Washington Irving - "The Crayon Papers"

Cyrus Townsend Brady - "The Eagle of the Empire"

G. A. Henty - "Forest & Frontiers"

Thomas Owen Marden - "A Short History of the 6th Division"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Far Horizon

L >> Lucas Malet >> The Far Horizon




For in good truth he needed refreshment, and that speedily, being very
tired, fagged by long hours in the City, by heavy responsibilities, by the
burden of the airless August heat, let alone those more intimate causes of
disturbance already indicated. Iglesias could not disguise from himself
that the close application to business was beginning to tell injuriously
upon his health. This same morning, coming back from early Mass, passing
through the flagged passage which leads from Kensington Palace Green into
Church Street, he had become so faint from exhaustion, that reaching--and
not without difficulty--his former home in Holland Street, he had summoned
the neat bald-headed little caretaker and asked permission to enter the
house and rest. The ground-floor rooms were cool and dusky, sheltered by
closed shutters from the summer sun. Only the French-window of the back
dining-room stood open, on to the flight of wrought-iron steps leading
down into the garden. Beside it the caretaker, not without husky
coughings, placed a kitchen chair for Iglesias and fetched him a glass of
water.

"I could wish I had something better to offer you, sir," he said, "but I
am an abstainer by habit myself; and I have no liquor of any kind,
unfortunately, in the house."

The water, however, was pleasantly cold, and Dominic drank it thankfully.
He could have fancied there was virtue in it--the virtue of things
blessed by long-ago mother-love. And, thinking of that, his eyes filled
with tears as he looked out over the small neglected garden. Of the once
glorious laburnum there remained only an unsightly stump, but jasmine
still clothed the enclosing walls, the dark green of its straggling shoots
starred here and there with belated white blossoms. About the lip of the
empty stone basin, vigorously chirruping, sparrows came and went, while in
the far corner a grove of starveling sunflowers lifted their brown and
yellow-rayed faces towards the light. Dominic, resting gratefully in the
cool semi-darkness of the empty room, until the faintness which had
attacked him was passed, found the place very gentle, soothing, and sweet.
The sadder memories had died out here, so he noted. Only gracious and
tender ones remained. He wished he could stay on indefinitely. As the
years multiply, and the chequered story of them lengthens, it is
comforting to dwell in a place where, once on a time, one had been greatly
loved.

Dominic turned to the waiting caretaker, who regarded him with mingled
solicitude, admiration, and deference.

"So the house is still unlet?" he said.

"Yes, sir, and is likely to remain so, I apprehend. The lease, as I
understand, falls in a very few years hence, and the landlord is unwilling
to make any outlay on the house, which will probably then be pulled down;
while no tenant, I opine, would be willing to rent a residence so wanting
in modern decoration and modern conveniences. Weeks pass, sir, without any
persons calling to view."

"Yet the rent is low?" Iglesias said.

"Very low for so genteel a district--I am a native of Kensington, 'the
royal village,' myself, sir--and no premium is asked."

Now, sitting on the uneasy bench upon the confines of Barnes Common--while
the little many-millioned world, which works, in gangs, and groups, and
amatory couples, and somewhat foot-weary family parties, sauntered
by--that same oppression of faintness came over Dominic Iglesias, along
with a great nostalgia for the cool, dusky, low-ceilinged rooms, and the
neglected yet still bravely blossoming garden of the little house in
Holland Street.

"It would be pleasant to spend one's last days and draw one's last breath
there," Iglesias said to himself; "when the sum of endeavour is complete,
when the last cable has been sent, the last column of figures balanced and
audited, when the ledgers are closed and one's work being fairly finished
one is free to sit still and listen--not fearfully, but with reverent
curiosity--for the footsteps of Death and the secrets he has in his
keeping."

And there he paused, for the scorched dusty land and pale dense sky, even
the rusty white summits of the great range of cloud, slowly, slowly
climbing high heaven--even the light dresses of passing women and
children--went suddenly black, indistinct, and confused to his sight, so
that he seemed to be falling through some depth of dark and untenanted
space, while the dust, thick, stifling, clinging, fell with him,
encircling, enveloping him with a horror of suffocation, of crushing,
impalpable, yet unescapable, dead weight.

Then out of the darkness, out of the dust, in voluminous dusty drab motor
veil and dusty drab motor coat, the Lady of the Windswept Dust herself
came towards him, bringing consolation and help.




CHAPTER XXXII


"You are coming round, dear man. You really look better. What you wanted
was a sensible Christian meal. For, I tell you, you were most uncommonly
done, and it was a near shave whether I should get you home here without
having to call on the populace for assistance. Don't go and worry now. You
were superb as usual, with enough personal dignity to supply a whole
dynasty, and have some left over for washing-day into the bargain. You
should give lessons in the art of majestic collapse--not that you did
collapse, thank goodness! But you came precious near it.--Yes, I mean it,
I mean it, dear man"--Poppy nodded her head at him, leaned across the
corner of the table and patted his arm with the utmost friendliness. "I
want to terrify you into being more careful. There are plenty of people
one could jolly well spare; but you're not among them. So lay that to
heart, or I shan't have an easy moment. And then as to personal dignity,
if you will excuse my entering into details of costume, in that grey
top-hat, grey frock-coat, et cetera, et cetera, you looked more fit for
the Ascot Royal Enclosure than for Barnes Common on a broiling August
Sunday. The populace eyed you with awe.--Don't be offended, there's a
dear. You can't help being very smart and very beautiful; and you oughtn't
to want to help it even if you could, since it gives me so much pleasure.
Your tailor's a gem. But how he must love you, must be ready to dress you
free of cost for the simple joy of fitting on."

The little dinner had been excellent. The clear soup hot, and the
ninety-two Ayala, extra dry, chilled to a nicety--and so with the rest of
the menu. Glass, silver, china, were set forth daintily upon the fine
white damask, under the glow of scarlet-shaded candles. The double doors
connecting the small drawing-room and dining-room stood open; this,
combined with the fact that lights were limited to the dinner-table,
giving an agreeable effect of coolness and of space. While, as arrayed in
a crisp black muslin gown--the frills and panels of it painted with shaded
crimson roses and bronze-green leaves--Poppy St. John ministered to her
guest, chattered to, and rallied him, her eyes were extraordinarily dark
and luminous, and her voice rich in soft caressing tones. Never had she
appeared more engaging, more natural and human, never stronger yet more
tenderly gay. Dominic Iglesias yielded himself up gladly, gratefully, to
the charm of the woman and to the comfort of his surroundings. Temperate
in all things, he was temperate in enjoyment. Yet he was touched, he was
happy. Life was very sweet to him in this hour of relief from physical
distress, of renewed friendship, and of pretty material circumstance.

"It was such a mercy I had a decent meal to offer you," Poppy went on.
"Often the commissariat department is a bit sketchy on Sunday, in--well,
in these days of the cleaned slate. But you see, Lionel Gordon, of the
Twentieth Century Theatre, was to tell me, this afternoon, what decision
he had come to about the engagement I have been spelling to get. He is an
appalling mongrel, three-parts German Jew and one part Scotchman--sweet
mixture of the Chosen and Self-Chosen people! He never was pretty, and
increasing years have not rendered his appearance more enticing; but he's
the cleverest manager going, on either side of the Atlantic, and he
doesn't go back on his word once given, as too many of them do. Well, he
was to let me know; and to tell the truth, beloved lunatic, I was rather
keen about this engagement. I knew if he did not give it me I should be a
little hipped, and should stand in need of support and consolation; while,
if he did, I should be rather expansive, and should want suitably to
celebrate the event. So I ordered a good dinner to be ready in either
case"--Poppy laughed gently. "Queer thing the artist," she said, "with its
instinct of falling back on creature comforts. Whatever happens, good luck
or bad luck, it always eats."

"And they gave you the engagement?" Iglesias inquired.

Poppy nodded her head in assent.

"Yes, dear man, Lionel gave it me. He'd have been a fool if he hadn't, for
he knows who I am and what training I've had. And then Fallowfeild has
made things easy. He's a thundering good friend, Fallowfeild is; and in
view of late events--once I had told him to go, I wouldn't, of course,
take a penny of Alaric's--I had no conscience about letting Fallowfeild be
useful. He was lovely about it. I shall only draw a nominal salary for the
first six months until I have proved myself. What I want is my
opportunity; and money matters being made easy helped materially. Both the
Chosen and Self-Chosen People have a wonderfully keen eye to the boodle,
bless their little hearts and consciences!"

She paused, leaning her elbows on the table and looking sideways at
Iglesias, her head thrown back.

"I am dreadfully glad to have you here to-night," she went on, "because
you see it's a turning-point. I have pretty well climbed the ridge and
reached the watershed. The streams have all started running in the other
direction--towards the dear old work and worry, the envy, hatred, malice,
and all uncharitableness, and all the fun, too, and good comradeship, and
ambition, and joy, of the theatre. Can you understand, I at once adore and
detest it, for it's a terribly mixed business. Already I keep on seeing
the rows of pinky-white faces rising, tier above tier, up to the roof,
which turn you sick and give you cold shivers all down your spine when you
first come on. And then I go hot with the fight against their apathy or
opposition, the glorious fight to conquer and hold an audience, and bend
its emotions and its sympathies, as the wind bends the meadow grass, to
one's will."

Poppy stretched out her hand across the corner of the table again, laying
it upon Iglesias' hand. Her eyes danced with excitement, yet her voice
shook and the words came brokenly.

"But, dearly beloved, I have your blessing on this new departure, haven't
I?" she asked. "After all, it's you, just simply you, that sends me back
to an honest life and to my profession. So I should like to have your
blessing--that, and your prayers."

"Can you doubt that you have them," Iglesias answered, and his voice, too,
shook, somewhat, "now and always, dearest of friends?"

For a little minute Poppy sat looking full at him, he looking full at her.
Then, with a sort of rush, she rose to her feet.

"Come along, this won't do," she said. "Sentiment strictly prohibited.
It's not wholesome for you after the nasty turn you had on Barnes
Common--and it's not particularly wholesome for me either, though for
quite other reasons. Moreover, it's fiendishly hot in here. So see, dear
man, you're not going just yet. I telephoned to the Bell Inn stables for a
private hansom to be on hand about ten thirty for you. Meanwhile, you're
to take it easy and rest. It is but five steps upstairs, and that won't
tire you. Come up into the cool and have your coffee on the balcony."

And so it came about that Dominic Iglesias followed Poppy St. John
upstairs--she moving rapidly, in a way defiantly--followed her into a
bedchamber, where a subtle sweetness of orris-root met him; and a
fantastic brightness of gaslight and moonlight, coming in through open
windows, chequered the handsome dark-polished brass-inlaid furniture, the
green silk coverlet and hangings, the dimly patterned ceiling and walls.
Without hesitation or apology, Poppy walked straight through this
apartment, and passed out on to the white-planked and white-railed
balcony.

The dome of the sky was immense and had become perfectly clear, the great
clouds having boiled up during the afternoon only to sink away and vanish
at sunset, as is their wont in seasons of drought. North and east the
glare of London pulsed along the horizon; and above it the stars were
faint, since the radiant first-quarter moon rode high, drenching roadway
and palings, the stretch of the polo-ground, the shrubberies and grove of
giant elms, with white light blotted and barred, here and there, by black
shadow. The air was still, but less oppressive, the cruelty of sun-heat
having gone out of it and only a suavity remaining. The _facade_ of
the terrace of smirking, self-conscious, much-be-flowered and be-balconied
little houses had taken on a certain worth of picturesqueness, suggestive
of the bazaar of some far-away Oriental city rather than of a vulgar
London suburb, the summer night even here producing an exquisiteness of
effect and making itself very sensibly felt. Poppy silently motioned her
guest to the further of the two cane deck-chairs set in the recess,
arranged a cushion at his back, drew up a little mother-of-pearl inlaid
table beside him, poured coffee into two cups. Then she moved across to
the rail of the balcony, and stood there, her head thrown back, her hands
clasped behind her, facing the moonlight, which covered her slender
rounded figure from head to foot as with a pale transparent veil of
infinite tenuity. Iglesias could see the rise and fall of her bosom, the
flutter of her eyelids, the involuntary movement of her lips as she
pressed them together, restraining, as might be divined, words to which
she judged it wiser to deny utterance.

And this hardly repressed excitement in Poppy's bearing and aspect, along
with the peculiar scene and circumstances in which he found himself,
worked profoundly upon Dominic Iglesias. In passing through that scented,
half-discovered, fantastically lighted bedchamber and stepping out into
the magic of the night, he had stepped out, in imagination, into regions
dreamed of in earlier years--when reading poetry or hearing music,--but
never fairly entered, still less enjoyed, since all the duties and
obligations of his daily life militated against and even forbade
such enjoyment. The weariness of his work in the City, the petty
annoyances he suffered at Cedar Lodge, the haunting disgust of de Courcy
Smyth's presence, fell away from him, becoming for the time as though they
were not. He never had been, nor was he now, in any degree self-indulgent
or a sentimentalist. The appeal of the present somewhat enchanted hour was
to the intellect and the spirit, rather than sensuous, still less sensual.
Nevertheless, an almost passionate desire of earthly beauty took him--of
the beauty of things seen, of things plastic, beauty of the human form;
beauty of far-distant lands and the varied pageant of their aspect and
history; of great rivers flowing seaward; of tombs by the wayside; of the
glorious terror of the desert's naked face; of languorous fountain-cooled
gardens, close hid in the burning heart of ancient cities; beauty of
sound, beauty of words and phrases, above all, of the eternal beauty of
youth and the illimitable expectation and hope of it.

And it was out of all this, out of the mirage of these vast elusive
prospects and apprehensions, that he answered Poppy St. John, as with
serious eyes yet smiling lips she turned, and coming across the white
floor sat down beside him, saying:

"How goes it, Dominic? Are you rested?"

"Yes," he answered, "I am rested. And more than that, I am alive and
awake, strangely awake and full of vision--thanks to you."

Poppy's expression sweetened, becoming protective, maternal. She leaned
back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap; yet there was still a
certain tension in her expression, an intensity as of inward excitement in
her gaze.

"Tell me things, then," she said, "tell me things about yourself, if the
gift of seeing is upon you.--There's no one to overhear. The neighbours on
both sides are away for the holidays, thank the powers! and their houses
stand empty. While the voices and footsteps down in the road only make us
more happily alone. So tell me things, Dominic. I am a trifle stirred up
with all this affair of the theatre, and you always quiet me. I'm really a
very good child. I deserve a treat. And there are things I dreadfully want
to know."

"Alas! there is so absurdly little to tell," Iglesias answered, "that,
here and now, in face of my existing sense of life and of vision, I am
humbled by my own ignorance and poverty of achievement. That poverty, I
suppose, is all the more apparent to me, because twice to-day I have
been--so I judge, at least--within measurable distance of bidding farewell
to this astonishingly wonderful world and the fashion of it. It comes home
to me how little I have seen, how little I have profited, how little I
know. I would have liked to leave it; it would be more seemly to do so,
having profited more largely by my sojourn here."

Iglesias paused, excitement which his natural sobriety disapproved gaining
him, too, through that ache of unrealised beauty. For a moment he
struggled with it as with a rising tide, then resigned himself.

"And yet," he added, "in other respects I should not be sorry to hear the
hour strike, for curiosity of the unknown is very strong in me.
Opportunity may have been narrow, and one may have been balked of high
endeavour and rich experience, by lack of talent and by adverse
circumstances; but in the supreme, the crowning experience, that of death
and all which, for joy or sorrow, lies beyond it, even the most obscure,
the most uncultured and untravelled must participate."

"Don't be in too great a deuce of a hurry to satisfy that curiosity, dear
man," Poppy put in. "You must contrive to exercise patience for a little
while yet, please; always remembering that it is entirely superfluous to
run to catch a train which is bound not to start until you are on board of
it. And then, too, you see--well, there's me, after all, and I want you."

Iglesias' face grew keen, as he looked at her through that encompassing
whiteness of moonlight.

"I am glad of that," he said very quietly, "because you are to me, dear
friend, what no other human being has ever yet been. The saddest thing
that could happen to me, save loss of faith, would be that you should
cease to want me. I only pray God, if it is not self-seeking, that you
may continue to want me as long as I live."

"But your religion?" she asked, a point of jealousy pricking her.

"My religion forbids sin, whether of body or mind; forbids violation of
the eternal spiritual proportion, by any placing of the creature before
the Creator in a man's action or in his heart. But my religion enjoins
love and stimulates it; since only through loving can we fulfil the
highest possibility of our nature, which is to grow into the likeness of
Almighty God."

"You believe that?" Poppy asked again.

"I do more," Iglesias said. "I know it."

Then both fell silent, having reached the place where words hinder rather
than help thought. And, as it happened, just then the stillness was
sensibly broken up, and the magic of the night encroached upon by the
passing of a couple of _char-a-bancs_ in the road below, loaded up
with trippers faring homewards from a day's outing at Hampton Court. The
tired teams jog-trotted haltingly. The wheels whispered hoarsely in the
muffling dust; and voices mingled somewhat plaintively in the singing of
a then popular khaki sing--"The Soldiers of the Queen." Hearing all of
which, as the refrain died away Londonwards up the great suburban
road, the compelling drama and pathos of life as the multitude lives
it--stupidly, without ideas, without any conscious nobility of purpose,
yet with a certain blundering and clumsy heroism--took Poppy St. John by
the throat. Those who stand aside from that democratic everyday drama,
rejecting alike the common joys and common sorrows of it, have need--so it
seemed to her--to account for and justify themselves lest they become
suspect. Therefore she looked at Dominic Iglesias intently, questioningly,
hesitated a moment, and then spoke.

"Still I don't understand you, in your determined detachment of attitude.
Tell me, if you are not afraid of love, why have you never married?" she
said.

And he, divining to an extent that which inspired her question, smiled at
her somewhat proudly as he answered.

"Be under no misapprehension, dear friend. I am a perfectly normal piece
of flesh and blood, with a man's normal passions, and his natural craving
for wife, and child, home, family, and the like. But during my mother's
lifetime I was bound to other service than that of marriage."

"But in these years since her death?" Poppy asked.

"There is a time for everything, as the Preacher testifies, a due and
proper time which must be observed if life is to be a reasoned progress,
not a mere haphazard stumbling from the weakness of childhood to the
incapacity of old age. And, can anything be more objectionably at variance
with that wise teaching than the spectacle of amorous uxorious
efflorescence in a man of well over fifty?"

Poppy permitted herself a lively grimace.

"All the same you have sacrificed yourself, as usual," she said.

"Not so very greatly, perhaps," Iglesias replied, with a soberly humorous
expression. "For I have always been very exacting and have asked very
much. I am culpably fastidious. My tastes are far beyond my means, my
desires out of all reasonable relation to my station and my merits. And it
should be remembered that my circle of acquaintances has been a very
limited one, until quite recently--I do not wish to appear more glaringly
arrogant or discourteous than I actually am. I had my ideal. It happened
that I failed to realise it; and I am very impatient of compromise in
matters of intimate and purely personal import. In respect of them I hold
I have an unqualified right to consult my own tastes. It has always been
easier to me to go without than to accept a second-best."

"In point of fact no woman was good enough! Poor brutes!"

Poppy mused a little, with averted face.

"How beastly cheap they'd all feel--I've not forgotten the undulating and
aspiring withered leaf--if they knew how mightily they all fell short!"
she added naughtily. Suddenly she looked round at Dominic Iglesias. Her
eyes were as stars, but her lips trembled. "Bless me, but you've
extensively original methods of conveying information! It's lucky for me
I've a steady head. So--so it comes to this--I reign all alone?" she said.

"Yes, dear friend, save for my love for my mother--such as the throne is
or ever has been--you reign alone," Iglesias answered quietly.

Poppy rested her elbows upon her knees, dropped her face into her hands,
and sat thus bowed together in the whiteness of the moonlight.

"Ah, dear!" she murmured presently, brokenly, "I've got my answer. It's
better and--worse, than I expected. All the same I'm content--that's to
say, the best of me is--royally, consummately content.--Thank you a
thousand times, thrice-beloved and very most exceedingly unworldy-wise
one," she said.

Then for a while both were silent, wrapped about by, and resting in, the
magic of the summer night. When Poppy roused herself at last to speak, it
was in a different key, studiously matter-of-fact.

"Look here, dear man, do you in the least realise how extremely far gone
you were when I arrived to you on Barnes Common this evening? Because I
tell you plainly I didn't in the very least like it. In my opinion it is
high time you gave up dragging that Barking Brothers & Barking cart."

"I shall give up doing so very soon," Iglesias replied. "Just now I am
acting as manager. Sir Abel is at Marienbad, and the other partners are
out of town."

"I like that--lazy animals!" Poppy said.

"But the situation is in process of righting itself--has practically
righted itself already."

"Thanks to you."

"In part, no doubt. There was a disposition to panic, which rendered it
exceedingly difficult to get accurate and definite information at first.
However, I arrived at the necessary data with patience and diplomacy, and
was able to draw out a clear detailed statement. This proved so far
satisfactory that Messrs. Gommee, Hills, Murray & Co. and Pavitt's Bank
have considered themselves justified in undertaking to finance Barking
Brothers until business in South Africa has resumed its ordinary course."

"Then the elderly plungers are saved?"

"Yes, I believe, practically they are saved," Iglesias said. "And,
therefore, as soon as Sir Abel has finished his cure and returns I shall
retire."

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