The Far Horizon

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"Yes?" Poppy queried. Her voice shook just perceptibly. In the
deepening dusk neither could see the other distinctly, and this
contributed to Dominic's decision to speak.

"It pains me," he said at last, "if you will pardon my frankness, that
you should think it necessary to account for yourself and justify
yourself as you often appear to do."

"Yes?" Poppy queried again.

"That you should do so distresses and disturbs me."

"Yes," Poppy murmured.

"I am afraid I grow selfish," Iglesias went on gently; "but you have
been good enough to tell me that my poor friendship is of value to
you. Does it not occur to you that yours is of far greater value to
me? And that for many and obvious reasons--these among others, that
while you are young, and have a wide circle of acquaintances, and in a
future to which, brilliant as you are, you may look forward with hope
and assurance, I am absolutely alone in the world. Save for one old
school-fellow, who has been very faithful to me, there is no one to
whom it matters, except in the most superficial degree, whether I live
or die."

"Ah!" Poppy said softly.

"Do not misunderstand me, I do not complain," Iglesias added. "I
entertain no doubt but that the circumstances in which I find myself
are the right and profitable ones for me, if I only lay to heart the
lessons they teach, and use the opportunities which they afford me."

"I don't know about that--I doubt that," Poppy put in hastily.

"You doubt it because you are young," he answered, "and your
circumstances are capable of alteration and development. Except under
very exceptional conditions, resignation is no virtue in the young. It
is more often an excuse for cowardice and sloth. But at my age the
world changes its complexion. My circumstances are incapable of
alteration and development. They are final. Therefore I do well to
accept them unreservedly. The work of my life is done. I do not say
that it has been a failure, for I fulfilled the main object I had in
view. But it has certainly been obscure and inglorious. The sun will
sink dimly enough into a bank of fog. My present is meagre in interest
and activity. My future, a brief enough one in all probability, must
of necessity be meagre likewise. Therefore your friendship is of
supreme importance to me."

Iglesias paused. His voice was grave, distinct, weighted with feeling.
He did not look at his companion; he could not trust himself to do so,
for he had discovered in himself unexpected depths of emotion.

"And just on that account," he went on, "I grow childishly nervous,
childishly apprehensive if anything arises which seems to cloud or, in
however small a measure, to endanger the serenity of our intercourse."

He turned and looked at her.

"This constitutes no slight to you, dear friend."

"No," she said, "very certainly it is no slight. On the contrary, it
is very beautiful; but it's an awful responsibility, too."

She sat quite still, her head carried high, her hands clasped in her
lap.

"I've underrated the position, I see. I've only thought of myself so
far and how you pleased me. But though I'm pretty cheeky, too--almost
as cheeky as little Dot--I never had the presumption to put the affair
the other way about."

Poppy began to sway slightly again and pat the palms of her hands
together between her knees.

"It's been a game, the finest game I've ever played; and I swore by
all my gods to play fair. But, as you look at it, our friendship
amounts to a good deal more than a game. It goes very deep. And I'm
not sure--. no, I'm not--whether I'm equal to it."

She glanced at Iglesias strangely through the clinging grey of the
dusk.

"Dear unknown," she said, "I give you my word I'm frightened--I who've
never been frightened at any man yet. In my own little way I've played
pitch and toss with their hearts and made footballs of them--except
that poor young fellow--I told you about him the first time we met--
who gave me the scarf, and whose people wouldn't let him marry me. But
this affair with you is different. It goes very far, it means--it
means nothing short of revolution for me, of putting away and
renouncing very much."

Poppy got up, stood pushing her hair back with both hands from her
forehead. Then she moved across to the further side of the fireplace.
Dominic had risen also. He stood on the near side of the hearth. He
was penetrated with the conviction that a crisis was upon them both,
involving all the happiness of their future relation to one another.

"You don't understand," Poppy cried passionately. "And I don't want
you to understand--that's half the trouble. I want to keep you. Your
friendship's the loveliest thing I've ever had. And yet I don't know.
For I'm not one woman--I'm half-a-dozen women, and they all pull all
sorts of ways so that I daren't trust myself. I want to keep you, I
tell you, I want horribly to keep you. Yet I'm ghastly afraid I'm not
equal to it. The price is too big."

As she spoke Poppy dashed her hand against the push of the electric
bell, and held it there, ringing a prolonged alarum, in quick response
to which Phillimore, the respectable elderly parlour maid, appeared,
bearing two rose-shaded lamps. Noiselessly and deftly--as one
accustomed to agitations, whose eyes did not see or ears hear if it
should be unadvisable to permit them to do so--she drew the curtains,
made up the fire, set out the tea-table. And with that change of scene
and shutting out of the dusk, Poppy seemed to change also; gravity and
strength of purpose departing from her, and leaving her--
notwithstanding her sober dress--unreal, fictitious, artificial, the
red-lipped carmine-tinted lady of the footlights, of the windswept
dust and embroidered dragons again. She chattered, moreover,
ceaselessly, careless of interruption, and of criticism alike.

"Here, let's hark back to the ordinary conduct of material existence,"
she said. "Tea? Won't you sit down? No--well, just as you like best.
Take it standing. Let me see, what were we discussing when we got
switched on to unexpectedly personal lines of conversation? The war--
yes, I remember. I was just going to tell you that Fallowfeild
believes it's going to be a nasty dragging unsatisfactory business.
Everyone gasses about the Boers being a simple pastoral people. But
Fallowfeild says their simplicity is just another name for guile, and
that he anyway can't conceive a more disconcerting job than fighting a
nation of farmers and huntsmen and gamekeepers in their own country,
every inch of which they know. People say they've no military science.
But so jolly much the better for them. They can be unfettered
opportunists, with nothing to think of but outwitting the enemy and
saving their property and their skins. The poor British Tommy will be
no match for them; nor will the British officer-man either, till he's
unlearned his parade-ground etiquette, and his haw-haw red-tape
methods and manner, and learned their very primitive but very cute and
foxy ones. By which time, Fallowfeild says, the mourning warehouses
here at home will have made a record turnover, and there will be
altogether too many new graveyards for comfort in South Africa."

Poppy paused in her harangue, for Dominic Iglesias had set down his
cup, its contents untasted. He was sad at heart.

"Are you going?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered. "It grows late. It's time I went, I think."

"Perhaps it is." Poppy's eyes had become inscrutable. "I really ought
to attend to my Gamping, and pass the time of day with Cappadocia. Her
snappishness has scared the maids. They refuse to go within a measured
furlong of her."

Poppy bent down over the tea-table, arranging the teacups with
elaborate neatness.

"Good-by," she said. "I don't quite know when we shall meet again."

"Why?" Iglesias asked. The muscles of his throat were rigid. He had
much ado to speak plainly and naturally. "Are you leaving home?"

"Home?" she answered. "Yes, I'm leaving it. Good-by again. Don't let
me keep you. Certainly I'm leaving home. Indeed, I believe I have left
it already--for good."

And she threw back her head and laughed.

Upon the doorstep a cold rush of air met Mr. Iglesias. Above, the sky
was blue-black and very clear. The road was vacant and grey with
frost. The flame of the gaslamps quivered, giving off a sharp
brightness in the keen atmosphere. Mr. Iglesias turned up the collar
of his coat and descended the steps. Just then a hansom emerged from
the distance and drew up with a rattle and grind against the curb some
twenty paces ahead. The occupant, a young man, flung back the doors
with a thud, and stood a moment on the footboard paying the driver,
who raised himself, leaning forward with outstretched hand across the
glistening black roof of the cab. Then the young man turned round,
swung himself down on to the asphalt pavement, and came forward as
rapidly as a long motor-coat, reaching to his heels, would permit. He
was tall and fair, well-favoured, preoccupied, not to say morose. He
did not vouchsafe Mr. Iglesias so much as a glance as he brushed past
him. The road was still vacant, and in the frosty air sounds carried.
Mr. Iglesias distinctly heard him race up a neighbouring flight of
steps, heard the click and turn of a latchkey in a lock, heard the
slam of a front door pulled to violently. And so doing Dominic turned
cold and a little faint. He would not condescend to look back; but he
had recognised Alaric Barking, and was in no doubt which house he had
entered.

"Keb, sir? 'Ere yer are, sir," the cabby called cheerily. "Very cold
night. Just set one gentleman down, and 'appy to tike another up. Want
to get back to my comfy little West End shelter, so I'll tike yer for
'alf fares, sir, though we are outside the blooming radius."

But Iglesias shook his head. The horse stood limply in a cloud of
steam. Alaric Barking had evidently pushed the pace. But even had the
animal been in better condition, Iglesias had no desire to drive in
that particular cab. He would rather have walked the whole way to
Cedar Lodge.

Opposite the Bell Inn, where the roads fork--one turning away through
Mortlake, the other leading to Barnes Common, Roehampton, and Sheen--
the row of smart little houses degenerates into shops. By the time he
reached these Mr. Iglesias discovered that he was unaccountably tired.
The keen air oppressed his chest, making his breath come short. It was
useless to attempt to go home on foot. Then, with a sense of relief,
he saw that on the far side of the road a couple of omnibuses stood,
the horses' heads turned Londonwards. He crossed, climbed the stairway
of the leading vehicle slowly, and sank into a seat. The 'bustop was
unoccupied, yet Dominic was not by himself. Two companions had climbed
the winding stairway with him and taken their places beside him, Old
Age on his left hand, Loneliness on his right. All up the long
suburban road, while the omnibus bumped and jolted and the fallen
leaves whirled and scurried before the searching breath of the night
wind Iglesias' two companions seemed to lean across him, talking.
There were tones of mockery in their talk, while behind and through
it, as some discordant refrain, he heard the ring of a young man's
eager footsteps, the click and turn of a latchkey, and the slam of a
door as it shut. On nearing the river the cold grew intense. Crossing
the bridge, the waterside lights were reflected in the surface of the
stream, which ran full and strong from the autumn rains, swirling
seaward with an ebbing tide. To Iglesias' eyes the reflections
converted themselves into fiery dragons, writhing in the heat of
deadly conflict, as upon Poppy St. John's oriental scarf. A glare hung
over London, palpitating as with multitudinous and angry life; and
when the omnibus slowed up in Hammersmith Broadway the voice of the
streets grew loud--the monstrous city, so it seemed to Dominic
Iglesias, shouting defiance to the majestic calm and solemnity of the
eternal stars.

CHAPTER XVI

"He says it is nothing serious, only a slight chill; and sends kind
regards and many thanks for kind inquiries, and hopes to be out in a
day or two, when he will call and thank you in person."

This from George Lovegrove to his wife, the latter arrayed in garments
of ceremony and seated upon the Chesterfield sofa awaiting guests. It
was her afternoon at-home.

"Well, I'm sure I hope it is no more than that, Georgie," she answered
comfortably. "Chills are always going about in November, and very
often gentlemen encourage them--especially bachelors--by not changing
into their winter vests and pants early enough. A great deal of
illness is contracted that way."

Here Serena rustled audibly. She stood by the window, holding the lace
curtain just sufficiently aside to get a narrow and attenuated view of
the fog-enshrouded Green. The outlook was far from inspiriting, and
Serena was keenly interested in the conversation going forward between
her host and hostess. But it was not in her programme to let this
appear. She, while straining her ears to listen, therefore maintained
an air of detachment. The word "pants" was, however, too much for her
fortitude, and she rustled. "Really, Rhoda does use the most
dreadfully unladylike expressions sometimes," she commented inwardly.
"She never seems to remember that everyone is not married, though even
if they were I should hope they would not mention those sort of
things. Rhoda is wanting in refinement. I wonder if George notices
that and feels it. If he does notice it, I think he ought to tell her
about it, because--"

But here she fell to listening again, since the said George took up
his parable once more.

"Still, I own I don't like his looks somehow. His face is so thin and
drawn. It reminds me of the time his mother, poor Mrs. Iglesias, died.
I told him, just jocularly, that his appearance surprised me, but he
put it all aside--you know he has a very high aristocratic manner at
times that makes you feel you have been intrusive--and then talked of
other things."

"He has lived too solitary," Mrs. Lovegrove said judicially, "too
solitary, and that tells on any one in middle life. I should never
forgive myself if we left him to mope. You must just try to coax him
over here to stay, Georgie, and I'll nurse him up and humour him, and
fortunately Serena's here, you see, for pleasant company."

Mrs. Lovegrove looked meaningly at her spouse, while the figure at the
window again rustled.

"I am sure you would exert yourself to help cheer poor Mr. Iglesias
up, if he came over to stay, would you not now, Serena?" she inquired
insinuatingly.

"Are you speaking to me, Rhoda?"

"Yes, about Mr. Iglesias coming here to stay."

Serena turned her head and answered over her shoulder.

"Of course you and George are quite at liberty to ask anyone here whom
you like. And if Mrs. Iglesias came I should be perfectly civil to
him. But I should not care, Rhoda, to bind myself to anything more
than that, because I do not find him an easy person to get on with."

She turned to her contemplation of the fog with a renewed assumption
of indifference. George Lovegrove's shiny forehead puckered into
little lines. He looked anxiously at his wife. The good lady, however,
laid a fat forefinger upon her lips and nodded her head at him in the
most archly reassuring manner.

"That's funny," she said, "because Mr. Iglesias is quite the cleverest
of all Georgie's gentlemen friends--except, of course, the dear vicar
--and so I always took for granted anyone like yourself was sure to
get on nicely with him, Serena. Even I hardly ever find him difficult
to talk with."

"I never talk easily to strangers," Serena put in loftily.

"Oh! but you'd hardly call Mr. Iglesias a stranger."

"Yes, I should," Serena declared with emphasis. "I should certainly
call him a stranger. I always call everyone a stranger till I know
them intimately. It is much safer to do so. And it would be absurd to
pretend that I know Mr. Iglesias intimately. You, of course, do, but I
do not. You and George may have seen him frequently since I have been
here, but I have really seen him very seldom, four or five times at
the outside. He has generally appeared to call when I was likely to be
out. I could not help observing that. It may be a coincidence, of
course. But I cannot pretend that I have not thought it rather
marked."

Serena had advanced into the centre of the room. She held herself
erect. She enjoyed making a demonstration. "Rhoda may think I am a
cipher," she said to herself, "but she is mistaken. She may think I
can be hoodwinked and used as a mere tool, but I will let her see that
I cannot." She felt daring and dangerous, and her eyes snapped. The
rustling of her skirts and the emphatic tones of her voice aroused the
parrot, which had been dosing on its perch, its head sunk between its
shoulders and its breast-feathers fluffed out into a little green
apron over its grey claws.

"Pollie's own pet girlie," it murmured drowsily, with dry clickings of
its tongue against its beak, the words jolting out in foolish twos and
threes. "Hi! p'liceman--murder! fire! thieves!--there's another jolly
row downstairs."

Poor George Lovegrove gazed in bewilderment from Serena to the parrot,
from the parrot to his wife, and then back to Serena again.

"You do surprise me! And I am more mortified than I can say that you
should have the most distant reason, Serena--or Susan either--ever to
feel the least slighted in this house. You do surprise me--I can't
believe it has been the least intentional on Iglesias' part. But I
would not have had anything of the kind happen for twenty pounds."

"Pray don't apologise, George," Serena cried, "or I shall feel quite
annoyed. Of course everyone has a right to their own preferences; but
I had been led to expect something different. As I say, it may only be
a coincidence. Nothing may have really been meant. Only it has seemed
rather marked. But in any case it has not been your fault, George."

"I am very glad you allow that, Serena," the good creature said
humbly.

"Oh! yes. I quite excuse you of any intentional slight, George. I
quite trust you. Still, nothing could be more unpleasant than for me
to feel that my being here put any restriction upon your friends
coming to the house. Of course I know Susan and I move in rather
different society from Rhoda and yourself."

"Yes," he assented hurriedly, agonised as to the wife's feelings--
"yes, yes."

"And so it is quite possible that I may not suit some of your
acquaintances."

"Excuse me," he panted--"no, Serena, I cannot think that."

"I am not sure," she returned argumentatively. "Not at all sure,
George. And nothing could be more unpleasant to me than to feel I was
the least in the way. Of course, I should never have come back if I
had supposed I should be in the way; but Rhoda made such a point of
it."

Here the parrot broke forth into prolonged and earpiercing shriekings,
flapping its wings violently and nearly tumbled backwards off its
perch.

"Throw a handkerchief over the poor bird's cage, Georgie dear," cried
Mrs. Lovegrove from the sofa. Her face was red. She had become
distressingly hot and flustered.--"And just as I was flattering myself
it was all turning out so nicely, too," she said to herself.--"No, not
your own, Georgie dear"--this aloud--"you may need it later. The red
bandana out of the right-hand corner of the top drawer of the work-
table."

"I think it would be much simpler for me to go," Serena continued, her
voice pitched in a high key to combat the cries of the parrot and the
rattle of the table drawer, which George Lovegrove in his present
state of agitation found it impossible to shut with accuracy and
despatch.

"Of course, it may inconvenience Susan to have me return sooner than
she expected. She is away speaking at a number of missionary meetings
in the North. And the maids will be on board wages, and the drawing-
room furniture will have been put into holland covers. She counted on
my staying here till I go to my cousin, Lady Samuelson, in Ladbroke
Square, the third week in December. But, of course, all that must be
arranged. I can give up my visit. Lady Samuelson will be annoyed, and
I don't know what excuse I can make to her. Still, I think I had
really much better go; and then you can have Mr. Iglesias, or any
other of your and Rhoda's friends, to stop here without my feeling
that I am in the way. Nothing could be more odious to me than feeling
I was encroaching or forcing myself upon you. Mamma would never have
countenanced such behaviour. It is the sort of thing we were always
brought up to have the greatest horror of. It is a thing I never have
done and never could do. I hope you understand that, George. Nothing
could be further from my thoughts when I accepted Rhoda's invitation
to----"

"Miss Hart, please, ma'am," the little house-parlour-maid trumpeted,
her face very pink from the exertion of attracting her mistress's
attention and making herself heard. Mrs. Lovegrove bounced up from the
sofa. Usually, it must be allowed, the great Eliza was rather at a
discount. Now she was astonishingly welcome. Her hostess's greeting,
though silent, was effusively cordial. She clutched at her guest's
hand as one in imminent risk of drowning at a lifebelt. The said guest
was in her sprightliest humour. She was also in a scarlet flannel
blouse thickly powdered with gradated black discs. This, in
conjunction with purple chrysanthemums in a black hat, her tawny hair
and freckled complexion, did not constitute a wholly delicious scheme
of colour; but to this fact Mrs. Lovegrove was supremely indifferent.

"Good-afternoon," Miss Hart said in a stage whisper, glancing towards
Serena, still bright-eyed and erect. "Don't let me interrupt, pray. My
conversation will keep. I will just sit and listen."

"Listen to what?" Serena cried, almost inarticulate with indignation.

"Why, to your recitation. Our gentlemen often treat us to a little in
that line of an evening, Mrs. Lovegrove, after dinner. I dote on
recitation. Pieces of a comic nature specially, when well delivered."

"I should never dream of reciting," Serena declared heatedly.

"No, really now," Miss Hart returned. "That seems quite a pity. It is
such a pleasant occupation for a dull afternoon like this, do you not
think so, Miss Lovegrove? I declare I was quite sure, from the moment
I came into the hall--while I was taking off my waterproof--that your
cousin was giving you a little entertainment of that kind, Mr.
Lovegrove. Her voice was running up and down in such a very telling
manner."

If glances could scorch, Miss Hart would unquestionably have been
reduced to a cinder, for rage possessed Serena. She had worked herself
up into a fine fume of anger over purely imaginary injuries. And now,
that Eliza Hart, of all people in the world, should intervene with
suggestions of comic recitations!

"Detestable person!" Serena said to herself. "Her conduct is
positively outrageous. Of course she knew perfectly well I was doing
nothing of the kind. Really, I believe anybody would feel her manner
quite insulting. I wonder how George and Rhoda can tolerate her. It
shows George has deteriorated much that he should tolerate her. I am
not so surprised at Rhoda. Of course she never had good taste. I think
I ought to go to my room. That would mark my displeasure. But then she
may have come on purpose to say something particular. I wonder if she
has done so? Of course if she has, she wants to get rid of me. That is
her object. But she is mistaken if she thinks that I shall gratify
her. I think I owe it to myself to make sure exactly what is going on.
I will certainly stay. That will show her I am on the watch."

During this protracted, though silent, colloquy, Serena had remained
standing in the middle of the room. Now she rustled back to the
window, held aside the lace curtain and resumed her contemplation of
the fog-enshrouded Green. Good George Lovegrove gazed after her in
deep dejection and perplexity. Somebody, it appeared to him, had been
extremely unreasonable and disagreeable; but who that somebody was for
the very life of him he could not tell. The wife was out of the
question; while to suppose it Serena approached high treason. Still he
was very sure it could not be that most scrupulously courteous
personage Dominic Iglesias. There remained himself--"Yet I wouldn't
knowingly vex a fly," he thought, "and as to vexing Serena! Sometimes
ones does wish females were not quite so sensitive."

Miss Hart, meanwhile, had taken the unaccustomed post of honour beside
her hostess upon the sofa. She was enjoying herself immensely. She
had a conviction of marching to victory.

"Yes," she said, "Mrs. Lovegrove, dear Peachie Porcher asked me just
to run across as she has missed your last two afternoons, lest you
should think her neglectful. I am well aware I am but a poor
substitute for Peachie--no compliments now, Mr. Lovegrove, if you
please!"

"Mrs. Porcher is in good health, I trust"--this from Rhoda.

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