The Far Horizon

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He hesitated and sighed, looking wistfully at the white-clad babies.

"If one had two or three of those little people of one's own it might
be very different--though I would never breathe a word of such a
thought to the wife. Females are so easily upset; and if it raises
regrets in us men, it must be much more trying for them, poor things,
to be childless. But where was I? Yes, well now the good time has
come--and I feel a criminal in saying so, but it appears to me to be
growing stale already, Dominic. It was better in anticipation than in
fact. I am an ungrateful fellow, that I am, I know it; but sometimes I
am inclined to ask myself whether all the things we set such fond
hopes on are not like that."

"No, not all," Iglesias answered, with a certain subdued enthusiasm.
"There are things--a few--which never grow stale. One may build on
them as on a foundation of rock. If they ever seem to fail us, to be
shaken and overthrown, it is an evil delusion, and the cause lies not
in them but in ourselves. It is we who fail, who are shaken and
overthrown through palsied will and feebleness of faith. They remain
forever inviolate."

"I suppose so," the other man said timidly. He was unused to such
vehemence of assertion on the part of his friend. He wondered to what
it could refer. His thought, carrying back to the evening at the
theatre, played around visions of distinguished amours. Then he
steadied himself to heroic resolve.

"I suppose it is," he repeated, "and that makes my conduct appear all
the more discreditable to me. My circumstances are too comfortable and
easy. It is just that. And so I take to fretting over trifles and
seeing slights and unkindness where none were intended." He looked up
at Iglesias, his squinting eyes full of apology and admiration. "Yes,
I am sadly poor-spirited and I have no excuse. I have been nursing a
sense of injury towards those to whom I have most occasion for
gratitude--the wife and you. Dominic, believe me I am heartily ashamed
of myself."

"Come, come," Iglesias answered, brought very much back to earth, yet
touched and softened. "My dear friend, you of all men have small cause
for self-reproach. In every relation of life--and our knowledge of one
another dates back to early youth--I have found you perfect in loyalty
and unselfish kindness."

George Lovegrove walked on for a moment in silence. He had to clear
his throat once or twice before he could command his voice.

"Praise from you is very encouraging," he managed to say at last. "But
I am afraid I do not deserve it. I have felt mortified lately
sometimes, and I am afraid envious. I--but after your last words I am
more than ever ashamed to own it--I have fancied that you were
becoming distant and that an estrangement was growing up between us.
Of course I have always understood, though we happened to be school-
fellows and in the same employment afterward, that your position and
mine were different. And I want you to know that I would never be a
clog on you, Dominic"--he spoke with an admirably simple dignity--
"believe me, I never would be that. Lately I have been troubled by the
thought that I had extracted a promise from you to remain at Trimmer's
Green. Now I beg of you most earnestly not to let that promise, given
in a moment of generous indulgence, weigh with you in the slightest,
if circumstances have arisen which point at your residing in a more
fashionable part of the town."

"But why should I want to go to a more fashionable part of London?"
Iglesias asked, smiling.

"Well, you see," the other returned, his face growing furiously red,
"it came to my knowledge, unexpectedly, that you have acquaintances in
quite another walk of life to ours--the wife's and mine, I mean. And
it would pain me deeply, very deeply, Dominic, that any promise given
to me, regarding your place of residence, should stand between you and
mixing as freely with those acquaintances as you might otherwise do."

They had come to the place where the sheltered pathway is crossed by
the Broad Walk--the upward trend of which showed blond, in the
sunshine, against the brilliant green of the grass and the dark boles
of the great trees bordering it. Here Iglesias paused. He was not
altogether pleased.

"I do not quite follow you," he said coldly. Then looking at the
guileless and faithful being beside him, he softened once more. Was it
not only more just, but more honourable, to treat this matter with
candour? "You are alluding to the lady who was good enough to send for
me the night you and Miss Lovegrove went with me to the play?"

"Yes," the excellent George assented in a strangled voice. He wanted
to know badly. He was agonised by fear of having committed an
indiscretion offensive to his idol.

"Set your mind quite at rest on that point then, my dear friend. Her
world is not my world and never will be. In it I should be very much
out of place."

Iglesias moved forward again, crossing the Broad Walk and making
towards the small iron gate, at the lower corner of the Gardens, which
opens on to Kensington High Street. But he walked slowly, becoming
conscious that he grew tired and spent. The glory of the spirit
dominant was departing, the tyranny of the body dominant beginning to
reassert itself. His features contracted slightly. He felt
unreasoningly sad.

George Lovegrove walked beside him in silence, his eyes downcast, his
heart stirred by vague tumultuous sympathy, his modest nature at once
inflamed and abashed, recognising in his companion the hero of an
exalted and tragic romance.

"Well, he looks it. It suits his character and appearance," he said to
himself, adding aloud--for the very life of him he could not help it--
"But she was very beautiful, Dominic."

"Yes," Iglesias answered, "she is beautiful and very clever and--very
unhappy."

The good George's heart positively thumped against his ribs. "And to
think of all the plans the wife and I have been making!" he said to
himself.

"If she wants me, she will send for me," Iglesias continued quietly,
"and I shall go to her at once, as I went that evening, without
hesitation or delay, wherever she may be. But," he added, "it becomes
increasingly improbable that she will send for me. I have not seen her
or heard from her since that night. And so, my dear friend, you
perceive that your kindly fears of having circumscribed my liberty of
choice in respect of a place of residence are quite unfounded. I have
no reason for leaving Cedar Lodge or altering my accustomed habits."

Iglesias smiled affectionately, as dismissing the whole matter.

"And now," he continued, "that little misunderstanding being cleared
up, will you mind my turning into the restaurant just here, in High
Street, for a cup of coffee and a roll? I have not breakfasted yet."

Whereupon George Lovegrove pranced before him, incoherent in kindly
remonstrance and advice.

"At 11 A. M., and after your severe indisposition at Christmas, too,
out walking on an empty stomach! It is positively suicidal. Where have
you been to?" he cried.

"To Mass," Iglesias answered, still smiling, though with something of
a fighting light in his eyes and a lift of his head.

His companion stared at him in blank amazement.

"To what?" he said.

"To Mass," Iglesias repeated. "I have been waiting for a suitable
opportunity to speak to you of this, George. I, too, have felt the
weight of enforced leisure. It has not been a particularly cheerful
experience; but it has given me time to read, and still more to think,
with the consequence that I have returned to the faith of my
childhood. I have made my peace with the Church."

They continued to walk slowly onward; but George Lovegrove drew away
to the further side of the path as though contact might be dangerous,
as though infection was hanging about. He kept his eyes averted, his
head bent.

"You do surprise me," he said at last. "I had not the slightest
inkling that you were contemplating such a step. I give you my word,
you have fairly taken away my breath. I do not seem to be able to
grasp it, that you, whom I have always looked up to as so mentally
superior, so independent in your thought, should have become a
Romanist--for that is your meaning, I take it, Dominic?"

"Yes, that is my meaning," Iglesias answered.

"You do surprise me," George Lovegrove said again presently, and in a
lamentable voice. "My mind refuses to grasp it. I would rather have
lost five hundred pounds than have heard this. I declare I am fairly
unmanned. I have never received a greater shock."

Iglesias remained silent. He was weary and sad. But he straightened
himself, trying to keep his gaze fixed steadily upon the far horizon
where dwells the everlasting light.

"It is presumptuous in me to criticise your action, perhaps," his
companion continued. "I never did such a thing before, having always
hesitated to set up my views against yours; but I cannot but fear you
have made a sad mistake. And if you were contemplating any change of
this kind, why did you not come into our own national English Church?"

"Very much because it is English and national, I think," he answered.
"In my opinion there is an inherent falsity of conception in
subjecting our approach to the Absolute to restrictions imposed by
country or by race, if these can, by any means, be avoided. Why hamper
yourself with a late, expurgated, and mutilated edition, when the
original, in all its splendour and historic completeness, bearing the
sign-manual of the Author, is there ready to your hand?"

Again Iglesias spoke with subdued but unmistakable enthusiasm. The two
friends had just reached the iron gate leading into High Street. Here
George Lovegrove stopped. He still kept carefully at a distance,
averting his eyes as from some distressing, even disgraceful, sight,
while his good honest face worked with emotion.

"I think if you will kindly excuse me, I will go no farther," he
faltered. "What you say may be true--I am sure I don't know. It is all
beyond me. But I should prefer not to talk any more about it until I
have accustomed myself to the thought of this change in you. Nothing
does come between people like religion," he added with unconscious
irony. "So I think, if you will kindly excuse me, I will just go away,
Dominic."

And, without more ado, he turned back into the Gardens.

The small polar bears, meanwhile, satiated with exercise, air, and
light, had begun to grow restive and fretty. Their stomachs cried
cupboardwards, and they were disposed to filch each other's toy horses
and hoops, and use each other's small persons as targets for balls,
thrown as bombs in a fashion far from polite. Anxious maids and nurses
hunted them homewards, not without slight asperity on the one part, on
the other occasional squealings and free fights. But upon the babies,
engaging even in naughtiness, George Lovegrove had ceased to bestow
any attention. He went forward blindly, cruising among them and their
attendants and smart little carriages, elephantine, careless where he
placed his feet, to the obstruction of traffic and heightening of
general annoyance, as sorrowful a man as any would need to meet. For
it seemed to him things had gone wrong, just then, past all hope of
setting right. His idol, light of his eyes and joy of his guileless
heart, has fallen from his high estate, discovering capacity of
playing the most discreditable and soul-harrowing pranks. Prejudice is
myriad-lived here on earth; and in George Lovegrove all the bigotry,
all the semi-superstitious, terror fostered by the accumulated
ignorance which generations of Protestant forefathers have bequeathed
to the English middle-class, reared itself, not only stubborn, but
militant. His thought travelled back to those barbarities of rougher
ages which are, in point of fact, more common to the secular than to
the religious criminal code; but which Protestant teachers, even yet,
find it convenient to put down wholly to the account of the Catholic
Church. Practically ignorant of the spoliation and persecution
practised under Henry the Eighth--of blessed domestic memory--of the
further persecution which disfigured the "spacious days of great
Elizabeth," not to mention the long and shameful history of the Penal
Laws, he fixed his mind upon lurid legends of the reign of unhappy
Mary Tudor, illustrated by prints in Fox's Book of Martyrs; upon
inquisitorial tortures, the very thought of which--even out of doors
in the pleasant spring sunshine--made him break into a heavy sweat,
and which, by some grotesque perversion of ideas, he believed to be
not only the necessary outcome of, but vitally essential to, the
practice of the Faith. Against this hideous background he set the calm
and stately figure of his beloved friend Iglesias--seeing him no
longer as the faithful comrade of more than half a lifetime, but as a
foreign being, an unknown quantity, a worshipper of graven images, a
participant in blasphemous rites, a believer, in short, in just all
that which sound, respectable, and godly British common sense cast
forth, with scorn and contumely, close on four centuries back. He was
frightened. His everyday, comfortable, jog-trot, little odd and end of
a local parochial suburban middle-class world was literally turned
upside down and inside out.

"And however will the wife take it--however will she take it?" he
mourned to himself. "To think we have been harbouring a Papist in
disguise! I dare not contemplate her feelings. She will be upset. I
must keep it from her as long as possible. And Serena, too, and Susan!
I don't know how I can face them. Females are so very eloquent when
put out. Of course I have known there was something wrong for a long
time past. I saw there was a change in him, and felt there was some
cause of coldness; but it never entered my head it could be as bad as
this. Oh! my poor, dear friend. Oh! my poor Dominic, perhaps I have
been overattached to you and this comes as a judgment. It would be
hard enough to have anything break up our friendship, but this folly,
this dreadful doting apostasy--"

He walked on blindly along the sheltered path between the flower-
borders, deaf to remonstrant nurses and scornful, beautiful babes
clothed in spotless white.

"If anything must come between us I would rather it was a woman," he
mourned, "ten thousand times rather, whoever and whatever she was,
than this."

CHAPTER XXIV

It happened on the afternoon of that same day that Eliza Hart, in
pursuance of her domestic avocations, had occasion to go into Mr.
Farge's room on the first floor to lay out a new coverlet on his bed.
When, as thus, compelled to enter the apartments of either of the
gentlemen guests of the establishment it was her practice to leave the
door half open, as a concession to propriety in the abstract and a
testimony to her own discretion in the concrete. The handsome mahogany
doors of Cedar Lodge, unhappily painted white by some vandal of a
former inhabitant, being heavy were hung on a rising hinge. Hence,
when half open, a space of some three inches was left between the back
of the door and the jamb, through which it was easy to get a good view
of the hall or the landing unobserved. Little Mr. Farge professed a
warm predilection for gay colours, and Eliza had selected the new
bedspread with an eye to this fact. It was of bright raspberry-red
cotton twill, enriched with a broad printed border in a flowing design
of lemon-yellow tulips and bottle-green leaves. The salesman, in
exhibiting it to her, had described it as "very chaste and pleasing."
Eliza herself qualified it as "tasty"; and had just disposed it, much
to her own satisfaction, upon the young man's bed, when her attention
was arrested by the tones of an unknown feminine voice in the hall
below. Shortly afterwards she heard Frederick, the valet's large
footsteps hurtling upstairs at a double, followed by a prolonged and
leisurely whispering of silken skirts. Here, clearly, was a matter
into which, for the reputation of Cedar Lodge, it was desirable to
look without delay. Eliza, therefore, moved to the near side of the
door, and, through the three-inch aperture afforded by the rising
hinge, raked the landing with a vigilant eye.

The door of Mr. Iglesias's sitting-room immediately opposite stood
open. In the doorway Frederick indulged in explanatory gesticulation.
While, slowly ascending the last treads of the stairs, was a lady of
unmistakable elegance, arrayed in a large black hat with drooping
plumes to it, a sable cape--the price of which, Eliza felt assured,
ran easily into three figures--and a black cloth dress in the cut of
which she read the last word of contemporary fashion. Arrived at the
stair-head the intruder stood still, calmly surveying her surroundings,
presenting, as she turned her head, a pale face, very red lips, and
eyes--so at least it appeared to the vigilant orbs of Eliza--quite
immodestly large and lustrous, melancholy and somehow extremely
impertinent, too. Then Mr. Iglesias emerged from his sitting-room, an
expression upon his countenance which startled Eliza. She very
certainly had never seen it before. For a moment the lady looked up at
him, as though silently asking some question. Then she patted him
lightly upon the back, and passed into the sitting-room hand in hand
with him, while Frederick with his best flourish closed the door.

"Well, of all the things!" cried Eliza, half aloud; and, oblivious
both of discretion and of the new raspberry-red cotton twill coverlet,
she backed, and sat, plump, upon the edge of the bed. Just then, as
she asserted in subsequently recounting this remarkable incident, you
might have knocked her down with a feather.

"Of all the things!" she repeated, after an interval of breathless
amazement. "And how long has this been going on, I should like to
know? So that is the reason of a certain gentleman's iciness, and his
stand-offish high-mightiness. Well, I never! And poor darling Peachie,
so trustful and confiding all the time; not that she need fear
comparison with anybody.--Bah! the serpent."

Nevertheless she was deeply impressed, and fell into a vein of furious
speculation as to who this unlooked-for smart lady might be. Then,
suddenly remembering the highly compromising nature of her own
existing position sitting not only in the lively little Farge's bed-
chamber, but actually upon his bed, she rose with embarrassment and
haste, and made her way downstairs to the offices--treading
circumspectly in dread of creaking boards--to interview Frederick. But
from that functionary she obtained scant information.

"Zee lady she ask for Mr. Iglesias. I tell her I go to find him. I put
her in zee drawing-room."

"Quite right, Frederick,"--this encouragingly from Eliza.

"But she no stay zere. She come again out quick. She not any name, not
any visiting card give; only write somezing, very fast, on a piece of
paper and screw it togezzer. Zen she not wait till I return, but
behind me upstairs chase."

So there was nothing for it, as the great Eliza perceived, but to
retire to the drawing-room, and--Mrs. Porcher happened to be out--note
the hour and, with the door discreetly half open, await the descent of
the intruder from the floor above.

"I can just catch darling Peachie, too," she said to herself, "and
draw her aside. To meet such a person unexpectedly, on the stairs or
in the hall, would be enough to make her turn quite faint."

CHAPTER XXV

Poppy St. John laid her hands lightly on Mr. Iglesias' shoulders and
smiled at him. She looked very young, yet very worn; and the corners
of her mouth shook.

"If you were anybody else," she said, "I believe I should give you a
kiss. But I am not going to, so don't be nervous, dear man. I'll be
perfectly correct, I promise you--only I had to come. I have been
good, absolutely tiptop beastly good, I tell you. I have washed the
slate. It is as clean as a vacuum, as the inside of an exhausted
receiver. And I feel as dull as empty space before the creation got
started."

Poppy shivered a little, putting one hand over her eyes, and resting
her head with its great black hat and sweeping plumes against Mr.
Iglesias' chest. And Iglesias quietly put his arm round her,
supporting her. The day had been full of experiences. This last,
though of a notably different complexion to the rest, promised to be
by no means the least searching and surprising. Iglesias steadied
himself to take it quite calmly, in his stride; yet his jaw grew rigid
and his face blanched in dread of that which might be coming.

"I have sent Alaric Barking about his business," Poppy continued
hoarsely. "Sent him back to his soldiering, helped to cart him off to
that rotten hole, South Africa. He is a smart officer, and he'll make
a name, if he don't get shot. And he won't get shot--I should feel it
in my bones if he was going to, and I don't feel it. I broke with him
more than a month ago. But I had to see him again to say good-bye,
this morning, before he sailed."

Poppy moved a step or two away, turning her back on Iglesias.

"And it hurt a jolly lot more than I expected. I don't suppose I am in
love"--she looked around inquiringly at him, as though expecting him
to solve the complicated problem of her affections. "It's not likely
at this time of day, is it? But I was fonder of Alaric than I quite
knew. He is a good sort, and we have had some ripping times together.
He had become a sort of habit, you know; and when you have knocked
about a lot, as I have, you get rather sick at the notion of any
change."

She stood, looking down, leisurely unbuttoning and pulling off her
long gloves.

"I don't know that I should have made up my mind to sack him in the
end, but that I wanted to please Fallowfeild."

Mr. Iglesias became very tall. His expression was hard, his eyes
alight. This the lady noted. She returned and patted him gently on the
back again.

"There, there, don't sail off on a wrong tack, my beloved fire-eater.
Fallowfeild was quite right. The game was up, really it was; and he
wanted me to walk out, like the gentlemanlike dog, so as to avoid
being kicked out. I always knew the break was bound to come some time;
and it's a long sight pleasanter to break than to be broken with,
don't you think so?--You see, Alaric has formed a virtuous
attachment." Poppy's lips took a cynical twist. "It was time, high
time, he should, if he meant to go in for that line of business at
all. The young lady is a niece of Fallowfeild's--a pretty little
girl, really quite pretty--I saw her that night we were both at the
play--all new, and pink and white, and well-bred, and _ingenue_,
and in every respect perfectly suitable."

Poppy looked mutinously, even mischievously, at Dominic Iglesias.

"Poor, dear old Alaric," she said. "I don't quarrel with him. His
elder brother's no children, and there are pots and pots of money.
That he should want to marry, and that his people should press it on
him, is perfectly natural, and obvious, and proper."

"But," Dominic asked fiercely, "if this young man, Captain Barking,
proposes to marry, why has he not married you--always supposing you
were willing to entertain his suit?"

Poppy flung her long gloves upon the table, unhooked her sable cape
and sent it flying to join them.

"Pou-ah! I'm hot!" she exclaimed. "I think I'll sit down, if you have
no objection. Yes, that chair, thanks--it looks excellently
comfortable. By the way, you've got an uncommonly nice lot of things
in this room. I am going to make a tour of inspection presently. It
pleases me frightfully to see where you live and look at your
possessions." She stared absently at the furniture and pictures.--"But
about my marrying Alaric Barking," she continued. "Well, you see--you
see, dear man, there is an inconvenient little impediment in the shape
of a husband."

As she finished speaking Poppy folded her hands in her lap. She sat
perfectly still, her lips pressed together, watching Mr. Iglesias over
her shoulder but without turning her head. He had crossed the room and
stood at one of the tall narrow windows, looking out into the bright
windy afternoon.

For here it was in plain English, at last, that underlying secret
thing which he had known yet dreaded to know. It begot in him an
immense regret and inevitable repulsion at admitted wrongdoing. He
made no attempt to juggle with the meaning of her words. Yet, along
with them, came a feeling of gladness that Poppy St. John would remain
Poppy St. John still; and a movement of hope--intimate and very
tender--since in this tragic hour of her history she had come directly
to him, asking comfort and sympathy. Dominic, cut to the quick by the
defection of the heretofore ever-faithful George Lovegrove, hailed
with a peculiar thankfulness this mark of confidence and trust.
Sinful, greatly erring, still the Lady of the Windswept Dust had
returned to him; and thereat he soberly, yet very deeply, rejoiced. In
truth, the sharp-edged breath of persecution he had encountered this
morning, while paining him, had braced him to high endeavour. The
Catholic Church, so he argued, must indeed be a mighty and living
power since men fear her so much. And this power he felt to be behind
him, sustaining him, inciting him to noble undertakings--he strong in
virtue of her strength, fearless through the courage of her saints,
able with the energy of their accumulated merit and their prayers.
Again, as on his way home that morning from hearing Mass, the spirit
was dominant, his whole nature and outlook purified and exalted by the
Divine Indwelling. To fail any human creature calling on him for help
would be contemptible, and even dastardly, in one blessed as he
himself was. Thus his relation to Poppy St. John fell into line. He
could afford to love and serve her well, since he loved and purposed,
in all things, to serve Almighty God best.

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