The Far Horizon

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"Well, I have been thinking it all over, Georgie, and we shall only be
doing our duty by Mr. Iglesias if we send for your cousin Serena. For my
part, I don't trust Mrs. Porcher. Did you see that fly-away blue bow?
Those who seem so soft are often the deepest. And widows have all sorts
of little cunning ways with them." She rose from the thrice happy sofa.
"I was gratified to have Dr. Nevington and Mr. Iglesias meet. But we
certainly will have to send for Serena," she said.

CHAPTER VII

Mr. Iglesias crossed Trimmer's Green in the dusty sunshine. He had
engaged to stay; and, indeed, he asked himself what person, what objects
or interests there were to take him else-whither? Nevertheless, the
promise seemed, somehow, a limiting of possibility and of hope. It was
destiny. London, very evidently, having got him, did not mean to let him
go. And London was not attractive this evening, but blouzy and jaded from
the heat. He passed on into the great thoroughfare and turned eastward,
absorbed in thought. Children cried. A pungent scent of over-ripe fruit
came from barrows in the roadway and open doors of green-grocers' shops.
Tempers appeared to be on edge. Workmen, pouring out from a big block of
flats under construction on the left, jostled him in passing, not in
insolence, but simply in inattention. Their language was starred with
sanguinary adjectives. The noise of the traffic was loud. Iglesias turned
up one of the side streets leading on to Campden Hill. It was quieter
here and the air was a trifle purer. Halfway up the hill he hesitated.
There was a shrine to be visited in these regions--in it stood an altar
of the dead. And above that altar, in Iglesias' imagination, hung the
picture of a woman, beautiful, and, to him, infinitely sad.

He turned eastward again and made his way into Holland Street. He rarely
had the courage to go back there. He had never reentered the house. But
this evening he was taken by the desire to look on it all once again. For
he was still pursued by the disquieting question as to whether he had
shirked the possibilities of his life, or had sacrificed them to a higher
duty than any duty of personal development. If the latter, however barren
of active happiness both past and present, he would be in his own eyes
justified, and desolation would cease to have in it any flavour of self-
contempt. Perhaps this dwelling-place of his childhood, youth, and what
should have been the best of his manhood, might help to answer the
question and set his doubts at rest.

A board--"To Let"--was up on the narrow iron balcony of the dining-room.
Iglesias rang, and after brief parley with the caretaker--a neat bald-
headed little old man, in carpet slippers and a well-brushed once-smart
brown check suit, altogether too capacious for his attenuated person--was
admitted.

"The place is quite empty save for my bits of sticks in the basement,
sir," he said. "You are at liberty to go where you please. I am afflicted
with the asthma and am glad to avoid mounting the stairs." He ended up
with a husky little cough. So Iglesias passed through the vacant house
unattended.

He received a pathetic yet agitating impression. The rooms were even
smaller than he had supposed. They were gloomy, too, from the worn paint
of the high wainscots and discoloration of the low ceilings. All the
windows were shut and the atmosphere was close and faint. The corners
were thick with crouching shadows, merely awaiting the cover of night, as
it seemed to Iglesias, to take definite shape, stand upright, and come
forth to possess and people all the house. Even now it belonged so
sensibly to them that his own reverent footsteps sounded to him harshly
intrusive upon the bare, uneven floors. At intervals, downstairs in the
basement, he could hear the little old caretaker's husky cough.

And it was strange to him to consider what those crouching shadows might
represent. Not the ghosts of human beings--in such he had small belief--
but an aftermath of human emotions, purposes, and passions, formulated or
endured in this apparently so innocent place. To his knowledge the
origins of revolution had seethed here. The walls had listened to details
of political intrigue, of projected assassination, to vehement
declarations of undying hate. Of the men who had plotted and dreamed
here, uplifted in spirit by the magic of terrible ideas, none were left.
One by one they had gone out into the silence to meet death, swift-handed
or heartlessly lingering, as the case might be. And what had they
actually accomplished? he asked himself. Had their death, often as must
be surmised of a sufficiently hideous sort, really advanced the cause of
humanity and helped on the birth of that Golden Age, in which Justice
shall reign alongside Peace? Or had these men merely wasted themselves,
adding to the sum total of human confusion and wrong; and wasted the
hearts and happiness of those allied to them by ties of friendship and of
blood, leaving the second generation to repair, in so far as it might,
the ruin which their violence had worked? Dominic Iglesias could not say.
But this at least, though it savoured of reproach, he could not disguise
from himself--namely, that out of the intemperate heat and fierceness of
these men's thought and action had come, as a necessary consequence, the
narrow opportunities and cold isolation of his own.

"As physically, so morally, spiritually, socially," he said to himself,
"the younger generation pays the debts contracted by the generation
immediately preceding it. Justice, indeed, reigns already, always has
done so--. justice of a rather tremendous sort. But peace?--Peace is
still very much to seek, both for the individual and the race."

Iglesias visited his mother's bed-chamber. He visited his former nursery.
Then he visited the drawing-room, the heart of this very pathetic shrine
where the altar of his dead was, almost visibly set up. To this room,
during the many years of his mother's mental illness, he had come back
daily after work; and had ministered to her, suiting his speech to her
passing humour, trying to distract her brooding melancholy, and to soothe
and amuse her as though she was an ailing child. Thank God, there was
nothing ugly to remember regarding her. She had never been harsh or
unlovely in her ways. Still, the strain of constant intercourse with her
had been very great--how great Iglesias had hardly realised until now, as
he stood in the centre of the room reconstructing its former appearance
in thought and replacing its familiar furnishings.

There to the left of the further window, overlooking the garden, she had
always sat, so that the light might fall upon her needlework--very fine
Irish lace, in the making of which nearly all her waking hours were
spent. She had learned the beautiful art as a young girl in her convent
school; and her skill in it was great. In those sad later years when her
mind was clouded the intricate designs and endless variety of delicate
and ingenious stitches had come to have symbolic meanings for her full of
mystic significance. In them she poured forth her soul, as another might
pour it forth in music, finding there an imaginative language far
surpassing, in its subtlety of suggestion, articulate speech. There were
deserts of net, of spider's web fineness, to be laboriously traversed;
hills of difficulty to be climbed, whence far horizons disclosed
themselves; dainty flower-gardens, crossed by open paths, and hedged
about with curves, sinuous and full of pretty impediments. And there
were, to her, vaguely agitating and even fearful things in this lacework
also--confusions of outline, broken purposes, multiplicity of opposing
intentions, struggle of good and evil powers in the intricacies of some
rich arabesque; or monotonous repetitions of design which distressed her
as with the terrors of imprisonment and of unescapable fate. She was
filled with feverish anxiety until such portions of her self-imposed
task were completed. Then she would be very glad. And Iglesias, glancing
up silently from the pages of his newspaper or book, would see the sorrow
pass out of her face as she leaned back in her chair and softly laughed.
And he would perceive that, in the achievement of those countless but
carefully ordered stitches, she had also achieved some mysterious victory
of the spirit which, for a time at least, would give her freedom of soul
and content. As a boy he had been rather jealous of her lacemaking,
declaring that it was dearer to her than he himself was. But as he grew
more experienced, more chastened, and, it must be added, more sad, he had
come to understand that it veritably was as speech to her--though speech
which he could but rarely interpret--expressing all that she could not,
or dared not, otherwise express, all the poetry of her sweet, broken
nature, its denied aspirations in religion, its tortured memories of
danger and of love.

Now, standing in the centre of the empty room, and looking at the place
beside the window where she habitually sat, Iglesias seemed to see once
more, as he had so often seen in the past, her fine-drawn profile and
softly waved upturned hair, her head and shoulders draped in a black
mantilla, the lines of which followed those of her figure as she bent
over her work. He could see the long delicate white hands moving
rhythmically, with the assurance of perfected skill, over the web in its
varying degrees of whiteness from the filmy transparency of the net
foundation to the opacity of the closely wrought pattern. Those hands, in
their ceaseless and exquisite industry, had troubled his imagination at
times. For too often it had seemed as though they alone were really
alive, intelligent, sentient, the rest of the woman dead. The impression
was so vivid even yet--though Iglesias knew it to be subjective only,
projected by the vividness of remembrance--that instinctively he crossed
the room, laid his left hand upon the moulding of the high wainscot,
leaned over the vacant space which appeared to hold her image, and spoke
gently to her, so that the moving hands might find rest for a moment,
while she recognised and greeted him, looking up.

There had always been a pause before the words of greeting came, while
her consciousness travelled back, hesitatingly, to the actual and
material world around her from the world of emotion and phantasy in which
her spirit lived. There was a pause now, a prolonged silence, broken at
last by the husky cough of the little old caretaker downstairs. The
vacant space remained vacant. Nevertheless Dominic Iglesias received both
recognition and greeting, and from these derived inward assurance that
all was well--that he was justified of his past action, that he had not
shirked the possibilities of his life, but sacrificed them to a higher
duty than any individual and private one. The present might be empty of
purpose and pleasure, the future lacking in promise and in hope; yet to
him one perfect thing had been granted--namely, a human relationship of
unsullied beauty, notwithstanding all its sadness, from first to last.

"And in the strength of that meat, one should surely be able to go many
days!" he said, as he straightened himself up. "Thank God, I never failed
her. How far she realised it or not, is but a small matter. I am obscure,
perhaps as things now stand wholly superfluous, still I have, at all
events, never grasped personal advantage at the expense of a fellow-
creature's heart."

Yet, even so, the longing for sympathy and companionship oppressed him as
never before. The sight of this place had stirred his affections and his
spiritual sense. His soul cried out for some language in which to express
itself--even though it were a language of symbol only, such as his
mother had found in her lacemaking. How barren and vapid a thing was the
exterior life, as all those whom he knew understood and lived it--his co-
lodgers, his fellow-clerks, the good Lovegroves, his late employer, Sir
Abel Barking, even, as he divined, that sonorous Protestant clergyman
whom he had met this afternoon--as against the interior life, suggestion
of which this vacant shadow-haunted house of innumerable memories
presented to his mind! Was there any method by which the interior and
exterior life could be brought into sane and fruitful relation, so that
the former might sensibly permeate and dignify the latter?

The comfortable inward conviction, just vouchsafed him, that he was
justified of his own past action, merely emphasised his consciousness
that he was still very much adrift, with no definite port to steer for.
He had, perhaps unwisely, promised George Lovegrove that he would stay on
at Trimmer's Green, but what, after all, did that amount to? Even the
exterior life was second-hand enough there; the interior life, as he
judged, practically non-existent. And so his staying must be ennobled by
some purpose beyond that of stepping across to smoke an after-dinner pipe
with the good, affectionate Lovegrove man, or attending his estimable
wife's "at homes." During the last ten days Mr. Iglesias had striven,
with rare, pathetic diligence, to cultivate amusement. True, the oak
palings had shut him out from Ranelagh; but, with that and a few other
exceptions, amusement, as practised in great cities, is merely a matter
of cash. Therefore he had dined at smart restaurants, had sampled
theatres and music halls, had sat in the Park and watched the world and--
in their more decent manifestations--the flesh and the devil drive by. He
had to admit that unfortunately all this left him cold, had bored rather
than entertained him. He had not felt out of place socially. His natural
dignity and detachment of mind were alike too strong for that; but he had
arrived at the conclusion that you must have learned the rudiments of the
art of amusement in early youth if you are to practise it with
satisfaction to yourself in middle-age. And he very certainly had not
learned the rudiments--not, anyhow, according to the English fashion. He
had been aware, during these social excursions, that he was a good deal
stared at and even commented on. At first he supposed this arose from
some peculiarity of his dress or manner. Then he understood that the
cause of this unsolicited attention bore a more flattering character, and
in this connection certain remarks made by the Lady of the Windswept Dust
occurred to his mind. But, Mr. Iglesias' pride being greatly in excess of
his vanity--when the first moment of half-humorous surprise was passed--
he found that these tributes to his personal appearance afforded him more
displeasure than pleasure. He turned from them with a movement of
annoyance, and turned from those places in which they were liable to
manifest themselves likewise. No, indeed, it was something other than
this he had to find, something lying far deeper in the needs of human
nature, if the emptiness of his days was to be filled and the hunger of
his heart and spirit satisfied!

Pondering which things he went down the creaking stairs of the house in
Holland Street, Kensington, leaving the empty and, to him, sacred rooms
to the crouching shadows. He had had his answer from the one person whom
he had perfectly loved. And surely, in justifying the past, that answer
gave promise of hope for the future? The way would be made clear, the
method would declare itself. Let him have patience, only patience, as
she, his mother, had had when traversing deserts and climbing Difficulty
Hill in her lacework; and to him, also, should far horizons be disclosed.

In the narrow hall the neat little old caretaker met him, huskily
coughing.

"The rent is low, sir," he said, "and the landlord is asking no premium.
If you should wish further particulars, or to inspect the offices----"

But Mr. Iglesias put a couple of half-crowns into his hand.

"No," he answered, "I do not propose to take the house. Persons who were
dear to me lived here once; and so I wanted to see it. As long as it is
unlet I may come back from time to time."

The old man shuffled his slippered feet upon the bare boards, looking
with mild ecstasy at the coins.

"And you will be most welcome, sir," he said. "Your generosity happens to
be of great assistance to me--not that I wish it repeated. I am not
grasping, sir, but I am grateful. I have a taste in literature which my
reduced circumstances do not allow me to gratify. I see the prospect of
many hours' enjoyment before me. I thank you."

CHAPTER VIII

And so it came about that a more tranquil spirit, touched with sober
gladness, possessed Dominic Iglesias as, leaving that house of many
memories, he pursued his way down Church Street and, passing into
Kensington High Street opposite St. Mary Abbot's Church, turned eastward
once again. A few doors short of the gateway leading into Palace Gardens
was an unpretentious Italian restaurant where he proposed to dine. For it
grew late. He had spent longer than he had supposed in wordless prayer
before the altar of his dead. The remembrance of the book-loving little
caretaker's gratitude remained by him pleasantly, softening his humour
towards all his fellow-men. Simple kindness has great virtue, uplifting
to the heart. To Iglesias it seemed those five shillings had been
eminently well invested.

The streets were clearer now; and he walked slowly, enjoying the cooler
air born of the sunset, and drawing from the leafy spaces of Kensington
Gardens and the park. Presently he became aware of a figure, not
altogether unfamiliar, threading its way among the intermittent stream of
pedestrians along the pavement a few paces ahead. His eyes followed it
reluctantly. In his present peaceful humour its aspect struck a jarring
note. Soiled white flannel trousers, a short blue boating coat, a soft
grey felt hat, tennis shoes, a shambling and uncertain gait as of one who
neither knows nor cares whither he is going or why he goes--the whole
effect purposeless, slovenly, inept.

Then followed a little scene which caused Iglesias to further slacken his
pace. For the seedy figure, reaching the open door of the restaurant,
hesitated, standing between the clipped bay trees set in green tubs which
flanked the entrance on either hand. Stepped aside, craning upward to see
over the yellow silk curtains drawn across the lower half of the windows.
Moved back to the door and stood there undecided. Finally, as a smiling
waiter, napkin on arm, came forward, the man crushed his hat down on his
forehead, forced his hands deep into his trouser pockets and turned away
with an audible oath. This brought him face to face with Mr. Iglesias,
who recognised in him his fellow-lodger, Mr. de Courcy Smyth.

"What, you!" he exclaimed snarlingly, while his pasty face flamed. "There
seems no escape from our dear Cedar Lodge to-night."

Then with an uneasy laugh he made an effort to recover himself.

"Really, I beg your pardon, Mr. Iglesias," he continued, "but my nerves
are villainously on edge. I have just met those two young idiots, Farge
and Worthington, waltzing home arm in arm like a pair of demented turtle-
doves. Having to associate with such third-rate commercial fellows and
witness their ebullitions of mutual admiration makes a man of education,
like myself, utterly sick. I came out this evening to get free of the
whole Cedar Lodge lot. You did the same, I suppose. Pray don't let me
frustrate your purpose. I sympathise with it. I will remove myself."

The splotchy red had died out of the speaker's face. Notwithstanding the
warmth of the evening he stood with his shoulders raised and his knees a
little bent, as a poorly clad man stands in a chill wind on a wintry day.
Iglesias observed his attitude, and in his present mood it influenced him
more than the surly greeting had done.

"I intended to dine here," he said quietly. "So, I fancy, did you."

"Oh! I have changed my mind, thank you," Smyth answered.

"In consequence of my arrival, I am afraid?"

"No, I had other reasons."

"In any case I should be very glad if you would reconsider your decision
and remain," Dominic said. "I am, as you see, alone, and I have not often
the pleasure of meeting you. I shall be very happy if you will stay and
dine with me, as my guest."

Smyth gave an odd, furtive look at the open door of the restaurant and
the row of white tables within. A light had come into his pale blue eyes,
making them uncomfortably like those of some half-starved animal.

"I am at a loss to know why I should accept hospitality from you," he
remarked, at once cringingly and insolently.

"Simply because you would give me pleasure by doing so. I should value
your society."

"I am not in evening dress."

"Nor am I," Dominic answered, with admirable seriousness. There was
something pitiful to him in the conflict, obviously going forward in the
other's mind, between hunger and reluctance to incur an obligation. He
cut it short with gentle authority. "There is a vacant table in the
corner where we can talk free from interruption. Let us go in and secure
it."

At the beginning of the meal the conversation was intermittent, the
burden of supporting it lying with Mr. Iglesias. But, as course followed
course, hot and succulent, while the _chianti_ at once steadied his
circulation and stimulated his brain, de Courcy Smyth became talkative,
not to say garrulous. Finally he began to assert himself, to swagger,
thereby laying bare the waste places of his own nature.

"You may think I was hard on Farge and Worthington just now, Mr.
Iglesias," he said. "I own they disgust me; not only in themselves, but
as examples of certain modern tendencies which are choking the life out
of me and such men as me. You business people are on the up grade just
now, and you know it. Whoever goes under, you are safe to do yourselves
most uncommonly well. I don't mean anything personal, of course. I am
just stating a self-evident fact. Commerce is in the air--you all reek of
success. And so even shopwalkers, like Worthington, and that thrice
odious puppy Farge, grow sleek, and venture to spread themselves in the
presence of their betters--in the presence of a scholar and a gentleman,
who is well connected and has received a classical education, like
myself."

Smyth paused, turning sideways to the table, leaning his elbow on it,
crossing his legs and staring gloomily down the long room.

"But what do they know or care about scholarship?" he continued. "What
they do know is that the spirit of this unspeakably vulgar age is with
them and their miserable huckstering. They know that well enough and act
upon it, though they are too illiterate to put it into words--know that
trade is in process of exploding learning, of exploiting literature and
art to its own low purposes, in process of scaling Olympus, in short, and
ignominiously chucking out the gods."

Dominic Iglesias had listened to this astonishing tirade in silence. The
man was evidently suffering from feelings of bitter injury, also he was
his--Iglesias'--guest. Both pity and hospitality engaged him to
endurance. But there are limits. And at this point professional dignity
and a lingering loyalty towards the house of Barking Brothers & Barking
enjoined protest.

"No doubt we live in times of commerce, rather than in those of
chivalry," he remarked. "Still, I venture to think your condemnation is
too sweeping. One should discriminate surely between trade and finance."

"Only as one discriminates between a little dog and a big one. The little
dog is the easier to kick. I can't get at the Rothschilds and
Rockefellers; and so I go for the Farges and Worthingtons," Smyth
answered. "In principle I am right. Trade, commerce, finance, juggle with
the names as you like, it all comes back to the same thing in the end,
namely, the murder of intellect by money. Comes back to the worship of
Mammon, chosen ruler of this contemptible _fin de siecle_, and safe to be
even more tyrannously the ruler of the coming century. What hope, I ask
you, is left for us poor devils of literary men? None, absolutely none.
Just in proportion as we honour our calling and refuse to prostitute our
talents we are at a discount. The powers that be have no earthly use for
us. We have not the ghost of a chance."

He altered his position, looking quickly and nervously at his host.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "For the moment I forgot you were on the
other side, among the conquerors, not the conquered. Probably this
conversation does not interest you in the least."

"On the contrary, it interests me very deeply," Dominic replied gravely.

"All the same, out of self-respect I ought to hold my tongue about it, I
suppose. For I have accepted the position, Mr. Iglesias. I have learned
to do that. Only on each fresh occasion that it is brought home to me--
and it has been brought home abominably clearly to-night--my gorge rises
at it. And it ought to be so. For it is an outrage--you yourself must
admit--that a man who started with excellent prospects and with the
consciousness of unusual talents--of genius, perhaps--should be ruined
and broken, while every miserable little counter-jumper----"

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