The Far Horizon

L >> Lucas Malet >> The Far Horizon

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27

He was about to turn away also, not particularly relishing the remaining
company, when, with a rush, Poppy was beside him, in stately garments of
black velvet and glimmering tissue of silver; her head and shoulders
draped with something of daring and magnificence, in her blue-purple
jewelled dragon-embroidered scarf. She caught Iglesias' right hand in both
of hers and held it a moment against her breast. And during that brief
interval he registered the fact that, notwithstanding her beauty, the
force of her personality and richness of her dress, she did not look out
of place in this somewhat cut-throat alley, with the questionable sights
and sounds of midnight London all about her; but vivid, exultant, true
daughter of great cities, fearless manipulator of the very varied
opportunities they offer, past-master, for joy and sorrow, in the curious
arts they teach.

"Get into the brougham, dear man," she said, "and let me talk. There, put
up the window on the traffic side. I have been in the liveliest worry
about you. Had the house turned out of windows to find you--and gave
things in general the deuce of a time.--The brougham's comfortable, isn't
it? Fallowfeild's jobbed it for the winter for me.--All the same I played
like an angel, out of pure desperation, thinking you might be ill. I made
the audience cry big, big tears, bless 'em. And it wasn't the part--not
a bit of it. It was you, just simply you.--And then I dawdled talking to
Antony Hammond about some lines in the second act I want altered, so as to
let myself down easy before digesting the disappointment of driving back
to Bletchworth Mansions alone. I wanted so very badly to have you see me.
Beloved and most faithless of beings, why the mischief didn't you come?"

And Iglesias sitting beside her watching her joyous face, crowned by her
dark hair, set in the gleaming folds of her jewelled scarf, as passing
lights revealed it clearly, or shifting left it in soft shadow, divined
rather than actually seen, became sadly conscious that the problems which
oppressed him were not only hard of solution but hard of statement
likewise. It seemed heartless to propound them in this, her hour of
success. Yet, unless he was deeply mistaken, the statement of them must
tell for emancipation and relief in the end.

"The play has gone well, and you are happy?" he asked her.

"Gorgeously--I grant you I was a bit nervous as to whether during these
years of--well--love in idleness, I had not lost touch with my art. But I
haven't. I have only matured in mind and in method. I am not conceited,
dear man, truly I am not; but I am neither too lazy nor too modest to use
my brains. What I know I am not afraid to apply. I've very little theory,
but a precious deal of practice--and that's the way to get on. Don't talk
about your ideas--just use them for all you're worth.--But this is beside
the mark. You're trying to head me off. Why didn't you come?"

"I would gladly have come," Iglesias answered. "My disappointment has been
quite as great as yours."

"Bless your heart!" Poppy murmured under her breath.

"But it was impossible for me to come. I was detained until it was too
late." He paused, uncertain how best to say that which had to be said.

"Oh! fiddle!" Poppy cried, with a lift of her head. "I stand first. You
ought not to have let yourself be detained. After all, it's not every day
someone you know blazes from a farthing dip into a star of the first
magnitude. You might very well have crowded other things aside. I feel a
trifle hurt, dear man, really I do."

"Believe me, no ordinary matter would have prevented my coming," Iglesias
answered. To his relief the carriage just then turned into the comparative
peace of Langham Place. It became possible to speak softly. "There was
a death in the house last night," he went on, "that of a person with whom
I have been rather closely associated. He died under circumstances
demanding investigations of a distressing character. No one save myself
was qualified, or perhaps willing, to assume the responsibility of calling
in the authorities."

Iglesias glanced at his companion, conscious that while he spoke her
attitude and humour had altered considerably. She was motionless. He saw
her profile, dark against the square light of window-glass. Her mouth was
slightly open, as with intensity of attention.

"Well--well--what then?" she said.

"The man had just suffered a heavy reverse. He had staked all his hopes,
all his future, upon a single venture. It proved a failure. He could not
accept the fact, and believed himself the victim of gross injustice and of
organised conspiracy."

"Do you believe it, too?"

"No," Iglesias answered. "I have an immense pity for him, as who would
not. Still, I am compelled to believe that failure came from within,
rather than from without. He overrated his own powers."

Poppy held up her hand imperiously. "Wait half a minute," she said, in an
oddly harsh voice. Leaning forward she put down the front glass and called
to the coachman:--"Don't go to Bletchworth Mansions. Drive on. Never mind
where, so long as you keep to empty streets. Drive on and on--do you
hear?--till I tell you to stop."

She put the window up again and settled herself back in her place,
dragging the scarf from off her head and baring her throat. She looked
full at Mr. Iglesias, her face showing ghostly white against the dark
upholstery of the carriage. Her eyes were wide with question and with
fear, which was also, in some strange way, hope.

"Now you can speak, dear friend," she said quite steadily. "I shall be
glad to hear the whole of it, though it is an ugly story. The man was
miserable, and he is dead, and the circumstances of his death point
to--what--suicide?"

In reply Iglesias told her how that morning, the servants failing to get
any response to their knocking, the upper part of the house being,
moreover, pervaded by a sickening smell of gas, help had been called in;
and, de Courcy Smyth's door being forced open, he had been found lying,
fully clothed, stark and cold upon his bed, an empty phial of morphia and
an empty glass on the table beside him, both gas-jets turned full on
though not alight.

At the top of Portland Place the coachman took his way northwestward,
first skirting the outer ring of Regent's Park and then making the
gradually ascending slope of the Finchley Road. The detached houses on
either side, standing back in their walled gardens, were mostly blind.
Only here and there, behind drawn curtains, a window glowed, telling of
intimate drama gallant or mournful within. The wide grey pavements were
deserted; the place arrestingly quiet, save for the occasional heavy tread
of a passing policeman on beat, and the rhythmical trot of the horse. And
the Lady of the Windswept Dust was quiet likewise, looking straight before
her, sitting stiffly upright, her hands clasped in her lap, the shifting
lights and shadows playing queerly over her face and her bare neck,
causing her to appear unsubstantial and indefinite as a figure in a dream.
Yet a strange energy possessed her and emanated from her, so that the
atmosphere about her was electric, oppressive to Iglesias as with a
brooding of storm. Her very quietness was agitating, weighed with meaning
which challenged his imagination and even his powers of reticence and
self-control. Opposite Swiss Cottage Station, where the main road forks,
a string of market waggons--slouching, drowsy car-men, backed by a pale
green wall of glistening cabbages, nodding above their slow-moving
teams--passed, with a jingle of brass-mounted harness and grind of wheels.
This roused Poppy, and the storm broke.

"Dominic," she said breathlessly, "do you at all know that you've just
told me means to me?"

"I have never known positively until now; but it was impossible that I
should not have entertained suspicions."

"Did he--you know who I mean--ever speak of me?"

"I think," Iglesias said, "he came very near doing so, more than once. But
I put a stop to the conversation."

"You frightened him," Poppy rejoined. "I know one could do that. It was a
last resource, a hateful one. Is there anything so difficult to forgive as
being driven to be cruel? One was bound to be cruel in self-defence, or
one would have been stifled, utterly degraded by self-contempt, bled to
death not only in respect of money but of self-esteem."

She threw up her hands with a gesture at once fierce and despairing.

"Oh! the weak, the weak," she cried, "of how many crimes they are the
authors! Crimes more particularly abominable when the weak one is the man,
and woman--poor brute--is strong."

She settled herself sideways in the corner of the carriage, turning her
face once more full upon her companion.

"Look here," she said, "I don't want to whitewash myself. What I've done
I've done. I don't pretend it's pretty or innocent, or that I haven't
jolly well got to pay the price of it--though I think a good deal has been
paid by now. But it seems to me my real crime was in marrying him, rather
than in leaving him. It was a crime against love--love, which alone, if
you've any real sense of the inherent decencies of things, makes marriage
otherwise than an outrage upon a woman's pride and her virtue. But, then,
one doesn't know all that when one's barely out of one's teens. And, you
see, like a fool I took the first comer out of bravado, just that people
mightn't see how awfully hard hit I was by his people interfering and
preventing my marrying the poor, dear boy who gave me this"--Poppy spread
out the end of her dragon scarf--"I've told you about him.--Stage people
are absurdly simple in some ways, you know. They live in such a world of
pretences and fictions that they lose their sense of fact, or rather they
never develop it. They're awfully easily taken in. Words go a tremendous
long way with them. And de Courcy could talk. He was appallingly fluent,
specially on the subject of himself. He made be believe he was rather
wonderful, and I wanted to believe he was wonderful. I wanted to believe
he was all the geniuses in creation rolled into one. All the more I wanted
to believe it because I wasn't one scrap in love with him."

Poppy beat with one hand almost roughly on Mr. Iglesias' arm.

"Do you see, do you see, do you see?" she repeated. "Do you understand?
I want you so badly to understand."

And he answered her gently and gravely: "Do not be afraid, dear friend. I
see with your eyes. I feel with your heart. As far as one human being can
enter into and share the experience of another, I do understand."

"But the nuisance is," she went on, the corners of her mouth taking a
wicked twist, "you know so very much more about a man after you've married
him. Other people are inclined to forget that sometimes. Consuming egoism
is hideous at close quarters. It comes out in a thousand ways, in mean
little tyrannies and absurd jealousies which would never have entered into
one's head.--I don't want to go into all that. It's better forgot.--Only
they piled up and up, till the shadow of them shut out the sunshine; and
I got so bored, so madly and intolerably bored. You see, I had tried to
believe in him at first. In self-defence I had done so, and stood by him,
and done my very best to put him through. But when I began to understand
that there was nothing to stand by or put through, that his talent was not
talent at all, but merely a vain man's longing to possess talent--well,
the situation became pretty bad. I tried to be civil. I tried to hold my
tongue, indeed I did. But to be bullied and grumbled at, and expected to
work, so as to give him leisure and means for the development of gifts
which didn't exist--it wasn't good enough."

Poppy put up her hands and pushed the masses of her hair from her
forehead. And all the while the shifting lights and shadows played over
her white face and bare neck, and the horse trotted on, past closed shops
and curtained windows, farther out of London and into the night.

"He didn't do anything which the world calls vicious," she continued
presently. A great dreariness had come into the tones of her voice. "He
was faithful to me, as the world counts faithfulness, simply because he
didn't care for women--except for philandering with sentimental sillies
who thought him an unappreciated eighth wonder of the world, and pawed
over and pitied him. La! La! The mere thought of it makes me sick! But he
was too much in love with himself to be capable of even an animal passion
for anybody else. And he made a great point of his virtue. I heard a lot
about it--oh! a lot!"

For a minute or two Poppy sat silent. Then she turned to Mr. Iglesias,
smiling, as those smile who refuse submission to some cruel pain.

"I wasn't born bad, dear man," she said, "and I held out longer than most
women in my profession would, where morals are easy and it's lightly come
and lightly go in respect of lovers and love. But one fine day I packed up
my traps and cleared out. He'd been whining for years, and some little
thing he said or did--I really forget exactly what--raised Cain in me, and
I thought I'd jolly well give him something to whine about. I knew
perfectly well he wouldn't divorce me. He wanted me too much, at the end
of a string, to torment, and to get money from when times were bad. Not
that I cared for a divorce. I consider it the clumsiest invention out for
setting wrongs right. I have too great a respect for marriage, which
ought, if it means anything, to mean motherhood and children, and a clean,
wholesome start in life for the second generation. When a woman breaks
away and crosses the lines, she only makes bad worse, in my opinion, by
the hypocritical respectability of a marriage while her husband is still
alive. Let's be honest sinners any way, if sin we must."

Again she paused, looking backward in thought, seeing and hearing things
which, for the honour of others, it was kindest not to repeat. The
carriage moved slowly, the horse slackening its pace in climbing the last
steep piece of hill which leads to the pond on Hampstead Heath.

"And now it's over," Poppy said, letting her hands drop in her lap. "Done
with. The poor wretched thing's dead--has killed himself. That is a
fitting conclusion. He was always his own worst enemy.--Well, as far as I
am concerned, let him rest in peace."

"Amen," Iglesias responded, "so let him rest. 'Shall not the judge of all
the world do right,' counting his merits as well as his demerits, making
all just excuses for his lapses and wrong-doings; knowing, as we can never
know, exactly how far he was and was not accountable for his own and for
others' sins. And now, dear friend, as you have said, this long misery is
over and done with. Whatever remains of practical business you can leave
safely to me. His memory shall be shielded as far as foresight and
sympathy can shield it, and your name need not appear."

The Lady of the Windswept Dust took his hand and held it.

"I don't know," she said brokenly, "why all this should all come upon
you."

"For a very simple reason," he answered. "What did you tell me yourself?
You stand first. And that is true."

But it may be remarked in passing that there are limits to the passive
obedience of even the best-trained of men-servants. Those of Poppy's
coachman had been reached. At the top of the hill he drew up, vigorously
determined to drive no farther into the wilderness, without renewed and
very distinct information as to why and where he went, perceiving which
Dominic Iglesias opened the carriage door and stepped out.

"The night is fine and dry," he said. "Let us walk a little, and then let
us drive home. You have your work to-morrow--or, rather, to-day--and you
must have a reasonable amount of rest first. The stream of your life has
been arrested, diverted from its natural channel; but it still runs strong
and clear yet. You have genius, real, not imagined, so you must husband
your energies.--Come and walk. Let the air soothe and calm you; and then,
leaving all the past in Almighty God's safe keeping, go home and rest."

Here the high-road stretches along the ridge of the hill, a giant
causeway, the broken land of the open heath falling away sharply to left
and right. It was windless. The sky was covered, and the atmosphere,
though not foggy at this height, was thick as with smoke; so that the
road, with its long avenue of sparse-set lamps--dwindling in the extreme
distance to faintest sparks--was as a pale bridge thrown across the void
of black unsounded space. All, save the road itself, the lamps, and seats,
and broken fringe of grass edging the raised footpath of it, was formless
and vague, peopled by shapes, dark against darkness, such as the eye
itself fearfully produces in straining to penetrate unyielding obscurity.
The effect was one of intense isolation, of divorce from humanity and the
works and ways of it, so present and overpowering it might well seem that,
reaching the far end of that pale bridge, the wayfarer would part company
with the things of time altogether and pass into another state of being.

And this so worked upon Poppy that, some fifty yards along the causeway,
her black and silver skirts gathered ankle-high about her, she stopped,
drawing very close to Iglesias and laying her hand upon his arm.

"Listen to the silence," she said. "Look at the emptiness. I don't quite
like it, even with you. It's too suggestive of death, death with no sure
hope of life beyond it.--I am quite good now, quite sane and reasonable.
I have put aside all bitterness. I'll never say another hard word of him,
or, in as far as I can, think a hard thought."

Then turning, suddenly she gave a cry, perceiving that east and south
all London lay below them--formless, too, indefinite, enormous, a City of
the Plains, unseen in detail but indicated through the gloom as a vast
semi-circle of smouldering fire.

Poppy stretched out both arms, letting her splendid draperies trail in the
dust.

"Ah! how I love it, how I love it," she cried. "Let us go back, dear man.
For it belongs to me and I belong to it. In the name of my art I must try
conclusions with it. I must play to it, and conquer it, and enchant, and
possess it, since I am free at last--I am free."

CHAPTER XXXVII

Serena's manner, though gracious, was lofty, almost regal. She had,
indeed, lately looked upon crowned heads, and the glory of them seemed,
somehow, to have rubbed off on her.

"Yes," she said, "I came up for the Queen's funeral. Lady Samuelson felt
it was a thing I ought not to miss, and I agreed with her. It was
inconvenient to leave home, because I had a number of engagements. Still,
I felt I might regret it afterwards if I did not see it. And then, of
course, Lady Samuelson was so kind the year before last, when I had so
very much to worry me, that I feel I owe it to her to stay with her
whenever she asks me to do so. Where did you see the procession from,
Rhoda?"

"Well, on the whole I thought it better to remain at home," Mrs. Lovegrove
confessed, "though Georgie was most pressing I should go with him. You are
slender, Serena, and that makes a great deal of difference in going about.
But I find crowds and excitement very trying. And then it must all have
been very affecting and solemn. I doubted if I could witness it without
giving way too much and troubling others. It is mortifying to feel you are
spoiling the pleasure of those that are with you, and I wanted poor
Georgie to enjoy himself as much as he could."

"In that case it was certainly better to remain at home," Serena rejoined.
"I have my feelings very much under control. Even when I was quite a child
that used to be said of me. It used to irritate Susan."

"Susan has a more impetuous nature," Mrs. Lovegrove observed. The day of
domestic eclipse was happily passed. She had come into her own again;
consequently she was disposed to be slightly argumentative, sitting here
upon her own Chesterfield sofa in her own drawing-room, even with Serena.

"I wonder if she has--I mean I wonder whether Susan really has a more
impetuous nature," the latter rejoined, "or whether she is only more
wanting in self-control. I often think people get credit for strong
feelings, when it is only that they make no effort to control themselves.
And that is unfair. I never have been able to see why it was considered
so creditable to have strong feelings. They usually give a lot of
inconvenience to other people. I am not sure that it is not self-indulgent
to have strong feelings.--We had excellent places just opposite the Marble
Arch. Of course Lady Samuelson has a great deal of interest; and we saw
everything. In some ways I think, as a sight, the procession was
overrated. But I am glad I went. You can never tell whether anything is
worth seeing or not until you have seen it; and so I certainly might have
regretted if I had not gone. Still, I think you were quite wise in not
going, Rhoda, if you were likely to be upset; and then, as you say, it
must be unpleasant getting about if one is very stout. Of course, I cannot
really enter into that. I take after mamma's family. They are always
slender. But the Lovegroves often grow stout. George, of course, has, and
I should not be surprised if Susan did when she is older. But then Susan
and I are entirely different in almost everything."

"I suppose you have heard of our dear vicar being appointed to the new
bishopric of Slowby, Serena," Mrs. Lovegrove remarked. The amplitude, or
non-amplitude, of the family figure was beginning to get upon her nerves.

"Oh! dear, yes, of course I have," Serena answered with raised eyebrows
and a condescending expression of countenance. "Not that it will make very
much difference to me, I suppose. I am so little at home now. But
naturally people, hearing we knew the Nevingtons, came to us for
information about them. I don't think anybody had ever heard of Dr.
Nevington at Slowby, and so they were very glad to learn anything we could
tell them. Of course it is a very great rise for Dr. Nevington, though he
will only be a suffragan bishop. Still, he must be very much flattered,
after merely having a parish of this kind. Susan is very pleased at the
appointment. She wrote to Dr. Nevington immediately and has had a number
of letters from him. I was quite willing she should write, but she told
him how popular his appointment was in Midlandshire. And I thought that
was going rather far, because Susan has no real means of knowing whether
it is popular or not. She could only know that she thought she liked it
herself, and had praised him among her friends. And I wonder whether she
is right--I mean I wonder whether she really will like it. Of course Susan
has been very prominent and has had everything her own way with most of
the clergymen's wives in Slowby. I think that has been rather bad for
Susan and given her an undue idea of her own importance. Now naturally
Mrs. Nevington will be the head of everything and the clergymen's wives
will go for advice to her. I do not see how Susan can help disliking that.
And then Mrs. Nevington is said to be a very good public speaker. I am
perfectly certain Susan will dislike that. For I always observe that
people who speak a great deal themselves, like Susan, never get on well
with other good speakers."--She moved a little, throwing back the fronts
of her black beaded jacket--her complimentary mourning was scrupulously
correct--and adjusting the black silk tie at her throat. "Of course I may
be mistaken," she added, "but if you ask me, Rhoda, I fancy you will find
that Susan and Mrs. Nevington will not remain friends for very long."

"I am distressed to hear you express such an opinion, Serena," Mrs.
Lovegrove returned. The tone of mingled patronage and possession in which
her guest spoke of her own two particular sacred totems, vicar and
vicaress, incensed her highly. She wished she had not introduced the
subject of the Slowby bishopric.--"When the object in view is a truly good
one," she added, with some severity, "I should suppose all right-meaning
people would strive to sink petty rivalries and cooperate. I should quite
believe it would prove so in Susan's case."

"Of course she would not give Mrs. Nevington's speaking well as her
reason, if they did not remain on friendly terms," Serena returned
negligently. "But then people so very seldom give their real reasons for
what they do, Rhoda. Surely you must have observed that. I think they are
generally very willing to deceive themselves a good deal."

"I am afraid it is so with too many, Serena, and with some who would
be the last to own it when applied to themselves."--Then the wife
determined by a piece of daring strategy to carry the war into the enemy's
country.--"And that reminds me," she said. "I suppose you have heard that
Mr. Iglesias has left Trimmer's Green?"

"I do not the least know what right you have to suppose anything of the
kind, Rhoda," the lady addressed replied with a haste and asperity far
from regal. "You must have very odd ideas of the people I meet, either at
Lady Samuelson's or at Slowby, if you imagine I am likely to hear anything
about Mr. Iglesias from them. If I had not met him here, of course, I
should never have heard of him at all; and if I had never heard of him I
should have been spared a great deal. Still, after all that has occurred,
I can quiet see that Mr. Iglesias might find it better to leave Trimmer's
Green."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27