuable slaves which had formerly found their way to
the Sultanate; but considerable quantities of ivory were obtainable
for many years in exchange for a gross of these goods; and Mr Burden
had the advantage not only of securing such a profit as was due to
his initiative and skill, but of knowing that indirectly through his
efforts, the slave trade had disappeared in a part of Africa where it
had seemed inseparable from the soil.
It was not to be expected that this state of things should last for
ever. Oligarchic as was the nature of M’Korian society, the number
of chiefs was limited; and a religious awe forbade the possession
by anyone of more than a certain number of these sacred symbols.
Moreover, a German firm, secretly subsidised by its government, had
so far interfered with the old monopoly as to offer the rings at a
price which made it difficult for the original trade to subsist in
English hands. But Mr Burden’s profits were soon supplemented from
other sources. Guns, of a simple sort, and a kind of sword, were
introduced, and (a very remarkable example of the ingenuity of a
client in Birmingham) fine chain armour replaced the leathern jackets
which the warriors of the protectorate had hitherto worn.
But, though Mr Burden had become the sole importer, though his
advice and that of Mr Abbott often controlled the decision of the
Government in the local affairs of the M’Korio, and though his name
was attached to all the few traditions of the settlement, yet the
trade was very small, and, such as it was, it was dwindling. In Mr
Burden’s considerable affairs, the total of this petty offshoot did
not amount to one-twentieth at the most; it rarely represented a
profit of £400—more commonly less than £300 in a year; and, to his
natural compliance in Charles Abbott’s judgment, therefore, was added
a business experience which made of the Delta something mean and
paltry in his conception.
This contempt of his for the M’Korio was broken down at last by the
intervention of Cosmo; but that intervention, necessary as it was in
its moment, would not alone have sufficed, though without it nothing
would finally have been done.
The ground had first to be prepared for the whole public and for
Mr Burden as a part of that public; and the instrument of this
preparation was the power which—a full year before he had met Mr
Burden’s son—Mr Barnett had begun to exercise over the Press.
There is a kind of rash political indignation which we all come
across, and to which some of us are attracted. There are men who hate
the successful or the rich, but whose hatred is not quite dishonest,
though it is wildly unjust. They see conspiracies upon every side,
they scowl at every new fortune, but they do so in good faith, for
they are haunted by a nightmare of Cosmopolitan Finance—pitiless,
destructive of all national ideals, obscene, and eating out the heart
of our European tradition. I need hardly say that this kind of hatred
was roused against Mr Barnett, and gained an especial strength from
the attitude which the great papers took towards what was known to be
his scheme; and yet at that moment Mr Barnett, had the world known
it, was comparatively poor. He had not certainly a free capital
of ten thousand pounds, beyond what was locked up in his various
properties and adventures.
The particular charge made against Mr Barnett was that he had “bought
the Press”—or at least the London Press.
Of general and vaguer charges there were many, but they are incapable
of proof, and I shall not concern myself with them. With his
relations towards the Press I am well acquainted; and though it is
not my business to defend Mr Barnett, yet I am so convinced that this
kind of indignation proceeds solely from an ignorance of our social
machinery, that it is incumbent upon me to show quite clearly how
false the accusation was.
The men who made it (a salutary fear of the law of libel forbade them
as a rule to put it into print), the men who made it, I say, had no
other ground than this: they saw that the M’Korio Delta was in the
air, they heard the name upon every side; they knew that Mr Barnett
would necessarily grow rich upon its development; they saw the Press
almost unanimous in its demand for that development, and they jumped
to the false conclusion which I have indicated, because their vision
had been warped by an uncontrolled and ill-balanced anger against the
modern inequalities of fortune.
Mr Barnett had not bought the Press; the Press is not to be bought.
That Mr Barnett had an influence with the Press, and a legitimate
influence, I will not deny; but when I have described that influence
I think my thesis will be proved.
Let us consider first what papers Mr Barnett owned. Here is the
list. He was the proprietor of _Little Ones_, _Boy’s Chatter_, _The
Woman_, _The English Country Side_. For some months, in the interval
between the bankruptcy of Sir Charles Binsted and the formation of
the Agricultural Union, he had also owned the _Farmer’s Friend_. It
is incredible that he should have made such purchases with any object
of hoodwinking public opinion. He could only have made them as an
investment. The very names of the papers are sufficient proof of this.
Beyond these he was proprietor of _The Review_. _The Review_ was a
losing property; he had been compelled to assume direction of it in
payment of a debt, and he was occupied at the date of which I speak
in building it up into something of its former importance. He was
also part owner (but only part owner), of the rival _Holborn Review_,
and the editor, who had been for some time his private secretary, has
assured me that Mr Barnett’s name was hardly mentioned in the office.
I am confident that he took no interest whatsoever in the _Holborn
Review_, save as a financial venture. My readers have but to turn to
a file to see that arguments upon both sides were admitted to its
pages, and that the M’Korio Delta, even at the height of its fame,
rarely afforded matter for more than one article in each issue.
Lest I should be accused of concealing anything that might militate
against my contention, I will mention the fact that Mr Barnett did
own the majority of the shares of the Twentieth Century Syndicate.
Now the Twentieth Century Syndicate, it is true, finances the Railton
Group; but Mr Barnett himself had nothing to do with that group. It
is interested in _The Mercury_, _The Britisher_, _The Hammer_, and
the two evening papers, _England_ and _The Empire_. No one who is
acquainted with the nature of modern finance can believe for a moment
that so indirect a relation would give Mr Barnett the least voice in
the management of these sheets.
Whether Mr Barnett held shares in the London and General Publishing
Company at any one time, it is not easy to determine. These shares
fluctuated considerably, and, if one may say so without disrespect
to so honoured a name as that of the Duke of Essex, the chairman
of the Company, they were something of a gambling stock. They were
perpetually changing hands, and the motive of their acquisition,
whether by Mr Barnett or by anyone else, cannot have been other than
that of a speculative game.
Over the great dailies he had absolutely no control whatsoever.
He advertised in them, of course; and a good deal of capital was
made by his opponents out of the fact that Mr Jefferson, the owner
and editor of so important a sheet as _The Gazette_, was connected
with Mr Barnett in the old business of the Haymarket Bank; but if
that is to be taken as an evidence of corruption, or even of undue
influence, who would be safe from such an accusation?[6] A man in his
position is naturally acquainted, often intimate, with the leading
men of his time. The editor of _The Doctrinaire_—a man wholly above
suspicion—was proud of his intimate friendship; and he naturally
had relations as a host upon more than one occasion with the two
proprietors of _The Nation_, and with the editors or owners of most
of the other great dailies. But Mr Barnett had no monopoly in such
acquaintances or friendships; most of our great financiers could have
boasted of the same.
It is time that I should turn from the ungrateful task of defending a
man against a calumny that ought never to have been made, to describe
the real services which Mr Barnett rendered to his adopted country,
and to the Empire; nowhere were these services more apparent than
in the interest he took in the careers of the more brilliant young
journalists. Let me cite the case of Mr Powler.
Mr Powler had been among the first to see the advantages of reversing
our fiscal policy. As long ago as 1898, just after taking his degree,
he had written a powerful defence of Protection which had earned him
his Fellowship. He was poor, and the whole weight of his genius might
have been lost for years to England had not Mr Barnett appointed
him to the editorship of _The Review_, just before the outbreak of
the war in South Africa. No one is ignorant of the effect of that
appointment.
[Illustration: THE EDITOR OF “THE DOCTRINAIRE” (AS HE APPEARED
READING HIS PAPER—“CAUSES OF OUR SUCCESS IN SOUTH AFRICA,” TO THE
ROYAL SOCIETY)]
Long after the war was over, but a full year before any mention
of the M’Korio Delta had been publicly made, the editor of _The
Doctrinaire_—a man wholly above suspicion—wrote to Mr Barnett, and
asked him if he could recommend some young fellow to sub-edit that
great weekly journal during his own enforced absence upon a shooting
party in Scotland. I know from Mr Powler himself what passed. Mr
Barnett came in person to the office of _The Review_, climbed to
the third story (no small sacrifice in a man of his temperament and
figure!) and begged Mr Powler to accept the post.
“It is better paid,” he said, “and a bigger place altogether than
anything that I could offer you.” Then he added with a smile: “You
know the advice that I always give to you young men.”
It was in vain that Mr Powler (so he himself assures me), pleaded to
remain in the service of a man whom he could not but regard as the
builder of a new world. He knew that Mr Barnett was making a great
sacrifice in permitting him to go, and it was only after a generous
dispute that the older man had his way.
Mr Powler took with him to _The Doctrinaire_ Mr Heinrich Rallé, and
between them they gave a life and a meaning to the paper which
recalled the great days of John Hardy and the successful, strenuous
battle in favour of the unification of Italy in the sixties. When
the editor of _The Doctrinaire_ returned from Scotland, he found the
beginnings of a fortune; and it seems to me not unnatural that he
should, under the circumstances, have permitted something of a new
policy to appear in his pages, or that he should have been drawn
towards Mr Barnett with a sentiment approaching to affection.
Talent of this kind is rare in modern journalism. The proprietors of
_The Nation_ privately approached and obtained the services of Mr
Henry Rallé. I will not enter into the somewhat heated difference
that arose between _The Doctrinaire_ and _The Nation_ relative to
this matter. I will content myself with saying that Mr Raleigh
infused a new life into the latter paper, erased from its outer
cover the phrase “an Hebdomadal Journal,” permitted the insertion of
illustrations, and in the general tone he imparted to its articles
made it what it had never been before; a vigorous ally of all that
makes for the larger life of England. It was on this occasion that Mr
Barnett’s friendship with Mr Jenkins, a proprietor of _The Nation_,
arose; and it is a singular example of his tact and care for detail,
that, during the four or five years which have since elapsed, in all
the multitude of dinners that either have eaten under Mr Barnett’s
roof, Mr Jenkins and the editor of _The Doctrinaire_ have never met.
I will not weary my readers with the story of the founding of
_Criticism_; of the resuscitation of the old _Orb_, or of that
vigorous off-shoot of Colonial enterprise, the London edition of
the _M’Korio Times_, It is enough to say that, in all this mass of
ephemeral literature, the last journal alone was directly founded by
Mr Barnett; and, as it dealt principally with the City, it had but
little effect upon the general current of opinion.
All this intellectual movement was instinct with the spirit of
England.
There are political forces that seem without form, very vague
and viewless as great currents of air may be, but they are as
irresistible.
Through England and the English some such force has long been
stirring. All these young men had felt it; all were bound as by a
kind of fate to express it. It coloured their writing upon every
topic. It troubled their view of the future; it compelled them to
continual appeals. For long that undefined and natural thing, that
impulse of patriotism, had wandered in vagaries, thinking that now
here, now there, it had found the substance which it should inspire,
the matter which it was destined to make live. So all great movements
begin.
At last, and not long after the advent into English journalism of
that younger life and keener enthusiasm which I have just described,
a true and permanent object absorbed its energies, and, if one may
use the phrase, the nation and her servants had found their mission.
The full meaning of the M’Korio Delta had appeared.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] As an example of the lengths to which folly can go, I may quote
the accusation made against Mr Barnett that he influenced three of
the great dailies upon a critical date by _threatening to cut off
their supply of paper_!!!
CHAPTER V
In the first few months after his success in the University
examinations, Cosmo lived a life which should have proved a fitting
introduction to the position his father had reserved for him.
With the middle of October he entered the business in Thames Street,
and displayed an assiduity delightful for Mr Burden to witness.
The merchant was, indeed, astonished at the aptitude, or, perhaps,
the inherited commercial talent, which had survived his son’s
philological training, and was at times prepared to admit that the
study of modern languages, even upon the side of pure literature,
served (as he had often heard from its defenders) for a gymnastic to
the growing mind.
Meanwhile, the young man was far from forgetting the pleasures due
to his rank; but he used them in such a way that the development of
his character was in no way injured. His health forbade excess. His
acquaintances ensured, some that his pleasures should be refined,
others that they should be energetic, all that they should be
well selected. In a word he led, during the happy winter months
that followed, the normal life of that class which is perhaps the
soundest, as it is certainly the most many-sided in Europe—the class
which has learnt to govern an immeasurable realm without corruption,
and almost without ambition.
It was remarkable that, in spite of his prospects, he maintained a
severe grasp over his private expenditure, and this wise economy
helped still further to strengthen a character which might, at first,
have shown signs of weakness. He managed to do thoroughly well
without a private trap, replacing it by such cabs as his business or
amusements demanded. As for riding, one horse sufficed him, and when
he visited the country to hunt (as he would occasionally do in the
middle of a business week), he was not above jobbing a mount from a
local stable; he would not be at the expense of hunters. Did he visit
the theatre, the stalls seemed to him his most natural place. He took
a box but twice during the whole of that autumn, once when the house
was full, and on another occasion when he had calculated that the
number of friends whom he could accommodate in this manner would have
cost a trifle more had he taken them to separate seats.
At the Empire, the Alhambra, and other music halls he made it a rule
to break a sovereign as he entered, and to make that sum suffice him
for the whole evening.
He but rarely visited the Savoy, the Carlton, or Prince’s. When
he entertained it was at his club, and though he was careful that
the wine and cooking should be of the best, yet he abhorred the
ostentation of unseasonable flowers, and of vintages whose names
might be unfamiliar to his guests. His dress was nearly always new,
and always, always quiet. His linen fitted him with exactitude (a
result of careful measurement). To his hats he paid that attention
which is only to be discovered in men who comprehend the subtle
importance of those ornaments.
In everything the management of his affairs displayed a wise
reticence and balance; qualities most fortunately bestowed upon him
by Providence, when we consider that his father’s old-fashioned
standard forbade him an allowance of more than £250 a year.
His life, I say, through all that winter, was at once well-ordered
and happy, and justly envied by his contemporaries. There was but
one flaw in the perfection of his content, and that flaw was to be
discovered in the very serious condition of his finances.
The interest upon £1250—an interest to be paid half-yearly—even if
it be at so small a rate as 15 per cent., may appear at the time of
payment a sum of astonishing magnitude to the needy. It amounts, as
the less classical of my readers will at once perceive, to no less
than £93, 15s. at the end of every six months; and when the first of
these terms approached him in the course of February, Cosmo had the
misfortune to find himself for the moment unable to meet it.
I have already indicated to what an exaggerated extent he permitted
such little matters to prey upon his mind. I need hardly say that in
his distress he went to call upon Mr Harbury.
That excellent friend spoke to him more seriously than he had done
upon the first occasion. He pointed out to him that, while debts
of the more ordinary sort were often a matter for jest, the exact
payment of interest was a duty upon the fulfilment of which a man’s
honour was engaged. In a somewhat softer manner, Mr Harbury proceeded
to inform Cosmo of the concern which Mr Barnett had begun to take
in his career; nor did he conceal from him that, on hearing of his
difficulty, the very first thing he had done had been to write to
that large-hearted and widely-travelled man whom he (Mr Harbury)
regarded almost in the light of a father. Rising at the close of
this conversation, he laid his hand, not without dignity, upon the
young man’s shoulder, and begged him to dismiss all further thought
of the matter from his mind.... It would have been evident to a
meaner intelligence than that of Mr Burden’s son, that he had once
more been saved by agencies whose power he had long admired, and
whose character he had begun to revere.
From that moment he threw himself with a kind of zeal into the
companionship of such friends. The ensuing spring was largely
passed in their society. Gratitude alone would have compelled him
to frequent their houses: to gratitude, admiration was added, and
to admiration a sudden access of a sense of familiarity, when he
discovered that no less a person than Charles Benthorpe was very
often a fellow guest with himself.
The historic name which this young man bore so easily; the consummate
knowledge of the world which he had acquired as the companion of his
father’s official life, the public reputation of the family, and to
some extent the titular honour it boasted, had drawn Cosmo warmly
towards the enjoyment of Charles Benthorpe’s friendship, during their
contemporary residence at the University.
Nay more, Lord Benthorpe himself, as Cosmo discovered with
astonishment and pleasure, was, in a manner, the familiar of these
few who had at heart the glory of England in the delta of the great
African river. Often as the name M’Korio would enter into the
conversation, still more often would the experience, and occasionally
the name, of Lord Benthorpe accompany the judgment of Mr Harbury, of
Mr Barnett, and of that Major Pondo, whom it will be my business upon
a later page to describe. Charles Benthorpe, in spite of the reserve
which properly accompanies exalted social rank, was not unwilling to
describe his father’s attitude upon those Imperial matters whereof
that statesman’s long political and administrative experience had
given him an exhaustive knowledge.
Nor was it only the name and opinions of Lord Benthorpe that mingled
with their discussions. Once his lordship came in person to a
dinner of Mr Barnett’s, and was willing to express by word of mouth
his strong faith in the future of the M’Korio Delta. Upon another
occasion, Mr Harbury was able to read a letter from him, regretting
the peer’s inability to address a small private meeting upon the
potentialities of the M’Korio, potentialities which, in his absence,
were set forth by that Major Pondo, with whom, as I have just
remarked, and shall probably remark again, a future page must deal.
* * * * *
Were it my task (which I thank Heaven it is not) to compose a work
of fiction, I should attempt to exclude all persons and scenes
irrelevant to the simple current of my story. The more suitable, but
I fear less entertaining, relation upon which I am engaged permits
no such artistic selection: I am compelled to describe all those
who in any principal way entered the last days of Mr Burden’s life,
and, delicate as is the business of portraying a living peer and
politician, it is my duty to present (with all the reticence and
courtesy due to such a figure) the character of Lord Benthorpe.
To this end I must first sketch, in the most summary manner, that
distinguished family history upon which depends no small part of the
affection and esteem in which all Englishmen delight to hold him.
A subtle admixture of talent and inherited rank is to-day more than
ever the strength of our folk. Nor do I fear to offend the modern
taste by printing here the typical record of a great line.
Lord Benthorpe’s family is first heard of more than a century ago.
His grandfather, John Calvin Benthorpe was, at the close of December
1796,[7] a young solicitor[8] in the town of Dublin. In the very next
year we find him put into the Irish Parliament by the Duke of Meath
as a recognition of his strong sympathy with the national aspirations
of the time, and, Presbyterian as he was, with the legitimate
demands for religious emancipation preferred by the bulk of his
fellow-citizens: co-religionists of his Grace.
His fine talents and excellent appreciation of men soon won him
a political position independent of his early patron; and he had
the good fortune to be instrumental, both as a principal and as
a shrewd negotiator, in the passing of the Act of Union. He had
indeed permitted himself certain rhetorical exercises against that
measure in debate; but, in the hard practical matter of voting,
his inheritance of Scotch common-sense had outweighed his Irish
enthusiasm, and he soon found himself in a position to purchase an
estate in Wiltshire, some fifteen miles to the north-east of Old
Sarum.
A character too weighty, and perhaps too sincerely Christian, to
feel in middle age the continued attraction of political life, he
applied himself rather to the founding of a family worthy of the
title which His Majesty King George III. had, at the respectful
entreaty of Mr Pitt, conferred upon him.
With this object, he considered for some years the contracting of
a suitable marriage, and, after a deliberation whose purpose he
was far too chivalrous to conceal, he decided to honour from among
many, and to lead to the altar, the charming Laetitia Green, only
child of Mr Groen, senior partner in the well-known banking firm of
Strong-i’-th’-arm and Hurst.
His wife’s and his own remaining fortune he sank in further purchases
of land, and in the erection of a very fine mansion in the Debased
Palladian manner. This great house (to which its owner first attached
the name of Placton) is not only famous with most educated men,
but will also be familiar to the general reader from its frequent
appearance in the Memoirs of Lady Graftham, and in the Life of Mr
Groen, recently published by his nephew, Lord Hurst of Hatton.
George Patrick Frederick-Culson Delamaine, the fruit of this
marriage, was born in 1823, at a moment when his father, the first
Lord Benthorpe, was at the zenith of his career as a land-owner. All
the gifts of fortune seemed to have been showered upon the boy; his
youth was leading to a manhood of the most brilliant promise, when,
at the age of twenty-two, romance or folly led him into an alliance
with a woman hopelessly beneath him in station.
She was the daughter of some local lawyer or other, and so betrayed,
in every accent and gesture, the restrictions of her upbringing, as
to be incapable of that moulding influence which her father-in-law’s
family had hoped to exercise. Her rare visits to Placton grew
to be an increasing embarrassment for the spacious dignity of
the household, and it was perhaps but a merciful intervention of
Providence when she was left a widow in June 1852, as the result of
her husband walking inadvertently into the well of a lift: a new
invention, to which the upper classes were as yet unaccustomed.
He left two children: Mary, born in February 1847, and Albert
Delamaine (the present Lord Benthorpe) born in July 1849.
To these children the old man showed a peculiar and a noble devotion.
He paid the mother a yearly allowance of no less than £400, on the
strict condition that she should live out of England, and enter into
no communication with the family. He was even at the charge of
employing private agents to see that this condition was observed.
In the choice of their occupations, their servants, their expenses,
their very lap-dogs, nay, their governesses and tutors, he directed
himself to the single object of making the boy and girl that which
their high station would later require them to be; dying in 1858,
he left his task as a sacred legacy to his wife, the children’s
grandmother, who kept in view, with admirable firmness, that ideal of
ancient lineage which her husband had so constantly cherished.
Not that any hint of their coming responsibility was permitted to
enter the children’s fresh young minds. Mary, until her seventeenth
birthday, dressed upon less than a hundred a year; rode out attended
by a groom in the plainest livery; and was permitted upon no
occasion, save that of indisposition, to absent herself from morning
prayers. Albert was thrust willy-nilly into the rough and tumble of
public school life, and discovered, in the rude manliness of Eton,
just what was needed to correct a somewhat oversensitive temperament.
In a word, the first Lord Benthorpe had proved characteristically
successful in this his last and (as it proved) posthumous task.
His wife lived to purchase her grandchild his commission in a cavalry
regiment, and to see the second Lord Benthorpe attain his majority
amid those plaudits which the tenants of Placton loyally reserved for
a family to which they owe their material and moral prosperity.
As a soldier, young Lord Benthorpe, though quiet to a fault, proved
deservedly popular. His entertainments, which were numerous, were
marked by an absolute refinement, and, if he exceeded in expense,
it was through no leaning towards ostentation, but rather from the
natural desire of a rich and reserved young man to gather, by the
sole means in his power, a number of acquaintance.
He was sincerely glad when his regiment was ordered abroad; he saw
active service in the Seychelles, he received in person the surrender
of seventeen half-breeds of Princess Martha’s Own during the great
mutiny of 1872, and was mentioned in despatches. His wound in the
fleshy part of the leg, received during the dreadful affair at
Pútti-Ghâl, is a matter so generally known that I need hardly allude
to it, save to remind my readers that the incident is the subject of
a fine steel engraving of Hogge’s now sold in its original state by
Messrs Washington for the price of 21s., though soiled copies are
obtainable at a considerable reduction.
Towards the end of the year 1875, when he was but twenty-six years
old, he thought it his duty to sever his connection with the army and
to enter politics. To this piece of self-sacrifice must be ascribed,
I fear, all the future misfortunes of his life.
He married.
Warned, I do not say by his father’s example, but doubtless by some
instinct, he took to wife the Lady Arabella Hunt, of an age not far
distant from his own, of descent a trifle superior, of a fortune
which permitted him—I fear imprudently—to rebuild the stables.
Such of my readers as may find their lot cast upon the clayey,
the calcareous, or the oolitic soils of our beloved country, will
appreciate what I mean, when I allude to the agricultural depression
which afflicted the years immediately subsequent to his marriage.
Lord Benthorpe, like so many others of his ancient station, refused
to believe that the star of England had set. He was too generous to
reduce his splendid hospitality; too patriotic to admit that the
country and he could go otherwise than forward; too proud of his
superb lineage to regret the investments in arable land, pasture,
undergrowth, common, waste and marsh, which his forefathers had made.
He did indeed attempt to develop a small town in his neighbourhood
which boasted a medicinal well. He bought certain freeholds within
the borough, and the medical profession were enthusiastic in their
praise of the waters. The less healthy of the governing classes began
to drink them in increasing numbers; but that fatality which seemed
to dog his every effort caused an epidemic of acute colic to coincide
with the second year of his effort, and he lost upon this chivalrous
venture the considerable sum of two hundred thousand pounds.
He borrowed.
At first, for his daily needs, from local banks; later, to repay
their claims and to set himself afloat again, from the more imposing
corporations of the metropolis; from these he received such aid as
he imagined would carry him forward to a better day. But that day
tarried.
He maintained his rents with difficulty. He attempted to increase
them. He lost the affection of his tenants, a disaster for which
the remaining respect of his equals scarcely compensated him. He
was finally compelled to abandon, most reluctantly, the society of
public entertainers, political, literary and racing men, to which all
his early manhood had rendered him familiar. He grew to inviting to
Placton none but those to whom no other hospitality offered. When
these failed him, he fell back upon his relatives; when these, upon
the local clergy, the smaller squires—the very doctors of his country
town. It was of no avail!
The government of Lord Beaconsfield, ever solicitous for the honour
of an ancient name, did all that could be done. He was offered posts
well suited to his talents; he was eagerly welcomed back to public
life. Indeed, it was his public work during the first years of his
difficulties—the last of the Conservative cabinet—which has rendered
his name so familiar to all of us. How young he was in those brave
days! How admirably did he support, and with what courage, the
singular place Great Britain vaunted in that better time!
I may be excused some enthusiasm as I recall his speech at Salisbury
upon “Peace with Honour,” his piloting of the Laundry Bill through
the House of Lords, his contribution to the Party funds during the
Midlothian campaign, a contribution which I know from personal
evidence to have been made possible only by the courtesy of the
present Marquis of Bramber, then better known as “Jim.”
Certainly he loved his country. It is to the honour of our
party system that the Liberal Ministry of the eighties did not
misunderstand a patriotism of this calibre. He was sent to Raub, to
the Marranagoes, to Pilgrim’s Island: positions which the routine
of our Permanent Service will not permit to be highly paid, but
which should normally offer ample opportunities for experience. This
experience he acquired—but, alas! unfruitfully. Nothing he touched
succeeded. On his return to England after an absence of three years,
he abandoned his official work that he might be freer to retrieve his
fortunes. His connection with Colonial Government should have aided
him in the financial development of our dependencies. His advice was,
indeed, solicited by the promoters of companies, but it proved almost
invariably unfortunate.
True to the straight line of honour in which he had been brought
up, he refused to be mentioned publicly in connection with the
Raub Central, the Marranagoes Guanos, or the Pilgrim’s Island Oil
Syndicate. They all went down; but, through that mysterious bond
which permits the outer public to scent out, as it were, whatever the
City privately honours, his reputation, already great with experts,
became general when he permitted his name to stand at the head of
the Carria Canal Company. It is no small testimony to the probity of
our public life that he benefited in no way from the rapid success
of that enterprise. He was paid an honest salary—a small salary; he
demanded no more. It pushed his name to the very front rank of our
Builders of Empire. I would it had done more. It failed.
Lady Benthorpe held the helm meanwhile unflinchingly in her large
grasp. She was of that kind which old Sutter finely calls “strong
women of the Lord”; of that kind which devised the motto: “_Homo
sum: nihil humanum a me alienum puto._” To the last she kept an open
political drawing-room, of considerable if decreasing account with
the literary and professional classes, using for that purpose in
winter the town house of her sister, but during the season the large
room of the Progress Galleries, to the left—on the first landing.
Most women, under such a strain, would have abandoned the struggle.
Many would have demanded the adventitious aid of stimulating drugs.
Her pride disdained it.
She sought the relief of which she stood in need, from wines of
the more hygienic sort, especially the lighter sparkling wines so
strongly recommended by the Faculty; and even to such medicine she
forebore to have recourse until the years of decline, when the frail
body could no longer support the indomitable soul within.
Her doctor was fully cognisant of her need. He has assured me that
the last sad months owed their tragedy to nothing more than the
exhaustion of that admirable brain.
To the very end she was occasionally present at her husband’s table,
though her conversation was no longer of the sobriety which once
lent a special distinction to that board; and when Lord Benthorpe
found it necessary in 1886 to step once more upon the platform in
defence of the integrity of the Empire—or, as it was then called, the
Kingdom—she accompanied him several times. It was with difficulty
that she was persuaded to abandon her design to appear at the great
meeting in the Albert Hall.
She died in February 1887, at the early age of forty-one years, three
months and two days.
Her end, though clouded by the most grievous nervous trouble, was
comforted and enlightened by the presence of two beings whom it would
be ignoble to dismiss from this record without a passing mention:
Mr Warner, the amiable scholar, to whom (as his former tutor) Lord
Benthorpe had presented the living of Great Monckton, at the very
gates of the park, and his wife, Mrs Warner, whose wonderful little
book, “Hours of Healing” wafted the spirit of the dying peeress from
earth to heaven.
[Illustration: LORD BENTHORPE PREVENTING THE DISRUPTION OF THE
EMPIRE]
It has been remarked that the difficulty of pronouncing the aspirates
in the title of this spiritual work betrayed a novice in the art of
letters. I am not competent to adjudge upon this criticism; but, if
it be well found, I may at least point out the marvel of a faith
which could redeem any ignorance of mere composition, and infuse so
exalted a quality into the prose of an untried pen.
* * * * *
Lord Benthorpe, thus left a widower, with his little son Charles no
more than four years old, applied himself to his public work with a
redoubled zeal. His weight in Hampshire during the early nineties,
when that great agricultural county was, I regret to say, flirting
with Home Rule, cannot be overestimated; yet it formed but a slight
part of his beneficent influence. His speeches in the House of Lords
recalled the old days when he had been entrusted by the government
with the Bill to which allusion has been made; and it was confidently
predicted that, on the restoration of his Party to power, he would be
given some post in the cabinet.
These hopes were not fulfilled. His disappointment appeared the
more bitter, when he considered how widely the journalists upon
whom he had wasted his attentions, had recently spread his public
reputation; it appeared appalling when he contemplated the condition
of his fortunes. For, it must be admitted (though it cuts one to
the heart to expose the humiliation of a man so prominent in our
commonweal) that, towards 1895, Lord Benthorpe found himself deprived
of all resources whatsoever. The interest upon his various mortgages
was met precisely, in good years, by the rent of his land and the
products of the home farm. In bad years by these combined with the
letting of Placton—a source alas! too often insufficient.
Our society does not permit men to fall unaided. If this is true of
the generality of citizens, it is still more true of those whose
names seem to stand for the stability of the country itself. Help
was immediately found. The management of the house and estate was
taken over (together with the mortgages) by the Anglo-Saxon Loan and
Investment Company, with which, by a happy coincidence, the name of
Mr Barnett was prominently associated. The house and grounds were
kept by this financial company in a condition worthy of the name
they bore; and Lord Benthorpe was generously permitted to make them
his permanent home, not only from a sentiment of what was due to
the dignity of his name, but also from a consideration of the added
value which he lent to the premises by his continued residence.
I do not mention this magnanimity on the part of a group of business
men in order to impair their reputation for shrewdness and commercial
capacity. Everything, down to the wages of the servants, passed
through their hands; and they had made it a condition—a condition to
which Lord Benthorpe very readily agreed—that even for such small
hospitalities as he might desire to extend to neighbours he should,
in every case, receive the written permission of the mortgagees.
Lord Benthorpe, at the moment when the great affair of the M’Korio
entered the arena of politics, bore an appearance which those
unaccustomed to our administrative classes might have mistaken for
weakness.
His figure, very tall and spare, was crowned by a head in which the
length of the face was perhaps the most prominent characteristic.
His thin aquiline nose, his pale grey eyes, set close together and
drooping somewhat at the corners, would not of themselves have led to
so false a judgment, nor would the shape and position of his ears,
to which the narrowness of the head and the sparseness of the hair
lent perhaps an undue prominence; it was rather his mouth, which,
from an unfortunate habit, he maintained permanently half open, thus
displaying somewhat long and projecting teeth, which met at a slight
angle, as do those of the smaller rodents. A slight growth upon the
upper lip emphasised the unfortunate character of this feature,
whose misleading effect was further heightened by a nervous trick
of drumming or tapping continually with the fingers, commonly upon
his knee, but sometimes upon the table, or whatever else might offer
itself to his hand.
As for his attitude, he would most commonly be seen sitting with one
leg crossed over the other, and in an inclination of body that gave
no hint of the intellectual energy which had inspired so many years.
I say that a foreigner imperfectly acquainted with our polity, and
even the less experienced among our own fellow citizens, would not
have guessed what power and initiative the whole picture concealed;
but those of us who remember the annexation of Raub, the firm hand
which suppressed the mutiny in the Seychelles, the disappointment
of Germany in the Marranagoes, the settlement of Pilgrim’s Island,
and especially the dreadful affair of Pútti-Ghâl, are not slow to
recognise in Lord Benthorpe, elements of that which has brought our
country to its present position among the nations.
* * * * *
Such was the man whom perhaps the best judge of character in our
time—I mean Mr Barnett—had designed with slow deliberation to
associate in his great enterprise. Lord Benthorpe and Mr Burden were
the two pillars upon which Mr Barnett intended the fabric of the
M’Korio Delta Development to repose.
Need it be added that he approached Cosmo with a frankness native
to all leaders of men, that he pointed out the difficulties which
would surround any attempt to persuade the old merchant, his father,
of what the M’Korio was and should be, and that he asked—almost
with humility—for the help of a young man whom he had himself so
conspicuously befriended?
Need it be added that the request was no sooner made than granted?
To the letter, with infinite tact, Cosmo (as I shall show in a
moment) carried out those instructions which he knew so well to be
to the advantage, not only of Mr Barnett, his benefactor, but of
himself, his family, and indeed the whole Empire. He was chosen
to bring into just those relations which the situation demanded,
his father, and that accomplished politician whose impoverishment,
dignity, and judgment it has been my tragic, but not unpleasing task,
to recall in the chapter which I now close.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Dublin Almanack and Register, vol. xiv. p. 26; also Rolls, Anno
xx^{ti} 4 etc., Dubl. Reg. ff.
[8] The “Pettifogging Attorney” of Grattan’s tirade. As a fact he was
a fairly prosperous young man with offices at a rental of £40 a year,
and already the mortgagee of two public-houses.
CHAPTER VI
Cosmo was too well acquainted with his father’s temper, and, withal,
too devoted a son to shock Mr Burden by any sudden introduction of
matters upon which the merchant must be presumed to judge far better
than he.
It was a beautiful thing—and a striking thing in these days of
irreverence and haste—to watch the delicate and modulated steps
whereby my old friend was brought, almost without his knowing it, to
the brink of the M’Korio. It was a process of that mingled affection
and reserve by which we daily see the young leading the aged towards
larger things, but one which no mere written description can fully
convey.
The young man would leave a book of Major Pondo’s in the hall by
accident; Mr Burden would pick it up under the impression that it
was a work of fiction: he would grow sufficiently interested in it
to take it into town with him; he would remark the half-tone blocks
representing the dryer parts of the delta: he would turn it sideways
to glance at the map of the river mouths; he would glance with
pleasure at the footnotes which referred him to Scripture—and when
he brought home the book Cosmo would forget its origin, but would
remember at last that it had been lent him by the son of Sir Samuel
Gare.
Had Cosmo any notes to write to Mr Barnett or to Mr Harbury, he was
careful to write them in his father’s house, to address them to their
offices, and to fling them at random upon the hall table whence they
should be picked up and posted; for his father hated disorder, and,
scolding, would catch them up himself.
He would even at times reconcile it with his conscience to address
envelopes to fictitious persons in the M’Korio settlement, or in the
delta where none resided.
He did not omit to leave the newspaper on the breakfast table,
so folded carelessly as to present, among other things, whatever
journalists might have printed that morning upon M’Korian matters: to
the astonishment and delight of his father he took to rising at an
hour earlier than the rest of the household, that he might have the
advantage of reading the news in full before his father should come
downstairs; but on those third or fourth days, when the M’Korio was
given a leading article, he would keep the newspaper throughout the
meal, until his father was in a hunger for it and would read it the
more keenly.
With something approaching art he spoke, and always spoke in praise,
of whatever small parcels had been invoiced from the office for this
apparently unimportant branch of the firm’s business, but affected
(wisely I think) to ignore their destination; now presuming that they
were for China, now actually causing their misdirection, and again
mispronouncing the name when his father reminded him.
He showed a curious anxiety with regard to a trade gun which Mr
Burden had received as a sample from Birmingham. He was especially
interested in the coats of mail; it was he who suggested to the
Society for the Promotion of Biblical Knowledge that they would do
well to write to a firm which penetrated the interior of the country,
and yet he who asked his father from whom such letters came and what
reply should be given them.
In the commonest topics of conversation, this atmosphere prevailed.
If his father spoke of cricket, Cosmo would remember the curious
aversion shown to that game by the son of Lord Benthorpe, an
aversion that had amused rather than annoyed so excellent a bowler
as Hagbourne, Mr Barnett’s friend.... The match had been played on Mr
Harbury’s ground.
If his father mentioned a club, it either was or was not a club to
which Charles Benthorpe or Major Pondo belonged.
Wine recalled the fact that it could not be drunk in the tropics;
whisky reminded him that it had been declared by such authorities
as Sir George Mackintosh and Lord Bannochry to be the healthiest
beverage for pioneers in the valleys of African rivers.
Nevertheless when, after a few weeks of this treatment, his father
himself spoke directly of the M’Korio, most obviously betraying a
mixture of authority and interest, Cosmo with exquisite consideration
turned the conversation into almost any other channel, and commonly
fell to talking of his undergraduate friends, of Imperial geography,
or of Mr Barnett’s great intimacy with, and salutary influence upon,
the resident members of the University.
One way with another the M’Korio became an atmosphere in that
household, long before the winter ended. It had all the qualities of
an atmosphere; ever present, circumambient, necessary to life, yet
but half perceived, an invisible influence. When I consider that
this great result had been achieved by a youth hitherto untrained in
the beneficent activities of commerce, I think no greater example
could be given of the power which has made modern England.
That Cosmo was naturally absorbed in Mr Barnett’s venture, and that
his conversation was bound to reflect it, I will not deny, but I
am confident that a conscious purpose animated him, and a method
learnt from his recent association with greater men. For “there
are friendships,” as that erratic but original Cambridge genius
Colthorpe has remarked, “there are friendships which are a liberal
education....”
Thus, through the agency of a son, in a manner which recalled the
training of some proud graminivorous creature for the use of man by
a method gentle yet firm, most filial, most efficient, Mr Burden,
in spite of the routine of a lifetime, was gradually brought to the
vision of a great Imperial opportunity.
It was towards the end of March, after a day spent in an attitude
of curious reserve, that he at last spoke plainly to his son of a
subject which had long occupied his mind.
In deference to his father’s wishes, Cosmo had that day dined at
home.
It was late in the evening at Avonmore: the fire lit in fitful
glimpses the eight red leather chairs ranged along the wall of the
smoking-room, the many photographs of Mr Watt’s work and of that of
the late Sir Edward Burne-Jones, as also the noble engraving of “The
Gambler’s Wife,” which hung amidst them in all its wealth of line and
value.
The hour and the scene were propitious, when Mr Burden committed
himself to a confidence unique in his lifetime; for, with the single
exceptions of Mr Abbott, whose advice he most constantly demanded, of
his head clerk (a man of immense experience), and of his sister, no
human being, he could boast, had inspired his ventures or had ever
been privy to his intentions.
His heir, however, his only son, who would in time direct the whole
fortunes of the house, had a clear right of admission into so
considerable a change as that which he contemplated: for that son’s
evident good use of his academic opportunities, and his excellent
choice of acquaintance, seemed to make him worthy of it in spite of
his innocence of affairs.
Rousing Cosmo, therefore, from the reading of an article upon
the _Decline of Portugal_, Mr Burden very weightily declared a
considerable anxiety to be present in his mind.
Twice that day there had been some trouble in the office about
the trade with the North; Cosmo was therefore to be excused if he
immediately sympathised with his father upon the rise of freights
to Reikjavick, and the inexplicable dropping off of the demand for
English stoves in Iceland. Mr Burden assured his son with remarkable
solemnity that he was mistaken. He paused a moment and said:
“You probably know, Cosmo, in fact you certainly know by this time,
that a portion of our firm’s business is done with the M’Korio Delta.”
Cosmo was far too loyal to deny his acquaintance with that fact,
but his features showed how little it had occupied his thoughts. Mr
Burden paused again and frowned. He went on:
“Now, this trade has never been of value to us ... but I have often
thought ... I may have been wrong ... I have often thought that it
might have been developed if I had looked more closely into the
matter.”
After a full and yet more fruitful pause, the third, but not the
last, in the course of this critical discourse, Mr Burden proceeded
with astonishing breadth and grasp to develop that theory of commerce
which distinguishes us from our less fortunate rivals. Compelled as
I am to condense his diction, I am yet careful to repeat his actual
phraseology, in a matter of which he was a master and of which I
cannot even call myself a novice.
He set forth first that times were not what they had been; that
competition was keen; that new markets had to be looked for; our
prosperity was indeed increasing, but the ratio of that increase
was declining. For a full ten minutes he distinguished in the most
lucid manner between actual and comparative growth; finally, he
propounded with some hesitation, yet warmly and grandly, as a scheme
or suggestion of his own, that the new markets might be expected to
arise in new countries.
Cosmo, to whose vigorous if quiet mind original theories immediately
appealed, was moved to a whole world of thought and allusion by his
father’s sudden insight. He recalled examples of success achieved
upon such lines; Australia suggested many, Johannesburg many more,
nor did he neglect the Western States of America; but he asked what
the M’Korio Delta, known so long, tropical, forgotten, could have in
common with these?
It was then that Mr Burden fully delivered himself of the idea which
had so long been maturing in his brain; he hoped—he could not tell
why—it was but a hope—yet he hoped that the M’Korio Delta might prove
one of those undeveloped tracts of an Empire whose future contained
almost infinite possibilities.
“This idea of mine,” he added, “has been singularly confirmed by
one or two things I have read, and certain chance allusions of
travellers in the last few years. I doubt whether our explorers or
our journalists have had quite the same opportunities of judging the
Delta as myself; and I am not accustomed to form my judgment upon
that of other men. Nevertheless, I am struck by the singular way in
which all modern research upon the matter seems to converge towards
my own original conclusions.”
When Mr Burden had said these things, Cosmo, with a wisdom beyond
his years, pointed out the extreme risks attending all colonial
experiments. The risk was not perhaps a risk to the nation as a
whole; but it was invariably present for the individual speculator.
His father nodded rhythmically and wisely as his son betrayed in
every phrase an increasing caution, but he cut him short with a firm
gesture.
“No one knows that better than I, Cosmo,” he said. “I would not enter
into any scheme that did not promise to obtain a very large support
from the public, and, I hope, some kind of official recognition....
When you are as old as I am,” he went on, as Cosmo would have
interrupted him, “you will know that official recognition, even if
it is unofficial,” here he hesitated for a moment, “even if it is
_informal_, is what makes the public come in.”
And with this expression of opinion, Mr Burden permitted to linger
upon his lips, a faint smile which showed the importance he justly
attached to his knowledge of the world.
He might have gone further, but Cosmo, for all his freshness, knew
what was passing in his father’s mind. There ran in his voice a
grace and humility strangely contrasting with his heavy features and
attitude.
“My dear father,” he said. “If I could do anything ... but no one
takes me seriously in business yet.” His eyes smiled as he said it.
His father answered proudly. “They will, Cosmo, they will,” and never
was his confidence in the future better placed.
“I only know men just as friends ... I know what you mean ...
the University does that ... I was thinking who of all that lot
understands the place best.... You know, for _my_ part,” changing
his tone to a digression, “I believe in it, but I mean politically;
commercially it wants all sorts of special knowledge ...” then his
face filled with thought and he stared at the fire.
Mr Burden smiled tolerantly: he had a reminiscent vision of his boy’s
rapid successes: of the academic triumph in Modern Languages, and,
still better, the firm friendships acquired with men proud to be his
equals ... perhaps through these an introduction to families that
would accept or even search an alliance: such early affections as....
But his reverie was cut short by an inspiration of Cosmo’s.
“Why not ask Lord Benthorpe?” he said.
“Lord Benthorpe!” cried Mr Burden. He was surprised and a little
shocked, and he let it be perceived.
Lord Benthorpe was a public man; it was only by his own desire
that he had not taken a high place in his party. As it was, in
administration he had come near to being, he might yet be, a great
Imperial Figure. Mr Burden could well remember how this somewhat
younger man had been acclaimed as a worthy successor to his
celebrated grandfather. His reputation, especially in youth, had been
surrounded by that purely political atmosphere which the patriotism
of purely commercial men turns into a halo. All these things Mr
Burden insisted upon openly in reply to his son. Perhaps, as old
men will, he somewhat exaggerated the importance of a name which
recent years had somewhat lessened; but his life had run upon lines
sufficiently remote from politics to warrant his humility, and, if
he doubted the possibility of obtaining Lord Benthorpe’s advice upon
so small a matter as the M’Korio, it was because he estimated at its
full value the weight of that advice, should he but have the good
fortune to receive it.
Cosmo was earnest. He protested that he could not see his father’s
objection. He did not know Lord Benthorpe well, but he knew Lord
Benthorpe’s son extremely well. He was absolutely certain, he said,
that Mr Burden misunderstood the simplicity of such men. Then, apart
from that, Lapthorne and Curley had asked advice on neutral matters,
and had received it—he assured his father that Lord Benthorpe’s world
had for the City as great a regard as ever the City for them; they
knew upon what the Empire reposed, and they saw—and for the matter
of that he, Cosmo, saw—that, but for some communication between the
Benthorpes and the Burdens, the Empire could hardly survive.
He would have said more in the same strain, had not Mr Burden,
whose pride was dimly suffering from so much protest, risen, rather
abruptly, and announced a decision to take his own time in the
matter. His son had the tact to say good-night.
And Mr Burden also went to his room—but for two hours he wrote and
rewrote a letter in the third person, in which Mr Burden presented
his compliments to Lord Benthorpe, and expressed in _oratio obliqua_
his apologies, his request for advice, and his trust that it might be
obtained. This letter that same night, very late, Mr Burden carefully
posted with his own hand in the pillar-box nearest to Avonmore—the
pillar-box which stands at the corner where Mafeking Avenue falls
into Alexandrovna Road.
* * * * *
That night, before he slept, an indecision oppressed Mr Burden.
He felt he had taken a plunge. He was not sure whether it was for
well or for ill; but he knew for certain that he was on the way to
unfamiliar places, nor is such expectation congenial to men grown old.
All the next day this double mood haunted him. It was mixed with
vague suspicions of interference and quarrel; it left him ill at
ease, until, upon the morning of the morrow, there reached him a
charming note, straightforward, easy and most terse; the notepaper
was plain and thick, the hand fluent, the phraseology easy. It was
a letter worthy of the care with which Mr Burden preserved it. It
spoke of his son’s great promise, praised his University record and
the multitude of his friends; it begged that Cosmo’s acquaintance
with Charles might take the place of an introduction; it assured Mr
Burden, with open emphasis, that no one in England had a greater
right to consult every judgment upon a matter where his firm’s
enterprise in trade had, almost alone, laid the foundation of our
power. Nothing of moment remained, save the signature, the simple
word “Benthorpe,” written undoubtedly with a thick quill;—and the
old-world courtesy of a postscript, begging that Mr Burden would let
the writer know upon what day and by what train he would reach Great
Monckton, “the next,” ran the last words of the letter, “the next
after the quiet little wayside station of Keynes.”
* * * * *
It is always a matter of balance for the judicious mind, when it
meditates an approach upon Placton, whether it should travel by
the Great Western to Halsden Junction or the South-Western line to
Great Monckton. Each is at an equal distance of three miles from the
mansion, but a host of considerations, which might prove tedious to
the anxious reader of his fortunes, ultimately decided Mr Burden
to attempt the latter. It was from Waterloo, not from Paddington,
that he engaged upon that fateful journey which came so near to
transforming the fortunes of our race.
The mixture in him of audacity and routine—a mixture common to the
mercantile classes of our countrymen—awakened the struggle which
lasted during the whole journey to the quiet little wayside station
of Keynes.
He was alone. In the days when the distinction was of importance he
had acquired a habit of travelling first class; this habit he had
preserved. He owed to it the solitude which permitted such a conflict
to arise in his mind.
His fortune had been inherited from so solid an ancestry, had been
preserved by so persistent an effort of probity and diligence, that
any speculation whatsoever had for him, at his age, a savour of
sacrilege.
On the other hand, the expansion of the British Raj, his faith in its
future, the example of so many nations created out of nothing by the
confidence of his contemporaries, above all, the remarkable wealth
acquired by those who had risked all upon the destiny of the Empire,
led him on to boldness.
Hard-headed business men are not easily to be persuaded when opposing
arguments present themselves to the mind. Mr Burden was not resolved
when he reached at last the quiet little wayside station of Keynes.
For a few moments he was at once bewildered and annoyed at hearing
that he was required to change, but, when he had paid the customary
fees and found himself once more alone in a well-lit carriage, this
annoyance disappeared before a renewal of the problem which vexed
him. His mind, however, was vigorous, he bent upon that problem the
fullest of his energies, and, as the train pulled out of the quiet
little wayside station of Keynes, he had very nearly arrived at
the firm conclusion, that so much was to be said upon either side,
as to make the judgment of some further adviser necessary before a
determination could be taken.
His mind was hardly fixed upon this excellent solution when the train
stopped; he heard called the name of Great Monckton, and the presence
of a servant who led him to a carriage, the honest English courtesy
of the Porter, Stationmaster, Guard, Newsagent, Ticket Collector, and
General Boy, the sharp country air and the name of Placton several
times repeated, gave him that sentiment of repose which accompanies
the neighbourhood of the great. And the carriage rolled, and scented
woods passed incessant through the evening, and more and more did Mr
Burden feel himself to be approaching security and the basis upon
which our England is founded.
There was a lodge, a fine gate cast in imitation of wrought-iron
and gilded in the Aylesbury manner, an aged woman who courtesied
with astonishing charm, a drive of close upon a mile, ancient and
well-groomed trees, a square church tower showing dimly against the
sky, and, in a dale which the drive skirted, a lake with boat house,
island and terrace, as in the well-known view.
Mr Burden, noting all these things with pure intent, felt something
old in his blood: he revered in his mind Lord Benthorpe’s mighty
image, and laid his doubts at the feet of so much achievement and
experience. He thirsted (if I may use the phrase) for the presence of
the British statesman.
It was not long delayed. They led him into that majestic house,
dark, panelled, venerable: walls so old that no man now living there
had seen them rise, oak felled before Her late Majesty assumed the
sceptre, furniture compared with whose taste that of Prince Albert
was modern, deep carpets from Brussels and Aubusson, pictures by
the Oxford Turner, by Etty, by Frith, by men whose very names are
forgotten—they led him, I say, past these monumental splendours, till
he reached a vast apartment wherein by the light of two candles of
pure yellow wax Lord Benthorpe sat alone—an illuminate spiritual
figure startling against a background of vague darkness and suggested
tapestries.
I have said enough of this statesman’s build, manner and history to
convince my readers that the moment was supreme in Mr Burden’s life.
As he entered and was announced, he felt so keenly the emotions of
awe and gratitude that he hesitated for a moment to advance.
What Lord Benthorpe had done and was, all England knows: the
conqueror of Raub and the hero of Pútti-Ghâl.
Mr Burden was a merchant worth at most but £257,000, and that locked
up entirely in his business; but no difference of fortune affected
the demeanour of the more illustrious man.
With the commercial classes of three European and fourteen Colonial
capitals Lord Benthorpe had been famous for that rare power of
putting his visitors at their ease: he did not fail with Mr Burden.
For though that unaffected man broke into a cold sweat under his
first addresses, a short three-quarters of an hour in the company of
the soldier-politician restored his power of speech and made him feel
the presence of a friend.
* * * * *
When it was evident that Mr Burden had entered this happier phase,
Lord Benthorpe, settling into an air of business, asked, as he had
asked so many in his active and useful life, what he could _do_ for
his guest.
It was a formula he had been taught from the nursery: he had used
it upon inferiors of every grade, and always with success—unless
I except an unfortunate interview with a cabman which in no way
regards these pages: for whereas the cabman on that long past day had
poured out with many oaths a list of incongruous things which Lord
Benthorpe might do for him, and closed it with a refusal of all save
the payment of the mere fare he had called to collect, every other
visitor, from the Secretary of the Society for the Prevention of
Diseases to the Sendar of Raub had been charmed to admiration by the
manner in which the phrase was delivered.
Mr Burden felt the spell, and it was with evident gratitude in
his voice that he declared himself arrived to discuss the matter
mentioned in his letter.
Lord Benthorpe smiled without effort, and tapping the table before
him with his fingers as was his wont, murmured twice:
“By all means.... By all means.”
Then there was silence in that great dark room for the space of
nearly four minutes.
A clock ticked solemnly in a corner, out of sight, and every now and
then Lord Benthorpe tapped again with his fingers upon the table; but
for these there was no sound to mask Mr Burden’s breathing. At last
Lord Benthorpe pushed back his chair, crossed his legs, supported his
left elbow on his knee, his head upon his left hand, and said again
in that low meditative tone, which was so full of responsibility and
reminiscence:
“By all means....”
Without, in some remote ante-chamber of the great building, a servant
played upon a gong of restrained and ample tones; the house was
filled with the summons, but softened as it was, Mr Burden found
in it a suggestion rather than a command that he should dress for
dinner. With this object he rose.
His host preceded him, lit a candle with his own hands, and showed
the way up the staircase. At its head opened a very wide corridor,
lit from above by skylights, and hung with pictures which were part
of the glory of the house.
They passed one canvas after another, Lord Benthorpe still holding
and shading the candle, Mr Burden listening with intelligent respect
to all he heard. This was Naples, that Lucerne; a third Nice, a
fourth Mentone—all the strange, beautiful places Lord Benthorpe had
admired in the course of his extensive travels: pictures ordered by
him from local masters whose name still stood clearly inscribed in
the bottom left-hand corner of their creations.
There were portraits too. A very fine, but somewhat sinister figure,
turbaned and sombre, was his great-aunt Kathleen, his grandfather’s
only sister. His grandmother, represented as the Tragic Muse, filled
amply the next frame; his grandfather the next.
Standing in his robes against a fringed and tasselled velvet curtain
of a rich purple hue with a broken pillar at his side, while a
sunbeam bursting through a distant cloud, threw into fine relief the
orator’s gesture, the Great Irishman was represented speaking in the
House of Lords in favour of the reform of the Poor Law. His left hand
touched with the index finger a map of Great Britain; his right was
slightly raised to heaven in dignified appeal. A wolf-hound nestling
at his feet indicated the domestic nature of his character, for the
taste of that time permitted the allegory in spite of the grave
improbability of such a creature’s presence in such a place and upon
such an occasion.
Towards the end of the corridor, before a painting more modern
in treatment and hanging quite alone, they halted a moment in
silence. It represented a woman yet young: hair of a colour similar
to her own was caught up behind her head in those ordered masses
once known as the Chignon; her skirt, which was most ample, was of
a brilliant pink; she was seated writing at a superb escritoire,
or writing-table, holding a graceful quill in a hand of which the
little finger emerged coquettishly above its fellows. The frame was
surmounted by the ornament of a dainty coronet; upon the features an
amiable smile was recorded.
“My wife,” said Lord Benthorpe simply. Then, after a long pause, “by
Marsten ...”; finally in a deeper and more subdued voice ... “from a
photograph.”
The two men parted, and Mr Burden dressed in profound thought,
wondering to have seen so much greatness united with such native ease.
Lord Benthorpe had been granted by his financial assistants the
widest latitude for this evening’s entertainment. Indeed, a cheque,
upon which no questions were asked, was sent him the moment his
request reached them. He preferred, however, with inbred tact, to
call but one other guest to his table, lest the merchant should be
confused by too considerable a gathering. This other guest, chosen
with admirable judgment, was Mrs Warner, who lived as an honoured
neighbour in the seclusion of her widowed cottage near by. Lord
Benthorpe introduced the clergyman’s widow as is the custom among
men of breeding, in a voice so low and blurred as to leave Mr Burden
under the erroneous impression that the lady, if not a peeress,
enjoyed at least a courtesy title; nor can I regret the trivial
error, when I reflect how admirably it served at once to prove the
equality that reigns over all our social relations, and to afford,
though by an illusion, the most vivid interest and pleasure to my
dear old friend.
As for the meal that followed, not the mere meats, though these also
had been ordered by the master of the house and cooked to singular
perfection—not these, but the subdued and cultured converse which
illumined it, are most worthy of memory.
To a soup, clear, but if anything insufficiently salted, and during
the absorption of which very little was said, succeeded a boiled
turbot, whose sauce, a mixture of butter and of flour, was handed
noiselessly from out the surrounding darkness by a manservant other
than he who poured at intervals of due length, and at the personal
choice of each guest, hock or claret.
Both these administrants, and yet a third, who would occasionally
appear and pass out again through the immense portals of the room,
secretly astounded Mr Burden by the perfection of their training,
and the singular dignity of their demeanour; nor could he doubt
that their features, though difficult to discern beyond the circle
of light which fell upon the table, corresponded with their other
characteristics.
It was during the consumption of the fish (turbot as I have said—and
boiled), that Lord Benthorpe, with practised good-will, opened
the verbal tournament by an allusion to Mrs Warner’s little work,
“Hours of Healing,” with which he was sure Mr Burden had long been
acquainted. Mr Burden, in the act of disguising his ignorance under
a strong assertion of his familiarity with the gem, could not but
admire within himself the literary skill of one whose rank he
imagined so exalted. It confirmed him in his respect for a class
which gallantly neglects its gilded leisure, not only for the service
of the State, but also for that of humanity at large.
To this impression Lord Benthorpe added by asking, with apparent
interest, whether or not the work of the parish had recently afforded
matter for serious comment. Mrs Warner replied that nothing of
moment could she recall since the affair in which her host, in his
capacity of Justice, had so amply seconded her efforts to correct the
disorders of a wandering circus recently visiting the village.
It cannot be denied that Lord Benthorpe was pleased with the
recollection; a merited content overspread his features as Mrs Warner
went on to describe the vigour with which the lord of the manor had
lent his influence to discountenance, the magistrate his power to
punish, a case of gross cruelty to animals which had taken place in
this show.
It seems that a tiger having, in some irrational fit, attached itself
to the trunk of the sole elephant the manager could boast, was
lashed off again by the application of a horsewhip, the weals caused
by which were the more difficult to prove in court, both from the
inconvenience of bringing the victim before the bench, and from the
peculiar parallel stripes already provided by nature upon the poor
creature’s hide.
When this relation was accomplished, Mrs Warner had the tact to add
that his lordship’s experience in the East (an experience which she
coupled with the name of Pútti-Ghâl) had luckily given him an ample
knowledge of tigers. He it was, she informed Mr Burden, who had
pointed out that in all such cases the truer Christianity of our
Indian fellow-subjects, had long learnt to drag off the infuriated
feline by a steady pull upon its tail.
Lord Benthorpe asserted in reply that so long as he had the
confidence of His Majesty, and was honoured by him with a Commission
of the Peace, there was nothing he would more rigorously pursue than
the inhumanity of the lower classes towards dumb animals; and, having
so expressed himself, he once more relaxed the momentary firmness
of his lips, and left to them their more usual expression of open
amiability.
At this moment appeared, with some ceremony, a leg of mutton loading
a dish of pure silver, whereon the presence of little runnels leading
to one united depression for the retention of the gravy, marked the
practical combined with the luxurious.
The conversation having turned upon tigers, perhaps the most
interesting of the animal creation, and Lord Benthorpe’s experience
in the East having been, as was public knowledge, manifold, it is
little wonder if he occupied the remainder of the meal in a somewhat
lengthy description of his adventures in the pursuit of this game;
for, though no class of the community knows better when to be
silent, neither is any better fitted for sustaining a monologue than
that which the host of the evening had adorned.
Making light, with becoming modesty, of his own courage in the
innumerable dangers which he had encountered, he did not even allude
to the little affair at Pútti-Ghâl, save to illustrate a point upon
the habits of the tigers which infest that neighbourhood. Nor was
anything in his many miraculous escapes incredible to an audience as
well informed as were the merchant and the clergyman’s widow upon the
ferocity of wild beasts, and the indomitable spirit of man.
Lest I should seem to lay too much insistence upon what was, after
all, but an episode in Mr Burden’s career, I will dwell no longer
upon the close of the meal.
Of the pudding I have no record: there is little occasion to mention
the cheese.
[Illustration: MRS WARNER’S RETREATING FIGURE]
I must not, however, omit to praise the gesture with which Lord
Benthorpe opened the door, nor that with which Mrs Warner rewarded
him as she swept through it to the drawing-room beyond. As she
left the room Mr Burden, gazing at what he afterwards called her
retreating figure, could not help marvelling at the simple grace, the
total absence of affectation, and, at the same time, the wonderful
dignity of her carriage. The impression was heightened, not only by
the error into which he had originally fallen as to her social rank,
but by the striking character of her dress, which was of a shining
electric green, comparable to that which illumines the wing cases of
certain tropical beetles.
In her absence the conversation flagged; they slowly sipped their
wine, and Mr Burden, who had smoked after dinner every day for nearly
fifty years, waited most anxiously for the appearance of tobacco.
If none was offered him, it was because Lord Benthorpe, naturally
clinging to what remained of his ancient authority, forbade in the
house which yet sheltered him the use of a narcotic he abhorred.
Mr Burden, remembering that such eccentricities were but the
tradition of an older society which he profoundly respected, suffered
in silence; but his suffering impressed with a monotonous dullness
the few moments during which Lord Benthorpe retained him to drink
wine. Indeed, until they rejoined Mrs Warner, nothing passed between
the two men save a remark from Lord Benthorpe, that the stripes upon
the tiger, to which allusion had been made during dinner, were a
curious instance of mimetic selection, permitting the man-eater to
be almost indistinguishable from the tall grasses wherein he lurked.
To this Mr Burden replied that Providence had endowed all animals,
even the weakest, with marvellous opportunities for self-protection.
The conversation after they entered the drawing-room, though full
of interest and charm, must no longer detain the reader, who will
have formed a sufficient judgment of its character from the careful
analysis which he has just perused.
It was at the early hour of ten that Mrs Warner left them, and Mr
Burden, recognising that an enforced departure before morning prayers
would leave but little time for discussion on the following day,
boldly approached the subject which had brought him to Placton.
He put forward very earnestly his doubts and his hopes upon the
future of his African trade; he told Lord Benthorpe frankly, how
vastly superior were the opportunities of the politician to those of
the merchant for determining the probable future of such a district
as the M’Korio, and he asked, in the plainest terms, for advice.
[Illustration: LORD BENTHORPE RECOGNIZING THE IMPORTANCE OF
BUSINESS-MEN TO THE EMPIRE]
Lord Benthorpe’s reply so greatly surprised him, that he did not at
first recognise its immense importance. It was roughly to the effect,
that Lord Benthorpe himself had long been seeking a similar source
of information, and had determined, strangely enough, to approach Mr
Burden.
“I am very glad you wrote to me,” he said, “because I believe myself
to be by nature diffident where initiative is required ... but as you
have written to me, believe me, Mr Burden, it is not I who have to
determine you, but you that _have_ determined me.... I have seen the
Empire, Mr Burden, in its broader and its remoter aspect. Well,” here
some memory of public speaking seemed to seize Lord Benthorpe, “well,
after having so seen it, near and far, in the snows of Canada, or the
burning deserts of Rajpootan, I can say that it has never reposed,
that I have never seen it reposing, upon any other basis (upon any
other permanent basis) than the energy, the shrewdness, the courage,
and the probity, of our English business men.”
As he spoke thus, Mr Burden felt new influences flooding into his
soul, and Lord Benthorpe continued:—
“If you will allow me to say so, your view of the M’Korio as a
practical investment would only complete and inform my knowledge of
its political future; but, between my knowledge and your estimate,
the latter is immensely the more important of the two.”
Then it was that Mr Burden became greater than himself. The
confidence reposed in him, the critical power which, however hidden
from others, he well knew himself to possess; the just deference paid
to his judgment and interest; above all, the high recognition of a
successful career, affected him to the degree of inspiration. He
spoke of the M’Korio with increasing confidence; he was carried on
from sentence to sentence, assuming a certitude which, if he did not
possess it as a positive knowledge, he could claim by the more divine
right of prophecy. Nay, he exceeded his own moments of strongest
conviction;—so true is it that the human mind, when it feels itself
the instrument of destiny, outleaps the narrow boundaries of mere
sensual experience.
Exquisite as was his breeding, Lord Benthorpe betrayed a very
genuine enthusiasm; and when Mr Burden had reached the climax of his
harangue, the statesman was tapping his fingers with such rapidity
as to suggest the antique rattle or the buzzer of modern times. He
looked up as Mr Burden ended and said:
“Do you know, do you know, Mr Barnett?”
Mr Burden replied that his son was very intimate with Mr Barnett and
his friends, but that he himself had never met him.
Then Lord Benthorpe described in some detail the vision which Mr
Barnett had conceived. He told him how frequently Mr Barnett had
come to him at Placton and in town, to discuss the possibilities of
the M’Korio; of how, more than once, a syndicate had nearly been
formed, but how they each felt, he and Mr Barnett and a group of
other men, the necessity of more knowledge. That solid knowledge
they had now acquired. Greatly as he admired Mr Barnett’s organising
power, and much as he respected, nay loved, his ardent patriotism, he
had mistrusted the visionary until he had heard the practical man.
And now (Lord Benthorpe concluded) there was nothing between them
all and the creation of a mighty province, save such few meetings,
one with the other, as the formalities towards the formation of a
syndicate required. He would beg Mr Barnett or Mr Harbury to write to
Mr Burden, and they would meet, and the thing should be done.
As is necessary in business, the two men went over the ground
again seven or eight times, careful to add nothing to their former
conclusions, and before half-past one the future was fairly clear.
Thus, thus was Mr Burden decided. I that write this love my country,
but I loved him too; and I could weep to think that, in her profit
from his own action, he profited nothing; but only died.
CHAPTER VII
Lord Benthorpe’s descent and training, of which my readers have
received an account, forbade him to exhibit haste in his further
dealings with Mr Burden. His long administrative experience in the
Orient, with which these papers have already rendered the Anglo-Saxon
race familiar, equally forbade him to leave his associates and
friends long ignorant of Mr Burden’s views. He wrote to Mr Barnett
immediately after Mr Burden’s departure from Placton, and was charmed
to discover, in the reply, that the Empire Builder was not so wrapt
in his dreams as to forget that a certain delay in money matters is
the mark of good birth. Indeed Mr Barnett advised that several weeks
should pass before the matter was mentioned again.
Mr Burden, meanwhile, who was chiefly acquainted with the narrow
world of business, read such delay to mean that his colleagues were
yet uncertain. At moments he feared some governmental interference
acting through the powerful connection of Lord Benthorpe; at others
he regretted the enthusiasm he had shown at Placton for the new
scheme. As the days passed, he grew into a feverish and restless
state, very favourable for the due fruition of Mr Barnett’s plans;
and while I am bound to regret the pain which such a process
inevitably caused my old friend, I am none the less constrained to
admit its ultimate wisdom. Without some exercise of discipline, no
organiser can marshal his forces; and it is to Mr Barnett’s honour,
that he never pursued such a method beyond the limits strictly
necessary to the mutual benefit of himself and of the friends he
would acquire.
Three weeks went by, and Mr Burden had worked himself into a state of
nervous irritation pitiful for any to behold save those who, like his
son, were aware of the ultimate advantage to which it would lead.
The merchant no longer mentioned the M’Korio directly, but he
continually brought home new books upon that river; he purchased a
new atlas; he visited upon two occasions the rooms of ill-frequented
museums. His dignity, which prevented him from betraying to Cosmo
his immeasurable anxieties, did not debar him from a ceaseless
conversation which was unnatural and strange in him; he spoke of
Oxford, of Placton, of geography, of the Roman Empire, of savages,
of command of the sea, of governing races, of the _Times_ newspaper,
of wars. And, all the while, Cosmo, with tenacious care, warded off
every allusion that pointed to the forbidden subject; under his
indefatigable calm, his imperturbable goodhumour, his father’s health
threatened to give way.
In early May a coincidence brought to maturity this period of
preparation. Mr Burden saw in the _Times_ (which paper he read at
breakfast) that a German company designed to acquire concessions in
the Delta; in the full agony of this news, he learnt—upon the same
morning—that Cosmo would meet Mr Barnett at luncheon. The father and
the son went into town together. The morning was not without tension.
Towards one o’clock came the moment when the tension could no longer
endure.
There was perfect restraint and good feeling in the little scene.
Cosmo took his hat in the office, and remembered to say that he
should be a trifle late in returning, because he expected Mr Barnett
would appear at the club. Just as he went out, his father, with
unnatural joviality, suggested that they should lunch together—they
so rarely lunched together. Cosmo’s hesitation was not noticeable. Mr
Burden rose; and so, for the second time, he came to, and was not
sought by, Imperial things.
They sat at a little table in a vast room, over-luxurious but grand;
they had already ordered and received the baked mutton and cabbage of
their choice; when Cosmo stood up and greeted warmly a figure, large
and benignant, which had appeared beside him. It was Mr Barnett.
A whirl of confused emotions ran through the mind of Mr Burden.
The public reputation was one thing to him, the splendid coat of
astrachan quite another; and when speech began, the accent, gesture,
and expression meant yet a third. At the introduction, Mr Barnett
bowed from the hips, mechanically and low, his chin upon his chest—a
fourth confusion combined with the others, where had Mr Burden seen
that posture before? He could not remember—then it returned to him:
it was in 1878, in a farce called _The Cologne Express_; never in
real life had he seen such a salutation.
Mr Barnett drew a chair to the table, sat down, and cleared his
throat with the energy characteristic of a master. Several men in
the club started round, and, seeing who it was, smiled; two nodded:
to one of them his nod was returned. Then Mr Barnett, putting both
his weighty hands upon the table, slowly twirled his powerful if
spatulate thumbs. He spoke at last in the tone of decision and
initiative which gives such men authority. His voice was directed
towards a waiter of terrified appearance; he ordered a bottle of
“one hundred and eighty,” and, when the bottle came, a fifth emotion
entered Mr Burden’s mind, to observe that it was champagne.
Mr Barnett smiled.
Leaders of men have led men always by a smile. Here also was a
leader, and it is my duty to describe at great length this individual
charm.
When Mr Barnett smiled, his lips, which he kept closed, did not bend
upwards as they do with commoner and weaker men, but downwards like
an arch, lending an astonishing vigour to his expression: the lower
one, never of a retiring curve, was thrust out superbly, glorying in
its capacity, and the whole mouth, never exiguous, assumed heroic
dimensions; the while for a moment his considerable eyes gleamed with
kindly intelligence. At their corners, three deep furrows spread
rapidly to his temples to disappear in the massive substance of his
face, when its features reassumed their normal and somewhat drooping
calm.
[Illustration: THE SMILE]
Such was Mr Barnett during these rare flashes which his friends
already knew, and which, after he had made the M’Korio, were
destined to captivate no less than two crowned heads, a Prime
Minister, four Admirals, ten General Officers, editors in great
profusion, innumerable professors, and a whole army of divines.
Such was the smile which illuminated the very man from within,
irradiated his genius and his vision, fascinated for a moment—and was
gone.
Not till he had drunk one glass of “one hundred and eighty” did Mr
Barnett fix his eyes upon Mr Burden, and tell him, in a measured
manner, with what pleasure he now met, by chance, a gentleman with
whom their arrangements were so soon to be made. Having once broken
the subtle barrier which separates individuals and races from one
another, Mr Barnett manifested himself a moulder and a maker of
things in justly ordered sentences, whereby he settled, within a few
moments, permitting no interruption, the nature of the syndicate
which would be formed, the few to whom any knowledge of it should be
confined, and its object in the laying of a foundation for what was
to be the development of the M’Korio.
Before Mr Burden well knew what had been done, he was pledged to meet
his colleagues upon that day week at the Plantagenet Club.
His adhesion had been but one disconnected phrase at the close of Mr
Barnett’s order of the day: of so urgent a kind is the influence of
those who once perhaps led armies, but who are now the captains of
greater forces, leading to victories which no soldier of the past
could understand.
This done, Mr Barnett drank another glass of champagne, and then the
best part of a third, in silence, holding the edge of the table with
his bent hands, and gazing down. At last he twice pronounced the
English word “So,” sighed heavily across the table, rose up, as rise
the terrible but majestic pachyderms of the Asiatic continent, smiled
once again, bowed, turned to the distant door, shook its lintel with
the stately emphasis of his tread, and disappeared in an atmosphere
of dignity which nothing marred, save the slight, continuous curve of
his back—an accident due to the obesity of his advancing years.
The influence of the rare over the more common mind, though by it
alone can the purpose of the world be forwarded, is not imposed
without friction and occasional pain.
Mr Burden suffered from an anarchy of thought, perhaps, more than
from a sense of dependence or of peril; yet he suffered, and Cosmo
noted that he suffered. When, therefore, his father hinted that he
should return with him to Norwood and share another unaccustomed
meal, he had the self-control to postpone the pleasure of a dinner he
had promised himself among friends in Covent Garden, and to come to
the comfort and aid of the parent, of whose old age he had become a
kind of guardian and director.
Safe back at Avonmore, when they had dined together alone in more
than a hour of silence, Mr Burden begged his son, upon whose judgment
he had begun to lean with pathetic but insufficient faith, to come
a walk with him towards the heights of the hills. They had not gone
far in the warm, long evening, before Mr Burden, who had been looking
towards the setting sun in silence, spoke out.
“Cosmo,” he said—his voice had in it hesitation, and something
approaching querulousness, “these things have a way of becoming much
bigger than one likes.” Then he added: “I have not had anything yet
to do with the,” he hesitated, “the ... preparation of a chartered
company; but I know that it may cost very little or a great deal
... and you know, Cosmo, the money would be in other hands. I could
furnish my share for that preliminary expense; I could do nothing
more.” Then he waited as though for a reply, though he had asked no
question.
Walking slowly by his side, and in a tone of thought, Cosmo, with
one of those flashes of modest common sense, which had recently so
delighted his father, pointed out, that the sums subscribed to such
syndicates were necessarily large, but that they were by no means
necessarily spent. They were a margin. He gave instances from his
reading, and one or two from the experiences of his friends. He
defended the Press from any silly accusation of corruption; but he
insisted upon the great expense of producing a modern newspaper,
upon its vast circulation, upon the cost of advertisement, which was
sometimes spared by the spontaneous action of public interest, but
had always to be provided for.
His father assented and listened.
Cosmo then showed how, in such a State as ours, it is necessary that
men of great position should ultimately take their share in any
quasi-political adventure, and, though, of course, no direct expense
was incurred in exciting the interest of politicians, yet indirectly
the charges were sometimes heavy, and must, in any case, be foreseen.
Mr Burden, for his part, reminded his son that the smaller the number
of an original syndicate the larger the individual contribution.
He feared that he must be prepared for an immediate sinking of many
thousands of pounds; it might be thirty, it might even be forty. Much
more than that had been sunk by the first founders of the Seychelles
Company.
Cosmo did not miss so obvious an introduction to his theme. His
father could not deny that the men who risked so much upon the
Seychelles were now among the greatest and best of the commonwealth;
and he showed very clearly that, if such syndicates were not formed
by a limited number of men, and those able to and ready to invest
largely, the chances of success would be small. Nor did he omit to
praise Lord Benthorpe with respect, Mr Barnett with awe, and Mr
Harbury with affection.
Across Mr Burden’s mind there passed suddenly the features of his
friend, Mr Abbott. For a moment, perhaps, he thought of taking advice
in that quarter also. He wisely dismissed the thought from his mind,
or at least postponed it until the first step should have been taken.
They had by this time arrived at the top of the hill, and were turned
in reverie northward and westward, to where the light was declining
redly behind evanescent effects of smoky cloud.
The soft air of Surrey blew upon them as they gazed; it was laden
with those peculiar subtleties which only Londoners can understand.
It came from the glorious heaths of Putney; from Kingston where
the woods and the river meet; it bore the spirit of Battersea, of
Clapham, of the Kennington Oval ... there lingered in it suggestions
of the “Elephant and Castle,” of Camberwell, of the majestic Thames
itself: it blew upon and soothed the father and the son, so that
their conclusions ran together, and the old man was ready for the
venture which the younger man defended.
When they had stood still a moment, to receive this influence before
turning back homewards, Mr Burden, even as they turned, looked at
Cosmo and said more softly:
“It will be your money, Cosmo. Remember that. I am speaking to you
about your own money.”
Cosmo answered in the voice of one who is touched: a voice, which was
perhaps the noblest thing of the many noble things he had acquired in
his academic training:
“People talk like that, father ... but it is yours, and will be yours
for very many years; it is you who may treble it or lose it.”
In the emotion of the moment, they walked from Nelson Street to the
corner of Kipling Gardens before Cosmo spoke again, then he said:
“If it were mine to-day, I should do it all the more. You know more
about it, father, but you’ve asked me, and I have told you what I
think.”
Cosmo was right.
He is, indeed, no longer a shareholder in the company, nor was he
even a shareholder when the Government bought at 5⅜xd; but he held
for a full seven months after his father’s death, he sold at 17¼, and
a good two-thirds of the fortune he now enjoys is due to his sound
judgment during that evening walk in Upper Norwood.
* * * * *
I have written “when the Government bought at 5⅜.” The thought has
perhaps no right to appear in this account, but I cannot forbear
to place on record my regret that Mr Burden did not live to see
that great silent scene in the House of Commons when the Government
announced their intention of buying out the Company. It would have
set his foolish doubts at rest, and would perhaps have preserved a
life of such value to the Empire, to the City, and to the residential
portion of South London. I knew him perhaps better than other men
knew him (if Mr O’Rourke will forgive the phrase); and I am most
confident that the King’s Own Ministers purchasing, in their public
capacity, the rights of the Company for the nation, at the price of
5⅜xd, would have satisfied every murmur and every suspicion in the
mind of the man who some months before, was for casting all away at
2-5/16. Alas! before even the first negotiations had been opened at
Lady Manningham’s garden party, my dear old friend was dead.
* * * * *
It took five days to make those arrangements which Mr Burden found
necessary to put within his immediate call the sum of £50,000. What
those arrangements were my commercial readers can easily guess, my
non-commercial readers would be at a loss to comprehend. That large
class who, like myself, comprehend them, and yet are not commercial,
would discover nothing but tedium in their recital.
That so considerable an amount was realised so soon, was due to
a variety of settlements; the selling of stock, the immediate
discounting of certain maturing bills, but principally to an advance
very readily made by the bank, and that at a rate of interest which
seemed to Mr Burden so generous as to be, in the technical language
of commerce, “almost nominal.” Indeed, it raised him very appreciably
in his own opinion; and made him see in himself a man of greater
position than he had imagined.
I am betraying no confidence when I say that the ease with which this
loan was obtained was in no small part due to the universal activity
of One Who has often appeared in the pages of this sad record. If any
further reward beyond the natural pleasure which proceeds from a good
action may be of value to Him, He may take this assurance from my pen
that He made a good man happy for more than thirty-six hours.
On the evening before his rendezvous at the Plantagenet Club, Mr
Burden, as usual, returned to his home by the 5.13. Cosmo he did not
expect; for the young man moved, as his father well knew, in another,
and as he hoped, a better world. He read, therefore, all that
evening, to beguile his thoughts, a novel dealing with the conflict
between science and religion. At half-past ten he went to bed.
It is a matter somewhat curious, but vouched for by a serving maid of
the name of Hannah, who brought hot water to his room, that he said
his prayers. I mention the point only to illustrate the attitude of
his mind at this critical moment. He went to sleep before eleven; but
his sleep was disturbed with dreams; in these dreams the grotesque,
unhappily, mixed with the terrible, and there ran through them
that reminiscence of the immediate past which is a sure sign of
disturbance in the Ganglions of the Cerebellum.
[Illustration: THE BISHOP OF SHOREHAM (THE HONBLE. THE REV. PEREGRINE
MAUCLERC) SITTING AS AN ASSESSOR AT THE TRIAL OF CANON CONE FOR
HERESY, PIRACY, CONSPIRACY AND SCHISM
AN EXCELLENT LIKENESS, WHICH WE TAKE FROM THE “CONE TRIAL ILLUSTRATED
SUPPLEMENT” OF “CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS”]
He dreamt that many men of many kinds were offering him money in
incredible amounts, as loans, as gifts, as reversions, as exorbitant
prices for securities which he held; and yet these offers did not
please, but vaguely disturbed him, for they were made by sundry
beings with faces always distorted, sometimes horrible, who sat
beside him on the seat of a hansom cab, wherein he drove. In the
corners of this cab, before him, were bottles of champagne. It was
brilliantly lit, and he could see outside in the darkness between
the shafts, that it was drawn not by a horse, but by his friend Mr
Abbott. The dream was evil, and, though he knew not by what the cab
was driven, yet he knew there sat up there some Thing which he did
not care to think of, and which he did not dare to see. Twice he
would have lifted the trap to glance furtively; twice his hand failed
him and his body grew quite cold with fear. Such is the nature of
dreams, that he found the event but ordinary when the hansom turned
into a bath chair, running of itself, and this again to his own
bed, which seemed to be at once in his own bedroom, and yet in a
crowded street; up and down this street he noticed a multitude of
people, nearly all of whom he knew, going to their business. The last
of them came, a healthy, up-standing figure, tall, strong, rubicund;
he was well familiar with it: it was that of the Honourable, the
Reverend Peregrine Mauclerc, vicar of St Judas’s, Denmark Hill, a
church he constantly attended. This figure, passing rapidly, nodded
at him in a breezy way, and cried cheerfully and very loudly: “It
will be paid for in shares.” Then an awful spasm of pain, come and
gone in a twinkling, incredibly severe, shot through his chest; and
Mr Burden suddenly awoke.
He was gasping and sitting upright; to his astonishment it was quite
dark. Never had his regular sleep been broken by such a sharp and
dreadful agony: rarely had it been broken at all for many years.
Indeed, since his father’s death, and the relief from political
discussion which followed it, he could remember nothing of the night
save evening, and then daylight again.
But now he found himself staring at darkness, with his left hand
at his chest. The pain had darted and vanished like the stab of a
dagger; but the shock was still in his brain.
There lay under his pillow a gold watch, presented to him, after
their release, by the officers and men of the Commander-in-Chief’s
Own Fighting Body-guard, in recognition of his services and generous
subscription to the Prisoners’ Funds. It was of great value; upon
sliding a small spring along the side this watch would strike the
hours and the quarters and the minutes, while pressure upon one of
three jewelled buttons caused it to render _Hearts of Oak_, or _The
Wearing of the Green_, or Mr Kipling’s _Kill ’im wid yer mouf_; but
these Mr Burden very properly left silent, save when he would amuse
the children of his friends.
Mr Burden pressed the spring: it chimed him half-past two, and then
three little tinkling minutes. Mr Burden did not lie down. He still
sat up there in bed, his left hand on his chest, his right hand upon
the pillow supporting him: and still he stared at darkness.
There are moments, under the brooding fixity of the night, when
the mind loses foothold. The man was old, his infirmity of purpose
in the single matter of this new investment I have described; his
doubts, which were the product of a morbid atmosphere rather than of
a reasoned view; his fear, which had become an irritable fear.
All these the night increased. The magnitude of the sum he risked,
the still greater peril of the adventure into which that day would
lead, appalled him. He was in great dread and disquiet of mind, and
he felt, though he did not know it, like those young poetasters
who put into their verse the longing to be in other times and away
from something evil in the modern world. It was a mood of intense
weakness, due, I believe, to illness alone, but it affected all his
attitude during the ensuing days.
After some twenty minutes of this suffering he slept again, uneasily,
dreaming confused dreams; he woke again in the grey light for a
moment, his mind troubled by some phantasm of a quarrel waged in
sleep, and he tossed into the morning. By seven he could rest no
more. He got up and dressed; day and activity began to invigorate his
mind. The quiet confidence of Cosmo at breakfast, the leader in _The
Times_ upon the corruption of Russia, the cat upon the rug—all the
familiar things of home strengthened him, like sacraments, for the
thing that he had to do.
Only once that morning did his miserable hesitation return. It was
when he found himself in the station at Norwood, standing, not on
the platform for the City, but opposite, on that for Victoria. The
novelty of the thing again disturbed him; but he was brave. He shook
off the influence, and, when he stepped out at his journey’s end,
the movement and the vigour of the streets revived in him a better
mood. His confidence increased as he stepped through the summer
morning; he entered Pall Mall briskly, in the attitude of expectation
and advance, and he went up the steps of the Plantagenet Club with
something as near triumph in his heart as men of that sober and even
temper can feel.
This was not an end for which he had worked; it came as a kind of
unexpected reward for a life that had been regular, industrious, and,
in its fundamental emotions, consistently patriotic. Of the many
feelings which men have mixed in them upon those great days when they
are admitted to take an active part in the expansion of our power,
two were supreme in him at that moment. He felt, with a freshness
almost of youth, as though he were himself about to create a new
thing on the map of the world.
He felt the warmth which cannot but accompany a prospect of
additional fortune.
From these two sources there proceeded an exultation which was not
ignoble, and which went forward with a conquering movement, lifting
his heart as he entered the great doors.
Within those doors some indefinable cold breath did strike him. Even
in that present mood of his, he could not shake off an impression of
strangeness. The furniture was not what he knew; it was recent; it
belonged to a more glorious but certainly a less commodious age.
It was bent into the strangest patterns; fantastic curves met here
and there in the faces of young unhappy women. There was applied to
it by screws moulding which would have required the utmost art of the
sculptor had it not consisted of composition.
The club quartered the three leopards of Anjou, gules regardant on a
field argent with the Lys semé argent upon a field azure: in chief
a crown royal and supporters, dexter, a lion rampant languetirant,
sinister an unicorn, enchainé: gartiered the device, “Honi soit qui
mal ‘pense,’” and the legend “Dieu et mon Droit” real. This coat
was blazoned above the mantelpiece, on the backs of the sofas, the
buttons of the servants’ livery, the notepaper and the china; it was
woven into the tapestry; it covered the seats of the chairs; nowhere
was the proud title of that house left unsymbolised.
In the general decoration of the hall and of the rooms, enormous
masses of perfectly new gilding lit up the interior with a grandeur
that recalled Empire indeed, but suggested also the strain
inseparable from great possessions; and, in between the gilding,
panels of a dead foreign white forbade Mr Burden such repose as he
imagined should pervade a London room.
There were, it is true, upon the walls, reproductions of eighteenth
century engravings, very charmingly framed in the American manner.
The good taste of their arrangement was marked: they were few and
widely spread; but of this Mr Burden knew nothing; his age had
narrowed him, and he did not comprehend our day.
He stood in the midst of the hall, as might some sea-faring man who
had sailed and found a people most unlike his own. He stood and
waited. Then the stronger mood returned to him, and he forgot these
things; for Lord Benthorpe, Mr Barnett and Mr Harbury had come into
the room together. He went forward to meet them.
When they had shaken hands, Mr Barnett, absent-minded as are many men
of his calibre, went before them with unconscious mastery, and led
them into a little room apart, where they could talk undisturbed;
and this had been reserved for him, for in that club Mr Barnett
held already the position which in a few years he was to hold in
the commonwealth itself. Here, in this small room, were the same
good taste, the same grandeur of decoration; but, for Mr Burden, now
recovered, no longer the same feeling of ill-ease.
They sat grouped round a table of fumed oak, on which a dainty
printed card begged members to pay for the refreshments of their
guests, while above them hung a very sensible admonition against the
bestowal of gratuities upon the domestics of these regal rooms.
They sat for a full quarter of an hour, talking in sparse and
careless sentences, now of politics, now of some book, and each from
time to time would look up cheerfully and say that they should be
getting to business.
Already had Mr Burden professed his interest in the architecture of
the club (for they had drifted on to that topic), when Mr Barnett
replied, quite suddenly, that they had but one thing to settle that
day, and that thing was the sum which they four must syndicate
before the promotion was entered upon. He waited for no comment, but
continued with equal abruptness, saying that, so far as he could
see, a hundred thousand pounds between them would command all that
was required for the security of their further steps; and, when he
had said this, he sat silently, with his great hands upon his great
knees, looking down upon the floor at his feet.
Lord Benthorpe had the advantage of Mr Barnett in a wider knowledge
of the world, and, from his Parliamentary training, a kind of subdued
fluency. Mr Barnett had brought out the sum of money almost brutally.
He had spoken rather slowly, choosing his words, as he always did. It
was a necessity for him, if he was to avoid the slight foreign accent
and the suspicion of foreign idiom, which even so he could not quite
eliminate. After that hard and broken phrasing, it was a relief to
hear Lord Benthorpe. His amiable mouth lay open between each phrase,
his eyes roved from one object to another around the room; he sat,
indeed, too far from the table to relieve upon it the appetite for
movement which pursued his fingers, but he twisted them in and out by
way of pastime during his discourse.
“I think,” he said, in a thin voice, well suited to dialectic, “I
think the sum is large ... larger perhaps than is necessary. In
theory, as it were, there is very little needed.... I know one
must always have a platform, as it were ... we shall have initial
expenses, so to speak ... but....”
And then the voice of Lord Benthorpe died away.
Mr Harbury joined in with a more definite remark:
“If anything the sum should be greater.”
He said it with the decision and simplicity common to men of his type
when they discuss a great financial matter. They are in daily contact
with these things, and they speak of them as you and I speak of a
road with which we are familiar, or of any of the common actions of
life. He continued:
“It should be greater, because the whole thing is a reserve for a
very important campaign. Lord Benthorpe is right. In theory there
is nothing needed; in practice, very often the expenses are small.
But one must have a perfectly free hand. One must know exactly what
one is doing, and one must never be forced to hesitate from lack of
funds.” He paused a moment, as though looking about him to find a
convenient phrase which would not wound.
“A thing like this,” he went on, still firmly, “which is mainly
political, may mean less expense than a scheme purely commercial, but
it may also mean a sudden and unexpected strain.”
Then, as men do who are wiser than their fellows in the matter they
discuss, he added an abrupt example:
“Do you remember the Thibet irrigation loan?”
Lord Benthorpe looked at him and nodded, more from courtesy than from
any other motive, for, as a fact, he had never heard of it.
“I remember it too,” said Mr Harbury grimly, “and that came of what I
call starving.”
He looked at them with a steady confidence, knowing his ground
thoroughly, and continued:
“We are all of us men of substance, and men of affairs, and we can
all, if we like, increase the sum.”
Here Mr Burden nodded. For the first time in the conversation he
clearly understood one whole phrase.
Lord Benthorpe was almost agitated.
“We could always add,” he said, “if there were any necessity;” and,
as he said it, the little nervous trick with his hands began again.
Mr Harbury shut his lips very tight. When he opened them it was to
say:
“You can’t do business that way,” and then he shut them again.
Mr Burden thought he would speak, and did so, with a mixture of sense
and self-respect:
“I shall be happy to abide by any decision that you come to,
gentlemen. I was certainly prepared, now or ultimately, for a much
larger sum.... But I will, of course, be bound by Lord Benthorpe’s
prudence; and by the sense of you all, gentlemen; ... by the sense
of you all.”
Mr Burden delighted in these phrases; they gave him a solid pleasure;
and he went on:
“For my part,” ... he was about to tell them that for his part he
thought that more was needed, when he suddenly remembered that he was
hopelessly out of his depth, and putting on a look of firmness and
reflection, he was silent.
Lord Benthorpe began:
“Still, so far as I can see ...” then he also remembered that he knew
nothing at all about such things, and was silent in his turn, still
preserving over his projecting teeth that wide, open, permanent and
kindly smile, still twisting his refined and lengthy fingers.
Mr Harbury had already said: “After all, we shall only be out of our
money for a few” ... when Mr Barnett interrupted, with his strong and
ponderous voice.
When two such men begin talking together, there is usually a kind of
battle to see which voice shall survive; but the relations between Mr
Harbury and Mr Barnett were such, that Mr Harbury at once yielded,
not without grace, and Mr Barnett, choosing his words, and speaking
very slowly, taking care to make a “d” a “d,” and a “t” a “t,” and
steering firmly past the “th,” rolled out:
“It must be a hundred thousand.”
Mr Harbury said that the Magnetic syndicate, if he remembered
rightly, had subscribed something of the same kind during the
Greenland excitement. Mr Burden, who had read all about the Greenland
excitement in the papers, exclaimed: “What a time that was!” Mr
Harbury then added that there were infinite possibilities all across
the north of Canada, and especially on the lower Snake river.
Lord Benthorpe told, at somewhat too great a length, a story about
his cousin, Charlie Corne, who had gone shooting up there. Mr Harbury
listened with great interest, and remarked that it was nothing to the
Big Moose country; and that led him to speak about the fishing there,
and that to the harbour, and that to the dispute with Russia.
For close upon an hour their speech turned thus upon those things
wherein a conquering race delights; and if I have painted the scene
of their first meeting at so great a length, and in such detail, it
is but due to my desire that every member of this race, who may read
these pages, shall know in what an atmosphere the crucial decisions
of their history are decided.
[Illustration: MR BURDEN OFFERING TO SUBSCRIBE WHATEVER MAY BE
NECESSARY]
The interest flagged. Lord Benthorpe had repeated the same sentence
two or three times; Mr Harbury had not spoken for close upon eight
minutes, when Mr Barnett closed the scene. He got up with the air of
a man, heavy with creative power, one who has accomplished a long and
finally successful task; Mr Harbury got up like an athlete ready for
new labours, standing erect and supple. Lord Benthorpe got up, as
politicians do, wearily, and by sections of his frame; and Mr Burden
got up, as do merchants, with some fuss, rubbing his hands, and
pulling occasionally at his coat.
It was not his habit to leave a business interview without some final
phrase. He would have thought it discourteous. He stood, therefore,
a little pompously, and, looking at Mr Barnett, addressed him in the
plural, and said:
“Remember, gentlemen, I shall be very happy, if there is any
occasion, to post you my cheque to-night for a larger....”
But Mr Harbury put up his hand with authority, and interfered:
“Do not mention it, Mr Burden; the suggestion was mine, but I think
Mr Barnett has thoroughly proved to us that the sum proposed is
sufficient.”
Then he let his hand drop again, and Mr Burden bowed, and they all
went out of the room.
So it was that, two days afterwards, Mr Burden paid not forty, nor
even thirty, but only twenty-five thousand pounds.
CHAPTER VIII
The Rev. Charles Gapworthy, B.A., sometime fellow and chaplain of St
Lazarus Hys Hostel, Bermondsey, S.E., tells us in his “Political
Economy for Schools” (chap. ii. “Capital,” p. 28) that “economic
force resides ultimately, not in material accumulation, but in a
certain bold prevision of the mind.” The truth is but one more
example of the power residing in what we denominate, in this country,
the “Christian virtue of Hope.”
The M’Korio Delta Development Company had been but an idea. That idea
had even seemed, for some months, to languish, when the accession
of Mr Burden’s reputation, his Faith (which had made the formation
of the syndicate possible), and, for that matter, his twenty-five
thousand pounds, though they were but the outward sign of inward
spiritual things, lent to the whole adventure body and life. Its
aspect changed; it became concrete, as it were: a thing to be named,
handled, criticised, combated, defended with passionate enthusiasm; a
national Force in Being.
[Illustration: THE REV. CHARLES GAPWORTHY, B.A. (FROM A BLOCK VERY
KINDLY LENT BY “THE ST LAZARUS HYS HOSTEL MAGAZINE; A REVIEW OF
SOCIAL PROGRESS”)]
Mr Barnett was the first to sacrifice himself in the cause for which
so many in the end laid down their all. He left the Edgeware Road,
and took a considerable mansion overlooking the Park, convenient to
the Twopenny Tube, possessing a southern aspect, and so near to the
Marble Arch as to boast nobility of site. He thought it his duty
(and the future has proved him wise) to hire a carriage with two
horses, men in livery, and a box at the Opera: nor did he hesitate
to ensure to the daily papers, even to those with whose editors he
was intimate, a fixed contract of advertisement, in return for which,
as the courtesy of journalism demands, certain of his doings were
published, and commentary upon others omitted.
If it be true, as Canon Cone has so beautifully put it in his
Christmas sermon on Kingdom, that “we can serve England better with
our heads than with our hearts,” most nobly did Mr Barnett serve her.
His dinners, the principal of which were given weekly upon Fridays,
when Parliament was resting from its labours and before the
well-earned week-end had begun, his dinners, I say, recruited their
guests with a peculiar discretion. Rarely did more than twenty sit
down together, never, even when that number was exceeded, did men or
cooking of inferior value weaken the effect of the meal.
Gatherings less formal distinguished or enlivened the remaining
evenings, saving that of the Sabbath, which, in fine contrast to so
many around him, Mr Barnett remembered to keep it holy.
His suggestions were an inspiration, not only to the young men whom
he had launched into our world of Letters, but to a multitude who had
hitherto known him only by repute, and who, in spite of the legendary
difficulty of approaching so great a man, were introduced to him in
batches—before lunch, at tea times, and (by appointment) in the early
morning.
By a happy coincidence, the very force of things seemed to fight
upon his side. “The stars in their courses,” as Canon Cone, careless
of political opposition,[9] magnificently put it, “fought for,” the
tradition of which Mr Barnett was but a part, however distinguished.
Men influenced by Mr Barnett in no way; men who had never met him,
were caught by the flame of his genius.
[Illustration: CANON CONE DELIVERING HIS CHIVALROUS ATTACK UPON
THE INCARNATION (A THUMBNAIL SKETCH TAKEN BY THE REPORTER OF
“CHRISTENDOM,” AND CALLED BY HIM “CANON CONE IN ACTION”)]
[Illustration: CANON CONE IN REPOSE, DISCUSSING MATTERS UNCONNECTED
WITH DOGMA AT THE DUCHESS OF LAVINGTON’S (A SKETCH PURCHASED FROM
HER GRACE’S SECRETARY AT THE TIME, NOW DOOR-KEEPER AT THE VARIETY,
BISMARK, PA., U.S.A.)]
Sir Philip Marshall, for example, if anything a recluse, sent to _The
Nineteenth Century_ (and after) from his distant home at the Land’s
End, his famous article upon Germany and the M’Korio valley.
Young Coster chose for his principal picture of the year the title,
“Moonrise upon the Marshes of the M’Korio.” It was hung upon the
line ... and so upwards to the ceiling, and though its dimensions
caused a considerable portion of its area to escape the eyes of the
spectator, its main features attracted universal attention. Indeed,
it was in stepping back to obtain a comprehensive view of it, that
Sir Henry Baile cannoned into the aged Duchess of Lavington, who was
herself lost in contemplation of the canvas. The contretemps and the
unhappy scene it led to, would be too trivial to find a mention here
did they not serve to show the public zeal for all that concerned
the M’Korio. That picture also furnishes, by the way, what I believe
to be the only example of any direct interference on the part of Mr
Burden himself with a national enthusiasm which he rightly regarded
as the stronger for its spontaneity: I mean the little note in which
he begged the artist to change the word “marshes” to “lagoons,” a
request which was at once complied with.
In the New Gallery a powerful piece of impressionism, “The River
of Fate,” by Miss Paxter, turned upon the same theme; all London
talked of the blue-eyed Somersetshire lad, who lay there in his
khaki, floating with upturned face upon the dark waters. The public
subscription which was raised for his aged parents, and their
subsequent conviction for fraud, are not to the purpose of my tale,
unless it be to take this opportunity of defending Miss Paxter with
all the warmth of which I am capable, from the suggestion that she
knew the old people to be childless, or the incident itself to be
fictitious.
A further proof of Mr Barnett’s self-abnegation, and of the absence
of all financial pressure, during the growth of the movement, exists
in the fact that Messrs Pscheuffer, desiring to publish a book upon
the M’Korio Delta, wrote to Mr Barnett, and that he, with a fine
sense of what was due to his honour, refused to write so much as the
preface, or even to accept the dedication of the volume. He referred
the firm to Major Pondo, and washed his hands off the whole matter.
The success of the M’Korio village at Earl’s Court, if a plebeian,
was yet a genuine indication of the popular feeling. It was crowded
throughout the season; and the chief, a magnificent Basuto named
Issachar, was pensioned by an enthusiastic admirer who prefers to
remain anonymous.
[Illustration: DR MOHL
FROM THE OIL PAINTING PRESENTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF DORPOTT BY HIS
MAJESTY WILLIAM II, EMPEROR AND KING]
Even the neglected museum of Theoretical Geography received, for
the first time in forty years, a daily influx of visitors eager to
behold the raised map of the M’Korio Delta. The absolute flatness,
and consequent ease of cultivation, of the region could not be better
appreciated than in this graphic form.
Two rival hosiers, having each patented a type of collar under the
name of “The M’Korio,” went to law to decide which should have the
right of using so valuable a title. The case was reported at great
length, and aroused the widest interest and discussion. It is one of
his many acts of private generosity, so few of which I have been able
to record in this book, that Mr Barnett recouped the loser of this
action for his trouble and expense out of his own pocket, and gave
him a handsome present beside.
Finally, in a _brochure_ of the utmost interest, based upon vast
research, and expressed with admirable economy of proof, Dr Mohl, of
the University of Dorpott, conclusively identified the Delta with the
Sheol of the Old Testament.
I would it were my lot to set down nothing save the positive side of
this wave of success; but I owe it to Mr Barnett, and also to the
truth, to touch upon such opposition as the movement encountered.
This opposition was not always consciously exerted. It existed none
the less.
An article appeared in a German Review advocating the purchase of
the Delta by Germany, with one of whose colonies it was coterminous.
The wound it dealt was the deeper from the fact that Mr Barnett’s
own second cousin, Baron Bloch, was the author of the article, which
appeared above his pseudonym of “Sympathicus.” It was good to hear
the outburst of indignation with which this proposal was met in
England. We were saved by the rally of our own blood to our side. The
article “Git,” which appeared in the principal American newspaper in
London, was undoubtedly the turning point, after which the City and
the banking interest determined to support what was feared at the
time to be the vacillating policy of the Government.
Owing to the persistence of a very wealthy private member, whom
no arguments could mollify, unexpected difficulties arose in the
transference of the Delta from the Foreign to the Colonial Office, a
trifling but necessary formality which could not be accomplished till
much later, in August, when the close season for grouse was at an end.
[Illustration: BARON BLOCH (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY M. M. BALLARU
ET CIE., 147 _bis_, RUE ST. LOUP. LES CLICHÉS SONT LA PROPRIÉTÉ
EXCLUSIVE DE LA MAISON)]
The correspondent of _The Times_ at Kurù, in a long course of
articles, which did more than anything else to teach the monied
classes what the M’Korio might mean, never once mentioned the company
nor any of its supporters—and there are conditions under which such
neutrality is dangerous.
Against all this Mr Barnett bore up with an heroic tenacity.
There was but one feature in all the field before him which gave him
any serious anxiety, and this was that unhappy vacillation which I
have already so often shown Mr Burden to have displayed, from the
moment that he plunged into efforts ill-suited to his training and
experience.
It was necessary, upon the face of it, that Mr Abbott should be
invited to join the original promoters, to “chip in,” as Mr Barnett
put it in somewhat excessive joviality of phrase.
But Mr Abbott was Faroosh. None but Mr Burden could approach him,
and frequently as he had been asked to do so, Mr Burden hesitated; a
childish hesitation; a man shrinking from a scene.
But if Mr Abbott’s directorship could wait, there were other and
more disquieting symptoms in Mr Burden’s manner. He had fits of
silence. For days he saw eye to eye with all his colleagues—and then,
suddenly, a note would come, short, querulous, excusing himself
from attending the most important functions. At last, during the
great reception in the beginning of July, Mr Barnett grew seriously
concerned.
My pen has not the leisure to describe the brilliancy of that
function. It was a scene which could not be matched in any capital
of Europe, hardly in London itself, elsewhere than in the little
district which is bounded on the north by Hyde Park Square and
Seymour Street, on the east by Park Street, on the south and west by
the misty distances of Hyde Park. It was worthy of all that was said
of it in the _Morning Post_ upon the one hand, in the _Indépendence
Belge_ upon the other—but I can mention it only in connection with Mr
Burden’s distressing mutability.
One thing had given Mr Barnett real hope; and that was Mr Burden’s
attitude towards what I may call the more common-place side of all
this matter of the M’Korio. A very genuine interest had appeared in
the old man’s face whenever he discussed the history or the geography
of the M’Korio. There ran through his character that tendency towards
futile pottering which led our grandfathers—with a mighty empire
before them—to waste their energies upon the foundation of learned
societies. During those enormous dinners, where every celebrity had
elbowed him, Mr Burden had often given cause for the very gravest
fears to the more masterful mind of the leader. But whenever he had
an opportunity of discussing Dr Mohl’s pamphlet with such experts
as M. Sabbat or Canon Cone, his animation and delight relieved
Mr Barnett’s apprehension. On the famous night when the first of
our geologists maintained the undoubted presence of gold in the
M’Korio, and when, in the startled silence that followed, Mr Barnett
(smiling that famous smile) had handed the model of the nugget from
guest to guest, Mr Burden, ignoring all that the news portended for
his country, showed an excited interest in the unique geological
conditions which could produce metallic deposits in a deep bed of
decomposing vegetable matter.
It was with confidence, therefore, that, on the occasion of this
great reception at Barnett House, the host led Mr Burden proudly
forward to present him to Major Pondo, whose book, “The African
River,” had during the past six days marked him out as the chief
expert upon that region.
The centre of every remark, the chief object of every introduction
throughout the evening, and now, upon Mr Burden’s late arrival the
natural recipient of his views, Major Pondo was for the moment one of
the land marks of London.
It was observed that Mr Burden stopped somewhat suddenly, as in
amazement, when he approached the soldier; and, indeed, the sight
which met his gaze was novel to him, and might have proved entrancing
to a better balanced mind.
Major Pondo, who boasted no regular commission from any crowned head
or president, had yet perhaps seen more real fighting than any of
those who are pleased to call themselves professional soldiers. Even
in this brilliant assembly, a dark contusion upon his left cheek-bone
was markedly visible, and a deep gash, clumsily sewn up across the
cusp of the chin, marked an adventure suffered somewhere far from
medical aid. In stature, he has been described as so short as to be
almost dwarfish. It is an error into which my contemporaries have
been led by the sturdy build and short, strong neck of the explorer.
His exact height, as it appears in official records, where the
photograph, thumb-marks, and many other accurate measurement of his
anatomy are preserved, is 1·3587 metres, or in English notation,
almost exactly five feet two inches.
[Illustration: MAJOR PONDO (AN EXTRACT FROM THE PICTURE OF THE
RECEPTION AT BARNETT HOUSE. BY THE COURTESY OF THE PROPRIETORS OF
“SOCIAL SKETCHES,” A WEEKLY MAGAZINE)]
Tropical suns and arctic snows in Mexico and Manitoba had tanned
his skin to the colour of wet elm. His teeth were even and of a
brilliant white, which stood in almost painful relief against the
complexion I have described.
His head, which was of great size, was bald, save for a considerable
cluster of hair at the back and just beside the ears. But though this
adornment was sparse, it was never unkempt; and Mr Burden, while yet
he was some way off, could distinguish upon it the gloss of a recent
unguent. The scalp was a mighty dome, and over the eyes was fixed
a frown, which indicated less a habit of scowling than the fixed
impression of indomitable energy. The face was clean shaven, and the
eyes of a beautiful soft brown, approaching black. Their glances
were slow and measured, but seemed to betray a certain unfamiliarity
with his surroundings. The right foot thrust out firmly a few inches
before the left; the right hand, holding the coffee cup in a simple
but powerful gesture, the left clenched just above the small of his
back, such was the figure whose name at least is familiar to every
Englishman, such was the human monolith which stood immovable in the
swirling of the throng as Mr Burden approached it with wondering
eyes. Mr Barnett introduced and left them together.
In that introduction the explorer had bowed, but had not uttered
a word. To the first remarks Mr Burden somewhat timidly made, he
replied with gestures alone; to a compliment, with a slight smile; to
a theory upon the climate of the M’Korio valley, with a cough that
committed him to nothing.
My old friend has confessed to me that, for some moments, he was
in dread lest Major Pondo might be dumb. He was even seized with a
terror that the man was ill-acquainted with the English language,
until the word “Yas!” mouthed out in the rich accent of Jamaica,
convinced him that he was in error. It was the prelude to a short
account, delivered as it were by rote, of the Major’s life and
adventures, at the close of which dark silence redescended. Mr
Burden, so far from finding his suspicions allayed, was tortured with
every manner of doubt.
If it were my purpose to defend my friend, I should find no
difficulty in holding such a brief. It must be remembered that he
was wholly ignorant of the new world into which he had wandered, and
that men such as Major Pondo, or indeed any other of those who yearly
and almost daily spread the bounds of our power, were quite unknown
to him. His irritability and unstable spirit, the result, as I still
believe, of old age, have been evident throughout these pages, and
it must be added that the hour was late—far later than the merchant
would have permitted himself had he obeyed his medical adviser—that
the glare, the heat, the multitude, all combined to arouse in him a
morbid judgment, and to enflame distorted views which were due in the
main to the failure of his health.
But it is not my business to defend him. I have no duty but to
enumerate quite simply, the facts in their order. Were I to trespass
upon another ground, I might find myself in competition with the
labours of Mr and Mrs O’Rourke, the very mention of whose existence I
particularly desire to avoid.
Be the cause what it may, when Mr Barnett returned to lead Mr Burden
to another guest, so far from having brought my friend into greater
harmony with the astounding energies of the new movement, he had
produced, by that interview with Major Pondo, a sentiment—I repeat
it, a morbid sentiment—approaching disgust.
There was nothing which, at that moment, Mr Burden would not have
believed. There was no anti-patriotic libel, no little-England mania
or lie, no dead and gone Cobdenism of the sixties, which he would not
have accepted after that brief experience.
He left the house that night, full of a kind of angry determination
to go next day and do what he had never yet dared to do: to speak to
Mr Abbott. But he would speak to him in a sense very different from
that which Mr Barnett had intended when he had asked him to call upon
that life-long friend, and to offer him a directorship.... He would
see Abbott, he would tell him of the risk to a considerable fortune,
of his doubts, of the torturing alternation of his mind: he would
find true stable comradeship and relief.
Fate, and the nature of men, led on to their meeting indeed, but
brought it, in spite of them both, to a very different end.
* * * * *
When Mr Burden awoke next morning, the deep sleep of fatigue and the
good light of a new day had somewhat changed his mood. There remained
of it nothing but an undercurrent of anxiety, which the conversation
of Cosmo that morning did very much to allay.
The day’s business at the office was prosperous, the air bracing and
sunny; if he found himself walking towards Mr Abbott’s office that
evening for the first time in so many weeks, it was only because he
was a business man, trained to method, and that therefore he detested
to abandon any resolve he had formed.
He came severely, and with a purpose, into the little panelled room
which had seen for 123 years the growth of the Abbott Line.
The place reeked of our past; but there was that in it which has
justly provided the financial press with a pet subject for ridicule.
It was as small as the cabin of a ship; indeed it had sheltered three
generations of men who had sailed as owners perpetually in their
own craft. It suggested the punch and the tobacco of that lazy race
of seamen, who knew of nothing but England, and cared for nothing
but her; and yet—in a way—we love them. It suggested very primitive
methods of business: phrases about “The position of the house,” the
plodding and the short-sightedness of the men whose theories in
government and finance we have, please God, finally abandoned. And at
the old large desk, in this old small room, sat a figure most worthy
of its frame.
Mr Abbot was in everything one of the characters which, pleasing as
they may still be in fiction to-day, would be sand in the bearings
of England, ruining the machine, were they to reappear in our modern
life.
There was nothing in him of what a true citizen has under the stress
and vision of our time.
He was tall, stout, and rubicund; his voice, which was louder than
that of a gentleman should be, pushed “cheeriness” up to and
beyond the bounds of vulgarity. The obstinacy which his features
partly betrayed was immediately apparent when he began to discuss
any controversial matter. He was cocksure of this and of that, upon
twenty subjects where men of an analytical power infinitely superior
had, in the vast intellectual expansion of these latter years, been
content to doubt or to criticise.
He was, in a word, what he would have called “sound.” He was “sound”
upon Free Trade; he was “sound” upon the maintenance of the gold
standard—a matter upon which he could know absolutely nothing. He
was “sound” in his contempt for “foreigners”—in which category he
was pleased to include what he denominated “Yankees.” He loved
England—but what he loved was the soil, the air, the habit; not that
great vision we possess. He clipped his words in a manner so heartily
unconscious and offensive that, for all his great wealth, the entry
into a rank above that of his birth would have been denied him. He
did not attempt it.
[Illustration: “COMPETITION! SIR; COMPETITION!”]
To strangers he would come out with a great roaring “sir,” at the
end of every other sentence. His conversations began with remarks
upon the weather (commonly in condemnation of it) and would, I regret
to say, not infrequently terminate with an oath, as he expressed
his difference from the more modern views of his companion. He would
often follow up such an expletive by uttering the undoubted truth
“that that was all _he_ knew about it,” or that “it was all _he_ had
to say.”
By some accident, probably of party tradition, he had followed Mr
Gladstone in his policy of Home Rule for Ireland; but nothing save an
inexcusable mulishness had made him continue to defend that worn-out
error when all his friends had abandoned it.
It is not remarkable that, with such a character, he should have
found himself totally out of sympathy with the principal economic
trend of our time, and should have boldly refused to amalgamate
the Abbott Line with any combination of shipowners. I can almost
see him as I write, sitting at the table at the Palmerston, where
he lunched, and shouting: “Competition, sir, competition!” at the
unhappy Zachary K. Peabody, the agent of the African Steamship Trust,
whose refinement he was too coarse to perceive, and whose practical
experience of commerce he derided.
His features were, in their outline, projecting and masculine; his
eyes firm, his chin solid. His hair, which was always in disorder,
was of a sharp iron-grey, and two little whiskers, nearly white,
emphasised the squareness of his face. But the strength of his mouth
was weakened by a perpetual tendency to laughter, and what he would
have called “good-fellowship,” or, as I have heard it named, “Row.”
Many things had combined to give him his influence over Mr Burden.
They had been young men together in the days when a common label
of so-called Liberalism, the necessity for political effort, was
sufficient to mask many essential differences of character between
men. The greater vigour and more sanguine temperament of the
shipowner had naturally over-borne the sobriety and occasional
hesitation of the dealer in hardware. It must also be admitted, that
in many of the small affairs of life—a narrow life, remember, and
one whose horizon was easily surveyed—his judgment had rarely been
at fault. It was he who had introduced Mr Burden to the trade in the
M’Korio, and who would willingly—for as such crude natures often are,
he was capable of affection—have gone to any sacrifice to preserve
his friend from commercial or personal dishonour.
He was unmarried.
As for his judgment upon any of the great complexities of modern
life, no worse judge could have been discovered than this utterly
simple, obstinate, loud-voiced man. His judgment upon such an
adventure as Mr Barnett’s could hardly for a moment be in doubt.
Mr Burden had felt it instinctively, and, for all these weeks, had
carefully avoided that familiar room. Now at last he entered; but the
very sight of Mr Abbott’s face roused in him a kind of warning that a
severe difference of opinion might arise.
It will not surprise my readers to be told that Mr Abbott’s greeting
was emphatic and commonplace, full of “eh’s?” and “Lord love me’s,”
and “all this long time’s”; but there lay in it a kind of hint that
Mr Abbott knew well enough the cause which had so prolonged that
interval.
Natural as was hesitation to such a man upon such a subject, Mr
Burden looking first in his friend’s eyes, and then away from them to
a vile oil painting of the _Arethusa_, said:
“Abbott, I have come to ask your advice upon a matter ... or perhaps
I should say, I want to hear what you think of a matter....”
Mr Abbott replied that Mr Burden might “ask away,” and “whatever
you’re going to do,” he continued, with a facile joviality, “take my
advice and don’t.” He laughed boisterously, as is the fashion of such
men, at his own wit, blew his nose in a resounding way, took out a
pipe, filled it with an astonishing black tobacco, lit it and said:
“Fire it out, my lad. Out with her!”
It was some time since Mr Burden had suffered this kind of approach;
and it cannot be denied that he was more than a little nettled.
Perhaps he showed it in his tone. At anyrate he said shortly enough:
“I have come to ask you what you think of the M’Korio?”
“It stinks,” said Mr Abbott, decisively.
He shut his mouth upon the words like a gin; put his hands firmly
upon the desk, as does a man upon a rudder bar, and looked up at Mr
Burden.
“Whole country stinks. You’ve known places that stink. Barking
Level stinks. Out _there_, by God, the whole place stinks. Big as
Yorkshire—I’ve been there, mind you, and you haven’t. Not a square
yard but stinks!”
Indeed, Mr Abbott, in company with many who declaim against the
corruption of our public life, would have done well to consider
whether his language was not a greater offence against true morality
than the actions and motives which he so recklessly ascribed to
others.
“I came for advice, Abbott: not for abuse,” said Mr Burden.
He was thoroughly annoyed, and the whole purpose of his visit receded
from him. He was annoyed by the self-satisfaction of his friend’s
tone, by the excessive coarseness of his language, though it came
from lips to which, I fear, coarseness was habitual. And he was,
above all, annoyed to have thrust into the delicacy of his slight
scruples this roaring objurgation.
“Who’s abusing you, man alive?” said Mr Abbott, in his great loud
voice, staring in harmony with his tone.
Mr Burden, crossing his arms, and tapping the oilcloth with his left
foot, answered, with quiet dignity, that Mr Abbott’s words implied an
insult to his friends, to himself, and he might add, to the Empire.
Mr Abbott’s only reply was to draw his forefinger rapidly across his
nose—a gesture to which he was most unfortunately addicted—to clench
his fist, and to strike the table before him.
“The Empire?” said Mr Abbott, much as a man might say, “the giant
Blunderbore?” Then he continued, more quietly: “Burden, you’re going
mad.”
“Yes, the Empire,” said Mr Burden with some heat, and with more
decision than he had yet shown. “I came for advice, Abbott, and,
upon my soul, I think I’m more fit to give it you than you are to
give it me.”
He had the firmness now to look Mr Abbott straight in the eye, and
doing so, he said in a voice that was almost equally firm:
“Perhaps you do not know that they have found gold?”
“GOLD!” roared, bellowed, thundered Mr Abbott. He blew out a great
breath, and whispered at the end of it: “Oh Lord in heaven!”
Mr Burden could bear no more.
He got up and said: “I’m sorry for this, Abbott, but I don’t think
that either you or I will profit by continuing the scene.”
Mr Abbott rose at the same time from his big wooden chair.
“You may go if you like, Burden,” he said, wagging his forefinger,
and staring into his friend’s face, as is the fashion of insolent
men; “you may go if you like ... but don’t blame me if they knock
you! They’re a lot of —— scoundrels, and if you have anything to do
with them you’re a —— fool ... and remember I said so. Don’t blame me
if they knock you!”
“I blame you for nothing but your expressions, Abbott,” said Mr
Burden.
His legs were trembling beneath him with emotion; he repressed it,
and walked slowly to the door, which he was careful to shut behind
him with courteous ease.
When he was gone Mr Abbott, whose mind was closed to all save the
most immediate things, stared at the door a moment, first blankly,
then a little sadly. At last he gave an enormous cough, followed by
a laugh yet more enormous, and within ten minutes had forgotten the
scene in the intricacies of a policy.
* * * * *
But Mr Burden was thoroughly disturbed. He was the more hurt at his
friend’s outburst, because at heart he had been on the defensive. Had
Mr Abbott shown less violence, the advice—which he had rejected—would
perhaps have sunk less deeply into his mind. As it was, the effect
of the quarrel was this: that the wild words of Mr Abbott, the
groundless insinuations which were those (at the best) of a fanatic,
did more than the closest reason could have done. They took root in
his heart, and bore a fruit of suspicion which never left him night
or day.
He dined in the evening in town, alone, at an hotel—a thing he had
not done for perhaps ten years. He purposely remained in that hotel
for many hours, that he might be alone when he should reach home,
and that he might sleep before the very name M’Korio should reach
his ears again. He took the 11.2, and did not reach his station till
twenty minutes to twelve. It was close upon midnight when he unlocked
the door of Avonmore.
He saw lights and heard voices; he came into the smoking-room whence
they proceeded, and saw at the fire the profile of Cosmo, a little
table with glasses, syphons and a whisky bottle, and beyond them,
in his own deep padded chair, a cranium and a back which were most
certainly those of Mr Barnett: of Mr Barnett in repose.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] As the scurrilous poem beginning “It is, it is the Canon’s
opening roar,” or the deliberate misprinting of the peroration to his
Romanes lecture on Historical Christianity, “The soul of Ananias like
a star,” etc.
CHAPTER IX
Mr Barnett did not rise.
He held between his hands such “teeming destinies,” he controlled in
the pursuit of his high mission so many various men, that his life
necessarily suffered from the tension of artificial effort.
He was the more inclined to relax upon those occasions when he felt
himself in the presence of friends who were bound to him by ties of
gratitude. That evening in Norwood such a temptation was enhanced by
the influence of a cosy room, soda water, spirits, a deeply padded
chair, two magazines, Scotch whisky, and all the atmosphere of
refinement.
He relaxed, I say, and a more truly lovable, because a more real Mr
Barnett shone outwards through the surface of the man: a Mr Barnett
not anxious for his accent or any other thing; a Mr Barnett interior,
domestic, and at ease.
In such a mood he saw no need to rise; but his courtesy did not
forsake him, nor the inbred habit of a man of the world. He lifted
himself some inches from the chair by a pressure of his left hand
and stretched out his right towards the owner of the house.
The high cosmopolitan sphere in which Mr Barnett had been formed is
naturally indifferent, as our eager English gentry also are, to the
conventions of the suburbs; but my readers will already have learnt
that nothing could offend Mr Burden more than a breach of the usages
of Norwood.
Mr Barnett’s attitude was at first incredible to him: to this
incredulity succeeded a burst of anger.
The late hour, the recent quarrel with his oldest friend, and,
doubtless, the approach of illness, might have betrayed Mr Burden
into an irrevocable step. He might have left the room without
speaking. He might even, so thoroughly was he put out, have manœuvred
for his guest’s departure by that process of persistent, patient
pressure which is called “kicking a man out of one’s house.” He might
have sworn—had not Cosmo, with an excellent comprehension of his
father’s petty vagaries, saved the position.
For Cosmo stepped out to greet his father warmly; he congratulated
him heartily on having been able to return in time; he told the
flurried merchant how long and anxiously the financier had waited;
with the pardonable exaggeration of filial care, he ante-dated
Mr Barnett’s advent and his own by a little over three hours; he
insinuated in every tone that nothing but the overwhelming importance
of his father’s judgment could have led Mr Barnett to so great an
effort.
Mr Burden was but partially appeased; he sat down in a stiff chair,
not his own, and faced Mr Barnett sternly as one might a witness in
a court; the Leader of Men returned his gaze with a beam of comatose
good nature. His head leaned slightly to the right, his upper eyelids
(which were double, as are those of the great Andean bird) dropped
deeply down, but from the little slit of prominent eye beneath a
liquid humour still gleamed. That humour played upon Mr Burden
steadily for some forty seconds, and then the voice spoke.
“I am ver’ happy to zee you, Mr Burten.”
A doubt, a disgusting suspicion, ran through Mr Burden’s mind;
it leapt into a formed phrase; he felt the words coming—but it
never reached his lips. He controlled himself during the pause
that followed, and, during that pause, it was most evident that Mr
Barnett’s vast organising mind was plunging deeper and deeper into
the baths of silence and recuperation.
When he spoke next, it was with eyes quite shut, and head bending
forward irregularly at intervals.
“About that fellow Âppott?” he said.
Mr Burden did not answer.
“That fellow Âppott,” Mr Barnett’s big head wagged slowly in
disapproval, “he is obstinate—but he is O.K. Alright. Aha? Not so?”
Mr Barnett groped with his right hand as though to lay it upon Mr
Burden’s knee; but, finding in the way the arm of the deep chair on
which he sat, he patted that affectionately instead, and closed his
eyes again, and was silent.
The younger and more active, though lesser, mind of Cosmo, came to
the aid of Mr Barnett, whom fatigue, coupled with his remaining
difficulties in the English tongue, had led into some vagueness of
expression. Cosmo was the better fitted to speak, from the fact that
Mr Barnett, earlier in the evening, when his mood had been for some
reason more sprightly, had fully explained how and why Mr Abbott was
necessary to the M’Korio.
“Father,” said Cosmo, rapidly, “you know how very few men there are
in London who know one subject; Mr Abbott really does know the Delta.
That is the whole point. But I am not sure that Mr Barnett quite
understands....”
[Illustration: MR BARNETT THOROUGHLY AT HOME]
Mr Barnett smiled and grunted; he was following, but indistinctly.
“Of course you know the difficulty, and I suppose I know it too. It
all comes from what is finest in his nature; but the suspicion is
intolerable, father. And that is another reason why he ought to come
in.”
After this lucid sequence of ideas, Cosmo, who was standing with
his hand on the table looking anxiously at his father across the
lamplight, said, with real earnestness, “We _must_ get him to come
in.”
Mr Barnett opened his eyes rather widely and suddenly, and said:
“Ah! Yes! He môst come in. That is so.”
He nodded wisely; then, had not breeding forbidden him, he would have
gone to sleep.
He fought against the temptation successfully, straightened himself
a little in his chair, and pursued the attack upon Mr Burden in
a manner the efficiency of which was only marred by his extreme
drowsiness. There was in his manner that which should connote so high
a respect for Mr Burden’s powers as to permit of confidence. He leant
forward heavily and pressed his thumb against the merchant’s ribs,
not as do lighter men and less consistent, with a jerk or dig, but
with a continuous pressure such as one uses against an electric bell.
When he had done this, Mr Barnett said, with increasing wakefulness,
and a kind of mock sadness in his voice:
“Sômetimes they do nôt come in.... No? ... Then we ...” And Mr
Barnett made with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand a
peculiar screwing motion, a gesture native to the conqueror; having
done so, he concluded: “we môst use pres-sure,” and, as he said these
words, he got up and stood steadily upon his feet.
It was a thing remarkable and arresting to the eye to see the fumes
of lethargy pass from that great mind as mist does from the face of a
mountain at morning; by an effort of the will it had thrown off sleep
and the blessing of repose. The power of concentration had returned
with every word during the last five minutes; the accent had grown
purer; the attention more decisive. Mr Barnett noted the hour, he
noted the cast of Mr Burden’s face in the shade of the light, and
interpreted it to mean a comprehension of his scheme. He exaggerated,
I believe, the intelligence of his host and colleague.
He took his hat from the table and put it firmly and ceremoniously
upon his head, as was his custom before he left a room; he took
up his cane, the top of which was of lead covered with gold; he
buttoned round him a great coat of fur, and, being so prepared,
went out through the drawing-room into the hall. There, with great
emphasis, he said good-night.
Cosmo not only opened the door for him, but leant his right hand
upon his shoulder, to afford support to a man older and perhaps
more infirm than himself. He so supporting him, they went down the
drive together, to where, at the gate, stood the electric brougham,
throwing great cones of light upon the thick air of the small hours:
it was the first in London to bear upon its panels a small coat of
arms.
As they went, Mr Barnett spoke twice. The first thing he said was:
“You should have a drive up herein. So a carriage can come. There is
no good if a carriage cannot come.” When he had said this, some rapid
process of thought led him to another topic, and he continued: “Your
father is a very fônny man.”
Cosmo although he had received so much wider a training than his
father, retained a trace, perhaps hereditary, of those conventions
which I have already condemned. He felt the colour come into his
face; but the darkness screened him, and his knowledge of the world
restored him his balance in a moment.
“He’ll be all right,” he said cheerfully. He opened the carriage
door (not without the thanks of his chief) and tenderly arranged a
warm rug around Mr Barnett’s knees. The young man in livery, hired
for such purposes, stood by in somnolent respect. Then they bade
each other good-night, and the last word Cosmo heard that evening as
he turned back towards the house was the great and comforting word
“Hôme,” rolled out by Mr Barnett to his servant in the accent of
command.
When Cosmo had re-entered the house and approached, with great
reluctance, the room whose atmosphere still seemed full of failure,
he found that his father had gone to bed, and he was glad; for, like
most men possessed of wisdom, he trusted half his fortunes to the
influence of other men’s sleep.
* * * * *
If the effect of a misunderstanding or a quarrel were immediate, with
what rapidity would not the tragedies of the world develop! With what
certitude could one not foresee, and perhaps provide against, the
climax of an evil fortune.
If things led on from logical step to step, what simple stories would
crowd the world. Then indeed the epic and the lyrical, which we
perpetually seek in fiction, would divert us in the common affairs of
our own lives.
But the real world around us, the world one corner of which it is
here my business to describe, is not arranged in that fashion. A
crime, a miscalculation, will produce consequences, not immediate
but ultimate. Suspicions confirmed, quarrels brought perhaps to the
point of violence, seem rather to sink into the mind and to make a
soil there, than to bear their full fruit at once; so that, when the
catastrophe falls, it is commonly at an insignificant and nearly
always at an unsuspected moment.
So it was with what I can only call the tragedy of my friend.
It was inevitable that when his even, narrow, and placid mind should
finally come face to face with the broad and rugged power of Mr
Barnett, sharp pain, and possibly misfortune, should follow from such
a meeting. The unhappy accident of the visit to Mr Abbott, and of a
couple of hours delay, had brought those two minds in the presence
one of the other; and a very grave hour had passed. But so are men
made, that this experience led to nothing at the time. A night’s
long sleep, the activities of the following day, sufficed to blur
the image. Is it not Seneca who tells us that our own judgment is
qualified by the expressed judgment of others? The public character
of Mr Barnett recovered its place in Mr Burden’s mind. Many days at
his business, a sudden change in the weather, a small but lucky
investment, a very active quarrel with his cook, who demanded and
received instant dismissal—these good and evil things soon put the
misfortune of Mr Barnett’s visit into its true perspective. It
produced no visible, certainly no deplorable, result; what it did do
was to leave Mr Burden all ready for further irritation, and for a
growing misconception of his surroundings, until at last the great
misfortune fell, after apparently the most trivial of accidents. The
heart of his confidence had been eaten out; it held by the outer
shell alone, and a touch was enough to make it crumble. But, for the
moment, his faith held firm.
Moreover, if Mr Burden had been inclined to let the incident
weigh upon him Cosmo’s efforts alone would have dispersed such an
inclination. He returned home quite regularly day after day; he
entertained his father with a thousand things. It was not till a
week had passed that he permitted so much as a letter concerning the
affairs of the Company to come under the old man’s eyes. When such
a letter did arrive, he had carefully provided that it should be a
short note of congratulation from a country gentleman, a distant
acquaintance, a man of great possessions, wholly ignorant of the
Delta and of most other things; one that hoped, if all went well,
to be a shareholder, and who very warmly said so in his letter to
Norwood.
At intervals of several days business details, of no great
importance, but such as gradually reawakened in Mr Burden the old
interest, began to come to his table; later he dined with Mr Harbury
and met a very charming American actress, the manager of the Banque
des Pyrénées, Lord John Mackintosh and his wife, and Lothingbury
Grail, a gentleman who had written verses. They talked of Art.
A week later Cosmo and he lunched with Lord Benthorpe at Cosmo’s
club, and the very next day, walking in the best of moods towards
the City, they met by accident Mr Barnett himself, fresh with the
morning, and in the most sympathetic of moods.
And all this while around Mr Burden, in the papers, in the
conversation of men, the M’Korio grew and grew. The season continued,
the debates in Parliament languished, the heat increased, and the
spirit of the great African River ran through the veins of London.
The prospectus was drafted: many little inconclusive conversations
were held; in a word, by all those small preliminaries which
are necessary to a great and worthy enterprise, Mr Burden was
re-introduced to the routine he knew. His active interest returned.
But deeper down the pall lay over his mind, and could not be lifted.
The struggle between these two things, his fatal lack of
comprehension, his eager and patriotic pride, has been hitherto the
matter of my record. Alas! the victory of the former must now lead on
to my conclusion!
* * * * *
Mr Burden permitted his colleagues to undertake the necessary
details, and he was even glad that they should look after such
wearisome business. The registration of the Company, the finding
of Brokers for it, and of Bankers, and of Solicitors, would have
interfered with what he honestly believed to be his own engrossing
labours in connection with his trade.
He was profoundly thankful that no further word was spoken of Mr
Abbott; but it was the thankfulness of respite, not of reprieve. He
saw before him an inevitable day, and he dreaded it. He consoled
himself with guesses; he tried to forget that his great friendship
had turned into an instrument—an instrument which could wound as well
as work for him.
Eddies of uncertainty swirled in his mind. The Bankers were as firm
as the Bank of England, the Brokers were of immense respectability,
the very name of the Solicitors seemed like a part of the
Constitution; but all these things did but increase his disease—they
seemed to him to be at the same time England, and not England. It
was as though a man should be given a picture framed in a solid
familiar frame—a frame suited to hold the portrait of his father—and
hung before his table; and as though, in such a setting, the picture
within constantly shifted and changed, now terrifying, now evil, now
grotesque, now merely irritant, but always a nightmare of discord. In
this mood a critical day found him—the day when his presence in the
new offices was demanded to hear the prospectus read, and to pass it
finally for printing.
The new offices were in Broad Street. Their position I have described
in an earlier part of this book; with their magnificence perhaps most
of my readers are acquainted. I have but to recall the two plaster
lions that guard the staircase, symbolising, it is believed, the
majesty of our race; the splendid negro, in Vienna ware of life-size,
holding the lamp in the central gallery, and clothed as to his middle
with a belt of ostrich feathers—whose ring of white against the
shining darkness of his skin naturally led on to the row of smiling
teeth above and the very conspicuous eyes. This masterpiece, which
Mr Barnett had accepted long ago in lieu of payment of a debt, was
already familiar to London—little reproductions of it were to be
seen in the shops of the West End—the symbols of the M’Korio. The
interiors were worthy of such apparatus. The doors of the main rooms
were of oak; the doorplates and the locks were Marie Antoinette
bronze gilding, embossed, single and reversible. It was a matter of
pride to the Promoters that no two were exactly alike. A large male
black cat, bearing round its neck a silver collar, added the note of
domesticity, and was already familiar to Britain through the personal
paragraphs of the daily press. The whole was rendered complete by a
porter, than whom nothing more splendid could serve a sovereign in
arms, whether in London or Berlin.
[Illustration: THE PORTER OF THE M’KORIO’S DELTA DEVELOPMENT CO.
(FROM A GROUP)]
This man was a Swedish Protestant; in height he was fully six
feet seven, his hair was of the colour of tow, his eyes were of a
faded blue, his face was white and yellow; in intellect, while not
deficient, he was of a deliberation which admirably suited the nature
of his employment; nor could any length of hours passed in the public
gaze at the Main Entrance weary the Northern steadfastness of his
mind. Proud of his uniform, content with his wages, enormous in his
manner as in his dimensions, he was a further and a crowning proof
of Mr Barnett’s instinct for what those adjuncts are, which cheer on
to success the energies of an Imperial race.
I would I had the space or leisure to deal at further length with
this remarkable and simple figure; indeed, long before Mr Burden’s
death, it was my intention to devote to the portrayal of this
porter’s life and character that literary skill which has now been
turned into another, a far graver, and I fear a more monotonous
channel. I had intended to relate exactly his career. How, stranded
in the docks of London, this towering Scandinavian had obtained
employment as a Life-guard; how, deserting from his Corps on account
of the bullying to which he was subjected by his comrades, he found
his way into the Metropolitan Police. Dismissed from this force for
drunkenness, he became a chucker-out in a Music Hall, in which post
his grievous muscular weakness, universal in men of his type, soon
proved him unfit to deal with that athletic youth which frequents
such haunts in the hey-day of its vigour; how, finally, while
posing as a giant in a Fair, a position he occupied in return for
his bare food, he was tempted to break his contract at the prospect
of a higher wage. At the persuasion of Mr Barnett himself, he fled
by night, accepted the service and livery of the M’Korio, and so
reached the culmination of his career.
His interesting personality has detained my pen too long, I must
return to Mr Burden entering the Great Room, where he should find his
colleagues on the day when the Prospectus in its final form was to be
passed for Press.
* * * * *
Mr Burden had played a great part in the world. He had been Sheriff
in the early eighties; he had been Treasurer to the Bowmakers’
Company, and had drawn up in that capacity the scheme for endowing a
new Chair of Comparative Religion at Dublin, a city sadly in need of
broadening its outlook upon God; he had been called as an honoured
witness before many Royal Commissions, and had sat on the Committee
for the Adjustment of Port Dues; he had even enjoyed, now for some
years, the honourable title of Justice of the Peace; and on the
occasion of the Mansion House dinner, but eight months before, he had
sat between the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the moment and some
other member of the Cabinet whose name I cannot recall.
He was therefore not unfamiliar with the honourable pomp wherewith we
surround the conduct of Empire; he was accustomed to the scenes and
the personalities which accompany the furtherance of our Fate.
As he had entered daily deeper and deeper into the machinery by which
that fate is advanced, its complexity had overwhelmed his simple mind.
I have sufficiently described the vortex of conflicting moods into
which his soul had been drawn; yet must that whirlpool continually
appear in this short story of his end, for without some sympathy
with his grievous torment a view quite false to his nature might be
conveyed. He could not comprehend.
It must be so. The past and the name of such men are necessary
to the grist of expansion; but expansion and the newer kind of
responsibilities kill them. So doubtless Venice in the sixteenth,
Spain in the seventeenth, Holland in the eighteenth centuries were
compelled to use, and destroy in using, what had been their most
national type. It was the price they paid for the varied glory they
proceeded to achieve. My friend was a necessary sacrifice, I know;
but he was my friend. The victim moves me.
Consider him here in this great modern room—how much it was a
torture-place for him.
He and they were ending their work. That day the last stone would be
laid; yet was he further than ever from repose.
He and the three other men before him were now occupied in the actual
work of forging a new province. The dignity of such an occasion
should have touched him (he thought) more profoundly than it could
his colleagues, whose lives had been spent in no other atmosphere.
But, alas! unrest, most cogent, most bewildering, robbed that great
occasion of any note of the solemn. Reality and unreality mixed in
his mind continually. The world, so long a quite familiar thing, grew
unfamiliar to him, more and more with every hour. The constraint
which he felt in Mr Barnett’s presence; the certitude he had that
Mr Barnett was a genius and a maker of England; the natural awe
wherewith he regarded Lord Benthorpe’s experience; the astonishing
phenomenon whereby Lord Benthorpe nevertheless showed himself purely
passive; Harbury’s manifestly clear and decisive intelligence,
coupled with his complete subservience—all these contradictions put
his mind into a whirl.
Full of an aged complaint, not very distant from despair, he sat him
down wearily in the vacant chair set for him. It was of the kind
known to the trade as “Dutch Mediæval Easy”; fashioned of American
hickory so treated as to resemble old English oak, and handsomely
upholstered in a green imitation of Spanish leather.
He noticed Mr Harbury’s quiet, impressive face; Lord Benthorpe’s
somewhat nervous ease; above all, Mr Barnett’s powerful ill-dressed
figure, sitting at random, bent over the scattered papers before
him; and in his heart he groaned, remembering his fortune risked,
the friendship of his life in jeopardy, and his hopeless see-saw of
misunderstanding.
As usual, it was Mr Harbury who spoke first; as usual, he spoke
rapidly and clearly.
“I think, gentlemen,” he said, “there is very little for us to do
... Payleys will bank for us, as you know. Charles & Charles will
naturally do our legal work. The Directors I think we know.” He
smiled as he said this, a slight conventional smile which fluttered
on the face of Lord Benthorpe, and died on that of Mr Burden. “All
we have to do is to read over the prospectus for the last time.” He
sighed, and there was a pause. Then he turned to Mr Burden, saying:
“Perhaps Mr Burden can suggest something.”
Mr Burden frowned solemnly. How often at his breakfast-table, when he
opened his morning’s letters, had he not come upon such documents,
prospectuses—the bricks and stones of Dominion? How often had he not
held them before him, judging them steadily through his spectacles of
gold? How rarely had he been misled by the false; how rarely had he
despised the true? His investments had not been many. The expansion
of his business had absorbed the greater part of his savings. But
such ventures as he had made were safe enough. He could remember
but one that had failed, and that was through no fault of his own
judgment, or of that of his directorate. It was the Foreign Office
which, as usual, had failed to put its foot down, and had permitted
the ruffianly Alemami of Yollabù to repudiate his most solemn
engagements. On all these things Mr Burden pondered in a confused
silence; then he said, in that measured tone which marks the man of
affairs:
“I can remember nothing that needs alteration, Mr Harbury; nothing
material.”
Mr Harbury suggested that they should read the draft of the
prospectus immediately, and that if anything occurred to any of them
for the last time he should mention it.
Mr Harbury had not got very far into the body of the work when Lord
Benthorpe stopped him at the word “exploitation.” It seemed to him a
foreign word, and it had a flavour of something grasping and unjust
about it. He hoped that no atmosphere of that kind would mar the
effect of the prospectus.
Mr Harbury was evidently interested, and asked Mr Burden’s opinion.
Mr Burden, who had been lost in thought, gazing at the great map of
the M’Korio Delta that hung on the wall, patched with yellow for
gold and with grey for coal, looked round somewhat flurried, and said
that he had nothing to say.
Lord Benthorpe suggested the word “development,” but Mr Harbury
pointed out that the word already occurred at the head of the sheet
in the phrase “M’Korio Delta Development Company.”
Lord Benthorpe murmured:
“True, true.”
After about ten minutes of discussion, the word “exploitation” was
allowed to stand.
* * * * *
Such are the limits of a modern book, that it is impossible for me to
give at full length every remark that was made during this historic
meeting. I abandon the attempt with reluctance. So many subtle shades
of meaning were thrashed out between these four men; so powerfully
did their various characters come into play; so many aspects of the
forces that build up new colonies appeared in them, that the subject
possesses an irresistible fascination to the writer, and perhaps to
the reader of this chronicle. It is a fascination which they must
resist: each in his own sphere.
Briefly, then, to mention only the more important matters, the word
“but” in the fifth line was changed to “and”; the Anglo-Saxon word
“employee” was substituted for the printer’s “employé”; and (a very
striking example of Mr Barnett’s grasp of the public pulse), the word
“lagoon” (though it had become familiar to the Island race in the
last two months) was changed to “lake.”
The whole discussion did not absorb more than an hour and a half of
their time; and, at the close of it, Mr Barnett rang for a servant.
He was that man of magnificence whom we have seen: a giant amenable
and of service, he brought in wine and sandwiches upon a tray. The
four men ate and drank, relaxing for a moment their attention to
business, and touching upon lighter things. Three-quarters of an hour
was all that Mr Barnett allowed for this pleasant interval: he rang
again, and their discussion was resumed. They went carefully over all
the points which had previously been decided, deleted a comma after
the words “brightest gem,” and put a full stop after “in the British
crown.”
At last, as the afternoon was drawing on, one or the other would rise
at intervals, stroll to the window with his hands in his pockets and
gaze out, or saunter to the fireplace, and lean upon the mantel-piece
looking into the glass above it. Conversation of a more general kind
occasionally relieved the strain and tension of their great task.
Lord Benthorpe had quite an interesting argument with Mr Harbury
upon the value of the inter-colonial postal system, and Mr Burden
slept, for perhaps five or six minutes, towards the close of the
afternoon.
By four o’clock, however, there remained nothing to decide, and Mr
Barnett suggested that he himself should read over the prospectus for
the last time, that they might have a final opportunity of touching
upon any matters that had not hitherto occurred to them.
* * * * *
Outside in Broad Street, men passed and repassed, and most of them
glanced up at that great window. There were many of the shrewdest,
and many of the most solid, who envied the little group within; and
even the great run of people, the crowd which turns the curving lane
to a river through the middle hours of the day, felt the magic of
what was passing behind those walls.
There were some random enthusiasts—vague, belated democrats from an
earlier age—who were filled with sudden anger as they considered
invincible powers of evil forging, in that room above, the chains
which were to bind a new country. To these the names of Benthorpe and
Burden were the names of implacable fiends; oppressors of humanity,
but oppressors of such more than human genius, that humanity could do
nothing against their power.
On the top of a passing omnibus a father of the name of Bailey, said
to his son, who sat beside him:
“You see that window? Those are the M’Korio offices.”
He wagged his head wisely and said:
“It’s a big thing,” and the expression upon his face was at once
illuminate and reverent; that of a familiar but devoted worshipper
at the shrine of some god. The boy, careless as all boys are of all
religions, said, “Oh,” and the ’bus rolled on.
Even the policemen and other poor men, who might have no share in
these high things, felt the awe of what was toward. The hawkers and
the newspaper boys, members of a rank where finance is forgotten, yet
remembered England, and felt a pride of their own in the venture upon
which these four men had entered; nor is there to-day any great city
in the world, save London, where every citizen can forget envy and
the differences of wealth in the passion of patriotism.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Mr Barnett, within, was reading the prospectus for the
last, and, if I remember rightly, the fifth time.
He held the paper down on the table by the weight of his large left
hand, and read it through most carefully; the volume of his voice
was emphasised by the slight guttural accent and the broad vowels
which alone betrayed his foreign experience.
It was a peculiarity of his—common to most men of dominant
character—that he suffered no interruption: a chance remark from
Mr Harbury, an interjection from Lord Benthorpe passed by totally
unheeded. His voice, slowly proceeding from word to word, or jolting
at the stops, went steadily over the other men’s remarks, and crushed
them as a great stone roller crushes clods in its going. It had
also this in common with the roller, that its pace was even. He
emphasised no syllables; every letter—contrary to our modern English
usage—was pronounced; and this, in words such as “undesirability,”
“advantageous,” or “irrecognisable” produced an effect both rich and
strange.
When he had finished reading, he smoothed the papers out, gathered
them up, and sighed as over a thing completed. He rose, and the three
others with him; and you may say that one of the greatest days in the
recent history of our country had gloriously ended.
“Not once or twice,” as someone says somewhere, “in our rough island
story, the path of duty was the road to glory.”
* * * * *
CHAPTER X
There runs a mandate to chosen nations to govern upon earth as
vicegerents of the Divine. It has fallen upon peoples so separated
by time and customs that its essential unity is with difficulty
perceived; nevertheless, that unity is assured. The process whereby
dominion is achieved is called by different names: the names, and not
the events, deceive us; the names alone produce a false atmosphere of
change. First, perhaps, it was the vague loyalty to the tribe, the
marauding foray, the settlement; next the intense love of a city and
of its gods, the successful defence, the advance, the conquest and
organisation of lands beyond the boundary. Karl Unterwassen reverses
the order; it is a point of small importance.
To-day the registration of the Company, the lease of offices, the
prospectus, the flotation are the progressive revelations of such a
mandate. Of all these allotment is the Crown.
The M’Korio Delta Development Company opened its lists on the 9th of
July. By four o’clock of the 10th those lists were closed and the
capital had been subscribed; it is not known how many times over.
With the next day the allotment began.
* * * * *
Those of my fellow citizens who have been engaged in the active work
of Empire building, will know what I mean when I say that allotment
is among the hardest tasks which our country demands of us. Those
who have not been thus actively engaged in the expansion of our
civilisation (“they also serve who only stand and wait”) must take it
for granted.
Consider the care and judgment to be exercised! Not to disappoint
what is influential or what is strong: not to alienate the mass
of small subscribers—for the mass of small subscribers is Public
Opinion. Not to offend the proprietor of a great newspaper.
Yet also, not to offend the manager, the editor—sometimes the
papermaker. To consider the claims which good birth and a long
tradition of government will give to this man, a genius for affairs
to that. To remember (and sometimes it is only remembered at the
last moment) that such and such a name—almost passed over in its
insignificance—stands for another much greater name. To recollect
the power of this subscriber with men of his own religion, of this
other with men who cultivate honesty, of a third with those who
admire the capacity for intrigue. Monarchy must be remembered: it is
a permanent feature in our English life. The army must be remembered.
Politicians, some of whose names the public will ignore, must yet
be accurately gauged. Their power as managers and leaders must be
estimated. Even the foreigner must have his place, and must be known.
The foreign sovereign, the foreign negotiator, may help to wreck or
to make the thing. He may be turned from the ally to the enemy of our
beloved country by one involuntary error.
It is a task, I say, of awful responsibility, and one in which a man
may do more in a few moments to advance or retard the designs of
Providence than in any other of the modern world.
The work went on. Three hours of it, four hours, sometimes five.
On the second day Mr Burden nearly broke down, Lord Benthorpe was
actually absent for two days running, fallen ill from sheer fatigue.
It told even upon Mr Harbury. He got black patches under his eyes,
and he walked, a new thing for him, with some fatigue. Mr Barnett
alone seemed to be actually refreshed by the closeness of application
that was necessary.
The public outside grumbled; nothing could be done till the
allotment was declared. They would have grumbled less had they
seen the grinding work of those ten days. Every morning the mass
of letters was sorted, the list of names drawn up, and with strict
commercial probity every single application passed before each of the
directors.
On the fifth day Mr Burden’s head was lost, and Lord Benthorpe’s
assent had become mechanical. Mr Barnett, on the contrary, became
more and more eager, more and more exact as the work proceeded.
Before the close of the sixth day, his brain alone was sitting in
judgment over that mass of papers; it was fortunate, for on the
remaining four days the most delicate part of the work remained to
be done. There did indeed pass by Mr Burden one or two incongruous
things that troubled him. Canon Cone had sent no cheque. Mr Barnett
would make himself responsible for that. Major Pondo, whom Mr Burden
had always regarded as a poor, adventurous man, applied for fifteen
thousand shares. The secretary of that politician who had most
consistently denounced the financial side of our colonial expansion
applied for ten thousand.
There were perhaps a dozen incidents of this sort which Mr Burden
could not fit in with what he had known of the world. But the work
was too pressing and too exacting to leave energy for comment, or
even for hesitation. All these discrepancies made upon Mr Burden’s
mind only one general and blurred effect: to wit, that his own
judgment was doubtful, and that society around him was more complex,
and perhaps more perilous, than he had imagined.
On the 19th the allotment was declared. On the morning of the 21st,
though no sales had taken place, the anxious informal bidding,
which went on in the house, and afterwards in the street, and even
privately between individuals (rigorously as etiquette forbids such
things) was offering two and one-sixteenth, two and one-eighth, two
and a quarter before evening. The prices began to be talked of, and
the selling to be regular within three days; and the price then was
over four. The shares rose with the steady movement of a balloon,
up on an accelerating curve; “M. D. D.’s.” changing hands with such
rapidity, that it was no longer possible to come to any conclusion
with regard to the individual motives of the more important buyers
and sellers. The pace was the pace of a crusade. As religions take
men or the enthusiasms of war, so the public had come to believe in
themselves and the M’Korio; in what they could _do_ with the new
province. They saw the Delta already drained, already mined—as it
will be mined and drained—they saw that the nominal capital of this
new company was the petty ransom of a great kingdom in the future of
England. By Wednesday, the 26th, the shares were at seven.
It is the most fruitful and the most beneficent of exaltations. It
bridges the ford, as Kipling has so finely said; it imposes law;
it is creating a new and happy world from the west of Ireland to
Pùtti-Ghâl. There is something awful and mysterious about it. As it
sweeps by, this missionary creed, this determination and confidence
of a whole people, a plain man’s spirit feeling it comes very near to
the Hosts of the Lord. On Monday the 31st, the shares were at eight
and a quarter, and there they stopped, up, poised upon a summit, as
genius poises upon the columns of conquerors: hovering in bronze.
It is not in humanity—even in ours—to bear these moods for ever
undisturbed. Some moments of doubt, but not of despair—perhaps it
is juster to say some moments of repose will overtake the temper
of the firmest race. On Tuesday, the 1st of September, the shares
were at six and three-quarters. On Thursday, the 3rd, they were a
fraction below five. But something rallied in the soul of England;
the country clergy read in the _Standard_ of Saturday morning with
something of the throb a trumpet peal evokes, that M.D.D.’s had gone
’way up over seven at the close of the yesterday’s market.
By what avenue shall I approach the analysis of that vast
agglomeration of subconscious national forces? Any single method
seems crude and petty in the presence of such a complex and
Overpowering Whole ... perhaps it is most reasonable to follow
the fortunes of one block of shares. For, when great states are
fermenting towards ripeness, men are but atoms whirled hither and
thither. Economic necessities drive them, and these necessities in
their turn are but the expression of some historic will.... Yes, it
is better to follow the fortunes of a block of shares than of an
individual shareholder: for men pass, but the Company remains....
I will consider the one thousand shares originally allotted to the
first cousin of the Secretary for the Fine Arts.
He became the possessor of these upon the 19th, and had paid for them
£250; £250 more to be paid (as the prospectus directed) in three
months, and the remainder when called for. These were but a part of
his holding; but I am dealing with this one block of shares for
the sake of example. On the 23rd, I find them bought at the price
of three and a quarter by the Bishop of Ballycannon. On the 26th,
his lordship sells them at seven to young Lord Berpham, who had been
advised by his solicitor that they were a good thing: sincere advice,
for his solicitor was also his creditor and trustee. On the 31st,
when they touched eight and a quarter, Lord Berpham should have sold,
but that young disdainful spirit was too noble. He was too noble.
Had he sold, he would have realised no less a sum than £8250 (less
brokerage). He was too noble. The blood in him was confident of
England, and he held on for a rise. My readers know what followed.
The next day they had fallen to six and three quarters. On Thursday,
most reluctantly, by the advice, not to say the pressure, of his
solicitors, the young man sold at four and seven-eighths, having
lost no less a sum than £2100, which he could ill afford. The buyer
was Mr Zimmer, the broker, but as I find that Mr Barnett himself
acquired them in the same afternoon, I have no doubt that he was the
bona fide purchaser; my certitude becomes the more fixed when I find
that on Saturday morning, the 5th of September (the shares having
then touched seven and a half), Mr Barnett disposed of them to Henry
Bowling, the well-known trainer and proprietor of _English Racing_.
He, in his turn, sold them at the same price to Mrs Maidstone,
who disposed of them a fortnight later at the same price to her
sister-in-law, who sold them at a slight premium in the open market.
I see them receding into the distance, passing through the hands of
that fine old poet-patriot, Gaystone; then, a wofully disintegrated,
a mournful procession, as the winter wanes, they drift off into the
middle classes, sink, and are engulfed.
But Mr Burden, he neither bought nor sold. He was astounded at these
fluctuations, but more astounded at the permanently high level which
M.D.D.’s maintained, in spite of the rough sea upon which they
were tossed. Sudden fortunes sprang around him, sudden reputations
startled and but half convinced his sober mind. Even that Major
Pondo, whose face he thought he must have seen in dreams, was wealthy
now, and met him with an easy air.
Then it was, after a month of so much violence, that the old man’s
inner spirit, no longer confused or troubled, leant towards its end,
and was possessed by sadness continually.
One part of it, the strongest and the safest, the part that had so
sanely judged his people and their politics for fifteen years, still
dwindled.
That other, older part, was not so easily to be silenced, nor was
so readily content. Here suspicions had hardened (vain imaginary
suspicions without proof, born of a narrow knowledge and of an
ignorance of modern things) till they became like thorns, piercing
him. He began to notice every gesture, and the shifting of every
eye. He would talk to Cosmo more than Cosmo wished. Once or twice he
walked alone, and to no purpose, southward out of Norwood, until he
could find the fields. Once, all night, he lay awake. There was no
pain, but he met the next day in a spirit of awful tension, akin to
madness. Once he refused, for the first time, an invitation to Mr
Barnett’s house.
In such a mood he wasted his last midsummer. In such a mood death,
which needs all our preparation, found him not half prepared.
* * * * *
To return to Mr Abbott.
His name had not been mentioned for days and weeks, partly, of
course, because every guide in this adventure, from Cosmo to Mr
Barnett, was determined to give as little pain as might be to Mr
Burden, the oldest and weakest of their number; and partly also
because the giving of that pain (in itself, after all, only an
imaginary evil), might result in the most practical of evils to the
M’Korio.
Mr Abbott was best as a friend, nay, as a director; next best as
an enemy; but worst of all, as one neither enemy nor friend, but
contemptuous and perhaps influencing secretly a member of their own
group. They knew all this, and July had ended without a word being
said. Mr Abbott himself had neither spoken nor written; Mr Burden had
not approached the offices of the shipmaster. Mr Barnett and Cosmo
were both confident that he dreaded the road to that familiar room;
they were confident he had not met his friend. Nor had he.
On the other hand, neither was the younger nor the older of these two
active brains willing to temporise. It was not in their sound scheme
of business to temporise, and the moment seemed to them, of all
moments, the least fitting for delay.
Mr Abbott pressed.
The session was lagging to its end. Within a week or two the grouse
would be whirring, and the chance would come for the transference
of the M’Korio from the Government of the Foreign Office to that of
the Colonial; the moment approached when a few men, undisturbed by
the necessities or accidents of debate, could go right forward and
do their best for England. But if time was propitious, time also
urged them. Soon the great editors would have left their offices, the
heads of the great businesses would be abroad or in the provinces.
I have already alluded to the grouse; but a very few weeks and the
shadow of the partridge would appear between Mr Barnett and the best
laid of his plans. Already multitudes of the middle class were asleep
upon beaches of sand. Anxiety, a mood that cannot long disturb such
minds, had begun to cast a wing over Mr Barnett’s clear and creative
intelligence.
The necessity for Mr Abbott was clamorous.
It was not only as a principal authority with men as ordinary as
himself (and such men are often possessed of great influence or
wealth; sometimes of a voice in Parliament); it was not only as a
loud name, which the public had long connected with the M’Korio
Delta, nor only as the owner of the Abbott Line, that Mr Abbott’s
support was demanded in Broad Street. There were a number of other
considerations, each apparently of little importance, but forming
in the aggregate a strand which men like Mr Barnett are the last to
neglect.
Bowley depended more perhaps upon Abbott’s general judgment of
affairs than upon any other’s man’s: and Bowley controlled the two
groups of insurance which the M’Korio coast still had to reckon with.
A friendship, a trifle fantastic, was to be discovered between Abbott
and the Permanent Under-secretary for Malarial Districts. That in
itself might have been of little importance a month earlier; but,
with Lord Malham at the Malarial Office, it made a difference; he had
only been there three weeks (since the Postage Stamp scandal), he was
shy and new to office and the Permanent Under-secretary was still the
master of the show.
Mr Abbott’s own paper, _The Keelson_, was not perhaps of very great
influence in the City; but it was the oldest in the shipping-trade,
and, though it certainly lost money, and could obtain but very
few advertisements, it was read in every principal office in the
provinces, and could only be boycotted at a very considerable expense
in the London Press. Oddly enough, it had acquired an established
reputation (for its opinions at least) in America and the Colonies,
though its total circulation amounted to little more than two
thousand copies. To you and me, and Cosmo, and Mr Barnett, and anyone
who sees the world from the inside, the thing was a rag, the losing
fad of a man more faddist than anyone in our faddist time. But when
you are dealing with an investing public of millions, such fads must
be reckoned with: for they tell—men cannot all print but they can all
talk, and the wild rags tell.
Abbott at lunch, two months before, had sworn “by this and by
that” to go into the House of Commons. I will not repeat the
coarseness of his phrase. The man was so happy-go-lucky, that his
determination might mean nothing at all; but Mr Barnett knew, as well
as anyone, that if Abbott should so choose there were perhaps five
constituencies in which room would at once be made for him.
Lastly there was the fact of Abbott’s resistance. Such resistance of
itself demanded caution.
Therefore it was that, one morning, without so much as a note to
announce him, Cosmo walked straight into that little office, where
his father had suffered the chief pang of his life two months before.
* * * * *
It was eleven o’clock of an August morning, and London was as hot as
Rome. The energy had gone out of things; the streets were curiously
silent; many of the offices deserted. Mr Abbott sat sweltering in a
shirt and white breeches, which he had preserved from some Eastern
travel. He thought it his business to be there, and there he was;
but no work could he or any other man do on such a day.
Cosmo, rigidly dressed, and with an extreme neatness, cool in the
tropical weather, everything about him ordered, came in with a brief
recognition. In the few months of his training, he had advanced
years in the knowledge of conduct and of business, and was already
manifesting the material of which the great successes are made. To
almost any other man in London, he would have used the delicate art
which a great scheme demands; but he knew his man too well to attempt
any such art with Mr Abbott. Here and there, you will discover, even
in the modern world, the man that must be driven. You will not always
succeed in driving him; but there is only one method of approaching
the business. There was exact determination and aim in every gesture
of the young man: his vigour and directness were the more remarkable,
in that until this moment he had never used such an attitude—save
possibly to servants.
He sat down in a chair just opposite his father’s friend. He put down
his hat upon the table with a slight, hard rap; looked Mr Abbott
steadily and strongly in the eyes (an effort so unusual as to cause
him positive pain), and said:
“I think you know why I have come.”
To such gross simplicity as the shipmaster’s, all this was as yet
nothing but an annoyance. He took the young man’s hat off the table,
reached out so as to hang it on the gas bracket behind him (whence
it fell to the floor) and said “No.” And, as he said it, a very
unpleasing expression passed across his face.
Cosmo jumped up, picked his hat off the floor, brushed it with his
arm, rapped it down upon the table again and said, with admirable
self-restraint: “You know as well as I do why I have come.”
“Let me put it up safely for you,” said Mr Abbott, and he reached
forward again for the hat. Cosmo withdrew it and held it in his right
hand, and, even at that most incongruous moment, Mr Abbott could not
refrain from laughter.
“You will have it,” he said; and his amusement so far got the better
of his temper, that Cosmo thought for one moment inwardly whether it
would not be better to approach this coarse mind by another channel.
But his training wisely persuaded him that the most direct of methods
was the best. The method whereby men tame beasts; the masterly method
of fear.
“I have come,” he said, still keeping himself well in hand, “because
matters cannot go on much longer as they are doing now.” He paused a
moment to let the impression form. “It can’t go on, Mr Abbott, and I
have come to tell you so quite frankly.... Before I leave this room I
mean the business to be settled.... It can’t go on.”
Mr Abbott rang a bell.
A young and rather nervous clerk came in, and gazed anxiously from
one to the other, for Cosmo’s face was unfamiliar to him, and there
had been quarrels of late.
“Arthur,” said Mr Abbott, “is it Friday or Monday that the
_Patagonia_ sails?”
Cosmo looked up with something like a scare on his face; he knew from
his reading how often these irrelevant questions may be leading up to
some great move.
“Monday, sir,” said Arthur in a whisper.
“Then you can just have the box of cigars sent here,” said Mr Abbott
jovially; “I’ll give ’em to Cap’n Gunn meself. I’d prefer to do that.
Rather than he shouldn’t have had ’em o’ course I’d have sent ’em
aboard. I thought someowrother she sailed to-morrow. As ’tis, why
I’ll give ’em to him myself. That’s all right, Arthur.”
Mr Abbott nodded and Arthur disappeared, relieved.
“I’m sorry, Cosmo,” said Mr Abbott, leaning familiarly across
the table like a second-rate uncle, and wiping an enormous red
handkerchief over his face; I’m sorry; these things aren’t of much
importance, but if one don’t attend to ’em at a time, you know....”
I have had to praise Cosmo for many things in these pages, as I have
had to blame him for a few; for nothing was he more worthy of praise
than for his complete command of himself at this moment. The effort
of the severe strain was hardly perceptible; certainly not to so
brutish a nature as his opponent’s.
“You were just saying, lad,” said Mr Abbott, with increasing
coarseness and kindliness, “how the thing couldn’t go on. Well, I’m
sorry for it. But you can sell out, ye know, and so can your poor
old dad. Hasn’t come to see me for weeks and weeks!” Mr Abbott shook
his head. “You can sell out, you know. Of course, I dunno’ how it’ll
look, mind ye, but you can run the risk that there won’t be any
trial; safe risk to run now-a-days.”
Cosmo answered him in the clear measured voice of a man whose plan is
exactly defined, and who is dealing with forces as irresponsible as
those of nature.
“Mr Abbott,” he said, “it is twenty-five minutes past eleven; if I do
not know before half-past that you are coming in, I shall go, and
our plans will be made accordingly.”
“And then the band played,” answered Mr Abbott with exquisite
vulgarity.
It was his theory (a theory which had so far controlled him in this
exchange of views) that a man should never lose his temper. He gave
way to passion as little as possible. Three times a week, perhaps, or
five at the utmost. Upon this occasion he struggled with himself; in
less than a moment came what is inevitable with men of Mr Abbott’s
hopeless type; he exploded.
“And then the band played,” he repeated somewhat inconsequently, “and
then the—! —! —! band played!” With each repetition, his face got
redder and redder, and his voice rose: not very loudly, but soughing
as do the boughs of trees at the beginning of a storm.
“And then by —! the —! —! —! —! band played!!” (every adjective was
varied). “Oh Lord” (striking the desk), “if you weren’t his son!
And if I hadn’t—well known you ever since you were a little whining
prig of a boy, I’d throw you out of this little window; I would!
Out of this little — side window. This dirty little,—little—, —,
side window. As it is, I’ll do nothing more than throw you down the
stairs!”
[Illustration: “AND THEN THE BAND PLAYED”]
Towards the end of this extraordinary harangue, Mr Abbott’s
voice—huge in volume, rolling in tone, thunderously deep in note and
menacing every species of violence in its mere sound—was shaking the
walls of the old room; in the new, palatial offices without, clerks
were cowering; though they were not unused to the echoes of such
scenes.
Cosmo was standing up, he was very pale, and his voice was only just
master of itself; but he did not give way. He stepped backward and
felt, without looking round, for the handle of the door, as Mr Abbott
rose gigantic from beyond the table. And Cosmo said, very rapidly, as
a light gun retreating fires one last, sharp, angry shell:
“Then we will freeze you out.”
With the last syllable of that final phrase he slammed the door, and
rippled down the stairs into the street.
About three seconds after he had turned the nearest corner, there
was a roaring and a storm on the landing he had passed; there was
terror in all the floors above, great boots upon the stairs, and Mr
Abbott, still in his shirt-sleeves, was at the private door, glaring
up and down the street, half apoplectic in the heat, and fearful to
the passers-by. He turned, still holding all his rage, clanked up the
stairs again, burst through the door of his little room and on into
the splendid outer offices, all marble and mahogany, where his clerks
were shivering like the doves in Virgil. He stood tremendous in the
entry and roared at them all: “You heard that?—Freeze me out! Eh? You
heard it all of you? You heard it, I say?” The wretched head clerk
answered “Yes,” which was a lie. Mr Abbott’s voice sank a little, but
only a little, as the sea sinks when the tide turns in a gale. “Ah!
You heard it all. That’s better!” Then he went on again: “Freeze me
out! Freeze out Charles Abbott of the Abbott Line! I’ll wring all
their necks!”
With that last pitiful, unpracticable, boasting threat, this mass of
noise, this anachronism without strength or value, stooped to pass
the low door, regained his sacred den, assumed his ancient wooden
throne and sat there fuming for an hour.
Long after, at dinner that evening, he found himself muttering once
or twice: “Freeze me out!” and he felt blood coming up into his face.
But in the Plantagenet Club, westward four miles, wiser and stronger
men were deciding what had best be done for the M’Korio, for their
England, and indeed for Mr Abbott himself.
Far off in Norwood, Mr Burden slept.
CHAPTER XI
It was not altogether well with Mr Burden. Strong Englishmen, even in
age, will not suffer in body (I think) through any mere disquiet of
the mind. The thing was a coincidence, by which his silly doubtings
mingled with some more serious physical ailment. But, whatever the
cause, in those hot days immediately succeeding Cosmo’s secret visit
to Abbott’s office, it was not altogether well with Mr Burden.
At first a chill, or perhaps a passing weakness, confined him to the
house. Next he lost appetite, and betrayed an irritability quite
unusual to him. His friends were heartily concerned. The Honourable
the Rev. Peregrine Mauclerc called twice upon him, and left upon the
last occasion a marked copy of the _Spectator_, containing a most
interesting letter from the Rector’s pen upon the subject of Hell, or
Annihilation.
Not quite a week later, Mr Burden leant back at the table almost
fainting, and it was evident that he could not go into the City.
It was a collapse, nothing more. It was believed that the necessary
repose and a few days’ nursing in the house would restore my poor old
friend to health. Indeed, he was so restored, and might still be with
us but for the accidents which I have yet to relate.
Though there was nothing definitely the matter, Mr Burden’s wealth,
and the value of his well-being to so many others besides himself,
were sufficient to attract the aid of the medical profession.
Cosmo’s profound, if silent affection was enhanced by the
consideration that his father’s position in the world, and ultimately
his own, could not but benefit by a proper observation of rank and
circumstance: for, with every hour he spent in the society to which
his exceptional brain had given him entry, Cosmo learnt more and more
the just weight of externals. Doctor Cayley was sent for, and Doctor,
or (as he preferred to be called) “Mr” Gamble, the specialist. It
was the practice of both these gentlemen to keep by them certain
printed forms, and the moment they were called to the bedside of
any distinguished patient, to fill in the blanks and post them to
all the leading journals quite impartially, without distinction of
party. Cosmo himself, with quiet dignity, gave notice of his father’s
illness, and of the names of his medical attendants, to the _Morning
Post_, the _Times_, the _Standard_, the _St James’s Gazette_, the
_Pall Mall Gazette_, the _Eagle_, the _Orb_, the _Mercury_, the
_Star_, the _Daily News_, the _Chronicle_, the _Intelligencer_, the
_Globe_, and several other papers whose great position compels them
to print a Social Column.
Nor was Mr Barnett idle. The legend of his influence upon the Press I
have already dispelled; but a man of such weight in our commonwealth
could not be heard without respect, and a few messages from him
created a profound impression upon the many editors who had tasted
his hospitality.
Apart from all this it chanced that all the proprietors, and most
of the wealthier readers of the principal organs of opinion were
interested in the M’Korio Delta; thus, from one source and another,
by a gradual accumulation of impressions, each perhaps insignificant,
Mr Burden’s illness became the theme of very serious public comment.
Short leaders appeared; there were pathetic kindly notes; a fine
letter from “Cantab” in the _Telegraph_, and in the _Spectator_ a
touching poem—a lovely little thing whose literary merit lent it but
a part, and that not the most considerable, of its distinction and
depth of feeling.
Nor was Mr Burden’s name printed alone. With every sympathetic
reference to his condition, some gracious word would be added in
recognition of his intimacy with Mr Barnett, or of what England owed
him for having given her such a son as Cosmo. In papers of the wider
circulation an allusion to the M’Korio Delta, which was now daily
mentioned in at least two places of each issue, gave zest and meaning
to the well-meant and charitable wishes expressed for Mr Burden’s
recovery.
Within five hours the two medical men arrived at Norwood, and
found there, already at the door, Sir N. Lewison, whose European
reputation, ever at the service of Mr Barnett, was never better
employed than now. Indeed, Mr Barnett had lent the great surgeon the
cream and blue Pompadour car wherein to make the visit.
The three learned gentlemen proceeded to the bedroom, where they
found Mr Burden sunk in a refreshing sleep.
Gently waked by the soft gesture of the nurse who was in attendance,
his condition, especially as regarded his heart, lungs and liver,
was examined with all the marvellous skill that modern science has
achieved; and when the principal features of his case had been
accurately ascertained, the doctors retired into a neighbouring
dressing-room to hold a short consultation which should decide the
treatment of their patient.
In the opinion of Sir Nathan (who spoke first), the arthritis was
cardiac, or, at the very least, arterial. He cited Pilkington’s note
upon Levasseur’s case, and quoted several exceptional things of the
sort which had come within his own experience; notably his attendance
upon the Hereditary Grand Duke of Lowenburg. With this conclusion,
Dr Cayley found himself wholly unable to agree; and, being a man
of humble origin,[10] who had risen by personal merit alone, he
expressed his difference of opinion in the strongest language. He
saw in the whole matter a very simple case of lesion in the biliary
ducts, a view wherein he was supported by Dr, or rather Mr Gamble,
the great specialist; the latter was, however, unable to avoid a
reference to his favourite topic of the greater lymphatics.
The baronet (for Sir N. Lewison had been raised from the knighthood
on the occasion of his services to the child of the Duke of Essex)
was too much of a man of the world to meet violence with violence,
and, after all, possessed a science deep enough to discover that
the differences between them were of no ultimate effect upon the
patient’s treatment.
When an agreement had thus been reached, they all three re-entered
the room. Cosmo joined them, and Dr Cayley, as the doyen of
the faculty, took it upon himself to reassure Mr Burden. In an
inaudible tone, such as the presence of an invalid demands, he gave
instructions to the nurse that the patient should be kept quiet, and
should not be allowed to rise until he felt completely rested. For
diet they prescribed the viands and beverages which Mr Burden was
in the habit of consuming, and so passed downstairs into the hall,
still discussing the interesting technical aspects of his disorder,
balancing, as they did so, their eyeglasses between the fore and
middle fingers of their right hands—a gesture, most unconscious and
natural in Dr Cayley and Mr Gamble, and so well caught by Sir Nathan
as hardly to betray the effort of imitation.
The envelopes presented to them by a servant contained the customary
fees; and, after many warm hopes for the swift recovery of his
father, they took leave of Cosmo, and left the house to convalescence.
[Illustration: THE THREE DOCTORS]
I have dwelt at this length upon the medical direction given by men
of such eminence, not only to show, as it is my duty to do, the
filial regard of Cosmo, but also to furnish an ample explanation
of his conduct at Avonmore during the illness; for, had not
the confirmed opinion of these high authorities assured him that
his father’s indisposition was but temporary, he would never have
pursued the course which some severe critics have blamed, but which
I can only praise. As it was, he felt himself justified in calling
a certain number of chosen guests daily under his roof, and in
undertaking, to some extent, the management of his father’s affairs;
he was confident, moreover, that Mr Burden, on his approaching
recovery, would absolve him of all indiscretion, and commend him even
for his most speculative decisions.
It was announced with pardonable exaggeration (but only in the daily
papers whose pages we hardly recall in our hurried modern life)
that Mr Burden, though still in feeble health, was able to direct
his affairs from the sick room; and Cosmo did not hesitate, with a
commercial courage which the future justified, to use his father’s
name in several important expressions of opinion. He wrote also to
the Press, above his own signature, twice within the space of a week,
strongly supporting an attitude of the Directors which had been
unduly criticised, and emphasising, with a fine indignation, the
treachery of the unpatriotic crew who used his father’s name at a
moment when the great merchant was unable to attend the meetings of
the Board. Indeed, it may truly be said that, at this moment when Mr
Burden’s body was most removed from the affairs of the M’Korio, his
spirit was omnipresent in a way it had never been until that moment;
his credit and position, which were of such incalculable advantage to
that Imperial venture, were never so strongly before the public as at
the moment when Cosmo, for his own wise ends, was speaking in the old
man’s name.
The splendid hospitality which the house at Norwood displayed at
this moment was of importance equally critical. Not that the parties
were large, but that this distant villa, which hitherto had seen
few visitors, and those of but a humdrum sort, now received men
upon whose capital or judgment, the principal affairs of our time
are conducted. In a few days the public rumours of Mr Burden’s
dissensions utterly died away, and the old man’s solid career became
in the general estimation the pivot of the whole M’Korian scheme. So
true is it that Providence does with us more than we mean! For Mr
Burden, passing the days upstairs between sleeping and waking, glad
that his son should be seeing something of companionship during this
difficult period of his illness, would never have had the tenacity or
the judgment to use his own influence as well as it was used by Cosmo
for him.
The strong constitution which Mr Burden had inherited, and which he
had carefully preserved, stood him in good stead during the course of
his little illness. Ten days after he had taken to his bed, that is,
upon August 23rd, he felt himself again; he could eat heartily, he
read with a clear judgment, and he might, had he not wisely deferred
to the opinion of the faculty, have left the house and gone about his
business.
His doctors, however, with the double object of permanently curing
their patient and of advancing the science they adorned, determined
to defer his return to business.
With his physique, and under these conditions of increasing strength,
the analysis of his malady became more and more difficult. His
medical advisers determined therefore to prescribe a potion, whose
virtue it was so to lower the action of the heart and to befog the
brain, as to bring its recipient to a state the pathology of which is
common knowledge throughout the profession. Thus artificially reduced
to a condition which would indeed be morbid, but the familiarity of
which would permit them to agree upon its nature, they could proceed
from the known to the unknown, they could build up a definite basis,
they could cure thoroughly, and they, the great scientists hoped,
at the same time, to observe what organ it was that had failed their
patient, and had yet eluded their consummate powers of observation.
A drug was therefore administered to him by the nurse, and he was
told, as invalids must ever be, that it was but a harmless tonic.
She advised him, if he felt inclined for sleep in the afternoon, to
take a full rest: and, having thus carried out her instructions to
the letter, the excellent woman went out for a few hours’ well-earned
recreation, and left her sufferer to repose.
But when he had drunk his medicine, Mr Burden felt an odd fancy for
the sun. The window of his great bedroom looked north, and he could
see the summer light upon the trees beyond; for the doctors had left
him at eleven, and it was noon. He ordered a servant, therefore, to
take his deck-chair down into the conservatory, upon the southern
side of the house: a greenhouse opening out of the drawing-room, of
which indeed it formed a part, being separated from it only by a
curtained archway supported upon columns in the Corinthian manner.
Just round the corner of this arch, lying with a book in his hand
which he would not read, and covered with a light rug, he felt
a drowsiness not wholly pleasing come upon him, and fell into a
curiously hard and uneasy slumber.
* * * * *
Whatever rules the world, it is not we.
An hour later, Cosmo brought Mr Barnett home to lunch, as had been
his custom during all these days. The meal was short: they feared
to speak at the dining-table lest they should wake Mr Burden, whose
bedroom was immediately above. To avoid disturbing him, they went
into the drawing-room together, to talk at ease upon the subject
which most absorbed them; and Mr Barnett, in whom something of the
artist lingered, watched with pleasure the contrast of strong light
striking the darkened room like a shaft from the greenhouse beyond.
They spoke frankly one to the other, as is the fashion of honest
men, when they believe themselves alone, and near them, in his chair
beyond the archway, Mr Burden lay steeped in an unnatural slumber.
Of what they said to each other I know nothing; but I have heard
minutely the description of the phantasmagoria which passed through
the brain of Mr Burden as the physic took effect.
He seemed to be now here, now there, but always in a place of very
bright colours and strong scents under a hot sun; and, though the
scene continued to change, it had always one thing in common, an
expanse of marsh and reeds and stagnant, slimy, steaming water:
tropical, and deadly to mankind. And up and down this horror there
passed, with movements that corresponded to clouds in his own
brain, great animals, now fantastic, as Wyverns, now of nature as
hippopotami and sloths, but always having in their expression, when
they turned towards him, something of the terrible.
Gradually in this place there were voices; one voice he recognised
for that of his son, the other he could not fix; he knew it and then
he did not know it; it pulsated between extremes of recognition
almost absolute, and again of a complete bewilderment. At last he
thought that he could attach a name to this second voice, a name that
began, he thought, with an N; but the mere attempt at thinking so
pressed upon and tortured him, that his poor soul abandoned itself
again to the mere watching of the confused and painful delirium. And
one voice, which was that of his son, was speaking perpetually of
fools, and of old fashions, and saying that he knew them, as though
he were proud of knowing them; and the other voice kept on insisting
that something or other must be done, and boasting of strength and
of power. Then the first voice, Cosmo’s again, passed into another
phase, and entreated and cajoled; and the second voice seemed only
to sneer, and, in some astonishing incongruous way, the name of his
friend, the name of the friend he had lost, the name of Mr Abbott,
came once and again upon the sufferings of this poor old man, and
mixed grotesquely with those other vague and awful things. And he
heard a repeated reference to an approaching death, and, on the other
side, a repeated sneer that death kept no certain hour.
Through all this tortured hour of vision the body and the soul of
him were not only in an agony, but in an anarchy as well; for the
intellect was broken and did not reign. He was entranced, and could
not judge, but only hear and see things quite inconsequent.
Then came the twilight whereby the soul of a man escapes from
darkness. It came rapidly. First he could smell distinctly, it was
the smell of an excellent cigar; then, with his eyes half closed,
he saw a daylight which he knew was not the cheating glare of his
unnatural sleep, and, with every moment, he caught the outer senses
more and more.
Mr Burden’s head was fuddled: he might have been asleep and dreaming
painfully, or he might have heard spoken words: false or true, he
could not comprehend them thoroughly. Even in health he would not
have followed all their meaning. Now they left upon him but a
confused impression of inward desolation and misery, which interwove
with his physical exhaustion and with the dull ache and ill-ease of
his body.
He opened his eyes and saw the realities of our world. He recognised
in a row of pots before him the _Primula Robinsoniensis_, and the
_Ranuncula Japonica_, his gardener’s pride. Still motionless, but
more and more alive, he noted the long lines of soot and grime upon
the glass, the bubbles of dried paint upon the woodwork, and, on
a corner of the iron frame of the conservatory, the stamp of the
makers, “Aurora Works,” and the situation of their industry, the Isle
of Dogs. He stared at the empty stove, and knew himself and his name.
He was broad awake. There were truly voices in the next room; they
were those of Mr Barnett and of his son. So much was real, but the
marsh and the monsters had vanished....
Cosmo’s voice, rapid and low, he could not easily follow, but he
caught the words “You can’t.... How can you possibly? ... must manage
my father.”
Then a protesting series of earnest appeals and an exhortation: “Not
that way ... not that way.”
His son’s voice and manner were so familiar to him, that Mr Burden
almost saw the shake of the head as he listened. But he could
understand nothing. Then again came Mr Barnett’s voice, very deep and
regular and slow.
“All that I cannot onderstand....” It thus interrupted Cosmo twice,
and came at last impatiently and steadily. “So it most be settled!
So!” And he heard a heavy hand come down by weight, and without
violence, upon the arm of a chair.
It occurred to Mr Burden suddenly that, though he was listening
to gibberish, yet he was listening unseen. To a character of his
simplicity, the thought was odious. I do not say it to ridicule
him. In a way it does him honour that he did not wish to be an
eavesdropper; and his desire to reveal himself was the more laudable
and just from the fact that he could make no use, and indeed no
sense, of what he overheard.
He shifted awkwardly and wearily from his invalid’s chair, stood up,
somewhat dizzy for the moment, and coughed as men do purposely on the
stage; he was not heard. Mr Barnett had just repeated with emphasis
the phrase: “This fellow Âppott,” when, with that reminiscence of his
trouble full in his ears, Mr Burden stood in the open archway which
led from the conservatory to the room.
He held to a curtain, as though for support. Mr Barnett stared at
him, and Cosmo seeing such a look in his companion’s eyes, swung
round sharply and, in his turn, saw his father. He leapt at once to
his feet and caught the old man’s arm.
“Where have you been?” he cried. Then he remembered his duty, and
said, more gently, “Where’s the nurse?”
Twenty surmises ran through his head. He thought perhaps the old man
was wandering—and he thought of many other things. And, during this
very awkward pause, Mr Barnett, whose great energies could ill brook
interruption, stared at the father and the son in the doorway: the
lower part of his strong face was thrust forward, his eyes vivid with
protest. But he did not say a word, and Cosmo was glad he did not.
Then Cosmo himself added, this time quite gently:
“You might kill yourself! You were not allowed to move after your
medicine.... You must let me do everything.”
[Illustration: THE UNEXPECTED APPEARANCE OF MR BURDEN]
The old man did not resist at all; he was led across the room by
Cosmo, past Mr Barnett, at whom he feebly smiled, and from whom he
received no smile in return but still that powerful indignant glance,
and as he stumbled by:
“I was asleep,” he murmured. For the only time in his life he was not
believed.
Cosmo led him upstairs again to his room. His father slept again, but
Cosmo waited till the nurse returned. He took her aside and spoke
to her in such a fashion that she determined to leave that roof—a
decision she wisely postponed. Then he went down, bracing himself as
best he could to find Mr Barnett.
To his very considerable annoyance, Mr Barnett had gone. He ran down
to the gate and looked up Alexandrovna Road; but, if the distant
Panhard he saw was that of the financier, it had gone too far for
recall. He went back to the house, up the drive, moodily; he stood
gazing for some minutes at the chair in the conservatory, he paced
and calculated the distance between it and the place where he and Mr
Barnett had sat; then he went and stood by the window and looked out
for a long time in silence, wondering at, and misreading, everything.
* * * * *
With that unpleasant little episode, a mischance which only the
imperfect sympathies of the various parties to it had exaggerated, Mr
Burden appeared to recover in a final manner.
His rapid restoration was due, in part, to the physicians, who found
his symptoms far easier to analyse under the effects of the drug
than they had been during the complex reactions of his convalescence;
and in part to the curious obstinacy of the old man himself who, with
a vivid memory of their last experiment, successfully refused to
touch another spoonful of medicine. Under the combined influence of
their science and his mother-wit, he was within three days dressed
and about the house. Within a week he was walking out daily, and soon
manifested that revolt against restraint, which is but the return of
an active and working brain to its normal functions.
As Mr Burden could spend more and more of the day downstairs, Cosmo
rightly thought it less and less his duty to waste his time at home.
Such was his zeal in his new-found opportunities for work, that he
would leave the house before his father had been permitted to rise;
and the recreation necessary after a long day, not to speak of
private calls which had to be made upon other members of the original
syndicate, commonly prevented his return until long after his father
was asleep.
In these days, therefore, which just preceded Mr Burden’s
reappearance in the City, he saw but little of his son.
Of Mr Barnett he saw and heard even less, on account of that
deplorable imbroglio with which my reader is already acquainted.
The interval was short. It was but a fortnight after the scene in
the drawing-room, that the doctor gave Mr Burden leave to resume his
business activities; but the continued loneliness and silence had
borne upon him very heavily.
I myself saw him in those days, and I myself was deceived by his
reaction towards health. I did not comprehend, nor did anyone
comprehend, how deep was the wound which even so short an illness and
one of so indeterminate a nature could inflict upon such a character
as Mr Burden’s, a character already shaken by doubt and continual
nameless perplexities.
We could all see that he had been thrust suddenly beyond the boundary
of old age, but we could not see the further thing: I mean, that he
was very near to the last fall of all; that any sudden blow might be
his end.
That blow was delivered, of course, by the blundering hand of the
unpardonable Abbott.
* * * * *
It will readily be perceived that, with a man of Mr Abbott’s
temper, the great forces of modern England would breed, not only a
reactionary hatred, but a mania for suspicion.
The man was for ever putting two and two together. He was perpetually
seeing conspiracies where no conspiracy existed, nay where no
conspiracy could, in the nature of things, exist. He would smell out
the secret influences of what he called “cosmopolitan finance,” in
the actions of the dullest and most orderly of civil servants. He
had dropped one newspaper after another, proceeding on a scale, as
it were, from the fairly sane to the hopelessly fanatical. At last
he had come to reading none, with the exception of a weekly sheet
which not only floundered into every mare’s nest of politics, but was
largely supported by subscriptions from Mr Abbott himself.
With such a temper attaching to the ordinary affairs of the State;
with a view of the occupation of Egypt (for example) that it was
provoked by a group of bankers and scripholders; with the confirmed
opinion that the problems of the Irish Land were principally due
to the greed of English moneylenders—with every illusion a belated
radical can nourish, it is not wonderful that Mr Abbott, the moment
difficulties of any sort threatened himself, should have positively
raved.
A man of quieter temper would have known that Cosmo’s strong and
virile attitude during the moment of their short interview was a
piece of very legitimate _finesse_. A man who could see modern
commerce as it is, would have admired the young man for the attempt,
but would have known how little strength lay behind it.
You cannot “freeze out” a man in Mr Abbott’s position. A shipowner,
a prosperous member of the most prosperous trade in England, has
no paper floating about that you can buy up; the investment of his
savings are not commonly in such securities as even a group of
enemies can largely affect. The principal weapons of that engrossing
warfare which is the crusade and school of knighthood of our day, are
useless in shipping circles. Freights are still a sort of neutral
ground in the fierce contest of high souls, and will so remain until
one dominating brain shall have pooled the interests of the main
lines, frozen out the tramps, and unloaded the shares of a Trust
upon legislators in such a manner as to forbid the interference of
Parliament.
In spite of the strength of his position, however, Mr Abbott’s
suspicions raged. A Government contract which lay between him and
the Excelsior Line fell to the Excelsior. He employed two men at
Somerset House for five days to discover the shareholders of the
Excelsior, and of the syndicate that was behind the Excelsior, and
of the investing company which was the principal holder of the
syndicate:—and so forth. He got very little for his pains; but he
remained convinced that some influence allied to the M’Korio had
defrauded him.
A cargo of which he had made certain at Barcelona failed him, and the
ship came home in ballast. The innocent name of the worthy Spaniard
who had been unable to oblige was darkly connected in his mind with
Mr Harbury.
He had great difficulty in effecting an insurance upon the _Polecat_.
He was asked a rate which he would not pay, and she went out
uninsured. More than three weeks overdue in the customary run to
the Plate, he did at last reinsure at thirty-five guineas; the very
next day she appeared, apologetic but undamaged, in the river. If Mr
Abbott had dared, he would have talked of bribery.
A succession of small incidents such as these, incidents which in
fifteen days had hardly cost him £15,000, had driven Mr Abbot quite
off his balance; and it happened that, on the evening before Mr
Burden was to return to his business, Mr Abbot sat down and wrote to
Norwood a letter as mad as ever man wrote; but in such terms as have
since, I am glad to say, been found indictable before a common jury.
I must offer a passing apology for printing it; it is the business
of a recorder to record, and I am impelled to put down even this
offensive extravagance.
The letter reached Avonmore by the first post of Monday, the 3rd
of September. It came with a batch of others on that morning when
Mr Burden had determined to return to town; the morning of a day
upon which he was expected to see, for a moment a least, his fellow
Directors at the offices of the M’Korio.
The merchant came down to breakfast cheerily, with a deceptive thin
veneer of health. He sat at his table assuming the airs of old
(Cosmo had long been gone); he opened his correspondence envelope by
envelope. The first, second, and third, were circulars; the fourth
was a wedding card, the fifth a prospectus; he saw next Mr Abbott’s
handwriting, and his mind changed, darkened, and grew cold, as does
a plain in early summer when a snow cloud comes above it from the
hills. He opened the envelope and read these words:—
“MY DEAR BURDEN,
“I don’t mind your being hand and glove with a greasy German Jew,
nor your toadying a jointed hop-pole like that bankrupt Benthorpe;
and as for Cosmo coming into my office and threatening me, I only
mind just so much as to prevent him ever coming there again.
But what I will not have is that any of your dirty gang should
interfere with my business; and if another ship of mine goes wrong
in any way, I warn you, and you can warn your Lords and your Jews
and your Cabinet Ministers, that I will sink the cost of another
ship in smashing the lot of you. I write to you because you are the
only one I know, and you may take it from me that I shall not write
again.”
Such was the letter.
There are many things in this mad scrawl which I should digress
a moment to ridicule and condemn, were it not more germane to
the spirit of my record to pass them by in contemptuous silence.
But there is one phrase which I cannot treat with the neglect it
deserves. I mean the phrase about Lord Benthorpe.
The abominable meanness in a man of Mr Abbott’s wealth harping on the
poverty of a superior is not my theme: it is enough to say that, had
the cases been reversed, Lord Benthorpe would never have descended to
expose the misfortunes of Mr Abbott. I have rather to comment upon
the word “bankrupt.”
By the time the matter comes into court, it is probable (considering
the dilatory habits of Mr and Mrs O’Rourke) that my work will be
regarded as the standard account of Mr Burden’s life. I am in
possession of this precious epistle. It is before my eyes as I write,
and I desire to put it publicly, with all my special knowledge of the
circumstances, at the service of the perfect gentleman whom he has
wronged.
Mr Abbott will find, I think, that our English law of libel is strong
enough and flexible enough to punish most heavily the use of such
a term. His lordship never has passed, nor, please God! ever shall
pass, through the Bankruptcy Court. Of his unfortunate lack of means
I have already spoken—I trust as delicately as possible—nor have I
concealed from my readers the ready help and sympathy he received
from his friends in the financial world. But between honourable
poverty and defalcation, both English law and English sense draw a
sharp line, as the slanderer will discover to his cost.
I will dwell no more upon the point. It is not the fashion of the
Island Race to pre-judge a matter which is so soon to fall beneath
a judge: Mr Justice Hopper, for many years a strong supporter in
Parliament of the Water Companies and the National Party.
* * * * *
When Mr Burden had read Abbott’s shameful words, though he had not
yet gathered all that they implied, and was rather stunned than
wounded by them in the first moment, a look of age passed over his
face: that look which was to return once or twice in the next few
hours, and each time to mean that on his soul was blowing a sharp
gust of death.
He laid his left hand heavily upon the table, sighed, and picked up
his remaining letters and opened them. One was a receipted bill from
his wine merchant; the next a letter from his daughter, Mrs Legros,
asking for money: the parish was a poor one, and they had to feed
the lambs.... Clarence, moreover, was suffering from measles, and
Billy needed a watch. The next was a circular from a company which
desired to cover his floors, not with carpets, but with a kind of
cheap linoleum; he frowned and threw it in the fire. The next was the
reminder letter of summons to the meeting of the Board of Directors
which was to be held in Broad Street, that afternoon, at four.
Methodically he put the hour down on a piece of paper, folded it and
slipped it into a waistcoat pocket; but his hand trembled as he did
so, and the hour he put down was wrong. The next letter was an appeal
for funds from a society for the Prevention of Evil, two more were
about American quack medicines, and the last was an angry note from a
local tradesman whose goods (so Mr Burden’s housekeeper constantly
maintained) had neither been ordered nor received, and were therefore
left unpaid for.
When he had read all this, his correspondence, Mr Burden’s left hand
stretched out again, his eyes not following it, and unsteadily took
up Mr Abbott’s letter. He read it a second time.
Its ridiculous language could touch no chord of humour, for all
those chords were silent; nor of resentment, for the man was already
broken. Cold senile tears gathered in his eyes; he put the letter
down again, and gazed across his lonely table at the window and the
grey London sky without. Then, at last, he rose with a determination
in his heart.
As he went through the hall and groped a little too long for his
hat, his housekeeper, a woman who had been with him since his wife’s
last illness, bade him not go out, telling him he was not fit to
try even the summer air, still less attuned to business; but, by
his expression and manner, it was evident that none of these things
mattered to him at all.
He was opening the door with the intention of walking directly to the
station, when the bell rang, and he saw, upon the step without, a man
whom he had known for many years: a Mr Hale.
Mr Hale greeted him with respect, and Mr Burden, after looking at him
some time before speaking, as is the way with men who suffer either
in body or in mind, took him by the arm almost familiarly, and said:
“Come with me, Mr Hale, and say whatever you have to say as I go down
to the station.”
Mr Hale was overwhelmed by so much condescension—for Mr Hale was of
no position in the world.
This citizen was an excellent example, not only of what human
industry may do against harsh conditions, but also of the squalls of
evil fortune which overtake merit even in its hours of success.
His father had been a rag-and-bottle merchant and dealer in
kitchen-stuff during the ’fifties, and had plied his trade in a
very little shop so near to Mr Burden’s house as to be a capital
_débouché_ for the perquisites of the cook. He left sufficient
capital at his death for his son to set up as an undertaker: a public
servant the necessity of whose presence was then increasingly felt in
the growing and prosperous suburb.
In this trade Mr Hale, junior, did very well for some time. He
enlarged his premises, and put in his window the striking sign of
a coffin accompanied by the words, “Simplicity, Despatch, Economy
and Reform,” the last of which abstractions had, until recent
years, seemed peculiarly congenial to the political spirit of the
neighbourhood.
Mr Burden had first come to know him in connection with the death of
a young man, a neighbour, of whom he had been in a sort of way the
guardian; he had later entrusted him with the mortal remains of Mrs
Burden.
But, shortly after that memorable date, misfortune overtook the
hitherto prosperous purveyor. The increased facility of communication
caused many of his clients to turn for the last rites to larger firms
in the centre of London, and even to entrust their lifeless clay to
the limited companies which had begun to compete with the smaller
capitalists of the profession. The practice of cremation also,
increasing somewhat in favour with the middle classes, had cut into
his profits; and two years of exceptional local health, during which
his permanent expenses could not be reduced, had eaten up his little
reserve. More than once he had undertaken a few jobs of cabinet work
for Mr Burden, who was ever ready to help those around him; but this
kind of job had to be done under the rose, as being beneath the
dignity, and, indeed, opposed to the rules, of the Society to which
Mr Hale belonged.
In the last few weeks things had become desperate with him; and, to
tell the truth, he was approaching Mr Burden upon this occasion for
the loan of £10.
I have no space to detail the conversation which passed between the
two, and I can only plead my old friend’s great weakness, the recent
destruction of his whole stamina and nerve, as an excuse for his
acceding to Mr Hale’s request. It was against all his principles, as
it must be against those of every sober reader of these lines, to
lend money.
He lent it because he was in that mood of mixed softness,
abandonment, and sadness, which so often precedes a catastrophe.
They parted outside the station, Mr Hale with overwhelming thanks and
repeated promises of repayment, Mr Burden gazing at him as though at
some memory of the past, then saying:
“Good-bye, Mr Hale,” and he said it with as much affection and
solemnity as though he were bidding farewell for ever to one of his
oldest friends.
Mr Hale smiled in a terrified manner and departed; Mr Burden went
down the stairs, took his train, and sat silent all the way into
town. For the first time in I know not how many years he held no
newspaper in his hands.
When he came to the City he went directly to Leadenhall Street,
and, purposely passing the little familiar archway which led to his
friend’s private room, went in at last by the great public entrance
of Mr Abbott’s offices.
But as the big plate-doors swung to, he felt something mortal upon
him.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Dr Cayley’s father was old “Honesty” Cayley, twice Mayor of
Bletchton.
CHAPTER XII
Mr Burden stood at the counter where little rails of shining brass
were reflected in the polished wood. He looked for some immediate
obedience; but his aspect at this moment was not such that his wealth
or station could be seen.
Mr Burden stood at the counter with both his hands upon it, waiting
till someone should notice that he was there. Such duties are
reluctantly undertaken by the youngest of a company, and there
approached him at length a young clerk with pale and curly hair,
watery blue eyes, and of a frank, uncivil manner, as though his heart
were in the right place but very small.
Mr Burden said to him:
“I want to see Mr Abbott.”
With easy negligence the young clerk shoved across the counter a form
on which was printed:—
+———————————————————————————————————+
| |
| Name of applicant............... |
| |
| Nature of business.............. |
| |
+———————————————————————————————————+
Mr Burden looked at this form a moment, and then lifting his head:
“Give him my name,” he said.
“What _is_ yer name.”
“Burden ... Mr Burden. Tell Mr Abbott Mr Burden is here, and wishes
most particularly to see him.”
The young clerk sauntered off with a careless ease, and Mr Burden
stood waiting at the counter. His face was very pale, his manner
unsteady. Beyond, in little pens of glass, ill-paid men, working at
books, peeped furtively; some smiled, others looked round to catch a
neighbour’s eye. Mr Burden was oblivious of it all.
The young clerk returned and said, as a servant in livery speaks to a
tradesman in none:
“Mr Abbott can’t see you.”
Patches of colour lit up in Mr Burden’s face; but, before he spoke or
moved, a little dry, grey man who had served his master faithfully
for twenty years, and to whom Mr Burden was as familiar as the City
streets, had seen what was passing and had come forward. He pushed
aside the very foolish youth, and said in a low, respectful voice:
“You had much better wait a little, Mr Burden, sir; you had indeed.”
Mr Burden shook his head slowly. He took up an office pen and wrote
a few lines upon a memorandum sheet. He folded it and put Mr Abbott’s
name outside.... “Take him that,” he said, “I must see him.”
What he had written I do not know; but I am assured that the address
was almost illegible, so violently did his hand tremble.
The little grey man went off in some fear. He was not long away. When
he came back, he bore in his hand the same note, unopened. “I am very
sorry, Mr Burden, sir,” he said, most anxiously ... “indeed, if you
will let me....”
Mr Burden took the note from him and tore it into twenty pieces
methodically and strongly, and scattered them upon the floor, casting
them deliberately down like seed to grow up into some remorseful
harvest. Then, the little grey man watching him anxiously as he went,
he passed through the monumental doors into the street.
It was with a most unnatural energy that he pushed through the crowds
on the pavement. His emotion forced a spasm of life through the worn
channels of his brain; he walked rapidly, his head bent down, till he
came to Broad Street and the offices of the M’Korio. The giant saw
him as he passed up the great stairs and saluted him, but Mr Burden
noticed nothing. He went on at once to that principal room, where he
knew that a meeting of the Board was to be held, and into this room
he strode, full of purpose, but checked a moment by the presence of
others as he entered.
He saw by the window the little group which, as he thought, had
ruined his peace for ever, and, among them, he saw Cosmo. He saw
Cosmo standing as a friend of theirs should stand, talking with them
familiarly.
They were four: Cosmo and Mr Barnett, Lord Benthorpe and Mr Harbury:
their minds at ease on that quiet and sunlit afternoon, fresh with
the activity of the City, ready for the action of life.
To each of them great fortune promised: and to Mr Barnett, who was
already very wealthy, more than fortune—true political power, a
thing to him worth all the effort of a life. They stood there at
the window, these four men, making not only their own success, but
the success of England, and building up yet another new people over
seas. There was a natural buoyancy in all their attitudes; the hard
work had been done, and only the last stone remained to be raised.
Then the one would have recovered his honour, another have solved his
indebtedness, another have found himself secure for the first time
in permanent wealth, another in retirement and leisure, and strong
over men.
They knew, indeed, what phantasies and little meticulous rules had
haunted this fifth man that had entered. They knew their Mr Burden by
this time; especially Cosmo, his son, foresaw what effort had still
to be gone through. But they had no doubt of success, for a man thus
sensitive is also weak and very yielding to persuasion: nay, as he
entered, that weakness of his was apparent, in the hesitation of his
step and the uncertain glance which he cast upon them.
Cosmo hung back a little, for he revered his father. The three others
came forward with effusion; Lord Benthorpe with perhaps rather more
restraint than the rest; and Mr Barnett, taking it upon himself to be
spokesman said:
“My dear Mr Burden!” and he took Mr Burden’s hand in his right hand
and put his left hand over it and held it fast, to show a real
friendship; and then he pulled up to the table a great chair of
dignity, and asked Mr Burden to be seated in it. Mr Burden said:
“Thank ye”: he sat down slowly, as would a man that bore a heavy sack
upon his shoulders, and the rest sat down around the table.
After a little silence, Cosmo asked his father whether his train had
been punctual. Mr Burden answered oddly. He said in a manner, which
(alas!) still savoured of pomposity:
“Gentlemen....” Then he coughed and was silent.
Mr Barnett, who all his life had possessed the art of managing men,
smiled a ready, but not convincing smile, and said:
“Eh, Mr Burten? Yes?”
Mr Burden, with a troubled look, and with eyebrows drawn together and
upwards, looked round at them, avoiding the eyes of each, and gazed
to his right at the window, as might a man who had the direction of
a battle, but who knew nothing of war, and who saw the closing in of
lines;—and fate, and dread, and ending coming forward upon him out of
the smoke and clamour.
He turned his head slowly round; he shifted his feet nervously, and
he began again:
“Gentlemen ... I have been thinking ... that there are some things
... I don’t say many ... but still there are some things which might
be settled without hurting us and without hurting anyone else,
and.... Of course I understand the position fully.” He tried to smile
and failed. “I am a man of the world, gentlemen; I understand the
position fully ... I know it may be a little sacrifice ... I think
you will all agree with me it should be settled.”
Mr Barnett, who all his life had possessed the art of managing men,
cleared his throat, and spoke rapidly in a confident tone: his hands
were clasped before him upon the table, his short creative thumbs
were pressed together. He said:
“I think we exactly know what it is in Mr Burten’s mind? It does
Mr Burten to his honour. Mr Burten is alluding herein, Lord
Bent’orpe” (for Mr Barnett always addressed Lord Benthorpe upon such
occasions—and Lord Benthorpe bowed very slightly, as men do who owe
nothing and can give much) “Mr Burten is alluding, Lord Bent’orpe,
I say, to our policy with regard to Mr Âppott herein. Mr Burten, it
does you much to your honour.”
Lord Benthorpe, whose ignorance of all these things was that of a
sincere and honourable gentleman, bowed again to Mr Burden: it was a
very slight bow, even more slight than that accorded to Mr Barnett;
and I am sorry to say that, immediately afterwards, he had the lack
of tact to remark: “I am sure that any such small matter as Mr Burden
wishes can be arranged.”
Mr Barnett betrayed considerable irritation.
“With all respect due,” he said—in spite of his accent, he had a
great command of English idiom—“with all respect due, and ready,
Lord Bent’orpe, and with every desire I have to spare——” here he
hesitated a moment, and Mr Harbury, to whom English was a familiar
language, murmured, “susceptibilities”—“susceptibilities,” continued
Mr Barnett, still pondering on all the syllables, “we have other
interests herein than alone our own to consider. We have the
interests also of the shareholders surely to consider. I think one
will agree with me? Ah?”
He lay back a little in his chair, and looked round at his three
companions, and then a little rapidly to his left at Mr Burden: Mr
Burden was silent, and Mr Barnett went on:
“We have, I say also, the shareholder-interest to consider. If we
had ourselves alone to safeguard so, we should be understanding Mr
Åppott’s position; indeed, I am very sure. Büt” (and here Mr Barnett
lowered his voice in a manner which would have been impressive even
to a larger audience, and wagged his head gloomily): “Büt have we
choice I fear...?”
He looked sadly a moment at the middle of the table, with an
expression not unlike that of an animal about to be sacrificed,
then throwing up his hands with the palms outwards, said in a sudden
return of native feeling:
“Ach! God! He hass not come in! He hass not come in! It is right on
his own head, I say.”
It was not often that Mr Barnett allowed a sudden revulsion of
feeling to awaken in him the exclamations of his youth, but he felt
strongly upon Mr Abbott’s action; he thought it stupid; he thought
it unbusiness-like. He thought it dangerous to the M’Korio Delta
Development Co. He thought it, from what he knew of the English,
un-English, and, during the few seconds of that angry phrase, a
native phrase had returned to him, strongly borne upon a gust of
natural passion.
Cosmo tentatively intervened:
“Perhaps, father, you could go and see Mr Abbott again?” Mr Burden,
hearing the voice of his son, and being thereby suddenly reminded of
his home and of many years, looked up with an awful pain in his eyes.
“No,” he said.
Then there was another awkward silence, which Lord Benthorpe did not
much relieve by saying twice the words, “I hope, ... I hope,” and
looking round with an uncertain smile.
Mr Harbury broke in, with the air of a man whose thought has matured;
he leant his chin upon his left hand, and looked steadily at Mr
Burden.
“Mr Burden, I think you will admit that Mr Abbott should have come
in. If he does not come in, we are absolutely bound to oppose him
with all our force. You see that as well as I do. You cannot justly
complain if we destroy that which attempts to destroy us. You cannot
justly complain if you refuse to persuade him further, and refuse
also to help us in our self-defence against him. There is no possible
third course.”
All this was said fixedly and clearly, as Mr Harbury had long learnt
to say the thing that should dominate a weak man’s mind; but Mr
Burden was so ill as to be perverse and irrational; and the anger
that makes men drunk was rising up in him again.
He cried much louder than he had meant:
“I have said all I have to say.”
His anger filled and impelled him; he kept control of his body to
some extent, but no longer of his mind; and he continued still
loudly, without reason, and forgetting his determination to be cold:
“I will not be a party to any intrigue against my friend!”
Now such are the limits of human nature, and such is its feebleness,
that even men like Mr Barnett (who had known all his life how to
manage men) can lose their steadfast poise in a sharp moment of
wrath. He looked round smartly, he put his face somewhat too suddenly
forward, as towards an opponent, and thrust into Mr Burden’s already
kindled fires the fuel of an insult.
Those two deep sunken lines which marked the financier’s heavy cheeks
like furrows and drew down the lowering corners of his mouth, were
contracted into a kind of intense sneer; and he said, without opening
his teeth:
“You will party be to your pocket whatever!”
Then Mr Burden, power bubbling up within him in spite of his age,
in spite of his illness, and filled, in spite of his wealth, with a
desire for freedom, cried out at him:
“Take care, Barnett, you’re going a little too far, just a little too
far.... I wouldn’t have that ... not for worlds!”
Mr Burden’s breath came very quickly, and he had his lips as closely
pressed together as any had yet seen them, and his head was full
with the blood of his anger. But there was anger in Mr Barnett also,
though of another race and kind and climate; and he said with a full
sneer, where only half a sneer had been before:
“What can you do? So?”
I repeat, for the twentieth time, that Mr Barnett’s knowledge of men
had never failed him. He must not be judged on this exceptional case,
nor condemned because he underestimated the follies that men like
Mr Burden can commit, when their state of mind is such as was then
Mr Burden’s state of mind. For, a passion like a fighting passion
possessed Mr Burden, and rioted through his aged and enfeebled body,
forcing its organs beyond their power, and straining the material
framework of his life. In that passion he had forgotten decent
conduct; he had forgotten investments and all that investments should
mean to a just and reasonable man. He repeated without moving:
“What can I do?” He said it two or three times in a low voice. He
remembered a furious letter to the Press which he had not posted:
he remembered his fear lest the Press should refuse to print it.
He remembered his sufferings as the syndicate was preparing, he
remembered his yielding, and what that yielding had cost him in
the soul. He remembered above all Mr Abbott, Charles Abbott, his
friend—and, remembering these things, he lost all control.
He snatched up his hat from the ground, and thrust it far back upon
his head at random: he sprang upright: he held his chair tilted back
with one hand; with the other he grasped his umbrella in a kind of
swagger, tip to ground, as though it had been the scabbard of a
sword. He seemed vigorous, or perhaps distraught: intoxicated with
the words that rose in him.
Mr Harbury, whose judgment I will always trust in such matters, and
who was once not unacquainted with the management of the stage, has
told me that never in his life, not even in the Levant, had he seen
so dramatic a passage of anger as was that of this old Englishman in
the toils: all his respectable English dress was at random; his sober
English gestures became those of a man who fights or labours; and it
is a detail worthy of notice, that the bone stud at his throat broke
as he started up, and that his collar went flying loose at random. He
shouted at them:
“What can I do? Oh, I can do a great deal, I can! You, Barnett, and
you, Harbury, and all of you! All!”
Perhaps he actually felt the presence of a crowd: the massed forces
of this new world surging against him; he spoke as though to numbers.
[Illustration: MR BURDEN IN HIS LAST UNFORTUNATE FIT OF PASSION (FROM
A SKETCH VERY KINDLY PROVIDED BY MR HARBURY)]
“I can smash it! I can smash you, and your precious shareholders
... and, and the Duke ... and the whole thing! I can go and say why
I went! Eh? Oh! good Lord! and I shall print it.... If they won’t
print it in your cursed papers, I’ll placard it; I’ll cover the town
with it; I’ll put your names up high—all your names—your names that
you hide, and the names that you have had and lost ... swindlers and
thieves and scum!”
And, after that outburst, he recovered himself a moment, and stood
away from them, breathing too hard, while Mr Harbury looked down, and
Mr Barnett smiled a drawn smile of hatred that would not betray fear.
Lord Benthorpe, a soldier in his youth, was very genuinely afraid; he
was afraid of something indefinable, of catastrophe ... he did not
understand these things.
There passed through Mr Burden’s mind a spasm of calm which he
mistook for self-control; he fumbled at his collar trying to
straighten it, he put on a civic dignity, and stood up stiffly, and
turned to his son and said:
“Come with me, Cosmo.”
Cosmo, whom this wild scene had distressed beyond bearing, looked
down nervously at the table, shuffled the papers before him, and
murmured almost inaudibly:
“Don’t make a fool of yourself, father.”
Then Mr Burden, stooping forward hurriedly, went out.
There was a full three minutes of silence, during which Mr Barnett’s
face looked like the face of one of those old and monstrous things,
enormous, dug from Assyrian sands, while Mr Harbury coughed twice,
and sidled his eyes uncertainly, and Lord Benthorpe twiddled his
fingers upon his trembling knees.
Then Cosmo, still in confusion, desiring to see whether indeed he
would ruin them all and desiring to be rid of the atmosphere of
anger, got up and went out after his father.
* * * * *
In the street another beam of those few which support the structure
of human life crashed within him; the old man’s brief draft of energy
ran out and was lost utterly.
The mechanical action continued; he could pass through the crowds
with whom he had mixed for fifty years, but he felt a growing tension
of the brain and some such abandonment of grasp and power, as men
feel who are drowning, and who lose their consciousness just before
they drown.
A few steps behind him followed Cosmo, his son. Interests, more
momentous than the life of one man, made it imperative to Cosmo
that the M’Korio should not be betrayed. There was just time for
his father to give notice of disclaimer; there was ample time to
visit some one of those newspapers that continued in spite of loss
and a deserved unpopularity to attack our great scheme of Empire.
The exchange was shut. There was time to ruin everything before the
morning. Nor could Cosmo know what his father suffered: he followed
in the interests of the M’Korio, and, happily, his father did not
know that he followed.
There are duties of many kinds; and Cosmo was doing one of these many
duties as best he knew.
He saw his father pass the statue of Mr Peabody, philanthropist,
cross Cornhill, and King William Street, and make for the Cannon
Street terminus; but Cosmo was a man to do his duty, when he did
it, thoroughly: it is a habit to which he owes the great position
he now enjoys.[11] He did not lose sight of Mr Burden until he had
seen him actually enter the gates of the railway station; then only
did he turn away, with heaven knows how much relief, and plan such
recreation as was legitimately his after the strain of the last few
hours. He sent first a telegram to Mr Barnett to reassure him, and
then cast off all business and went west, to spend the evening with
such companions as he had previously engaged.
But Mr Burden, bowing under the increasing weight of his malady,
hesitated as he went up to take his ticket. He had forgotten, and was
at a loss in everything. He did not remember his season ticket; and,
when he stood before the little window, an impatient crowd gathered
behind him, cursing at his delay. He had forgotten even the name of
the station for his home. The trained clerk was quick enough to meet
the difficulty. He took the gold piece that the old merchant had put
down, and gave him in exchange such a third-class ticket as would
carry him to the very extremities of the suburban zone. Mr Burden
looked at the unfamiliar name upon the paste-board and moved slowly
on to the platform; a considerable volley from the long queue whom he
had just released followed his shambling figure; till a wit at the
head of it restored the public humour by giving him very publicly the
title of Methuselah. Mr Burden, wandering vaguely towards the train,
did not so much as hear.
On the platform the porters knew him, and, in spite of the colour
of his ticket, opened for him a first-class carriage; one, with the
ready courtesy of his kind, helped him to his place, then, turning,
tapped his forehead and jerked his thumb over his shoulder with a
leer; for Mr Burden was evidently very ill indeed.
In the train he sat, relieved by some repose, and conscious (in a
blurred way) that an old man in the corner of a railway carriage was
safer from insult and observation, than wandering on a platform, a
thing for gibes.
He sat dully, his brows contracting now and then. The names of
the stations pleased him, because they were familiar. He tried to
remember their order, or at least the name of such as he had not
yet reached; but he could not. He was puzzled, and looked round
at his fellow passengers, as though for help. They glanced at him
above their papers, and saw that he was ill. They feared for the
decencies. One, more refined than the rest, bolted out at the next
stopping-place. The others defended themselves with silence, reading
steady behind the bulwark of the evening papers.
The old man turned to the window beside them, and watched the
stations and the people as the train went on. He saw the news upon
the placards, flaring under the flaring lights. He recited the
headlines slowly to himself. They were associated dimly, he knew not
why, with anxiety; they distressed him.
Then there was a little darkness and a rumble, and he heard the
name of Norwood. He recognised it at once, and got out, and stood
irresolutely at the gate. The collector took the ticket out of his
hand, and smiled. Mr Burden looked at him fixedly, wondering at his
smile, and felt for a moment an angry wave of emotion. He took this
man also for one of his enemies.
But a muddled feeling of pleasant association came after. He took him
foolishly for a friend, and smiled and nodded in reply. Then, by pure
instinct, such as animals have, he found the way towards his home.
He came up that familiar road, his head reeling, and a bond, as
though of iron, oppressing it within; and, as he walked, he suffered
some dull ache continually. His slow steps jarred him; and now and
then those pulsating throbs that are Death’s artillery preparing his
attack, hammered at the walls of his being.
[Illustration: THE SERIOUS INDISPOSITION OF MR BURDEN IN THE TRAIN]
He kept to one line of the pavement to make more sure; and once he
thought: “Perhaps I am drunk.” For it flashed twice on him that he
was something different from himself; and he mixed with a night forty
years gone, when he had drunk a whole bottle of some kind of wine. He
heard again his father’s anger; and it seemed to him, in a fantastic
way, that he was about to meet that anger now—after all those
years.
The functions of humanity were breaking down in him: memory,
connection, harmony. Oh, poor Mr Burden! He had not known what was
meant by the preachers when they preached; he had not known what
was before him when they talked of the Soul. Mr Burden had called
it immortal in his recited creed, and very right had he been in so
calling it, and he was to prove it right in astounding trials, but in
so doing quite to pass beyond the meaning of his word or theirs.
He came up that familiar road: he saw the gates of his own house—they
both stood white in the evening. Habit (or ritual) the mistress of
men sane, the good nurse of the last hours, carried him stumbling
beyond the first gate. He passed the lodge, and, stumbling still, he
reached the steps at his door. Here the old man would have sat down,
as beggars do, to rest, had not habit still sustained and preserved
his manhood: for never in his life had he done so strange a thing as
to sit upon the doorsteps of a house.
It was his house, and he was master of it. He felt in his pocket for
a key, and found one. He tried the door with it; but the key was
too large. Many thoughts at once confused him, for he was troubled
by Pain and Mortality: Pain and Mortality wrestled with his failing
manhood, to mount, to ride, to conquer. But they were not in the
saddle yet. He was determined to open his own door. He fancied many
things at once. That his door had changed, or the key. Of his home
and himself he was still sure; but his key and his door had already
entered that world where all things common change and mingle, and
where some other things, less known, emerge quite fixed for ever. Of
his home and himself, he was still sure. His key and his door were
already passing; himself and his home were, alas! to follow.
As he grated at the door, a faithful servant of his, a woman of the
name of Kate Hatteras, heard him, and ran and opened. He would have
told her the miracle of the door and of the key, but Pain—now grown
into the whole of himself and wrestling hard, a power that knew its
aims—Pain constrained him. He groaned, and his servant supported him
deftly with her laborious and dutiful arm, and there flashed between
them that good bond of long acquaintance, and Charity came into this
house and visited its dying master—the first of the last angels. And,
after Charity, there came those three great spirits, whose Hebrew
names I never knew, but which are called in our language the Design,
and the Mercy, and the Justice, of God.
Charity and the old servant helped him up the stair, soothing him; he
would have still spoken of the key and of the door; he smiled with
smiles that were those of a child or of a man in extreme old age.
Then his pain returned, and he groaned; for the pain was in the head,
where is the citadel of a man besieged. His keep was taken.
Once, during that last little pilgrimage, upon a landing, he stopped,
and tried to speak some senile syllables. He wished to thank his
companion courteously. No one else had been directly good to him and
to his dissolving humanity in all these terrible hours; but, in the
midst of his attempt, the key returned to him. He mixed the mention
of it into his speech, frowned a little, and stopped.
“Come, sir,” said that admirable woman, “come along; you’ll be
better, sir. Don’t you take on; now don’t ’ee”; for she had been born
away from towns, and her duty, her service, her honour, her hard
work, and her kind of English, were all one thing.
So he took comfort, in spite of his pain, and her help was his
support; nor had he any other friend, from that moment until he died.
Mr Burden was put to bed, not only by this servant, but by another
named Elizabeth, and by the knife-and-boot boy too, whose daily
task was indeed accomplished before nine, but who commonly remained
against orders till eleven, that he might enjoy communion with
his kind. And all these three, Kate Hatteras, Elizabeth, and the
knife-boy, were awed in the presence of this good man, whom God had
made and preserved, and was now taking back from them, and from Upper
Norwood, and from England.
The burden and the grotesque of their task wreathed up into the
sublime; they felt like travellers over whom a mist is lifted until
they see, startled, the majesty of great hills before them. Their
souls were raised by the sharp apparent nearness of those awful
gates, through which it was their high destiny also to pass at
last. They saw revealed for another (they themselves had caught the
revelation), the things which each of us is born to see, each at his
own time, upon his dreadful day.
Kate Hatteras, resolute and exact, left the boy to watch, called a
messenger by telephone, sent him to a nursing home near by, and,
finding a cab, directed it to fetch, not this or that celebrity,
but a doctor of the place in whom she had some confidence. Within
an hour, she had in the house a nurse of some age and experience,
but insufficiently refreshed with sleep; there came next all manner
of appliances, and, soon after, the young doctor, nervous and
smiling rhythmically, who went up to the room and gave Death a long
particular name.
But Death could have no need of definition here. He was present
with his most ancient titles, dominant upon a throne, ordering that
infinite vast wherein the narrow walls of one poor human habitation
were not seen, so tenuous were they. His armies at a summons filled
the place all around: He was in his court and power.
The servants were bidden by Kate Hatteras to go and sleep. The doctor
wrote some useless thing, and left it for the morning. It was past
midnight. Kate Hatteras lay down in the dressing-room near by, where,
some few days before, the consultation had been held; she lay down
dressed, and slept, and dreamt of a lonely shore where twilight
stretched out endlessly along dull sands by a silent sea. But next
door, in his bed (and above him some text or other in a frame) lay
Mr Burden, her good master, in the agony of that last steep beyond
which, they say, is an horizon.
He muttered incoherently, with pauses of silence between, and the
nurse, though lacking sleep, yet thought it her duty to watch.
The September night was chilly; a fire was lit. She sat rigid and
staring at the fire, till, in a longer spell of silence, her head
drooped; and she living, her living body in spite of her will,
fell unconscious into repose. But round the dying man were other
companions.
Now this, now that, out of the long past was with him; persons and
things all trivial. He spoke twice of an order—then he would bid a
clerk write something ... to whom? He forgot the name ... he forgot
the name. He complained of his memory; then he sighed a little, and
was still.
In a moment he turned, and began his muttering again. To many
friends, long dead, he spoke of the key and of his honour, and of
... of ... he sought for a name that would fit at once a traitor
and a lost friend, something evil in the world;—some spirit or
other. Perhaps a son. The effort strained him; he groaned again
and was silent. One fixed and harassing perplexity recurred. There
was something being done against his will at home; some quarrel of
judgment: the children surely—or was it a servant? His wife was there
by the bedside, renewing some ancient domestic difference: ... but
there! he was willing to yield. Anything, anything to cool the press
of fever that was gaining upon the turmoil within him: yet he wished
her nearer to him and understanding more, for he was very ill; and he
kept on whispering: “As you will, my dear, as you will.” Then, almost
aloud: “Don’t go! ... don’t go without settling it, my heart!” But
she was gone.
Mr Burden opened his eyes: he knew that he was awake: he saw the
ceiling plainly, and the stucco pattern of it, above the dull light
of the falling fire. His wife, the real picture of her, rushed into
his mind; he knew that she had gone that very moment, shutting the
door and leaving him. He could not move, for something had snapped,
and all was changing; he felt himself utterly alone.
Loneliness caught him suddenly, overwhelming him; wave upon wave of
increasing vastness, the boundaries leaping, more and more remote,
immeasurably outwards with every slackening pulse at the temples.
Then it was dark; and the Infinite wherein he sank was filled with
that primeval Fear which has no name among living men: for the moment
of his passage had come.
_Sanctus Fortis, Sanctus Deus,
De profundis oro Te.
Miserere, Judex Meus,
Mortis in discrimine._
Mr Burden’s head jerked a little to the right, his jaw fell, his
hands twitched and grew rigid. Mr Burden was dead.
* * * * *
The dirty light grew in the east of the world, and lit without hope
the labour and despair of the city; the masts and spars of the ships
a long way off in the docks showed delicate and true. There was a
little streak of murky rose which faded, and, without, one cameo
noise and then another led on to the life of a new day. A bird among
the black branches of the ruined smoky trees, a footfall in the road
outside; a few more moments and the sound of wheels. It was Cosmo
coming home.
His subdued, but rather husky voice, as he paid the driver, was
carried on the rare morning; he dropped a coin to the pavement and
it rang. Even the shaking key in the lock could be heard, though he
turned it softly. He was careful for his father’s repose, as he had
always been when he came home after a night of pleasure with his
equals. He pulled off his boots, not without many blunders, and went
up the stairs noiselessly, holding the banisters well. He reached his
room above, and lay down at once to sleep, half dressed, the sleep he
needed.
An hour later, when it was broad day, the nurse in the room with the
dead man snored fitfully, stirred, and awoke. She started suddenly,
as she looked round at what was in the bed. Then her long experience
composed her, she did what she had to do, and went into the next
room, not liking to be alone. Kate Hatteras woke at her touch; and
they watched together; and only when they saw that the time had come
did they rouse the household. The fires were lit for breakfast to be
cooked, and someone called Cosmo and told him what had fallen in the
night.
* * * * *
Two days after, with reasonable pomp, they restored the body to the
earth, in that part of the cemetery at Norwood where lay the vault
he had purchased: just beyond the sections consecrated to the Roman
Catholics and the Jews. Already, for some fifty-three hours, his
spirit had returned to God who gave it.
Thus did they bury Emmanuel Burden, a dealer in hardware; and his son
inherited his wealth.
I have no fears for him at the Judgment Seat. He had borne with
affection for more than twenty years the common trials of domestic
life. He had brought up three children to maturity. He had dissipated
nothing of his health or patrimony; he had increased his fortune
by sober and by honest means, and with it in some part the wealth
of the country which he adored. He had voted consistently as he
thought best for the interests of Britain, supporting Mr Gladstone’s
Administrations until the fatal year of 1885, and, since that date,
concerning himself for the success of the Unionist or Conservative
candidate. But Mr Burden is dead, and I do not quite see who there is
to take his place.
Honest Englishman and good man—I wish I could have written of him in
nobler terms.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Honorary L. L. D. of Dublin: trustee of Holy Souls Hospital. P.
G. M. of the A. G. O. and major in the volunteers.
_Printed in Great Britain
by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh_
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 108 Changed: be an increasing embarassment
to: be an increasing embarrassment
pg 158 Changed: he ordered a bottle of “one hunderd and eighty”
to: he ordered a bottle of “one hundred and eighty”
pg 187 Changed: University of Dorpat
to: University of Dorpott
pg 210 Changed: About that fellow Âppot?
to: About that fellow Âppott?
pg 210 Changed: Mr Barnet groped with his right hand
to: Mr Barnett groped with his right hand
pg 233 Changed: such a name—almost passsed
to: such a name—almost passed
pg 249 Changed: aren’t of much impoortance
to: aren’t of much importance
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Emmanuel Burden, merchant of Thames st., in the city of London, exporter of hardware : A record of his lineage, speculations, last days and death" ***
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