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.