But Mr Burden was thoroughly disturbed. He was the more hurt at his friend’s outburst, because at heart he had been on the defensive. Had Mr Abbott shown less violence, the advice—which he had rejected—would perhaps have sunk less deeply into his mind. As it was, the effect of the quarrel was this: that the wild words of Mr Abbott, the groundless insinuations which were those (at the best) of a fanatic, did more than the closest reason could have done. They took root in his heart, and bore a fruit of suspicion which never left him night or day.
He dined in the evening in town, alone, at an hotel—a thing he had not done for perhaps ten years. He purposely remained in that hotel for many hours, that he might be alone when he should reach home, and that he might sleep before the very name M’Korio should reach his ears again. He took the 11.2, and did not reach his station till twenty minutes to twelve. It was close upon midnight when he unlocked the door of Avonmore.
He saw lights and heard voices; he came into the smoking-room whence they proceeded, and saw at the fire the profile of Cosmo, a little table with glasses, syphons and a whisky bottle, and beyond them, in his own deep padded chair, a cranium and a back which were most certainly those of Mr Barnett: of Mr Barnett in repose.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] As the scurrilous poem beginning “It is, it is the Canon’s opening roar,” or the deliberate misprinting of the peroration to his Romanes lecture on Historical Christianity, “The soul of Ananias like a star,” etc.
CHAPTER IX
Mr Barnett did not rise.
He held between his hands such “teeming destinies,” he controlled in the pursuit of his high mission so many various men, that his life necessarily suffered from the tension of artificial effort.
He was the more inclined to relax upon those occasions when he felt himself in the presence of friends who were bound to him by ties of gratitude. That evening in Norwood such a temptation was enhanced by the influence of a cosy room, soda water, spirits, a deeply padded chair, two magazines, Scotch whisky, and all the atmosphere of refinement.