The Far Horizon

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The part of wisdom, in face of this very forthcoming young person, would
have been no doubt to arise and withdraw. But to Dominic Iglesias, just
then, dogs, woman, conversation, were alike so remote and unreal, part
merely of the scene which he had been contemplating, that he failed to
take them seriously. Divorced from routine, he was divorced, in a way,
from habitual modes of mind and conduct. He neither consented nor
refused, but just let things happen, attaching little or no meaning to
them. If this feminine being chose to prattle--well, let her do so.
Really he did not care.

"I am not very modern myself," he said, with a shade of weariness. "So
perhaps your small dog had some intuition of a kindred spirit when taking
refuge with me."

"All the same, you hardly date from the social era of Charles II., I
fancy," the young lady answered quickly.

As she spoke she raised her chin with a slightly impudent movement, thus
bringing her countenance into the sunlight. For the first time Iglesias
clearly saw her face. It was small, the features insignificant, the skin
smooth and fine in texture, but sallow. Her hair, black and very massive,
was puffed out and dressed low, hiding her ears. Her lips were rather
positively red, and the tinge of colour on either cheek, though slight,
was not wholly convincing in tone. Even to a person of Mr. Iglesias'
praiseworthy limitation of experience in such matters, her face was
vaguely suggestive of the footlights--would have been distinctly so but
for her eyes. These were curiously at variance with the rest of her
appearance. They belonged to a quite other order of woman, so to speak--a
woman of finer physique, of higher intelligence, possibly of nobler
purposes. They were arrestingly large in size, thereby helping to dwarf
the proportions of her face. In colour they were a rather light warm
hazel, with a slight film over both iris and pupil, and a noticeably
bluish shade in the whites of them. In these last particulars they were
like a baby's eyes; but very unlike in the reflective intensity of their
observation as she fixed them upon Dominic Iglesias.

"Cappadocia may be a fool about motors," she remarked, "but she's
uncommonly shrewd in reading character. She seems to like you, to have
taken you on, don't you know; and she's generally right. So I'll sit
down, please. Oh! no, no, come along now"--this as Mr. Iglesias rose and
made a movement to depart--"why, dear man, the very point of the whole
show is that you should sit down, too."

CHAPTER V

And so it came about that the Lady of the Windswept Dust sat at one end
of the flat bench and Dominic Iglesias at the other, with the two absurd
and exquisite little dogs in between. And the lady chattered. Her voice
was sweet and full, with plaintive tones and turns of laughter in it;
and, though the vowel sounds were not wholly impeccable, having the tang
in them common to the speech of the cockney bred, the aspirates happily
remained inviolate. And Iglesias listened, still with a curious
indifference, as, sitting in the body of the house, he might have
listened to patter from the other side of the footlights. It passed the
time. Presently he would get up, taking the whole of his rather sorrowful
personality along with him, and go out by the main entrance, while she
left by the stage door--and so vanished, little dogs and all.

"It's my habit to play fair," she announced. "If I'm going to ask
personal questions at the finish, I always lead up to them by supplying
personal information at the start. It's mean to induce other people to
give themselves away unless you give yourself away first--also, I observe
it is usually quite unsuccessful. Well, then, to begin with, his name"--
she gently poked the tiny spaniel beside her, causing it to wriggle
uneasily all the length of its satiny back--"is Onions. Graceful and
distinguished, isn't it? But I give you my word I couldn't help myself.
Cappadocia's so duchessy that I had to knock the conceit out of her
somehow, or it would not have been possible to live with her. She was
altogether too smart for me--used to look at me as if I was a cockroach.
So I consulted a friend of mine about it; for it's a little too much to
be made to feel like a black-beetle in your own house, and by a thing of
that size, too! And he--my friend--said there is nothing to compare with
a _mesalliance_ for taking the stuffing out of anyone. I own I was not
exactly off my head about that speech of his. In a way it was rather a
facer; but when I got cool I saw he was right. After all, he knew, and I
knew--and he knew that I knew----"

The lady paused. Her voice had taken on a plaintive inflection. She
looked away at the domed heads of the enormous elm trees above the range
of oak palings.

"For the life of me I can't imagine why you're here," she exclaimed,
"instead of inside there with all the rest of them! However, we haven't
got as far as that yet. I was telling you about my King Charleses. So my
friend brought me this one"--again she poked the little dog gently. "His
pedigree's pretty fair, but of course it's not a patch on Cappadocia's.
Her prizes and the puppies--you don't mind my alluding quite briefly to
the puppies--are a serious source of income to me. But I believe she
would have ignored the defective pedigree. He is rather nice-looking, you
see, and Cappadocia is rather superficial. It is the name that worries
her--Onions, Willie Onions, that's where the real trouble comes in. Not
like it? I believe you. She's capable of saving up all her pocket-money
to buy him a foreign title, as a rich, ugly woman I once knew did who
married a man called Spittles. He was a bad lot when she married him, and
he stayed so. But as the Comte d'Oppitale it didn't matter. Vices became
merely quaint little eccentricities. If he beat her it was with an
umbrella with a coronet on the handle, and that made all the difference.
Everything for the shop window, you see, with a nature like hers or
Cappadocia's. But I don't rub it in, I assure you I don't. I only remind
Cappadocia of the fact by calling her Mrs. W. O. when she's a pest and a
terror. And that's better than smacking her, anyhow, isn't it?"

To this proposition Mr. Iglesias gravely assented. The lady drew her
blue-purple scarf a little closer about her shoulders, causing the
embroidered dragons to writhe as in the heat of conflict, while the
sunlight glinted on the gold thread of their crests and claws, and
glittered in their jewelled eyes. She gazed at the elm trees again.

"It's quite nice to hear you speak, you know," she remarked
parenthetically. "The conversation has been a little one-sided so far. I
was beginning to be afraid you might be bored. But now it's all right. I
flourish on encouragement! So, to go on, my name is Poppy--Poppy St.
John--Mrs. St. John. Rather good, isn't it?"

"Distinctly so," said Mr. Iglesias. Her unblushing effrontery began to
entertain him somewhat. And then he had sallied forth in search of
amusement. This was not the form of amusement he would have selected;
but--since it presented itself?

"I'm glad you like it," she returned. "I've always thought it rather
telling myself--an improvement on Mrs. Willie Onions, anyhow. Oh! yes, a
vast improvement," she repeated. "My friend was quite right. I tell you
it's an awful handicap to have a name which gives you away socially. The
man, the husband, I mean, may be the best of the good. Still, it's
difficult to forgive him for labelling you with some stupidity like that.
There's no getting away from it. You feel like a bottle of pickles, or
boot-polish, or a tin of insecticide whenever a servant announces you.
Everybody knows where you do--and don't--come in. But, to go on, I am
barely three--only I fancy you are the sort of person who is rather rough
on lying, aren't you? Well, in that case, quite between ourselves--I am
just turned nine-and-twenty."

She faced round on Dominic Iglesias, fixing on him those curiously
arresting eyes, which at once emphasised and redeemed the commonness of
her face, as the sweetness of her voice emphasised and redeemed the
commonness of her accent, and the quietude of her manner and movements
mitigated the impertinence of her words and vulgarity of her diction.

"And really that's about all it is necessary for you to know at present,"
she asserted. "We shall see later, if we keep it up--if Cappadocia keeps
it up, I mean, of course. She is fearfully gone on you now, that's clear;
and she may be capable of a serious attachment. I can't tell. An
unfortunate marriage has been known to turn that way before now. Anyhow,
we'll give her the benefit of the doubt."

Poppy laughed softly, leaning forward and still looking at Mr. Iglesias
from under the shadow of her wide-brimmed hat.

"Now," she said, "come along. I've shown you I play fair all round, even
to a stuck-up little monkey of a thing like Cappadocia. It's your turn to
stand and deliver. I had been watching you and speculating for ever so
long before our introduction. Tell me, who on earth are you?"

Iglesias' figure stiffened a little; but it was impossible to be annoyed
with her. To begin with, she was too unreal, too unsubstantial a being.
And, to go on with, invincible good-temper is so very disarming.

"Who am I? Nobody," he answered gravely.

"Bless us, here's a find!" Poppy cried, apparently addressing the little
dogs. "Hasn't he so much of a name even as Willie Onions? Where's it gone
to? It must be nearly as awkward for him as it was for the man who had no
shadow. Come, though," she added in tones of remonstrance, "you must play
fair. Cards on the table and no humbugging. To put it another way, what
do you do?"

"Since yesterday, nothing," he answered.

The young lady regarded him with increasing interest.

"But, my gentle lunatic," she said, "you didn't exactly begin your
acquaintance with this planetary sphere yesterday--couldn't, you know,
though you are very beautiful to look at. So, if you don't very
particularly much mind, we'll hark back to before yesterday."

Dominic Iglesias' gravity gave way slightly. He smiled in spite of his
natural pride and reticence.

"For over thirty-five years I was a clerk in a city bank."

"Pshaw!" Poppy cried hotly. "And pray what variety of congenital idiot do
you take me for? If you are going to decline upon fiction, please let it
be of a higher order than that. I tell you it's unworthy of you!"

She pursed up her lips and moved her head slowly from side to side in
high disgust.

"Don't be childish," she said. "Don't be transparently silly. If you want
to gas, do put a little more intelligence into it. You--you--out of sight
the most distinguished-looking man I've ever met except Lord--well, we
won't name names, it sounds showy--you a clerk in a city bank! There,
excuse me, but simply--" Poppy snapped her fingers like a pair of
castanets, making the little dogs start and whimper. "Fiddle!" she cried;
"tell it to a bed-ridden spinster in a blind asylum!--Fiddle-de-dee!"

And for the life of him Dominic Iglesias could not help laughing. It was
a new sensation. It occurred to him that he had not laughed for years--
hardly since the days of poor Pascal Pelletier and the little garden in
Holland Street, Kensington.

Poppy watched him, her eyes dancing. Her expression was very charming,
wholly unselfconscious, in a way maternal, just then. But Iglesias was
hardly sensible of it.

"That's good," she said. "Now you'll feel a lot better. I saw there was
something wrong with you from the start which needed breaking up. Now,
suppose you quit inadequate inventions and just tell the truth."

"Unfortunately, I have done so already," Mr. Iglesias said.

The lady paused a moment, her face full of inquiry and doubt.

"Honest injun?"

The term was not familiar to her hearer, but he judged it to be of the
nature of an asseveration, and assented.

"And do you mean to tell me that for all those years you went through
that drudgery every day?"

"I had my Sundays," Iglesias answered; "and, since their invention, my
bank holidays. Latterly I got three weeks' holiday in the summer,
formerly a fortnight."

Laughter had speedily evaporated; and, his harsher mood returning upon
him, Iglesias found a certain bitter enjoyment in setting forth the
extreme meagreness of his life before this light-hearted, unsubstantial
piece of womanhood. Again he classed her with the absurd and exquisite
little dogs as something superfluous, out of relation to sad and sober
realities.

"And yet you manage to look as you do! It beats me," Poppy declared. "I
tell you it knocks me out of time completely. For, if you'll excuse my
being personal, there is an air about you not usually generated by an
office stool--at least, in my experience. Where do you get it from? You
can't be English?"

"I am a Spaniard by extraction," Mr. Iglesias said, with a slight lift of
the head.

"There now, my dear man, don't you go and freeze up again. We were just
beginning to get along so nicely," Poppy put in quickly. "I am having a
capital good time, and you're not having an altogether bad one, are you?
But, tell me, how long ago were you extracted?"

"Very long ago. I was brought to England as a baby child."

"Oh! I didn't mean it that way," she returned. "I was not touching on the
unpardonable subject of age; not that it would matter much in your case,
for you are one of the lucky sort with whom age does not count. I only
meant are you an all-round foreigner?"

"Practically--my mother was partly Irish."

Dominic Iglesias looked away to those densely wooded slopes of Sheen and
Roehampton, against the purple-green gloom of which the home signals of
Barnes Station--hard white lines and angles tipped with scarlet and
black--stood out like the gigantic characters of some strange alphabet.
The air was sweet with the scent of new-mown hay. The birds flirted up
and down the hawthorn bushes and furze brakes. It was all very charming;
yet that same emptiness and distrust of the future were very present to
Iglesias. He forgot all about his companion, aware only that those two
unbidden guests, Old Age and Loneliness, stood close beside him, claiming
harbourage and entertainment.

"Ah! your mother," Poppy said slowly, with the slightest perceptible
inflection of mockery. "And she is alive still?"

Dominic Iglesias turned upon the poor Lady of the Windswept Dust
fiercely. She had come too close, come from her proper place--were not
her lips painted?--behind the footlights, and laid her hands upon that
which was holy. He was filled with unreasoning anger towards her--anger
towards himself, too, that he should have departed from his habitual
silence and reticence, submitted to be cross-questioned, and listened to
her feather-headed patter so long. He rose to his feet, for the moment
young, alert, full of a pride at once militant and protective.

"God forbid!" he said sternly. "Dear saint and martyr, she is safe from
all misreading at last. She is dead."

He stood a moment trying to choke down his anger before addressing her
again.

"It is time I should go," he said presently. "I think we have talked
enough."

But Poppy St. John presented a singular appearance. All the audacity had
departed from her. She sat huddled together, looking very small and
desolate; her eyes--the one noble feature of her face--swimming with
tears.

"No, no; don't go," she cried in tones of childlike entreaty. "Why should
you go? I like you, and I meant no harm. I've had the beastliest day, and
meeting you was a let-up. You did me good somehow. Cappadocia was quite
right in taking to you. I only wanted to know about you because--well,
you are different. Pshaw, don't tell me. I know what I am talking about.
You're straight. You're good right through."

The words were poured forth so rapidly that Iglesias hardly gathered the
exact purport of them. But one thing was clear to him--namely, that this
frivolous and meretricious being must be human after all, since she could
suffer.

"Don't go," she repeated. "I'm miserable. I'll explain. I'll tell you.
Just sit down again. It would be awfully kind. You see, I've been
expecting a friend. It was all-important I should see him to-day, because
there were things to be said. I've been awake half the night screwing up
my courage to saying them. And then he never turned up. I got nerves
waiting hour after hour--anybody would, waiting like that. And I began to
imagine every kind of pestilent disaster."

Poppy swallowed a little and dabbed her pocket-handkerchief against her
eyes.

"I shall be all right in a minute," she went on. "Do sit down, please.
You say you're nobody and have nothing to do, so you can't very well be
in a hurry. I am like this sometimes. It's awfully silly, but I can't
help it. Some rotten trifle sets me off, and then I can't stop myself. I
begin to go over all my worst luck.--Doesn't it occur to you there's no
earthly good in standing? It obliges me to talk loud, and it's stupid to
take all Barnes Common into our confidence. Thanks; that's very nice of
you.--Well, you see when I'm like his, the flood-gates of memory are
opened--which sounds pretty enough, but the prettiness is strictly
limited to the sound for most of us, at least as far as my experience
goes. The water is generally a bit dirty, and there are too many dead
things floating about in it; and, when they reel by, as the current takes
them, they turn and seem to struggle and come half alive."

She paused, hitching the embroidered dragons up about her shoulders.

"That is why I put on this scarf to-day. It was given me by a man who was
awfully fond of me before--I married. He bought it in the bazaar at
Peshawur, and sent it home to me just as he was starting on one of those
little frontier wars the accounts of which they keep out of the English
papers. And he was killed, poor dear old boy, in some footy little
skirmish. And this is all I've got left of him."

Poppy spread out the ends of the scarf for Mr. Iglesias' inspection.

"It must have cost a lot of money. The stones are real, you see; and that
gold thread is tremendously heavy. Just feel the weight. It was all his
people's doing. They didn't consider me smart enough for him--or rather
for themselves. They weren't anybody in particular, but they were
climbing. The society microbe had bitten them badly. So they bundled him
off to India. What another pair of shoes it would have been for me if
he'd lived! At least it seems so to me when I'm down on my luck, as I am
to-day. But after all, I don't know." Poppy began to be impudent, to
laugh again, though somewhat brokenly. "Sometimes I don't believe one can
count on any of you men till you are well dead, and then you're not much
use, you know, faithful or unfaithful."

She dabbed her eyes once more and looked at Mr. Iglesias, smiling
ruefully.

"Life's a pretty rotten business, at times, all round, isn't it?" she
said. "You must have found it so with that thirty years' drudgery in a
city bank. By the way, what bank was it?"

And Dominic Iglesias, touched by that very human story, attracted, in
spite of himself, by the frankness of his companion, a little shaken by
the novelty of the whole situation, answered mechanically:

"The bank? Oh, yes! Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking of Threadneedle
Street."

For a moment Poppy sat silent, her mouth round as an O. Then she drew her
open hand down sharply behind poor Willie Onions, and shot the small dog,
in a sitting position, off the bench on to the rough grass. His fringed
legs stuck out stiff as sticks, while his enormous lappets of ears flew
up and back, giving him the most wildly demented appearance during this
brief inglorious flight through space.

"Catch birds!" she cried, "catch birds, I tell you! Think of your figure.
My good child, take exercise or you'll be as round as a tub!"

She clapped her hands encouragingly, but the little animal, half-scared,
half-offended, came closer, fawning upon her trailing string-coloured
skirts. Poppy leaned down, resting her elbows upon her knees, and napped
at the unhappy Onions with her handkerchief.

"Go away, you silly billy. Have a little decent pride, can't you? Don't
bestow attentions when they're unwelcome." Then she addressed herself to
Mr. Iglesias, but without looking up. "I beg your pardon, all this must
seem rather abrupt. But sometimes one's duty to one's family takes one on
the jump, as you may say; and one repairs neglect right away also on the
jump. But--but--there's one thing I should like to know--when I told you
my name just now--Poppy St. John, Mrs. St. John--you remember?"

"I remember," he said.

"Well, didn't it convey--didn't it mean anything special to you?"

"I am afraid not," Iglesias answered. "You must pardon my ignorance,
since I have lived very much out of the world. I know nothing of
society."

"So much the better. The world is a vastly overrated place, and society
is about the biggest fraud going." She left off teasing the little dog,
sat bolt upright, and looked full at Dominic Iglesias, her eyes serious,
redeeming all the insignificance of her features and those little
doubtful details of the general effect of her. "Don't make any mistake
about either of them," she said. "Let the world and society alone as you
value your peace of mind and independence. They're dead sea fruit to all
outsiders such as--well--you and me. I hate them; only they've got me,
and will have me in some form or other till the end, I suppose. But you
are different, and I warn you"--Poppy's voice took on an odd inflection
of mingled bitterness and tenderness--"they are not a bit adapted for a
beautiful, innocent, uncrowned king like you."

She got up as she spoke, gathering her trailing skirts about her, and
called sharply to the little dogs.

"The dew is rising," she said, "and Cappadocia's a regular cry-baby if
she gets her feet wet. I must take her home. There's my card. You see the
address? You can come when you like, only let me know the day beforehand,
because I should be sorry to have people with me or to be out. Cappadocia
'll want you. So shall I. You do me good. I'll play quite fair, I promise
you. Good-night."

The sun stood in a triumph of crimson and gold, which passed into the
fine blue of a belt of earth mist. Eastward the sky blushed, too, but
with brazen blushes, tarnished by the breath of the great city--the pure
blue of the earth mist exchanged for the murk of coal smoke and the
thousand and one exhalations of steaming streets, public-houses and
restaurants. Poppy St. John walked slowly along the footpath, her figure
dyed by the effulgence of the skies to the crimson and gold of her name.
About her shoulders the embroidered dragons glittered as she moved, while
the two tiny spaniels trotted humbly at her heels. For a brief space she
showed absolutely resplendent. Then suddenly an interposing terrace of
smart much-be-balconied and beflowered little houses shut off the sunset;
and in their rather vulgar shadow Dominic Iglesias, watching, beheld her
transformed into the unsubstantial, in a way fictitious, Lady of the
Windswept Dust and of the footlights once again.

CHAPTER VI

That weekly ceremony--well known to Trimmer's Green--Mrs. Lovegrove's
afternoon at-home, was in progress. She wore her black satin gown, and
her white Maltese lace fichu, just to give it a touch of summer
lightness. It must be added that she was warm and uncomfortable, having
conscientiously superintended preparations in respect of commissariat in
the overheated atmosphere of the basement; hurried upstairs--the imagined
tinkle of the front-door bell perpetually in her ears--to pull her stays
in at the waist and project herself into the aforementioned official
garments--a very trying process on a June day to a person of ample
contours and what may be described as the fluidic temperament. Later she
had cooled off, or tried so to cool--for on such occasions there is
invariably some window-blind, ornament, or piece of furniture actively in
need of straightening--sitting in her somewhat fog-stained and sun-faded
drawing-room during that evil period of waiting in which the intending
hostess first suffers acute mortification because she is "quite sure
nobody will come," and then gets hot all over from the equally agitating
certainty that everybody she has ever known will appear simultaneously,
and that there will be neither cakes nor conversation enough to go round.

But this disquieting and oft-repeated preface to the afternoon's
festivity was now happily over. And the good lady, oblivious of
discomfort and a slightly disorganised complexion, sat purring with
satisfaction upon her best Chesterfield sofa, Dr. Giles Nevington beside
her. "Pleasure, not business, to-day, Mrs. Lovegrove. For once I am going
to make no demands on my faithful and able coadjutor. This call is a
purely friendly one--no subscription lists of any sort or description in
my pocket," the clergyman had said in his resonant bass when clasping her
hand.--A large, dark, clean-shaven man of forty, a studied effect of
geniality and benevolence about him, slightly tempered, perhaps, by cold
and watchful blue-grey eyes, fixed--so said his detractors--with
unswerving determination upon the shovel-hat, apron, and gaiters of the
Anglican episcopate.

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