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)]