There was perfect restraint and good feeling in the little scene. Cosmo took his hat in the office, and remembered to say that he should be a trifle late in returning, because he expected Mr Barnett would appear at the club. Just as he went out, his father, with unnatural joviality, suggested that they should lunch together—they so rarely lunched together. Cosmo’s hesitation was not noticeable. Mr Burden rose; and so, for the second time, he came to, and was not sought by, Imperial things.
They sat at a little table in a vast room, over-luxurious but grand; they had already ordered and received the baked mutton and cabbage of their choice; when Cosmo stood up and greeted warmly a figure, large and benignant, which had appeared beside him. It was Mr Barnett.
A whirl of confused emotions ran through the mind of Mr Burden. The public reputation was one thing to him, the splendid coat of astrachan quite another; and when speech began, the accent, gesture, and expression meant yet a third. At the introduction, Mr Barnett bowed from the hips, mechanically and low, his chin upon his chest—a fourth confusion combined with the others, where had Mr Burden seen that posture before? He could not remember—then it returned to him: it was in 1878, in a farce called The Cologne Express; never in real life had he seen such a salutation.
Mr Barnett drew a chair to the table, sat down, and cleared his throat with the energy characteristic of a master. Several men in the club started round, and, seeing who it was, smiled; two nodded: to one of them his nod was returned. Then Mr Barnett, putting both his weighty hands upon the table, slowly twirled his powerful if spatulate thumbs. He spoke at last in the tone of decision and initiative which gives such men authority. His voice was directed towards a waiter of terrified appearance; he ordered a bottle of “one hundred and eighty,” and, when the bottle came, a fifth emotion entered Mr Burden’s mind, to observe that it was champagne.
Mr Barnett smiled.
Leaders of men have led men always by a smile. Here also was a leader, and it is my duty to describe at great length this individual charm.
When Mr Barnett smiled, his lips, which he kept closed, did not bend upwards as they do with commoner and weaker men, but downwards like an arch, lending an astonishing vigour to his expression: the lower one, never of a retiring curve, was thrust out superbly, glorying in its capacity, and the whole mouth, never exiguous, assumed heroic dimensions; the while for a moment his considerable eyes gleamed with kindly intelligence. At their corners, three deep furrows spread rapidly to his temples to disappear in the massive substance of his face, when its features reassumed their normal and somewhat drooping calm.
THE SMILE
Such was Mr Barnett during these rare flashes which his friends already knew, and which, after he had made the M’Korio, were destined to captivate no less than two crowned heads, a Prime Minister, four Admirals, ten General Officers, editors in great profusion, innumerable professors, and a whole army of divines.