Perhaps he actually felt the presence of a crowd: the massed forces of this new world surging against him; he spoke as though to numbers.
MR BURDEN IN HIS LAST UNFORTUNATE FIT OF PASSION
(FROM A SKETCH VERY KINDLY PROVIDED BY MR HARBURY)
“I can smash it! I can smash you, and your precious shareholders ... and, and the Duke ... and the whole thing! I can go and say why I went! Eh? Oh! good Lord! and I shall print it.... If they won’t print it in your cursed papers, I’ll placard it; I’ll cover the town with it; I’ll put your names up high—all your names—your names that you hide, and the names that you have had and lost ... swindlers and thieves and scum!”
And, after that outburst, he recovered himself a moment, and stood away from them, breathing too hard, while Mr Harbury looked down, and Mr Barnett smiled a drawn smile of hatred that would not betray fear.
Lord Benthorpe, a soldier in his youth, was very genuinely afraid; he was afraid of something indefinable, of catastrophe ... he did not understand these things.
There passed through Mr Burden’s mind a spasm of calm which he mistook for self-control; he fumbled at his collar trying to straighten it, he put on a civic dignity, and stood up stiffly, and turned to his son and said:
“Come with me, Cosmo.”
Cosmo, whom this wild scene had distressed beyond bearing, looked down nervously at the table, shuffled the papers before him, and murmured almost inaudibly:
“Don’t make a fool of yourself, father.”