The Far Horizon

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These meditations occupied but a few moments, yet Poppy's patience ran
short.

"Dominic Iglesias," she cried suddenly, sharply, "I am tired of
waiting."

He crossed the room and stood in front of her, serious but light of
heart.

"See here, it is all right between us?" she asked imperatively.

"Yes, all is perfectly right between us," he answered. "Your coming
gives me the measure of your faith in me. I am grateful and I am very
glad."

"Ah!" Poppy said softly.

She sat forward in her chair, making herself small, patting her hands
together, palm to palm, between her knees, and swaying a little as she
spoke.

"You see," she went on, "to be quite honest, I didn't break with
Alaric simply to enable him to marry and live happy ever after. Nor
did I do it exclusively to please Fallowfeild. It would take a greater
fool than I am to be as altruistic as all that. I always like to have
my run for my money. I--I did it more to get you back."

She paused and raised her head, looking full at him.

"And I have got you back?" she said.

"Yes," he answered, smiling. "I ask nothing better than to come back."

"Do you mean that you are prepared to take everything on trust--after
what I have just told you--without wanting explanations?"

"Friendship has no need of explanations," Iglesias said, with a touch
of grandeur--"that is, as I understand friendship. It accepts what is
given without question, or cavilling as to much or to little, leaving
the giver altogether free. Friendship, as I understand it, should have
honourable reticences, not only of speech but of thought; wise
economies of proffered sympathy. In its desire of service it should
never approach too near or say the word too much; since, if it is to
flourish and obtain the grace of continuance, it must be rooted in
reverence for the individuality of the person dear to it. This is my
belief." His bearing was courtly, his expression very gentle.
"Therefore rest assured that whatever confidence you repose in me is
sacred. Whatever confidence you withhold from me is sacred likewise."

Poppy mused a little, a smile on her lips and an enigmatic look in her
singular eyes.

"You're beautiful, dear man," she murmured. "You're very beautiful.
You're worth chucking the devil over for; but you'll take a jolly lot
of living up to. So see here, you're bound to look me up pretty
constantly just at first, for I tell you life is not going to be
exactly a toy-shop for me for some little time to come. You hear? You
promise?"

"I promise," Iglesias returned.

"And there's another thing," she continued rather proudly, "a thing
men too often blunder over--with the very best intentions, bless them,
only they do blunder, and that leads to ructions. Please put the
question of money out of your head once and for all. I have a certain
amount of my own, nothing princely well understood, but quite possible
to live on. It was to prevent his playing ducks and drakes with it
that I finally left the jackal of a fellow whom I married. Well, I
have that, and I have made a little more, one way and another."--Poppy
permitted herself a wicked grimace.--"Poor old Alaric used to tell me
I was a great financier wasted, that I should have been invaluable as
partner in their family banking concern--that's more than he'll ever
be, poor chap, unless marriage makes pretty sweeping changes in him.
Some of my sources of income naturally are cut off through the
cleaning of the slate. For I have been tiptop beastly good--indeed I
have, as I told you! No more cards, and oh dear, no more racing. But
no doubt Cappadocia will contribute in the way of puppies. _Noblesse
oblige_--she realises her duty towards posterity, does Cappadocia.
So I shall scrape along quite tidily. And then, as long as I keep my
voice and my figure, at a push there's always my profession.--You
hadn't arrived at the fact that I had a profession? Such is fame, dear
man, such is fame. Why, I started as a child-actress at thirteen; and
went on till the jackal made that impossible, like virtue, and self-
respect, and a decent home, and a few kindred trifles in favour of
which every clean-minded woman has, after all, a strongish prejudice."

Poppy's voice shook. She had much ado to maintain an indifferent and
matter-of-fact manner. Iglesias drew up a chair and sat down beside
her. She put out her hand, taking his and holding it quietly.

"There, that's better," she said. "I feel babyish. I should like a
good square cry. But I won't have one. Don't be afraid. The motto is
'No snivelling, full steam ahead.'--But as to the stage, I'm not sure
that won't prove the solution of most difficulties in the end.
Sometimes it pulls badly at my heartstrings, and I shouldn't be half
sorry for an excuse for taking to it again. It's a rotten profession
for a man, and not precisely a soul-saving one for a woman. But it
gives you your opportunity; and, at bottom, I suppose that's the main
thing one asks of life--one's opportunity. Too, your art is your art;
and if it is bred in you, you sicken for it. I was awfully glad that
night to see you at the play, though in a way it shocked me. It seemed
incongruous. Tell me, do you really care for the theatre?"

"To a moderate extent I do," Dominic answered. She wanted, so he
divined, to give a lighter tone to the conversation. He tried to meet
her wishes.--"I am not a very ardent playgoer, I am afraid. But at the
present time I happen to be involved indirectly in theatrical
enterprise. I am interested in the production of a play, which I am
assured will prove a remarkable success."

"You're not financing it?" Poppy asked sharply.

"Within certain limits I am," he answered, smiling. "An appeal was
made to me for help which it would have been cruel to refuse."

Poppy's expression had become curiously sombre, not to say stormy. She
got up and began to roam about the room.

"I hope to goodness the limits are clearly defined, and very narrow
ones, then," she exclaimed. "For my part I don't believe in talent
which can't find a market in the ordinary course of business. I grant
you managers sometimes put a play on which is no good; and sometimes
cripple what might be a fine play by doctoring it, in deference to the
rulings of that archetype of all maiden aunts and incarnation of
British hypocrisy, the censor; but they very rarely, in my experience,
reject a play which has money in it. Why should they? Poor brutes,
they are not exactly surfeited with masterpieces. The play which
requires private backing, though a record-breaker in the opinion of
its author, is usually rubbish in that of the public. And the public,
take it all round, is very fairly level-headed and just; you must not
judge it by the stupidities of the censor. He represents only an
extreme section of it, if at this time of day he really represents
anybody--a section which does the screaming sitting sanctimoniously at
home, getting its information at second-hand through the papers, and
never darkens the doors of a play-house at all. Moreover, you must
remember that the public is master. There is no getting behind its
verdict."

Poppy's peregrinations had brought her back beside Mr. Iglesias again.
She patted him on the shoulder.

"See here, my beloved no-longer-nameless one," she said. "Be advised.
Learn wisdom. For I tell you I've been through that gate if ever a
woman has. The jackal--I wish to heaven we could keep him out of our
talk, but, for cause unknown, he persistently obtrudes himself--he
invariably does so when I'm hipped and edgy--well, you see, he was an
unappreciated genius in the way of a dramatist, from which fact I
derived first-hand acquaintance with the habits of the species. What I
don't know about those animals is not worth knowing. They're just
simply vermin, I tell you. Their utter unprofitableness is only
equalled by their lunatic vanity. They imagine the whole world, lay
and professional, is in league to balk and defraud them. So don't
touch them, I entreat you, as you value your peace of mind and your
pocket. They'll bleed you white and never give you a penn'orth of
thanks--more likely turn on you and make out, somehow or other, you
are responsible for the failure of their precious productions.--Now
let's try to forget them, and talk of pleasanter subjects. These
obtrusions of the jackal always bring me bad luck. I'm downright
scared at them.--Tell me about your goods, your books and your
pictures. And show me something which belonged to your mother--that
is, if it wouldn't pain you to do so. I should like to hold something
she had touched in my hands. It would be comforting, somehow. And just
set that door wider open, there's a dear. I want to have a look into
the other room and see where you sleep."

For the ensuing half hour Poppy was an enchanting companion, wholly
womanly, gentle and delicate; eager, too, with the pretty spontaneous
eagerness of a child, at the recital of stories and exhibition of
treasures beloved by her companion. The lonely cedar tree, lamenting
its exile as the wind swept through the labyrinth of its dry branches,
moved her almost to tears.

"It is tragic," she said; "still, I am glad you have it. It's very
much in the picture, and lifts the sentiment of the place out of the
awful suburban rut. It's a little symbolic of you yourself, too,
Dominic--there's style, and poetry, and breeding about it. Only, thank
the powers, you differ from it mightily in this, that its best days
are over, while you are but in the flower of your age. And your rooms
are delightful--they're like you, too.--The rest of the house? My dear
soul, the manservant ushered me into a drawing-room, when I arrived,
the colours of which were simply frantic. I bolted. If I'd stayed
another five minutes they'd have given me lockjaw.--Now I must go."
She smiled very sweetly upon Mr. Iglesias. "I'm better, ten thousand
times better," she said. "When I came I was rather extensively
nauseated by my own virtuous actions. Now it's all square between them
and me. I'm good right through, I give you my word I am. If only it'll
last!"

Poppy's lips quivered, and she looked Iglesias rather desperately in
the face.

"Never fear," he answered, "but that it will last."

"Still you'll come and see me often, very often, till I settle down
into the running? It will be beastly heavy going--must be, I'm afraid
--for a long while yet."

Dominic Iglesias, holding her hand, bent low and kissed it.

"I will serve you perfectly, God helping me, as long as I live," he
said.

Five minutes later Mrs. Porcher, supported by the outraged and
sympathetic Eliza, watched, through the aperture afforded by the
rising hinge of the dining-room door, an unknown lady, escorted by Mr.
Iglesias, sweep in whispering skirts and costly sables across the
hall.

Passing out and down the white steps, Poppy, usually so light of foot
and deft of movement, stumbled, and but for Iglesias' prompt
assistance would have fallen headlong. At that same moment de Courcy
Smyth, slovenly in dress, with shuffling footsteps, crossed the road,
and then slunk aside, his arm jerked up queerly almost as though
warding off a blow.

"No, no, I'm not hurt, not in the least hurt," Poppy said
breathlessly, in response to Iglesias' inquiry. "But it's given me a
bad fright. I'll go straight home. Put me into the first hansom you
see.--No, I'll go by myself. I'd far rather. I give you my word I'm
not hurt; but I've a lot of things to think about--I want to be alone.
I want to be quiet. Come soon. I was very happy. Good-bye--
good-night."

CHAPTER XXVI

A featureless landscape of the brand of ugliness peculiar to the
purlicus of a great city, to that intermediate region where the
streets have ended and the country has not yet fairly begun. A waste
of cabbagefields--the dark lumpy earth between the rows of yellowish
stumps strewn with ill-smelling refuse of decaying leaves--seen
through the rents in a broken, unkempt, quickset hedge. Running
parallel with the said hedge, shiny blacktarred palings, shutting off
all view of the river. Between these barriers, a long stretch of drab-
coloured high road, flanked by slightly raised footpaths, a verge of
coarse weedy grass to them in which a litter of rags, torn posters,
and much other unloveliness found harbourage. To the northwest and
north, a sky piled to the zenith with mountainous swiftly moving
clouds, inky, blue-purple, wildly white, from out the torn bosoms of
which rushed, now and again, flurrying showers of hail and sleet
driven by a shrieking wind. March was in the act of asserting its
proverbial privilege of "going out like a lion"; but the lion, as seen
in this particular perspective, was a frankly ignoble and ill-
conditioned beast.

And Poppy St. John, heading up against wind and weather along the
left-hand footpath, felt frankly ignoble and ill-conditioned, too. Her
poor soul, which had made such valiant efforts to spread its wings and
fly heavenward--a form of exercise sadly foreign to its habit--
crawled, once more, soiled and mud-bespattered, along the common
thoroughfare of life. At this degradation, her heart overflowed with
bitterness and disgust, let alone the blind rage which possessed her,
as of some trapped creature frustrated in escape. She had broken gaol,
as she fondly imagined, and secured liberty. Not a bit of it! In the
hour of reconciliation, of sweetest security, she met her gaoler face
to face and heard the key grind in the lock.

Save for the occasional passing of a market waggon, or high-shouldered
scavenger's cart, the road was deserted. Once a low-hung two-wheeled
vehicle rattled by, on which, insufficiently covered by sacking, lay a
dead horse, the great head swinging ghastly over the slanting tail-
board, the legs sticking out stark in front. A man, perched sideways
on the carcass, swore at the rickety crock he was driving, and lashed
it under the belly with a short-handled heavy-thonged whip. He was
collarless, and the scarlet and orange handkerchief, knotted about his
throat, had got shifted, the ends of it streaming out behind him as he
lifted his arm and swayed his whole body madly using his whip. Poppy
shut her eyes, sickened by the sound and sight. Just then a scourging
storm of sleet struck her, causing her to turn her back and pause,
where a curve in the range of paling offered some slight shelter. For
strong though she was, and well furnished against the inclement
weather in a thick coaching coat, buttoned up to her chin and down to
her feet, her cloth cap tied on with a thick veil, the stinging wind
and sleet were almost more than she could face. Her depression was not
physical merely, but moral likewise. For over and above her personal
and private sources of trouble, it was a day and place whereon evil
deeds seemed unpleasantly possible. The swearing driver and dangling
head of the dead horse had served to complete her discomfiture; and
presently, the storm slackening a little, hearing footsteps behind
her, she wheeled round, her chin bravely in the air, but her heart
galloping with nervous fright, while her fingers closed down on the
butt of the small silver-plated revolver which rested in the right-
hand waist pocket of her long coat.

De Courcy Smyth was close beside her. Poppy set her lips together and
braced herself to endure the coming wretchedness. It was some years
since she had had speech of him--some years, indeed, since she had
seen him, save during that brief moment, twenty-four hours previously,
as she descended the steps of Cedar Lodge. Even in his most prosperous
days he had been unattractive in person, at once untidy and theatrical
in dress. Now Poppy registered a distinct deterioration in his
appearance. His puffy face, red-rimmed eyes, and shambling gait were
odious to her. She noted, moreover, that he was poorly clad. His grey
felt hat was stained and greasy; his ginger-coloured frieze overcoat
threadbare at the elbows, thin and stringy in the skirts. The soles of
his brown boots were splayed, the upper leathers seamed and cracked.
This might denote poverty. It might, also, only denote carelessness
and sloth. In any case, it failed to move her to pity, provoking in
her uncontrollable irritation; so that, forgetful of diplomacy,
stirred by memories of innumerable kindred provocations in the past,
Poppy spoke without preamble, asking him sharply as he joined her:

"Have you no better clothes than that?"

Smyth paused before answering, looking her up and down furtively yet
deliberately, wiping the wet of his beard and face, meanwhile, with a
frayed green silk pocket-handkerchief.

"It offends your niceness that your husband should dress like a tramp,
does it?" he said hoarsely. "And pray whose fault is it that he is
reduced to doing so? Judging by your own costume, you can easily
remove that cause of offence if you choose. It does not occur to you,
perhaps, that while you live on the fat of the land I, but for the
charity of strangers--which it is loathsome to me to accept--should
not have enough to pay for the food I eat or for the detestable garret
in which I both work and sleep? Under these circumstances I am
scarcely prepared to call in a fashionable tailor to replenish my
wardrobe, lest its meagreness should, on the very rare occasions on
which I have the honour of meeting you, offer an unpleasing reflection
upon your own super-elegance."

To these observations, delivered with a somewhat hysterical
volubility, Poppy made no direct reply. Surely it was cruel, cruel,
that at this juncture, when she had so honestly striven to refuse the
evil and choose the good, this recrudescence of all that was most
hateful to her should take place? Moreover, now as always, just that
modicum of truth underlay Smyth's exaggerated accusations and
perverted statements which made them as difficult to combat as they
were exasperating to listen to. For a minute or so Poppy could not
trust herself to speak, lest she should give way to foolish invective.
His looks, manner, intonation, the phrases he employed were odiously
familiar to her. She fought as in a malicious dream, to which the
squalor of the surrounding landscape offered an only too appropriate
setting. Turning, she walked slowly in the direction whence she had
come--namely, in that of Barnes village and Mortlake. There the quaint
riverside houses would afford some shelter and sense of comradeship.

"I am sorry to make you come farther out," she said, with an attempt
at civility.

"That is unexpectedly considerate," he commented.

"But it is impossible to talk in the teeth of this wind," she
continued, "and I imagine we're neither of us particularly keen to
prolong our interview."

"Excuse me, speak for yourself," Smyth interrupted. "I find it
decidedly interesting to meet my wife again. She has gone up in the
world, and climbed the tree of fashion in the interval. I have gone
down in the world, as every scholar and gentleman, every man with
brains and high standards of art and culture, is bound to go down
sooner or later, in this hideous age of blatant commercialism and
Mammon rampant. I don't quarrel with it. I would far rather be one of
the downtrodden, persecuted minority. But, just on that account, my
wife is all the more worth contemplating, since she offers a highly
instructive object-lesson in the advantages which accrue from allying
oneself with the victorious majority. See--"

A rush of wind and flurry of cold rain rendered the concluding words
of his tirade inaudible. It was as well, for Poppy was growing wicked,
anger dominating every more humane and decent feeling in her.

"Look here," she said, when the storm had somewhat abated. "I know
that sort of talk as well as my old shoe. Haven't I listened to it for
hours? For goodness' sake, quit it. It doesn't wash. Let us come to
the point at once without all this idiotic brag and gassing. You wrote
me a letter shouting danger and ruin. What did it mean? Anything real,
or merely a melodramatic blowing off of steam? Tell me. Let us have it
out and have finished with it. What do you want?"

The softening medium of a gauze veil failed to hide the fact that
Poppy's expression was distinctly malignant, her great eyes full of
sombre fury, her red lips tense. Smyth backed away from her against
the palings in genuine alarm.

"I--I believe you'd like to murder me," he said.

"So I should," Poppy answered. "I should very much like to kill you.
And I've the wherewithal here, in my pocket, and there's no one on the
road. But you needn't be anxious. I'm not going to murder you. The
consequences to myself would be too inconvenient."

As she spoke she thought of yesterday, of the renewal of her
friendship with Dominic Iglesias, and of all that he stood for to her
in things pure, lovely, and of good report. A sob rose in her throat,
for nothing, after all, is so horrible as to feel wicked; nothing so
hard to forgive as that which causes one to feel so. Poppy walked on
again slowly.

"What do you want?" she repeated miserably. "Be straight with me for
once, if you can, de Courcy, and tell me plainly--if there's anything
to tell. What is it you want?"

"I have my chance at last," he said hurriedly, "of fame, and success,
and recognition--of bringing those who have despised me to their
knees. I thought I was safe. But yesterday I found that you--yes, you
--come into the question, that you may stand between me and the
realisation of my hopes--more than hopes, a certainty, unless you play
some scurvy trick on me. I had to have your promise, and there was no
time to lose--so I wrote."

Poppy looked at him contemptuously.

"What does all that mean?--more money?" she asked. "Haven't you grown
ashamed of begging yet? I raised your allowance last year, and it's
being paid regularly--Ford & Martin have sent me on your receipts. To
give it you at all is an act of grace, for you've no earthly claim on
me, and you know it. From the day I married you I never cost you a
farthing; I've paid for everything myself, down to every morsel of
bread I put into my mouth. You, talked big about your income
beforehand, when you knew you were up to your eyes in debt. Well, in
debt you may stay, as far as I am concerned. I'll give you that
seventy-five a year if you'll keep clear of me; but I won't give you a
penny more, for the simple reason that I shan't have it to give. It'll
be an uncommonly close shave in any case--I have myself to keep."

"Yourself to keep?" Smyth snarled. "Since when have you taken to
wholesale lying, my pretty madam? That is a new development."

"I'm not lying," Poppy blazed out. "I am speaking honest, sober
truth."

Smyth laughed. It was not an agreeable sound.

"Is not that a little too brazen?" he asked. "Even with such a
negligible quantity as a deserted husband, it is a mistake to overplay
the part."

Then, frightened by her expression, he slunk aside again. But Poppy
did not linger. Slowly, steadily, she walked on down the rain-lashed
footpath.

"For God's sake tell me what you want--tell me what you want," she
cried, "and let me get away from all this rottenness."

"You do not believe in me," Smyth replied sullenly, "and that is why
it is so difficult to speak to you about this matter. You have always
depreciated my powers and scoffed at my talents. No thanks to you I
have any self-confidence left."

"All right, all right," Poppy said. "We can miss out the remainder of
that speech. I know it by heart. Come to the point--what do you want?"

"I was just filling in the sketch of the third act."

Poppy shrugged her shoulders and raised her hands with a despairing
gesture.

"Oh, heavens," she ejaculated, "a play again! Are you mad? You know,
just as well as I do, every manager Mill refuse it unread."

"It will be unnecessary to approach any manager. I go straight to the
public this time. I have the promise of money to meet the expenses of
two matinees at least. I have no scruple in accepting--it is an
investment, and an immensely profitable one--for I know the worth of
my own work. It is great, nothing less than great--"

"Of course," Poppy said. "But pray where do I come in?" Then she
paused. Suddenly she pieced the bits of the puzzle together, saw and
understood. Misery, deeper than any she had yet experienced,
overflowed in her. "Ah, it is you, then, you who are bleeding Dominic
Iglesias," she cried. "Robbing him by appeals to his charity and lying
assurances of impossible profits. You shall not do it. I will put a
stop to it. You shall not, you shall not!"

"Why?" Smyth inquired. "Do you want all his money yourself?"

"You dirty hound," Poppy said under her breath.

"I did not know of your connection with him till yesterday," Smyth
continued--in proportion as Poppy lost herself, he became cool and
astute--"though we have lived in the same house for the last eighteen
months. I supposed you to be in pursuit of larger game than
superannuated bank-clerks. However, your modesty of taste, combined
with your charming attitude towards me, might, as I perceived, lead to
complications. I ascertained how long you had been at Cedar Lodge
yesterday. Then I wrote to you."

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