CHAPTER XI

It was not altogether well with Mr Burden. Strong Englishmen, even in age, will not suffer in body (I think) through any mere disquiet of the mind. The thing was a coincidence, by which his silly doubtings mingled with some more serious physical ailment. But, whatever the cause, in those hot days immediately succeeding Cosmo’s secret visit to Abbott’s office, it was not altogether well with Mr Burden.

At first a chill, or perhaps a passing weakness, confined him to the house. Next he lost appetite, and betrayed an irritability quite unusual to him. His friends were heartily concerned. The Honourable the Rev. Peregrine Mauclerc called twice upon him, and left upon the last occasion a marked copy of theSpectator, containing a most interesting letter from the Rector’s pen upon the subject of Hell, or Annihilation.

Not quite a week later, Mr Burden leant back at the table almost fainting, and it was evident that he could not go into the City.

It was a collapse, nothing more. It was believed that the necessary repose and a few days’ nursing in the house would restore my poor old friend to health. Indeed, he was so restored, and might still be with us but for the accidents which I have yet to relate.

Though there was nothing definitely the matter, Mr Burden’s wealth, and the value of his well-being to so many others besides himself, were sufficient to attract the aid of the medical profession.

Cosmo’s profound, if silent affection was enhanced by the consideration that his father’s position in the world, and ultimately his own, could not but benefit by a proper observation of rank and circumstance: for, with every hour he spent in the society to which his exceptional brain had given him entry, Cosmo learnt more and more the just weight of externals. Doctor Cayley was sent for, and Doctor, or (as he preferred to be called) “Mr” Gamble, the specialist. It was the practice of both these gentlemen to keep by them certain printed forms, and the moment they were called to the bedside of any distinguished patient, to fill in the blanks and post them to all the leading journals quite impartially, without distinction of party. Cosmo himself, with quiet dignity, gave notice of his father’s illness, and of thenames of his medical attendants, to theMorning Post, theTimes, theStandard, theSt James’s Gazette, thePall Mall Gazette, theEagle, theOrb, theMercury, theStar, theDaily News, theChronicle, theIntelligencer, theGlobe, and several other papers whose great position compels them to print a Social Column.

Nor was Mr Barnett idle. The legend of his influence upon the Press I have already dispelled; but a man of such weight in our commonwealth could not be heard without respect, and a few messages from him created a profound impression upon the many editors who had tasted his hospitality.

Apart from all this it chanced that all the proprietors, and most of the wealthier readers of the principal organs of opinion were interested in the M’Korio Delta; thus, from one source and another, by a gradual accumulation of impressions, each perhaps insignificant, Mr Burden’s illness became the theme of very serious public comment. Short leaders appeared; there were pathetic kindly notes; a fine letter from “Cantab” in theTelegraph, and in theSpectatora touching poem—a lovely little thing whose literary merit lent it but a part, and that not the most considerable, of its distinction and depth of feeling.

Nor was Mr Burden’s name printed alone.With every sympathetic reference to his condition, some gracious word would be added in recognition of his intimacy with Mr Barnett, or of what England owed him for having given her such a son as Cosmo. In papers of the wider circulation an allusion to the M’Korio Delta, which was now daily mentioned in at least two places of each issue, gave zest and meaning to the well-meant and charitable wishes expressed for Mr Burden’s recovery.

Within five hours the two medical men arrived at Norwood, and found there, already at the door, Sir N. Lewison, whose European reputation, ever at the service of Mr Barnett, was never better employed than now. Indeed, Mr Barnett had lent the great surgeon the cream and blue Pompadour car wherein to make the visit.

The three learned gentlemen proceeded to the bedroom, where they found Mr Burden sunk in a refreshing sleep.

Gently waked by the soft gesture of the nurse who was in attendance, his condition, especially as regarded his heart, lungs and liver, was examined with all the marvellous skill that modern science has achieved; and when the principal features of his case had been accurately ascertained, the doctors retired into a neighbouring dressing-room to hold ashort consultation which should decide the treatment of their patient.

In the opinion of Sir Nathan (who spoke first), the arthritis was cardiac, or, at the very least, arterial. He cited Pilkington’s note upon Levasseur’s case, and quoted several exceptional things of the sort which had come within his own experience; notably his attendance upon the Hereditary Grand Duke of Lowenburg. With this conclusion, Dr Cayley found himself wholly unable to agree; and, being a man of humble origin,[10]who had risen by personal merit alone, he expressed his difference of opinion in the strongest language. He saw in the whole matter a very simple case of lesion in the biliary ducts, a view wherein he was supported by Dr, or rather Mr Gamble, the great specialist; the latter was, however, unable to avoid a reference to his favourite topic of the greater lymphatics.

The baronet (for Sir N. Lewison had been raised from the knighthood on the occasion of his services to the child of the Duke of Essex) was too much of a man of the world to meet violence with violence, and, after all, possessed a science deep enough to discover that the differences between them were of no ultimate effect upon the patient’s treatment.

When an agreement had thus been reached, they all three re-entered the room. Cosmo joined them, and Dr Cayley, as the doyen of the faculty, took it upon himself to reassure Mr Burden. In an inaudible tone, such as the presence of an invalid demands, he gave instructions to the nurse that the patient should be kept quiet, and should not be allowed to rise until he felt completely rested. For diet they prescribed the viands and beverages which Mr Burden was in the habit of consuming, and so passed downstairs into the hall, still discussing the interesting technical aspects of his disorder, balancing, as they did so, their eyeglasses between the fore and middle fingers of their right hands—a gesture, most unconscious and natural in Dr Cayley and Mr Gamble, and so well caught by Sir Nathan as hardly to betray the effort of imitation.

The envelopes presented to them by a servant contained the customary fees; and, after many warm hopes for the swift recovery of his father, they took leave of Cosmo, and left the house to convalescence.

THE THREE DOCTORS

I have dwelt at this length upon the medical direction given by men of such eminence, not only to show, as it is my duty to do, the filial regard of Cosmo, but also to furnish an ample explanation of his conduct at Avonmore duringthe illness; for, had not the confirmed opinion of these high authorities assured him that his father’s indisposition was but temporary, he would never have pursued the course which some severe critics have blamed, but which I can only praise. As it was, he felt himself justified in calling a certain number of chosen guests daily under his roof, and in undertaking, to some extent, the management of his father’s affairs; he was confident, moreover, that Mr Burden, on his approaching recovery, would absolve him of all indiscretion, and commend him even for his most speculative decisions.

It was announced with pardonable exaggeration (but only in the daily papers whose pages we hardly recall in our hurried modern life) that Mr Burden, though still in feeble health, was able to direct his affairs from the sick room; and Cosmo did not hesitate, with a commercial courage which the future justified, to use his father’s name in several important expressions of opinion. He wrote also to the Press, above his own signature, twice within the space of a week, strongly supporting an attitude of the Directors which had been unduly criticised, and emphasising, with a fine indignation, the treachery of the unpatriotic crew who used his father’s name at a moment when the great merchant was unable to attend the meetings of the Board. Indeed,it may truly be said that, at this moment when Mr Burden’s body was most removed from the affairs of the M’Korio, his spirit was omnipresent in a way it had never been until that moment; his credit and position, which were of such incalculable advantage to that Imperial venture, were never so strongly before the public as at the moment when Cosmo, for his own wise ends, was speaking in the old man’s name.

The splendid hospitality which the house at Norwood displayed at this moment was of importance equally critical. Not that the parties were large, but that this distant villa, which hitherto had seen few visitors, and those of but a humdrum sort, now received men upon whose capital or judgment, the principal affairs of our time are conducted. In a few days the public rumours of Mr Burden’s dissensions utterly died away, and the old man’s solid career became in the general estimation the pivot of the whole M’Korian scheme. So true is it that Providence does with us more than we mean! For Mr Burden, passing the days upstairs between sleeping and waking, glad that his son should be seeing something of companionship during this difficult period of his illness, would never have had the tenacity or the judgment to use his own influence as well as it was used by Cosmo for him.

The strong constitution which Mr Burden had inherited, and which he had carefully preserved, stood him in good stead during the course of his little illness. Ten days after he had taken to his bed, that is, upon August 23rd, he felt himself again; he could eat heartily, he read with a clear judgment, and he might, had he not wisely deferred to the opinion of the faculty, have left the house and gone about his business.

His doctors, however, with the double object of permanently curing their patient and of advancing the science they adorned, determined to defer his return to business.

With his physique, and under these conditions of increasing strength, the analysis of his malady became more and more difficult. His medical advisers determined therefore to prescribe a potion, whose virtue it was so to lower the action of the heart and to befog the brain, as to bring its recipient to a state the pathology of which is common knowledge throughout the profession. Thus artificially reduced to a condition which would indeed be morbid, but the familiarity of which would permit them to agree upon its nature, they could proceed from the known to the unknown, they could build up a definite basis, they could cure thoroughly, and they, the great scientistshoped, at the same time, to observe what organ it was that had failed their patient, and had yet eluded their consummate powers of observation.

A drug was therefore administered to him by the nurse, and he was told, as invalids must ever be, that it was but a harmless tonic. She advised him, if he felt inclined for sleep in the afternoon, to take a full rest: and, having thus carried out her instructions to the letter, the excellent woman went out for a few hours’ well-earned recreation, and left her sufferer to repose.

But when he had drunk his medicine, Mr Burden felt an odd fancy for the sun. The window of his great bedroom looked north, and he could see the summer light upon the trees beyond; for the doctors had left him at eleven, and it was noon. He ordered a servant, therefore, to take his deck-chair down into the conservatory, upon the southern side of the house: a greenhouse opening out of the drawing-room, of which indeed it formed a part, being separated from it only by a curtained archway supported upon columns in the Corinthian manner. Just round the corner of this arch, lying with a book in his hand which he would not read, and covered with a light rug, he felt a drowsiness not wholly pleasing come upon him, and fell into a curiously hard and uneasy slumber.

Whatever rules the world, it is not we.

An hour later, Cosmo brought Mr Barnett home to lunch, as had been his custom during all these days. The meal was short: they feared to speak at the dining-table lest they should wake Mr Burden, whose bedroom was immediately above. To avoid disturbing him, they went into the drawing-room together, to talk at ease upon the subject which most absorbed them; and Mr Barnett, in whom something of the artist lingered, watched with pleasure the contrast of strong light striking the darkened room like a shaft from the greenhouse beyond.

They spoke frankly one to the other, as is the fashion of honest men, when they believe themselves alone, and near them, in his chair beyond the archway, Mr Burden lay steeped in an unnatural slumber. Of what they said to each other I know nothing; but I have heard minutely the description of the phantasmagoria which passed through the brain of Mr Burden as the physic took effect.

He seemed to be now here, now there, but always in a place of very bright colours and strong scents under a hot sun; and, though the scene continued to change, it had always one thing in common, an expanse of marshand reeds and stagnant, slimy, steaming water: tropical, and deadly to mankind. And up and down this horror there passed, with movements that corresponded to clouds in his own brain, great animals, now fantastic, as Wyverns, now of nature as hippopotami and sloths, but always having in their expression, when they turned towards him, something of the terrible.

Gradually in this place there were voices; one voice he recognised for that of his son, the other he could not fix; he knew it and then he did not know it; it pulsated between extremes of recognition almost absolute, and again of a complete bewilderment. At last he thought that he could attach a name to this second voice, a name that began, he thought, with an N; but the mere attempt at thinking so pressed upon and tortured him, that his poor soul abandoned itself again to the mere watching of the confused and painful delirium. And one voice, which was that of his son, was speaking perpetually of fools, and of old fashions, and saying that he knew them, as though he were proud of knowing them; and the other voice kept on insisting that something or other must be done, and boasting of strength and of power. Then the first voice, Cosmo’s again, passed into another phase, and entreated and cajoled; and the second voiceseemed only to sneer, and, in some astonishing incongruous way, the name of his friend, the name of the friend he had lost, the name of Mr Abbott, came once and again upon the sufferings of this poor old man, and mixed grotesquely with those other vague and awful things. And he heard a repeated reference to an approaching death, and, on the other side, a repeated sneer that death kept no certain hour.

Through all this tortured hour of vision the body and the soul of him were not only in an agony, but in an anarchy as well; for the intellect was broken and did not reign. He was entranced, and could not judge, but only hear and see things quite inconsequent.

Then came the twilight whereby the soul of a man escapes from darkness. It came rapidly. First he could smell distinctly, it was the smell of an excellent cigar; then, with his eyes half closed, he saw a daylight which he knew was not the cheating glare of his unnatural sleep, and, with every moment, he caught the outer senses more and more.

Mr Burden’s head was fuddled: he might have been asleep and dreaming painfully, or he might have heard spoken words: false or true, he could not comprehend them thoroughly. Even in health he would not have followed all their meaning. Now they left upon him buta confused impression of inward desolation and misery, which interwove with his physical exhaustion and with the dull ache and ill-ease of his body.

He opened his eyes and saw the realities of our world. He recognised in a row of pots before him thePrimula Robinsoniensis, and theRanuncula Japonica, his gardener’s pride. Still motionless, but more and more alive, he noted the long lines of soot and grime upon the glass, the bubbles of dried paint upon the woodwork, and, on a corner of the iron frame of the conservatory, the stamp of the makers, “Aurora Works,” and the situation of their industry, the Isle of Dogs. He stared at the empty stove, and knew himself and his name.

He was broad awake. There were truly voices in the next room; they were those of Mr Barnett and of his son. So much was real, but the marsh and the monsters had vanished....

Cosmo’s voice, rapid and low, he could not easily follow, but he caught the words “You can’t.... How can you possibly? ... must manage my father.”

Then a protesting series of earnest appeals and an exhortation: “Not that way ... not that way.”

His son’s voice and manner were so familiarto him, that Mr Burden almost saw the shake of the head as he listened. But he could understand nothing. Then again came Mr Barnett’s voice, very deep and regular and slow.

“All that I cannot onderstand....” It thus interrupted Cosmo twice, and came at last impatiently and steadily. “So it most be settled! So!” And he heard a heavy hand come down by weight, and without violence, upon the arm of a chair.

It occurred to Mr Burden suddenly that, though he was listening to gibberish, yet he was listening unseen. To a character of his simplicity, the thought was odious. I do not say it to ridicule him. In a way it does him honour that he did not wish to be an eavesdropper; and his desire to reveal himself was the more laudable and just from the fact that he could make no use, and indeed no sense, of what he overheard.

He shifted awkwardly and wearily from his invalid’s chair, stood up, somewhat dizzy for the moment, and coughed as men do purposely on the stage; he was not heard. Mr Barnett had just repeated with emphasis the phrase: “This fellow Âppott,” when, with that reminiscence of his trouble full in his ears, Mr Burden stood in the open archway which led from the conservatory to the room.

He held to a curtain, as though for support. Mr Barnett stared at him, and Cosmo seeing such a look in his companion’s eyes, swung round sharply and, in his turn, saw his father. He leapt at once to his feet and caught the old man’s arm.

“Where have you been?” he cried. Then he remembered his duty, and said, more gently, “Where’s the nurse?”

Twenty surmises ran through his head. He thought perhaps the old man was wandering—and he thought of many other things. And, during this very awkward pause, Mr Barnett, whose great energies could ill brook interruption, stared at the father and the son in the doorway: the lower part of his strong face was thrust forward, his eyes vivid with protest. But he did not say a word, and Cosmo was glad he did not.

Then Cosmo himself added, this time quite gently:

“You might kill yourself! You were not allowed to move after your medicine.... You must let me do everything.”

THE UNEXPECTED APPEARANCE OF MR BURDEN

The old man did not resist at all; he was led across the room by Cosmo, past Mr Barnett, at whom he feebly smiled, and from whom he received no smile in return but still that powerful indignant glance, and as he stumbled by:

“I was asleep,” he murmured. For the only time in his life he was not believed.

Cosmo led him upstairs again to his room. His father slept again, but Cosmo waited till the nurse returned. He took her aside and spoke to her in such a fashion that she determined to leave that roof—a decision she wisely postponed. Then he went down, bracing himself as best he could to find Mr Barnett.

To his very considerable annoyance, Mr Barnett had gone. He ran down to the gate and looked up Alexandrovna Road; but, if the distant Panhard he saw was that of the financier, it had gone too far for recall. He went back to the house, up the drive, moodily; he stood gazing for some minutes at the chair in the conservatory, he paced and calculated the distance between it and the place where he and Mr Barnett had sat; then he went and stood by the window and looked out for a long time in silence, wondering at, and misreading, everything.

With that unpleasant little episode, a mischance which only the imperfect sympathies of the various parties to it had exaggerated, Mr Burden appeared to recover in a final manner.

His rapid restoration was due, in part, to the physicians, who found his symptoms far easierto analyse under the effects of the drug than they had been during the complex reactions of his convalescence; and in part to the curious obstinacy of the old man himself who, with a vivid memory of their last experiment, successfully refused to touch another spoonful of medicine. Under the combined influence of their science and his mother-wit, he was within three days dressed and about the house. Within a week he was walking out daily, and soon manifested that revolt against restraint, which is but the return of an active and working brain to its normal functions.

As Mr Burden could spend more and more of the day downstairs, Cosmo rightly thought it less and less his duty to waste his time at home. Such was his zeal in his new-found opportunities for work, that he would leave the house before his father had been permitted to rise; and the recreation necessary after a long day, not to speak of private calls which had to be made upon other members of the original syndicate, commonly prevented his return until long after his father was asleep.

In these days, therefore, which just preceded Mr Burden’s reappearance in the City, he saw but little of his son.

Of Mr Barnett he saw and heard even less, on account of that deplorable imbroglio withwhich my reader is already acquainted. The interval was short. It was but a fortnight after the scene in the drawing-room, that the doctor gave Mr Burden leave to resume his business activities; but the continued loneliness and silence had borne upon him very heavily.

I myself saw him in those days, and I myself was deceived by his reaction towards health. I did not comprehend, nor did anyone comprehend, how deep was the wound which even so short an illness and one of so indeterminate a nature could inflict upon such a character as Mr Burden’s, a character already shaken by doubt and continual nameless perplexities.

We could all see that he had been thrust suddenly beyond the boundary of old age, but we could not see the further thing: I mean, that he was very near to the last fall of all; that any sudden blow might be his end.

That blow was delivered, of course, by the blundering hand of the unpardonable Abbott.

It will readily be perceived that, with a man of Mr Abbott’s temper, the great forces of modern England would breed, not only a reactionary hatred, but a mania for suspicion.

The man was for ever putting two and two together. He was perpetually seeing conspiracieswhere no conspiracy existed, nay where no conspiracy could, in the nature of things, exist. He would smell out the secret influences of what he called “cosmopolitan finance,” in the actions of the dullest and most orderly of civil servants. He had dropped one newspaper after another, proceeding on a scale, as it were, from the fairly sane to the hopelessly fanatical. At last he had come to reading none, with the exception of a weekly sheet which not only floundered into every mare’s nest of politics, but was largely supported by subscriptions from Mr Abbott himself.

With such a temper attaching to the ordinary affairs of the State; with a view of the occupation of Egypt (for example) that it was provoked by a group of bankers and scripholders; with the confirmed opinion that the problems of the Irish Land were principally due to the greed of English moneylenders—with every illusion a belated radical can nourish, it is not wonderful that Mr Abbott, the moment difficulties of any sort threatened himself, should have positively raved.

A man of quieter temper would have known that Cosmo’s strong and virile attitude during the moment of their short interview was a piece of very legitimatefinesse. A man who could see modern commerce as it is, wouldhave admired the young man for the attempt, but would have known how little strength lay behind it.

You cannot “freeze out” a man in Mr Abbott’s position. A shipowner, a prosperous member of the most prosperous trade in England, has no paper floating about that you can buy up; the investment of his savings are not commonly in such securities as even a group of enemies can largely affect. The principal weapons of that engrossing warfare which is the crusade and school of knighthood of our day, are useless in shipping circles. Freights are still a sort of neutral ground in the fierce contest of high souls, and will so remain until one dominating brain shall have pooled the interests of the main lines, frozen out the tramps, and unloaded the shares of a Trust upon legislators in such a manner as to forbid the interference of Parliament.

In spite of the strength of his position, however, Mr Abbott’s suspicions raged. A Government contract which lay between him and the Excelsior Line fell to the Excelsior. He employed two men at Somerset House for five days to discover the shareholders of the Excelsior, and of the syndicate that was behind the Excelsior, and of the investing company which was the principal holder of the syndicate:—andso forth. He got very little for his pains; but he remained convinced that some influence allied to the M’Korio had defrauded him.

A cargo of which he had made certain at Barcelona failed him, and the ship came home in ballast. The innocent name of the worthy Spaniard who had been unable to oblige was darkly connected in his mind with Mr Harbury.

He had great difficulty in effecting an insurance upon thePolecat. He was asked a rate which he would not pay, and she went out uninsured. More than three weeks overdue in the customary run to the Plate, he did at last reinsure at thirty-five guineas; the very next day she appeared, apologetic but undamaged, in the river. If Mr Abbott had dared, he would have talked of bribery.

A succession of small incidents such as these, incidents which in fifteen days had hardly cost him £15,000, had driven Mr Abbot quite off his balance; and it happened that, on the evening before Mr Burden was to return to his business, Mr Abbot sat down and wrote to Norwood a letter as mad as ever man wrote; but in such terms as have since, I am glad to say, been found indictable before a common jury.

I must offer a passing apology for printingit; it is the business of a recorder to record, and I am impelled to put down even this offensive extravagance.

The letter reached Avonmore by the first post of Monday, the 3rd of September. It came with a batch of others on that morning when Mr Burden had determined to return to town; the morning of a day upon which he was expected to see, for a moment a least, his fellow Directors at the offices of the M’Korio.

The merchant came down to breakfast cheerily, with a deceptive thin veneer of health. He sat at his table assuming the airs of old (Cosmo had long been gone); he opened his correspondence envelope by envelope. The first, second, and third, were circulars; the fourth was a wedding card, the fifth a prospectus; he saw next Mr Abbott’s handwriting, and his mind changed, darkened, and grew cold, as does a plain in early summer when a snow cloud comes above it from the hills. He opened the envelope and read these words:—

“My Dear Burden,“I don’t mind your being hand and glove with a greasy German Jew, nor your toadying a jointed hop-pole like that bankrupt Benthorpe; and as for Cosmo coming into my office and threatening me, I only mind just so muchas to prevent him ever coming there again. But what I will not have is that any of your dirty gang should interfere with my business; and if another ship of mine goes wrong in any way, I warn you, and you can warn your Lords and your Jews and your Cabinet Ministers, that I will sink the cost of another ship in smashing the lot of you. I write to you because you are the only one I know, and you may take it from me that I shall not write again.”

“My Dear Burden,

“I don’t mind your being hand and glove with a greasy German Jew, nor your toadying a jointed hop-pole like that bankrupt Benthorpe; and as for Cosmo coming into my office and threatening me, I only mind just so muchas to prevent him ever coming there again. But what I will not have is that any of your dirty gang should interfere with my business; and if another ship of mine goes wrong in any way, I warn you, and you can warn your Lords and your Jews and your Cabinet Ministers, that I will sink the cost of another ship in smashing the lot of you. I write to you because you are the only one I know, and you may take it from me that I shall not write again.”

Such was the letter.

There are many things in this mad scrawl which I should digress a moment to ridicule and condemn, were it not more germane to the spirit of my record to pass them by in contemptuous silence. But there is one phrase which I cannot treat with the neglect it deserves. I mean the phrase about Lord Benthorpe.

The abominable meanness in a man of Mr Abbott’s wealth harping on the poverty of a superior is not my theme: it is enough to say that, had the cases been reversed, Lord Benthorpe would never have descended to expose the misfortunes of Mr Abbott. I have rather to comment upon the word “bankrupt.”

By the time the matter comes into court, it is probable (considering the dilatory habits of Mr and Mrs O’Rourke) that my work will beregarded as the standard account of Mr Burden’s life. I am in possession of this precious epistle. It is before my eyes as I write, and I desire to put it publicly, with all my special knowledge of the circumstances, at the service of the perfect gentleman whom he has wronged.

Mr Abbott will find, I think, that our English law of libel is strong enough and flexible enough to punish most heavily the use of such a term. His lordship never has passed, nor, please God! ever shall pass, through the Bankruptcy Court. Of his unfortunate lack of means I have already spoken—I trust as delicately as possible—nor have I concealed from my readers the ready help and sympathy he received from his friends in the financial world. But between honourable poverty and defalcation, both English law and English sense draw a sharp line, as the slanderer will discover to his cost.

I will dwell no more upon the point. It is not the fashion of the Island Race to pre-judge a matter which is so soon to fall beneath a judge: Mr Justice Hopper, for many years a strong supporter in Parliament of the Water Companies and the National Party.

When Mr Burden had read Abbott’s shameful words, though he had not yet gathered allthat they implied, and was rather stunned than wounded by them in the first moment, a look of age passed over his face: that look which was to return once or twice in the next few hours, and each time to mean that on his soul was blowing a sharp gust of death.

He laid his left hand heavily upon the table, sighed, and picked up his remaining letters and opened them. One was a receipted bill from his wine merchant; the next a letter from his daughter, Mrs Legros, asking for money: the parish was a poor one, and they had to feed the lambs.... Clarence, moreover, was suffering from measles, and Billy needed a watch. The next was a circular from a company which desired to cover his floors, not with carpets, but with a kind of cheap linoleum; he frowned and threw it in the fire. The next was the reminder letter of summons to the meeting of the Board of Directors which was to be held in Broad Street, that afternoon, at four. Methodically he put the hour down on a piece of paper, folded it and slipped it into a waistcoat pocket; but his hand trembled as he did so, and the hour he put down was wrong. The next letter was an appeal for funds from a society for the Prevention of Evil, two more were about American quack medicines, and the last was an angry note from a local tradesmanwhose goods (so Mr Burden’s housekeeper constantly maintained) had neither been ordered nor received, and were therefore left unpaid for.

When he had read all this, his correspondence, Mr Burden’s left hand stretched out again, his eyes not following it, and unsteadily took up Mr Abbott’s letter. He read it a second time.

Its ridiculous language could touch no chord of humour, for all those chords were silent; nor of resentment, for the man was already broken. Cold senile tears gathered in his eyes; he put the letter down again, and gazed across his lonely table at the window and the grey London sky without. Then, at last, he rose with a determination in his heart.

As he went through the hall and groped a little too long for his hat, his housekeeper, a woman who had been with him since his wife’s last illness, bade him not go out, telling him he was not fit to try even the summer air, still less attuned to business; but, by his expression and manner, it was evident that none of these things mattered to him at all.

He was opening the door with the intention of walking directly to the station, when the bell rang, and he saw, upon the step without, a man whom he had known for many years: a Mr Hale.

Mr Hale greeted him with respect, and Mr Burden, after looking at him some time before speaking, as is the way with men who suffer either in body or in mind, took him by the arm almost familiarly, and said:

“Come with me, Mr Hale, and say whatever you have to say as I go down to the station.”

Mr Hale was overwhelmed by so much condescension—for Mr Hale was of no position in the world.

This citizen was an excellent example, not only of what human industry may do against harsh conditions, but also of the squalls of evil fortune which overtake merit even in its hours of success.

His father had been a rag-and-bottle merchant and dealer in kitchen-stuff during the ’fifties, and had plied his trade in a very little shop so near to Mr Burden’s house as to be a capitaldébouchéfor the perquisites of the cook. He left sufficient capital at his death for his son to set up as an undertaker: a public servant the necessity of whose presence was then increasingly felt in the growing and prosperous suburb.

In this trade Mr Hale, junior, did very well for some time. He enlarged his premises, and put in his window the striking sign of a coffin accompanied by the words, “Simplicity,Despatch, Economy and Reform,” the last of which abstractions had, until recent years, seemed peculiarly congenial to the political spirit of the neighbourhood.

Mr Burden had first come to know him in connection with the death of a young man, a neighbour, of whom he had been in a sort of way the guardian; he had later entrusted him with the mortal remains of Mrs Burden.

But, shortly after that memorable date, misfortune overtook the hitherto prosperous purveyor. The increased facility of communication caused many of his clients to turn for the last rites to larger firms in the centre of London, and even to entrust their lifeless clay to the limited companies which had begun to compete with the smaller capitalists of the profession. The practice of cremation also, increasing somewhat in favour with the middle classes, had cut into his profits; and two years of exceptional local health, during which his permanent expenses could not be reduced, had eaten up his little reserve. More than once he had undertaken a few jobs of cabinet work for Mr Burden, who was ever ready to help those around him; but this kind of job had to be done under the rose, as being beneath the dignity, and, indeed, opposed to the rules, of the Society to which Mr Hale belonged.

In the last few weeks things had become desperate with him; and, to tell the truth, he was approaching Mr Burden upon this occasion for the loan of £10.

I have no space to detail the conversation which passed between the two, and I can only plead my old friend’s great weakness, the recent destruction of his whole stamina and nerve, as an excuse for his acceding to Mr Hale’s request. It was against all his principles, as it must be against those of every sober reader of these lines, to lend money.

He lent it because he was in that mood of mixed softness, abandonment, and sadness, which so often precedes a catastrophe.

They parted outside the station, Mr Hale with overwhelming thanks and repeated promises of repayment, Mr Burden gazing at him as though at some memory of the past, then saying:

“Good-bye, Mr Hale,” and he said it with as much affection and solemnity as though he were bidding farewell for ever to one of his oldest friends.

Mr Hale smiled in a terrified manner and departed; Mr Burden went down the stairs, took his train, and sat silent all the way into town. For the first time in I know not how many years he held no newspaper in his hands.

When he came to the City he went directly to Leadenhall Street, and, purposely passing the little familiar archway which led to his friend’s private room, went in at last by the great public entrance of Mr Abbott’s offices.

But as the big plate-doors swung to, he felt something mortal upon him.

FOOTNOTES:[10]Dr Cayley’s father was old “Honesty” Cayley, twice Mayor of Bletchton.

[10]Dr Cayley’s father was old “Honesty” Cayley, twice Mayor of Bletchton.

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