“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.