The Far Horizon

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Still, one way and another, the boy came very near touching the confines
of despair. Then the tide rose and the stranded ship of his fate began to
lift a little. By means of a series of accidents--the illness of his
former school-fellow, the already mentioned George Lovegrove, whose post
he offered temporarily to fill--he drifted into connection with the
banking house of Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking. There his knowledge
of modern languages, his industry, and a certain discreet aloofness
commended him to his superiors. A minor clerkship fell vacant; it was
offered to him. And from thenceforth, for Dominic Iglesias, the monotony
of fixed routine and steady labour, until the day when, as a man of past
fifty, restless and somewhat distrustful both of the present and the
future, he watched the dying of the sullen sunset over Trimmer's Green
from the windows of the first-floor sitting-room of Cedar Lodge.

CHAPTER II

That which had in point of fact happened was not, as Iglesias felt,
without a pretty sharp edge of irony. For to-day, London, so long his
task-mistress and gaoler, had assumed a new attitude towards him.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, she had cast him off, given him his freedom. It
was amazing, a thing to take your breath away for the moment. And
agitated and hurt--for his pride unquestionably had suffered in the
process--Iglesias asked himself what in the world he should do with this
gift of freedom, what he should do, indeed, with that which remained to
him of life?

It had come about thus. Seeking an interview that morning with Sir Abel
Barking, in the latter's private room at the bank, he had made certain
statements regarding his own health in justification of a request for
some weeks' rest and holiday now, rather than later, in September, when
his yearly vacation would fall due.

"So you find yourself unequal to dealing satisfactorily with the
increasing intricacy of our financial operations, become confused by the
multiplicity of detail, suffer from pains in the head?" Sir Abel had
commented, with a certain largeness of manner. "I own, my good friend, I
was not wholly unprepared for this announcement."

"My work has not so far, I believe, suffered in any respect," Iglesias
put in quietly. "Directly I had reason to fear it might suffer I----"

"Of course, of course. I make no complaint--none. I go further. I admit
that the area of our undertakings is enlarged, enormously enlarged,
thanks to the remarkable personal energy and strenuous transatlantic
business methods introduced by my nephew Reginald. I grant you all
that----"

Sir Abel cleared his throat. Seduced by the charms of his own eloquence,
he was ready to mount the platform at the shortest possible notice, even
in private life. He loved exposition. He loved periods. His critics--for
what public man is without these, their strictures naturally inspired by
envy?--had been known to add that he also loved platitudes. Be this as it
may, certain it is that he loved an audience--even of one. He had been
considerably ruffled this morning by communications made to him by his
good-looking and somewhat scapegrace youngest son. Those who fail to rule
their own households often find solace in attempting to rule the
households of others. Speech and patronage consequently tended to the
restoration of self-complacency.

"No doubt this expansion, these modern methods, constitute a tax upon
your capacity, my good friend, you having acquired your training under a
less exacting system. I am not surprised. I confess"--he leaned back in
his chair, with an indulgent smile, as one who should say, "the gods
themselves do not wholly escape"--"I confess," he repeated, "it is
something of a tax upon the capacity of a veteran financier such as
myself. But then strain in some form or other, as I frequently remind
myself, is the very master-note of our modern existence. We all
experience it in our degree. And there are those men, such as myself, for
instance, who from their position, their vast interests and heavy
responsibilities, from the almost incalculable issues dependent on their
judgment and their action, are called upon to endure this strain in its
most exhausting manifestations, who are compelled to subordinate personal
case, even health itself, to public obligation. In the end they pay,
incontestable they pay, for their self-abnegation, for their unswerving
obedience to the trumpet-call of public duty."

He paused and mused a while, his head raised, his right hand resting--it
was noticeably podgy and squat--on the highly polished surface of the
extensive writing-table, his left hand dropped, with a rather awkward
negligence, over the arm of his chair. Meanwhile he gazed, as pensively
as his caste of countenance permitted, at a portrait of himself, in the
self-same attitude, which adorned the opposite wall. It had been
presented to him by the electors of his late constituency. It was life-
size and full-length. It had been painted by a well-known artist whose
appreciation of the outward as a revelation of the inward man is slightly
diabolic in its completeness. The portrait was very clever; it was also
very like. Looking upon it no sane observer could stand in doubt of Sir
Abel's eminent respectability or eminent wealth. His appearance exuded
both. Unluckily nature had been niggardly in the bestowal of those more
delicate marks of breeding which, both in man and beast, denote
distinction of personality and antiquity of race. Pursy, prolific,
Protestant, a commonness pervaded the worthy gentleman's aspect, causing
him, as compared with his head clerk, Dominic Iglesias--standing there
patiently awaiting his further utterance--to be as is a cheap oleograph
to a fine sketch in pen and ink. It may be taken as an axiom that, in
body and soul alike, to be deficient in outline is a sad mistake. But of
all these little facts and the result of them, Sir Abel was, needless to
relate, sublimely ignorant.

"With you, my good friend, it is otherwise," he remarked presently,
reluctantly removing his gaze from the portrait of himself. "A beneficent
Providence has devised the law of compensation. And we may remark the
workings of it everywhere with instruction and encouragement. Hence
social obscurity has its compensating advantages. You, for example, are
affected by none of those considerations of public obligation binding
upon myself. You are so situated that you can avoid the more trying
consequences of this universal overstrain. If the demands of the position
you now fill are too much for you, you can retire. I congratulate you,
Iglesias. For some of us it is impossible, it is forbidden to retire."

The speaker paused, as when in addressing a political or charitable
meeting he paused for well-merited applause, secure of having made a
telling point. Dominic Iglesias, however, had not applauded. To tell the
truth, his back was stiffening a little. He had a very just appreciation
of the relative social positions of himself and his employer; still it
did not occur to him, somehow, that applause was necessarily in the part.

"You have the redress in your own hands," Sir Abel went on, not without a
hint of annoyance. "If you need amusement, leisure, rest, they are all
within your reach."

Still Iglesias did not speak.

"See now, my good friend, consider. To be practical"--Sir Abel raised his
finger and wagged it, with a heavy attempt at _bonhomie_. "You have no
family to provide for?"

"No," said Mr. Iglesias.

"You are, in short, not married?"

"No, Sir Abel," he said again.

"Well, then, no obstacle presents itself. But let us pause a moment, for
I must guard myself against misconception. In the interests of both
public and private morality I am a staunch advocate of marriage." Again
he cleared his throat. The platform was conspicuous by its presence--in
idea. "I hold matrimony to be among the primary duties, nay, to be the
primary duty of the Christian and the citizen. We owe it to the race, we
owe it to ourselves, we owe it to the opposite sex. Let us be quite clear
on this point. Yet, since I deprecate all bigotry, I admit that there may
be exceptional cases in which absence of the marital relation, though
arguing some emotional callousness, may prove advantageous to the
individual."

A queer light had come into Dominic Iglesias' eyes. The corners of his
mouth worked a little. He stood quite still and rather noticeably erect.

"I do not deny this," Sir Abel continued. "I repeat, I do not deny it.
And yours, my good friend, may be, I am prepared to acknowledge, a case
in point. I take for granted, by the way, that you have saved, since your
salary has been a liberal one?"

Iglesias inclined his head.

"Clearly we need discuss this matter no further then." The speaker became
impressive, admonitory. "Indeed, it appears to me that your lot is a most
favoured one. You are free of all encumbrances. You can retire in
comfort--retire, moreover, with the assurance that your departure will
cause no inconvenience to myself and my colleagues, since you make room
for men younger and more in touch with modern methods than yourself."

Mr. Iglesias permitted himself to smile.

"Ah, yes!" he said. "Possibly I had not taken that fact sufficiently into
account."

"Yet, clearly, it should augment your satisfaction," Sir Abel Barking
observed, with a touch of severity. "And, by the by, you can draw your
pension. You were entitled, strictly speaking, to do so some years ago--
four, I believe, to be accurate. This was pointed out to you at the time
by my nephew Reginald. He was not at all unwilling that you should retire
then; but you preferred to remain. I had some conversation, at the time,
with my nephew on the subject. I insisted upon the fact that your service
had been exemplary. I finally succeeded in overruling his objection to
your retaining your post."

"I am evidently under a heavy obligation to you, Sir Abel," said
Iglesias.

"Don't mention it--don't mention it," the great man answered nobly.
"Those in power should try to exercise it to the benefit of their
subordinates. It has always been my effort not only to be just, but to be
considerate of the interests and feelings of persons in my employment."

And with that he again fixed his eyes upon the ironical portrait adorning
the opposite wall, wholly blind to the fact that it at once revealed his
weaknesses and mocked at them, conscious only of an agreeable conviction
that he had treated his head clerk with generosity and spoken to him with
the utmost good-feeling and tact.

With the proud it is ever a question whether to spoil the Egyptians, or
to fling back even the best-earned wages, payable by Egyptians, full in
the said Egyptians' face. For the firm of Barking Brothers & Barking, in
the abstract, Iglesias had the loyalty of long-established habit. It had
been as the rising tide, setting the ship of his fate and fortune
honourably afloat in the dismal days of that early stranding. Its service
had eaten up the best years of his life, it is true. But, even in so
doing, by mere force of constant association, the interests of the great
banking house had come to be his own, its schemes and secrets his
excitement, its successes his satisfaction. Fortunately the human mind is
so constituted that it is possible to have an esteem, amounting to
enthusiasm, for a body corporate, while entertaining but scanty
admiration for the individuals of whom that body is composed--fortunately
indeed, since otherwise what government, secular or sacred, would long
continue to subsist? Hence, to Iglesias, this matter of the pension was
decidedly difficult. Pride said, "This man, Abel Barking has been
offensive; both he and his nephew have been ungrateful; reject it with
contempt." Justice said, "You have no quarrel with the firm as a whole;
accept it." Common sense, pricked up by anger, said, "Claim your own,
take every brass farthing of it." While personal dignity, winding up the
case, admonished, "By no means give yourself away. Make no impetuous
demonstration. Go home and think it quietly over." And with the advice of
personal dignity Mr. Iglesias fell in.

Yet he was still very sore, the heat of anger past, but the smart of it
remaining, when he journeyed back from the city later in the day. And not
only that after-smart, but a perplexity held him. For two strange faces
had looked into his during the last few hours--those of Loneliness and
Freedom. He had taken for granted, in a general sort of way, that such
personages existed and exercised a certain jurisdiction in human affairs.
But in all the course of his laborious life they had never before come
close, personally claiming him. He had had no time for them. But they are
patient, they only wait. They had time for him--plenty of it. Suddenly he
understood that; and it perplexed him, for his estimate of his own
importance was modest. He even felt apologetic towards them, as one at
whose door distinguished guests alight for whose entertainment he has
made no adequate provision. He was embarrassed, his sense of hospitality
reproaching him.

It so happened that, on this same return journey, he occupied the seat on
the right, immediately behind that of the driver. The sky was covered,
the atmosphere close. The horses, grey ones, showed a thick yellowish
lather where the collar rubbed their necks and the traces their flanks.
They were slack and heavy, and the omnibus hugged the curb. Within it was
empty, and on the top boasted but three passengers besides Iglesias
himself. It followed that, carrying insufficiency of ballast, the great
red-painted vehicle lumbered, and jerked, and swayed uneasily; while the
lighter traffic swept past it in a glittering stream, the dominant note
of which was black as against the dirty drab of the recently watered
wood-pavement. And the character of that traffic was new to Dominic
Iglesias, though he had travelled the Hammersmith Road, Kensington High
Street and Kensington Gore, Knightsbridge and Piccadilly, back and forth
daily, these many years. For the exigencies of business demanding that
the hours of his journeying should be early and late, always the same, it
came about that the aspect of these actually so-familiar thoroughfares
was novel, as beheld in the height of the season at three o'clock in the
afternoon.

At first Iglesias saw without seeing, busy with his own uncheerful
thoughts. But after a while he began to speculate idly on the scene
around him, turning to the outward and material for distraction, if not
for actual comfort. And so the stream of carriages and hansoms, and the
conspicuously well-favoured human beings occupying them, began to
intrigue his attention. He questioned whom they might be and whither
wending, decked forth in such brave array. They seemed to suggest
something divorced from, yet native to, his experience; something he had
never touched in fact, yet the right to which was resident in his blood.
And with this he ceased, in instinct, to be merely the highly respected
and respectable head clerk of Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking--now
superannuated and laid on the shelf. A gayer, fiercer, simpler life,
quick with violences of vivacious sound and vivid colour, the excitement
of it heightened by clear shining southern sunshine and blue-black
shadow--a life undreamed of by conventional, slow-moving, rather vulgar
middle-class London--to which, on the face of it, he appeared as
emphatically to belong--awoke and cried in Dominic Iglesias.

It was a surprising little experience, causing him to straighten up his
lean yet shapely figure; while the burden of his years, and the long
monotony of them, seemed strangely lifted off him. Then, with the air of
courtly reserve--at once the joke and envy of the younger clerks, which
had earned him the nickname of "the old Hidalgo"--he leaned forward and
addressed the omnibus driver. The latter upraised a broad, moist and
sleepy countenance.

"Polo at Ranelagh," he answered, in a voice thickened by dust and the
laying of that dust by strong waters. "Club team plays 'Undred and First
Lancers."

The words had been to the inquirer pretty much as phrases from the
liturgy of an unknown cult. But it was Iglesias' praiseworthy disposition
not to be angry with that which he did not happen to understand, so much
as angry with himself for not understanding it.

"Only an additional proof, were it needed, of the prodigious extent of my
ignorance!" he reflected in stoically humorous self-contempt. His eyes
dwelt, somewhat wistfully, on the glittering stream of traffic, once
again those two unbidden guests, Loneliness and Freedom--for whose
entertainment he had made inadequate provision--sitting, as it seemed,
very close on either side of him. Then that happened which altered all
the values. Dominic Iglesias suddenly saw a person whom he knew.

He had seen that same person about three hours previously in the bank in
Threadneedle Street, while waiting for admittance to Sir Abel's private
room. Rumour accredited this handsome young gentleman--Sir Abel's
youngest son--with tastes expensive rather than profitable, liberal
socially, rather than estimable ethically, declaring him to be distinctly
of the nature of the proverbial thorn in the banker's otherwise very
prosperous side. He had, so said rumour, the fortune or misfortune, as
you chose to take it, of being at once a considerably bad boy and a
distinctly charming one. Be all that as it might, the young man had
certainly presented a grimly anxious countenance when, without so much as
a nod of recognition, he had stalked past Mr. Iglesias in the dim light
of the glass and mahogany-walled corridor. But now, as the latter noted,
his expression had changed, and that very much for the better. The young
man's face was flushed and eager, and his teeth showed white and even
under his reddish brown moustache. If anxieties still pursued him they
were in subjection to one main anxiety, the anxiety to please, which of
all anxieties is the most engaging and grace-begetting.

Just then the traffic was held up, thus enabling Iglesias from his perch
on the 'bustop to receive a more than fleeting impression. Two ladies
were seated opposite the young man in the carriage. In them Iglesias
recognised persons of very secure social standing. The elder he supposed
to be Lady Sokeington--Alaric Barking's half-sister--to whom, on the
occasion of her marriage, twelve or thirteen years ago, he had had the
expensive honour of presenting, in his own name and that of his
colleagues, a costly gift of plate. The other lady, so it appeared to
him, was eminently sweet to look upon. She was very young. She leaned a
little forward, and in the pose of her delicate figure and the carriage
of her pretty head--under its burden of pale pink and grey feathers,
flowers, and lace--he detected further example of that engaging anxiety
to please. They made a delightful young couple, the fair seeming of this
life and riches of it very much on their side. Mr. Iglesias' chivalrous
heart went out to them in silent sympathy and benediction; while, the
block being over, his gaze continued to follow them as long as the young
girl's slender white-clad back and the young man's flushed and eager face
remained distinguishable. Then he started, for he was aware that his
unbidden companions had received unexpected reinforcement. A third guest
had arrived, and looked hard and critically at him. It's name was Old
Age, and he found something sardonic in its glance. With all his
gentleness of soul, all his innate self-restraint, there remained
fighting blood in Dominic Iglesias. Therefore, for the moment,
recognising with whom he had to deal, a light anything but mild visited
his eyes, and a rigidity the straight lines of his chin and lips. Old Age
is a sinister visitant even to those who are moderate in demand and clean
of life. For it gives to drink of the cup not of pleasure, but merely of
patience, of physical loss and intellectual humiliation; and, once it has
laid its spell upon you, you are past all remedy save the supreme remedy
of death. And so, at first sight, Iglesias rebelled--as do all men--
turning defiant. Then, being very sane, he gave in to the relentless
logic of fact. Silently, yet with all courtesy, he acknowledged the
newcomer, and bade it be seated along with the rest. While, after brief
pause to rally his pride, and that courage which is the noblest attribute
of pride, he turned to things concrete and material once more, finally
addressing himself to the omnibus driver:

"Pardon me; polo, as I understand, is a species of game?"

The broad moist countenance was again uplifted, a hint of patronage now
tempering its good-natured apathy.

"Sort'er 'ockey on 'orseback."

"That must be sufficiently dangerous," Mr. Iglesias remarked.

"Bless you, yes. Players breaks their backs pretty frequent, and cuts the
ponies about most cruel--"

He ceased speaking abruptly, jammed the brake down with his heel in
response to the conductor's bell, and drew the sweating horses up short
to permit the ingress of fresh passengers. This accomplished, the omnibus
lumbered onwards while Dominic Iglesias fell into further meditation.

The explanation vouchsafed him was still far from explicit; yet this much
of illumination he gained from it, namely, the assurance that all these
goodly personages, Alaric Barking and his sweet companion among them,
were on pleasure bent. One and all they fared forth, on this heavy summer
afternoon, in search of amusement--in search of that intangible yet very
powerful factor in human affairs to which it is given to lift the too
great weight of seriousness from mortal life, cheating perception of
relentless actualities, helping to restore the balance, helping men to
hope, to laugh, and to forget. Perceiving all which, conscious moreover
of the near neighbourhood of Loneliness on the right hand and Old Age on
the left, Iglesias began to bestow on these votaries of pleasure a more
earnest attention, recognising in them the possessors of a secret which
it greatly behoved him to enter into possession of likewise. In what, he
asked himself, did it actually consist, this to him practically unknown
quantity, amusement? How was the spirit of it cultivated, the enjoyment
of it consciously attained? How far did it reside in inward attitude, how
far in outward circumstance? In a word, how did they all do it? It was
very incumbent upon him to learn, and he admitted a ridiculous ignorance.

CHAPTER III

Thus had the chapter of labour ended, and that of leisure opened. And it
was with the sadness of things terminated very strongly upon him that, as
Frederick, the German-Swiss valet, finished clearing the dinner-table and
departed, Mr. Iglesias looked forth over the neatly protected verdure of
Trimmer's Green in the evening quiet. The smugly pacific aspect of the
place irritated him. He was aware of a great emptiness. And very
certainly the scene before him offered no solution of the problem of the
filling of that emptiness. And somehow or other it had to be filled--
Iglesias knew that, knew it through every fibre of him--or life would be
simply insupportable. Meanwhile from the public drawing-room below came
sounds of revelry, innocent enough yet hardly calculated to soothe over-
strained nerves. Little Mr. Farge--whose thin and reedy tenor carried as
does a penny whistle--gave forth the refrain of a song just then popular
in metropolitan music-halls.

"They're keeping latish hours at the Convalescent Home," piped Mr. Farge;
while his friend and devout admirer, Albert Edward Worthington, tore at
the banjo strings and the ladies tittered.

Iglesias listened in a somewhat grim spirit of endurance. On the far side
of the Green he could see the gaslights in the Lovegroves' dining-room.
These appeared to watch him rather uncomfortably, as with three
supplicating and reproachful eyes. He debated whether he would not take
his hat, step across, and tell his old friend what had happened--it would
at least relieve him of the sound of little Farge's serenading. But his
pride recoiled somehow. Good souls, man and wife, they would be full of
solicitude and kindness; but they would say the wrong thing. They would
not understand. How, indeed, should they, being wholly at one with their
surroundings--unimaginative, domestic, British middle-class, with its
virtues and limitations aggressively in evidence? George Lovegrove would
suggest some minor municipal office, or membership of the local borough
council, as a crown of consolation. His wife would skirt round the
subject of matrimony. She had done so before now; and Iglesias, while
presenting a dignified front to the enemy, had inwardly shuddered. She
was an excellent, estimable woman; but when ponderously arch, when
extensively sly! Oh, dear no! It didn't do. Her gambols were too sadly
suggestive of those of a skittish hippopotamus. Dominic Iglesias was
conscious that he had a skin too little to-night; he could not witness
them with philosophy. The kindliest intention, the best-meant words,
might cause him extravagant annoyance.

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