The Far Horizon

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But now she was tired. The fun seemed fun no longer; so that,
notwithstanding her successes, she found herself a prey to
dissatisfaction, discontent, and a disposition to recall all the less
happy episodes of her varied career. She yawned quite loudly, as she
laid opera-glasses and play-bill upon the velvet cushion in front of
her, and pulled the soft fur-lined garment up closer about her
shoulders.

"The first act's safe to be poorish anyhow, and Dot does not come on
till just the end of it. I wonder if I dare go to sleep?" she asked
herself, gently rubbing her eyes. "It would be awfully nice to forget
the whole blooming show, past, present, and to come, for a little
while and plunge in the waters of oblivion. Oblivion with a capital O
--a dose of that's what I want. Beautiful roomy consolation-stakes
of a word, oblivion, if one could only believe in the existence of
it--which, unluckily, some-how I can't."

Here the strains of the orchestra ceased. The lights were turned low
in the body of the house. The curtain went up. As it did so a cold
draught drew from regions behind the stage, laden with that
indefinable odour of gas, glue, humanity, flagged stair and alleyways,
paint, canvas, carpentry, and underground places the sun never
penetrates, which haunts the working part of every theatre. Poppy
smiled as she snuffed it, with a queer mingling of enjoyment and
repulsion. For as is the smell of ocean to the seafarer, of mother-
earth to the peasant, of incense to the priest, so is the smell of the
theatre to the player. Nature may revolt; but the spell holds. Once an
actor always an actor. The mark of the calling is indelible. Even to
the third and fourth generation there is no rubbing it out.

"I suppose it would have been wiser if I had stuck to the profession,"
Poppy commented to herself. "I should have been a leading lady by now,
drawing my thirty to forty pounds a week. I had the root of the matter
in me. Have it still, worse luck; for it's the sort of root which
asserts its continued existence by aching at times like that of a
broken tooth. It was a wrench to give it all up. But then those rotten
plays of his, inflated impossible stuff, which would never act--
couldn't act!--and I carrying them round to manager after manager and
using all the gentle arts I knew to get them accepted. Oh! it was very
dignified, it was very pretty! And then his perpetual persecutions for
money, his jealousy and spite, and his fine feelings, his infernal
superiority--yes, that was what really did the job. Flesh and blood
couldn't stand it. To prove to a woman, at three meals daily, that she
couldn't hold a candle to you in birth, or brains, or education; and
then expect her to slave for you--and make it jolly hot for her if she
didn't, too--while you sat at home and caressed the delusion of your
own heaven-born genius in the only decently comfortable chair in the
house! No, it was not good enough--that it was not."

Poppy surveyed the stage, unseeing, her great eyes wide with unlovely
memories.

"I wonder what's become of him," she said presently. "He hasn't dunned
me for months. Has he found some other poor wretch to bleed? Must
have, I imagine, for he always declared he was on the edge of
starvation. Supposing that was true, though--supposing he has
starved?"

Her thought sank away into a wordless reverie of the dreariest
description. Suddenly she roused herself, clenching her hands in her
lap.

"Well, supposing he has, what does it matter to me? If ever a man
deserved to starve, he did, vain, lazy, cowardly, self-seeking jackal
of a fellow. Why in the name of reason should I trouble about him--
specially to-night? But then why, whenever I am a bit done, does the
remembrance of him always come back?"

Poppy yawned again, staring blankly at the persons on the stage,
hearing the sound of their speech but knowing only the sense of her
own thought.

"Why? Because it's like him, because it's altogether in the part. He
was always on the watch for his opportunity; wheedling or
blackguarding, directly he saw one had no fight left in one, till he
got his own way."

She leaned forward, resting her hands on the velvet cushion.

"I am confoundedly tired," she said. "All the same, it's rather
horrible. If the thing came over again, which mercifully it can't, I
should do precisely the same as I did. And yet I'm never quite sure
which of us was really in the right. And, therefore, I suppose just as
long as I live, whenever I'm dished--as I am to-night--I shall work
the whole hateful business through again, and the remembrance of him
will always come back."

She pushed the soft heavy masses of hair up from her forehead with
both hands.

"In the main it was your own fault, de Courcy Smyth, and you know that
it was. Most women would not have held out nearly as long as I did. So
lie quiet. Let me be. Starve, if you've got as far on the downgrade as
that. What do I care? I owe you nothing. You never gave me a child. So
starve, if you must--yes, starve," she said.

Then she gathered herself back into her stall. Her expression changed.

"Ah, there's Dot. They're giving her a reception. Bless them--how
awfully sweet! Hurrah for poor little Dot!" Her hands went up to
applaud. And for the ensuing ten minutes her fatigue was forgotten.
She became absorbed in the action of the piece.

CHAPTER XIX

Dot Parris earned a recall at the end of the first act, conquering by
sheer force of personality that gloomy and half-hearted audience. And
Poppy St. John--among whose many faults lack of generosity certainly
could not be counted--standing up, leaned right out over the velvet-
cushioned barrier of the dress circle, crying "Brava!" and clapping
her hands. To achieve the latter demonstration with befitting
resonance she had stripped off her gloves. Then as the lights were
turned up and the curtain swung into the place, she proceeded to
further stripping--namely, that of her black embroidered sacque,
which she threw across the back of the empty stall beside her, thereby
revealing a startling costume. For she was clothed in rose-scarlet
from shoulder to foot; and that without ornament of any description to
break up the daring uniformity of colour, save the stiff unstanding
black aigrette in her hair, tipped with diamond points which flashed
and glittered as she moved. The soft _mousseline-de-soie_ of
which her dress was made swathed her figure, cross-wise, without
apparent fastening, moulding it to the turn of the hips. Thence the
skirt flowed down in a froth of rose-scarlet gaugings and fluted frills,
which trailed behind her far. The bodice was cut in a deep V back and
front, showing her bare neck. Her arms were bare, too, from the elbow.
Her skin, somewhat sallow by day, took on a delicate ivory whiteness
under the electric light. By accident or design she had omitted to
tinge her cheeks to-night; and the even pallor of her face emphasised
the largeness of her eyes--luminous, just now, with sympathy and
enthusiasm. For the artist in Poppy dominated all else, vibrant and
alert. The glamour of the actor's life was upon her; the seamy side of
it forgotten--its unworthy rivalries and bickerings, the slangings and
prolonged weariness of rehearsals, its many disappointments,
heart-burnings, and sordid shifts. These were as though they were not;
so that the stage called her, even as the sea calls one, and mother-earth
another, and religion a third.

"Pou-ah! aren't I just hot, though!" she said, half aloud, as she
flung off her sacque. "And what a changeling imp of a creature Dot is,
after all! An imp of genius.--well, she's every right to that, as one
knows when one looks at James Colthurst's pictures. He'd genius. He
didn't shirk living. My stars! there was a man capable of adding to
the number of one's emotions! And she's inherited his gifts on her own
lines. What a voice, what gestures! She is as clever as she can stick.
Oh! she's a real joy of a demon of a thing, bless her; and she's
nothing like come to her full strength yet."

Then growing aware that she herself and her vivid attire were
beginning to attract more attention than, in the interests of a quiet
evening, she desired, Poppy subsided languidly into her stall, and,
picking up her opera-glasses, slowly surveyed the occupants of the
house.

There to begin with was Bobby Saville in the second row of the stalls,
flanked on either hand by a contingent of followers. His round dark
head and the set of his tremendous shoulders were unmistakable.
Saville was very far from being a model young man, yet Poppy had a
soft spot in her heart for this aristocratic bruiser and bravo. His
constancy to Dot Parris was really touching. With a dog-like
faithfulness and docility, this otherwise most turbulent of his sex
had followed the object of his affections from music-hall to comic
opera, from comic opera to the high places of legitimate drama. And
Dot meanwhile remained serenely invulnerable, tricking and mocking her
high-born heavy-weight lover, telling him cheerfully she really had no
use for him, though his intentions were strictly honourable. Twenty-
five years hence, she added, when he was an elderly peer, and she had
begun to grow broad in the beam, and the public had begun to grow
tired of her, she might perhaps contemplate the thraldom of wedlock.
But not yet awhile--no, thank you. Her art held all her love,
satisfied all her passions; she had none to waste upon mankind. Two
days hence, as Poppy knew, Bobby Saville would sail for South Africa,
to offer an extensive target to Boer bullets. He had come to bid
farewell, to-night, to the obdurate object of his affections. And his
followers--some of whom were also bound for the seat of war--had come
to support him during those pathetic proceedings.

In the boxes she recognised more than one woman whose rank of riches
had rendered her appearance common property through the medium of the
illustrated papers. But upon these social favourites she bestowed
scant scrutiny. To her they did not matter, since she had a
comfortable conviction that, given their chances, she might safely
have backed herself to beat them at their own game. One large and
gentle-looking lady did attract her, by the innocence of her mild eyes
set noticeably wide apart, and by the beauty of her small mouth. Her
light brown hair, touched with grey, rippled back from her low
forehead under a drapery of delicate lace. She was calm, yet there was
an engaging timidity in her aspect as she sheltered behind the farther
curtain of the box. Beside her sat a young girl, white-clad,
deliciously fresh in appearance, an expression of happy half-shy
expectation upon her charming face. Behind them, in the shadow,
kindly, handsome, debonnair, stood Lord Fallowfeild. His resemblance
to the large and gentle lady declared them brother and sister. Poppy
St. John watched the little party with a movement of tenderness. She
perceived that they were very fond of one another; moreover they were
so delightfully simple in bearing and manner, so excellently well-
bred. But of what was the pretty maiden so shyly expectant? Of
something, or somebody, far more immediately interesting to her than
players or play--so Poppy judged.

Turning from the contemplation of these pleasant people with a sigh
she could hardly have explained--even to herself--Poppy swept the
dress circle with her opera-glasses. Presently she paused, and with a
lift of surprise looked steadily again, then let both hands and
glasses drop upon her rose-scarlet cap. Four rows up and back, on the
far side, in a stall next the stepped gang-way, a man sat. His face
was turned away, his shoulder being towards her, as he leaned sideways
talking to the woman beside him--a slender, faded, yet elegant person
of uncertain age, dressed in fluffy black. In the seat beyond, also
leaning forward and taking part in the conversation, was another man
of so whimsical an appearance as very nearly to make Poppy laugh
aloud. She would unquestionably have done so had she been at leisure;
but she was not at leisure. Her eyes travelled back to the figure
beside the gang-way, which intrigued both her interest and her memory.
Tall, spare, faultlessly dressed, yet with an effect of something
exotic, aloof, unusual about him, he provoked her curiosity with
suggestions of times and places quite other than of the present.

"Who is it?" Poppy said to herself. "Surely I know him. Who the
Dickens is it?"

The conversation ceased. The man drew himself up, turned his head; and
Poppy gave a little choking cry, as she found herself staring Dominic
Iglesias straight in the face.

Whether he recognised her she did not know, did not want to know just
yet. For she needed a minute or two to reckon with the position. It
was so wholly unexpected. It affected her more deeply than she could
have anticipated. Not without amusement she realised that she had
never, heretofore, quite believed in him as an ordinary mortal, who
ate and drank, went to plays, had relations with human beings other
than herself, and conducted himself generally on the commonplace lines
of modern humanity. Therefore to see him under existing circumstances
was, in a sense, a shock to her. She did not like it. Absurd and
unreasonable though it undoubtedly was to feel it so, yet his presence
here struck her as in a way unseemly, derogatory. She had never
thought of him in this connection, and it took a little time to get
accustom to this aspect of him. Then she discovered, with half-
humorous annoyance, that she was called upon to get accustomed to
something else as well--namely, to her memories of the past month
since she parted from him. For it was undeniable that the said
memories took on a queer enough complexion in the light of this sudden
encounter with Dominic Iglesias. If an hour ago they had been
unsatisfactory, now they were very near odious. And that seemed hardly
fair. Poppy turned wicked.

"For what's the worry, after all?" she asked herself. "Why on earth am
I either disappointed or penitent? Is he no better than the rest of
us, or am I no worse? And with what am I quarrelling, in any case--his
being less of a saint, or I less of a sinner than I'd been pleased to
imagine? I'm sure I don't know."

Instinctively her eyes sought that kindly worlding, Lord Fallowfeild.
With him at least, as she reflected, one knew exactly where one was,
since his feet were always very much upon the floor. But here again
discomfiture, alas! awaited her. For another person, and evidently a
welcome one, had joined that pleasant little party. Standing beside
the large and gentle lady, speaking quickly, gaily, his face keen and
eager, she beheld Alaric Barking. Lord Fallowfeild, smiling, patted
the young man affectionately on the shoulder. And then, with a shudder
of pain gnawing right through her, Poppy St. John, glancing at the
graceful white-clad maiden, understood of whose coming this one had
been so sweetly and gladly expectant.

To the strong there is something exhilarating in all certainty, even
certainty of disaster. And it was very characteristic of Poppy that at
this juncture no cry came to her lips, no sob to her throat. She
shuddered that once, it is true. But then, setting her teeth, the
whole daring of her nature rose to the situation, as a high-mettled
horse rises to a heavy fence. What lay on the other side of that fence
she did not know as yet, nor did she stop to consider. Desperate
though it looked, she took it gallantly without fuss or funking.

"Well, there's no ambiguity about this affair, anyhow," she said
grimly. "Of course it had to come sooner or later, and I knew it had
to come. Well, here it is, that's all, and there's no use whining. And
that's why he's been so jumpy lately: he had a bad conscience. Poor
old chap, he must have been having a beastly bad time of it."

Poppy mused a little.

"Still, it's a facer," she added, "and a precious nasty one, too."

She stretched herself, shaking back her head, while the diamond points
of her aigrette danced and glittered. Took a deep breath, filling her
lungs; listened to herself, so to speak, noting with satisfaction that
neither heart nor pulse fluttered.

"No serious damage," she commented. "I must have the nerves of a
locomotive. Here I am perfectly sound, perfectly sober, standing at
the parting of the ways, between the dear old devil of love and the
deep sea of friendship. Poppy Smyth, my good soul, you've always been
rather fatally addicted to drama. Are you satisfied at last? For just
now, heaven knows, you've jolly well got your fill of it."

Then, for a space, she sat staring out into the house, thinking hard,
intently, yet without words. The future, as she knew, hung in the
balance, for herself and for others; but, as yet, she could not decide
into which scale to throw the determining weight. Presently she looked
steadily at Dominic Iglesias. He was again engaged in conversation,
trying, with his air of fine old-world courtesy, suitably to entertain
his strangely assorted neighbours. Poppy had an idea he found it
rather hard work. She was not in the least sorry. That faded piece of
feminine elegance, in fluffy black, bored her. She entertained a
malicious hope that the said piece of feminine elegance bored Mr.
Iglesias also. Finally, with rather bitter courage, she turned her
eyes once more upon Lord Fallowfeild and his companions.

"Poor little girl, poor little girl," she said, quite gently, "so
that's your heaven on earth, is it? I'm afraid a mighty big crop of
wild oats is on show in your Garden of Eden. Still to you, apparently,
it is a blissful place enough. Only the question is, do I intend to
relinquish my rights in that particular property and make it over to
you in fee simple, my pretty baby, or do I not? Shall I give it you,
or shall I keep it? For it is mine to give or to keep still--very much
mine, if I choose to make a fight for it, I fancy."

Yet even as she communed thus with herself, the white-clad maiden and
the other occupants of the box became indistinct and shadowy. The buzz
of conversation in the theatre had ceased; so had the strains of the
orchestra. The lights had been turned low and the curtain had risen
upon the second act.

About half-way through that act Poppy St. John got up, threw her
velvet sacque over her arm, and, slipping past the three intervening
stalls, made her way up the steps of the near gang-way to the swing-
doors opening out to the couloir. Her movements, though studiously
quiet, were, owing to the vivid hue of her attire, very perceptible
even in the penumbra of the dress circle, provoking attention and
smothered comment. The lady in fluffy black, for example, followed her
with glances of undisguised and condemnatory interest, finally calling
the attention of both her cavaliers to the progress of this glowing
figure.

The New Century Theatre is one of those enterprises of trans-Atlantic
origin, undertaken with the praiseworthy and disinterested object of
teaching the Old World "how to do it," and is built and furnished
regardless of expense. The couloirs are wide, lofty, richly carpeted;
the walls of them encrusted with pale highly polished marbles,
pilasters of which, with heavily gilded capitals, flank vast panels of
looking-glass. The moulded ceilings are studded with electric lights,
the glare of which is agreeably softened by pineapple-shaped globes of
crystal glass. The scheme of colour, ranging from imperial purple
through crimson and rose-pink to softest flesh tints, formed an
harmonious setting to the rose-scarlet of Poppy's dress, with its
froth of trailing frills and flounces, as she stood discoursing to a
smart, black-gowned, white-aproned box-keeper.

"You understand, fourth row on the left, next the gang-way? Tell him a
lady wishes particularly to speak to him between the acts. Then bring
him to me here."

"Yes, madam, I quite understand," the young person replied, with much
intelligence, scenting something in the shape of an adventure.

Poppy moved across and sat down on one of the wide divans, and so
doing began to know, once more, how very tired she was. A new
tiredness seemed, indeed, to have been added to the original one. That
first was, at worst, bored and irritable. This was of a different, a
more sad and intimate character.

"I feel as if I had been beaten all over," she said to herself. "Well,
perhaps that's just what it is. I have been beaten. I wish I could
sleep. Oh! dear, oh! dear, how I wish I could sleep."

Her thought fell away into the vague, the inarticulate, though she did
not sleep. Still there was a temporary suspension of volition, of
conscious mental activity, which, in a degree, rested her. Persons,
passing now and again, looked with curiosity at the brilliant figure,
and inscrutable eyes in the dead-white face. The smart box-keeper,
moved by some instinct of pity, came back more than once, finally
offering one of those unwholesome-looking cups of coffee and boxes of
chocolate of which so few have the requisite audacity to partake.
Poppy roused herself sufficiently to reject these terrible delicacies,
while smiling at the conveyor of them. Then she relapsed into the
vague again, and waited, just waited.

"There's the end of the act, madam," the young woman remarked at last
encouragingly.

"All right," Poppy answered. "Go straight away and bring the gentleman
here to me. I'm in a hurry. I want to get home."

The glass doors of the exits swished back and forth, letting out the
confused stir and murmur of the house, letting out a crowd of men as
well. And the aspect the said crowd presented to Poppy's overstrained
nerves and exalted sensibility was repulsive. For it suggested to her
a flight of gigantic black locusts, strong-jawed, pink-faced, and
white-breasted, driven forth by a common hunger, rather cruelly active
and intent. Her sense of humour was in abeyance, as was her usually
triumphant common sense; so that her thought, going behind appearances
and the sane interpretation of them, declined to that fundamental
region in which the root laws of animal life become hideously bare and
distinct. Out of the deep places of her own womanhood a hatred towards
this crowd of men arose; that secular enmity which exists between the
sexes asserting itself and, for the time being, obscuring both reason
and justice. For upon what, as she asked herself bitterly, when all is
said and done, do these male human locusts pasture, save on the souls
and bodies of women, finding a garden before them, and, too often,
leaving but a desert behind? Sex as sex became abhorrent to her, its
penalties unpardonable, its pleasures as loathsome as its sins.

But from the black-coated throng the trim figure of the box-keeper
just then detached itself; and a moment later Poppy, looking up,
beheld Dominic Iglesias standing before her.

CHAPTER XX

"You sent for me, so I have come," Iglesias said, for Poppy St. John,
usually so voluble, just now appeared speechless.

From the moment he had become aware of her presence in the theatre,
Dominic had been sensible that she presented herself under a new
aspect. Of the many different Poppys he had seen, this was by far the
most powerful and dramatic. She stood out from the rest of the
audience as some splendid tropic flower stands out from a thick-set
mass of foliage, conspicuous in form and colour and in promise. There
were handsome women, smart women, beautifully dressed women in plenty,
but Poppy did not shade in with all these, making but part of a
general effect. She remained unique, solitary; and this not merely on
account of her vivid raiment. The effect of her told upon the mind
quite as much as upon the sight. Yet she did not look out of place.
She looked, indeed, preeminently at home. Out of doors, in the country
sunshine, she had struck Dominic as a slight creature, unreal and
fictitious. Here, amid highly artificial and conventional
surroundings, she seemed to him the most natural and vital being
present, retaining the completeness of her individuality, the energy
and mystery of it alike, almost aggressively evident and untouched.
Iglesias ceased to consider her in relation to his and her broken
friendship, or in relation to that which he so reluctantly divined of
her private life. He contemplated her in herself, finding an element
of things primitive in her, which commanded his admiration, though it
failed, so far, to touch his heart. And if this was the impression he
received seeing her at a comparative distance, that impression was
greatly intensified seeing her now at close quarters. The contrast
between the subtle softness and the flare--as of a conflagration--of
her dress, the weariness of her attitude, and the unfathomable
melancholy of her eyes, stirred him profoundly.

"Yes," she answered quietly, almost coldly, "I know I sent. This was
about the last place I should have expected to run across you. I
flattered myself I was safe enough here. I didn't wish to meet you one
little bit. Still, when I did see you, I wanted you. You're the most
plaguey impossible person to rid oneself of somehow"--her voice and
manner softened a little--"so I sent for you. I don't know why,
because now I've got you I seem to have changed my mind. I have
nothing to say."

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