He relaxed, I say, and a more truly lovable, because a more real Mr Barnett shone outwards through the surface of the man: a Mr Barnett not anxious for his accent or any other thing; a Mr Barnett interior, domestic, and at ease.
In such a mood he saw no need to rise; but his courtesy did not forsake him, nor the inbred habit of a man of the world. He lifted himself some inches from the chair by a pressure of his left hand and stretched out his right towards the owner of the house.
The high cosmopolitan sphere in which Mr Barnett had been formed is naturally indifferent, as our eager English gentry also are, to the conventions of the suburbs; but my readers will already have learnt that nothing could offend Mr Burden more than a breach of the usages of Norwood.
Mr Barnett’s attitude was at first incredible to him: to this incredulity succeeded a burst of anger.
The late hour, the recent quarrel with his oldest friend, and, doubtless, the approach of illness, might have betrayed Mr Burden into an irrevocable step. He might have left the room without speaking. He might even, so thoroughly was he put out, have manœuvred for his guest’s departure by that process of persistent, patient pressure which is called “kicking a man out of one’s house.” He might have sworn—had not Cosmo, with an excellent comprehension of his father’s petty vagaries, saved the position.
For Cosmo stepped out to greet his father warmly; he congratulated him heartily on having been able to return in time; he told the flurried merchant how long and anxiously the financier had waited; with the pardonable exaggeration of filial care, he ante-dated Mr Barnett’s advent and his own by a little over three hours; he insinuated in every tone that nothing but the overwhelming importance of his father’s judgment could have led Mr Barnett to so great an effort.
Mr Burden was but partially appeased; he sat down in a stiff chair, not his own, and faced Mr Barnett sternly as one might a witness in a court; the Leader of Men returned his gaze with a beam of comatose good nature. His head leaned slightly to the right, his upper eyelids (which were double, as are those of the great Andean bird) dropped deeply down, but from the little slit of prominent eye beneath a liquid humour still gleamed. That humour played upon Mr Burden steadily for some forty seconds, and then the voice spoke.
“I am ver’ happy to zee you, Mr Burten.”
A doubt, a disgusting suspicion, ran through Mr Burden’s mind; it leapt into a formed phrase; he felt the words coming—but it never reached his lips. He controlled himself during the pause that followed, and, during that pause, it was most evident that Mr Barnett’s vast organising mind was plunging deeper and deeper into the baths of silence and recuperation.
When he spoke next, it was with eyes quite shut, and head bending forward irregularly at intervals.