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 treasonin 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 directlythrough 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 interviewto 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 formedin 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 tellher 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 hehad 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 stillher 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 todraw 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 writtenout 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, burningbefore 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 wantto 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 claspedbefore 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 stillmade 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 ifyousend these back byme, why, it’ll be fitting like; and then I can bring you back some few things ofyournwhatshehas; 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, whythat’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 MrCapes, 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 roomhe 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 noticewhich 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 theTimesand theFinancial News—and that his favourite recreations are shooting, fishing, yachting, golfing, hunting, pig-sticking, polo, and travel. He has also several clubs: among others theDevonshire.

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 certainlydid 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 theTimesto “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, thelinkbetween 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, ofLeeds; 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 natureof 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 thewordmoney 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 littlelaugh. 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 dothat,” 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 storybooks, 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 reappearingat 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 mouthfrom 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 Harburyat 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 hiseyes 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 charactersof 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)

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