That which had in point of fact happened was not, as Iglesias felt,
without a pretty sharp edge of irony. For to-day, London, so long his
task-mistress and gaoler, had assumed a new attitude towards him.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, she had cast him off, given him his freedom. It
was amazing, a thing to take your breath away for the moment. And
agitated and hurt--for his pride unquestionably had suffered in the
process--Iglesias asked himself what in the world he should do with
this gift of freedom, what he should do, indeed, with that which
remained to him of life?
It had come about thus. Seeking an interview that morning with Sir Abel
Barking, in the latter's private room at the bank, he had made certain
statements regarding his own health in justification of a request for
some weeks' rest and holiday now, rather than later, in September, when
his yearly vacation would fall due.
"So you find yourself unequal to dealing satisfactorily with the
increasing intricacy of our financial operations, become confused by
the multiplicity of detail, suffer from pains in the head?" Sir Abel
had commented, with a certain largeness of manner. "I own, my good
friend, I was not wholly unprepared for this announcement."
"My work has not so far, I believe, suffered in any respect," Iglesias
put in quietly. "Directly I had reason to fear it might suffer I----"
"Of course, of course. I make no complaint--none. I go further. I admit
that the area of our undertakings is enlarged, enormously enlarged,
thanks to the remarkable personal energy and strenuous transatlantic
business methods introduced by my nephew Reginald. I grant you all
that----"
Sir Abel cleared his throat. Seduced by the charms of his own
eloquence, he was ready to mount the platform at the shortest possible
notice, even in private life. He loved exposition. He loved periods.
His critics--for what public man is without these, their strictures
naturally inspired by envy?--had been known to add that he also loved
platitudes. Be this as it may, certain it is that he loved an
audience--even of one. He had been considerably ruffled this morning by
communications made to him by his good-looking and somewhat scapegrace
youngest son. Those who fail to rule their own households often find
solace in attempting to rule the households of others. Speech and
patronage consequently tended to the restoration of self-complacency.
"No doubt this expansion, these modern methods, constitute a tax upon
your capacity, my good friend, you having acquired your training under
a less exacting system. I am not surprised. I confess"--he leaned back
in his chair, with an indulgent smile, as one who should say, "the gods
themselves do not wholly escape"--"I confess," he repeated, "it is
something of a tax upon the capacity of a veteran financier such as
myself. But then strain in some form or other, as I frequently remind
myself, is the very master-note of our modern existence. We all
experience it in our degree. And there are those men, such as myself,
for instance, who from their position, their vast interests and heavy
responsibilities, from the almost incalculable issues dependent on
their judgment and their action, are called upon to endure this strain
in its most exhausting manifestations, who are compelled to subordinate
personal case, even health itself, to public obligation. In the end
they pay, incontestable they pay, for their self-abnegation, for their
unswerving obedience to the trumpet-call of public duty."
He paused and mused a while, his head raised, his right hand
resting--it was noticeably podgy and squat--on the highly polished
surface of the extensive writing-table, his left hand dropped, with a
rather awkward negligence, over the arm of his chair. Meanwhile he
gazed, as pensively as his caste of countenance permitted, at a
portrait of himself, in the self-same attitude, which adorned the
opposite wall. It had been presented to him by the electors of his late
constituency. It was life-size and full-length. It had been painted by
a well-known artist whose appreciation of the outward as a revelation
of the inward man is slightly diabolic in its completeness. The
portrait was very clever; it was also very like. Looking upon it no
sane observer could stand in doubt of Sir Abel's eminent respectability
or eminent wealth. His appearance exuded both. Unluckily nature had
been niggardly in the bestowal of those more delicate marks of breeding
which, both in man and beast, denote distinction of personality and
antiquity of race. Pursy, prolific, Protestant, a commonness pervaded
the worthy gentleman's aspect, causing him, as compared with his head
clerk, Dominic Iglesias--standing there patiently awaiting his further
utterance--to be as is a cheap oleograph to a fine sketch in pen and
ink. It may be taken as an axiom that, in body and soul alike, to be
deficient in outline is a sad mistake. But of all these little facts
and the result of them, Sir Abel was, needless to relate, sublimely
ignorant.
"With you, my good friend, it is otherwise," he remarked presently,
reluctantly removing his gaze from the portrait of himself. "A
beneficent Providence has devised the law of compensation. And we may
remark the workings of it everywhere with instruction and
encouragement. Hence social obscurity has its compensating advantages.
You, for example, are affected by none of those considerations of
public obligation binding upon myself. You are so situated that you can
avoid the more trying consequences of this universal overstrain. If the
demands of the position you now fill are too much for you, you can
retire. I congratulate you, Iglesias. For some of us it is impossible,
it is forbidden to retire."
The speaker paused, as when in addressing a political or charitable
meeting he paused for well-merited applause, secure of having made a
telling point. Dominic Iglesias, however, had not applauded. To tell
the truth, his back was stiffening a little. He had a very just
appreciation of the relative social positions of himself and his
employer; still it did not occur to him, somehow, that applause was
necessarily in the part.
"You have the redress in your own hands," Sir Abel went on, not without
a hint of annoyance. "If you need amusement, leisure, rest, they are
all within your reach."
Still Iglesias did not speak.
"See now, my good friend, consider. To be practical"--Sir Abel raised
his finger and wagged it, with a heavy attempt at _bonhomie_. "You have
no family to provide for?"
"No," said Mr. Iglesias.
"You are, in short, not married?"
"No, Sir Abel," he said again.
"Well, then, no obstacle presents itself. But let us pause a moment,
for I must guard myself against misconception. In the interests of both
public and private morality I am a staunch advocate of marriage." Again
he cleared his throat. The platform was conspicuous by its presence--in
idea. "I hold matrimony to be among the primary duties, nay, to be the
primary duty of the Christian and the citizen. We owe it to the race,
we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to the opposite sex. Let us be quite
clear on this point. Yet, since I deprecate all bigotry, I admit that
there may be exceptional cases in which absence of the marital
relation, though arguing some emotional callousness, may prove
advantageous to the individual."
A queer light had come into Dominic Iglesias' eyes. The corners of his
mouth worked a little. He stood quite still and rather noticeably erect.
"I do not deny this," Sir Abel continued. "I repeat, I do not deny it.
And yours, my good friend, may be, I am prepared to acknowledge, a case
in point. I take for granted, by the way, that you have saved, since
your salary has been a liberal one?"
Iglesias inclined his head.
"Clearly we need discuss this matter no further then." The speaker
became impressive, admonitory. "Indeed, it appears to me that your lot
is a most favoured one. You are free of all encumbrances. You can
retire in comfort--retire, moreover, with the assurance that your
departure will cause no inconvenience to myself and my colleagues,
since you make room for men younger and more in touch with modern
methods than yourself."
Mr. Iglesias permitted himself to smile.
"Ah, yes!" he said. "Possibly I had not taken that fact sufficiently
into account."
"Yet, clearly, it should augment your satisfaction," Sir Abel Barking
observed, with a touch of severity. "And, by the by, you can draw your
pension. You were entitled, strictly speaking, to do so some years
ago--four, I believe, to be accurate. This was pointed out to you at
the time by my nephew Reginald. He was not at all unwilling that you
should retire then; but you preferred to remain. I had some
conversation, at the time, with my nephew on the subject. I insisted
upon the fact that your service had been exemplary. I finally succeeded
in overruling his objection to your retaining your post."
"I am evidently under a heavy obligation to you, Sir Abel," said
Iglesias.
"Don't mention it--don't mention it," the great man answered nobly.
"Those in power should try to exercise it to the benefit of their
subordinates. It has always been my effort not only to be just, but to
be considerate of the interests and feelings of persons in my
employment."
And with that he again fixed his eyes upon the ironical portrait
adorning the opposite wall, wholly blind to the fact that it at once
revealed his weaknesses and mocked at them, conscious only of an
agreeable conviction that he had treated his head clerk with generosity
and spoken to him with the utmost good-feeling and tact.
With the proud it is ever a question whether to spoil the Egyptians, or
to fling back even the best-earned wages, payable by Egyptians, full in
the said Egyptians' face. For the firm of Barking Brothers & Barking,
in the abstract, Iglesias had the loyalty of long-established habit. It
had been as the rising tide, setting the ship of his fate and fortune
honourably afloat in the dismal days of that early stranding. Its
service had eaten up the best years of his life, it is true. But, even
in so doing, by mere force of constant association, the interests of
the great banking house had come to be his own, its schemes and secrets
his excitement, its successes his satisfaction. Fortunately the human
mind is so constituted that it is possible to have an esteem, amounting
to enthusiasm, for a body corporate, while entertaining but scanty
admiration for the individuals of whom that body is
composed--fortunately indeed, since otherwise what government, secular
or sacred, would long continue to subsist? Hence, to Iglesias, this
matter of the pension was decidedly difficult. Pride said, "This man,
Abel Barking has been offensive; both he and his nephew have been
ungrateful; reject it with contempt." Justice said, "You have no
quarrel with the firm as a whole; accept it." Common sense, pricked up
by anger, said, "Claim your own, take every brass farthing of it."
While personal dignity, winding up the case, admonished, "By no means
give yourself away. Make no impetuous demonstration. Go home and think
it quietly over." And with the advice of personal dignity Mr. Iglesias
fell in.
Yet he was still very sore, the heat of anger past, but the smart of it
remaining, when he journeyed back from the city later in the day. And
not only that after-smart, but a perplexity held him. For two strange
faces had looked into his during the last few hours--those of
Loneliness and Freedom. He had taken for granted, in a general sort of
way, that such personages existed and exercised a certain jurisdiction
in human affairs. But in all the course of his laborious life they had
never before come close, personally claiming him. He had had no time
for them. But they are patient, they only wait. They had time for
him--plenty of it. Suddenly he understood that; and it perplexed him,
for his estimate of his own importance was modest. He even felt
apologetic towards them, as one at whose door distinguished guests
alight for whose entertainment he has made no adequate provision. He
was embarrassed, his sense of hospitality reproaching him.
It so happened that, on this same return journey, he occupied the seat
on the right, immediately behind that of the driver. The sky was
covered, the atmosphere close. The horses, grey ones, showed a thick
yellowish lather where the collar rubbed their necks and the traces
their flanks. They were slack and heavy, and the omnibus hugged the
curb. Within it was empty, and on the top boasted but three passengers
besides Iglesias himself. It followed that, carrying insufficiency of
ballast, the great red-painted vehicle lumbered, and jerked, and swayed
uneasily; while the lighter traffic swept past it in a glittering
stream, the dominant note of which was black as against the dirty drab
of the recently watered wood-pavement. And the character of that
traffic was new to Dominic Iglesias, though he had travelled the
Hammersmith Road, Kensington High Street and Kensington Gore,
Knightsbridge and Piccadilly, back and forth daily, these many years.
For the exigencies of business demanding that the hours of his
journeying should be early and late, always the same, it came about
that the aspect of these actually so-familiar thoroughfares was novel,
as beheld in the height of the season at three o'clock in the afternoon.
At first Iglesias saw without seeing, busy with his own uncheerful
thoughts. But after a while he began to speculate idly on the scene
around him, turning to the outward and material for distraction, if not
for actual comfort. And so the stream of carriages and hansoms, and the
conspicuously well-favoured human beings occupying them, began to
intrigue his attention. He questioned whom they might be and whither
wending, decked forth in such brave array. They seemed to suggest
something divorced from, yet native to, his experience; something he
had never touched in fact, yet the right to which was resident in his
blood. And with this he ceased, in instinct, to be merely the highly
respected and respectable head clerk of Messrs. Barking Brothers &
Barking--now superannuated and laid on the shelf. A gayer, fiercer,
simpler life, quick with violences of vivacious sound and vivid colour,
the excitement of it heightened by clear shining southern sunshine and
blue-black shadow--a life undreamed of by conventional, slow-moving,
rather vulgar middle-class London--to which, on the face of it, he
appeared as emphatically to belong--awoke and cried in Dominic Iglesias.
It was a surprising little experience, causing him to straighten up his
lean yet shapely figure; while the burden of his years, and the long
monotony of them, seemed strangely lifted off him. Then, with the air
of courtly reserve--at once the joke and envy of the younger clerks,
which had earned him the nickname of "the old Hidalgo"--he leaned
forward and addressed the omnibus driver. The latter upraised a broad,
moist and sleepy countenance.
"Polo at Ranelagh," he answered, in a voice thickened by dust and the
laying of that dust by strong waters. "Club team plays 'Undred and
First Lancers."
The words had been to the inquirer pretty much as phrases from the
liturgy of an unknown cult. But it was Iglesias' praiseworthy
disposition not to be angry with that which he did not happen to
understand, so much as angry with himself for not understanding it.
"Only an additional proof, were it needed, of the prodigious extent of
my ignorance!" he reflected in stoically humorous self-contempt. His
eyes dwelt, somewhat wistfully, on the glittering stream of traffic,
once again those two unbidden guests, Loneliness and Freedom--for whose
entertainment he had made inadequate provision--sitting, as it seemed,
very close on either side of him. Then that happened which altered all
the values. Dominic Iglesias suddenly saw a person whom he knew.
He had seen that same person about three hours previously in the bank
in Threadneedle Street, while waiting for admittance to Sir Abel's
private room. Rumour accredited this handsome young gentleman--Sir
Abel's youngest son--with tastes expensive rather than profitable,
liberal socially, rather than estimable ethically, declaring him to be
distinctly of the nature of the proverbial thorn in the banker's
otherwise very prosperous side. He had, so said rumour, the fortune or
misfortune, as you chose to take it, of being at once a considerably
bad boy and a distinctly charming one. Be all that as it might, the
young man had certainly presented a grimly anxious countenance when,
without so much as a nod of recognition, he had stalked past Mr.
Iglesias in the dim light of the glass and mahogany-walled corridor.
But now, as the latter noted, his expression had changed, and that very
much for the better. The young man's face was flushed and eager, and
his teeth showed white and even under his reddish brown moustache. If
anxieties still pursued him they were in subjection to one main
anxiety, the anxiety to please, which of all anxieties is the most
engaging and grace-begetting.
Just then the traffic was held up, thus enabling Iglesias from his
perch on the 'bustop to receive a more than fleeting impression. Two
ladies were seated opposite the young man in the carriage. In them
Iglesias recognised persons of very secure social standing. The elder
he supposed to be Lady Sokeington--Alaric Barking's half-sister--to
whom, on the occasion of her marriage, twelve or thirteen years ago, he
had had the expensive honour of presenting, in his own name and that of
his colleagues, a costly gift of plate. The other lady, so it appeared
to him, was eminently sweet to look upon. She was very young. She
leaned a little forward, and in the pose of her delicate figure and the
carriage of her pretty head--under its burden of pale pink and grey
feathers, flowers, and lace--he detected further example of that
engaging anxiety to please. They made a delightful young couple, the
fair seeming of this life and riches of it very much on their side. Mr.
Iglesias' chivalrous heart went out to them in silent sympathy and
benediction; while, the block being over, his gaze continued to follow
them as long as the young girl's slender white-clad back and the young
man's flushed and eager face remained distinguishable. Then he started,
for he was aware that his unbidden companions had received unexpected
reinforcement. A third guest had arrived, and looked hard and
critically at him. It's name was Old Age, and he found something
sardonic in its glance. With all his gentleness of soul, all his innate
self-restraint, there remained fighting blood in Dominic Iglesias.
Therefore, for the moment, recognising with whom he had to deal, a
light anything but mild visited his eyes, and a rigidity the straight
lines of his chin and lips. Old Age is a sinister visitant even to
those who are moderate in demand and clean of life. For it gives to
drink of the cup not of pleasure, but merely of patience, of physical
loss and intellectual humiliation; and, once it has laid its spell upon
you, you are past all remedy save the supreme remedy of death. And so,
at first sight, Iglesias rebelled--as do all men--turning defiant.
Then, being very sane, he gave in to the relentless logic of fact.
Silently, yet with all courtesy, he acknowledged the newcomer, and bade
it be seated along with the rest. While, after brief pause to rally his
pride, and that courage which is the noblest attribute of pride, he
turned to things concrete and material once more, finally addressing
himself to the omnibus driver:
"Pardon me; polo, as I understand, is a species of game?"
The broad moist countenance was again uplifted, a hint of patronage now
tempering its good-natured apathy.
"Sort'er 'ockey on 'orseback."
"That must be sufficiently dangerous," Mr. Iglesias remarked.
"Bless you, yes. Players breaks their backs pretty frequent, and cuts
the ponies about most cruel--"
He ceased speaking abruptly, jammed the brake down with his heel in
response to the conductor's bell, and drew the sweating horses up short
to permit the ingress of fresh passengers. This accomplished, the
omnibus lumbered onwards while Dominic Iglesias fell into further
meditation.
The explanation vouchsafed him was still far from explicit; yet this
much of illumination he gained from it, namely, the assurance that all
these goodly personages, Alaric Barking and his sweet companion among
them, were on pleasure bent. One and all they fared forth, on this
heavy summer afternoon, in search of amusement--in search of that
intangible yet very powerful factor in human affairs to which it is
given to lift the too great weight of seriousness from mortal life,
cheating perception of relentless actualities, helping to restore the
balance, helping men to hope, to laugh, and to forget. Perceiving all
which, conscious moreover of the near neighbourhood of Loneliness on
the right hand and Old Age on the left, Iglesias began to bestow on
these votaries of pleasure a more earnest attention, recognising in
them the possessors of a secret which it greatly behoved him to enter
into possession of likewise. In what, he asked himself, did it actually
consist, this to him practically unknown quantity, amusement? How was
the spirit of it cultivated, the enjoyment of it consciously attained?
How far did it reside in inward attitude, how far in outward
circumstance? In a word, how did they all do it? It was very incumbent
upon him to learn, and he admitted a ridiculous ignorance.