EMMANUEL BURDEN

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.