Mr Barnett betrayed considerable irritation.
“With all respect due,” he said—in spite of his accent, he had a great command of English idiom—“with all respect due, and ready, Lord Bent’orpe, and with every desire I have to spare——” here he hesitated a moment, and Mr Harbury, to whom English was a familiar language, murmured, “susceptibilities”—“susceptibilities,” continued Mr Barnett, still pondering on all the syllables, “we have other interests herein than alone our own to consider. We have the interests also of the shareholders surely to consider. I think one will agree with me? Ah?”
He lay back a little in his chair, and looked round at his three companions, and then a little rapidly to his left at Mr Burden: Mr Burden was silent, and Mr Barnett went on:
“We have, I say also, the shareholder-interest to consider. If we had ourselves alone to safeguard so, we should be understanding Mr Åppott’s position; indeed, I am very sure. Büt” (and here Mr Barnett lowered his voice in a manner which would have been impressive even to a larger audience, and wagged his head gloomily): “Büt have we choice I fear...?”
He looked sadly a moment at the middle of the table, with an expression not unlike that of an animal about to be sacrificed, then throwing up his hands with the palms outwards, said in a sudden return of native feeling:
“Ach! God! He hass not come in! He hass not come in! It is right on his own head, I say.”
It was not often that Mr Barnett allowed a sudden revulsion of feeling to awaken in him the exclamations of his youth, but he felt strongly upon Mr Abbott’s action; he thought it stupid; he thought it unbusiness-like. He thought it dangerous to the M’Korio Delta Development Co. He thought it, from what he knew of the English, un-English, and, during the few seconds of that angry phrase, a native phrase had returned to him, strongly borne upon a gust of natural passion.
Cosmo tentatively intervened:
“Perhaps, father, you could go and see Mr Abbott again?” Mr Burden, hearing the voice of his son, and being thereby suddenly reminded of his home and of many years, looked up with an awful pain in his eyes.
“No,” he said.