In the month of October immediately following two events took place
which, though of apparently very different magnitude and importance,
intimately and almost equally--as it proved in the sequel--affected
Dominic Iglesias' life. The first was the declaration of war by the
South African Republics. The second was the return of Miss Serena
Lovegrove to town.
Now war is, unquestionably, not a little staggering to the modern
civilised conscience; and this particular war possessed the additional
unpleasantness of having in it, at first sight, an element of the
grotesque. It is not too much to say that it struck the majority of the
British public as being of the nature of a very bad joke. For it was as
though a very small and very cheeky boy, after making offensive signs,
had spat in the nation's face. Clearly the boy deserved sharp
chastisement for his impudence. Nevertheless, the position remained an
undignified and slightly ridiculous one; and the British public
proceeded to safeguard its proper pride by treating the matter as
lightly as possible. It assured itself--and others--that, given a
reasonable parade of strength, the small boy, blubbering, his fists in
his eyes, would speedily and humbly beg pardon and promise to mind his
manners in future. A few persons, it is true, remembered Majuba Hill,
and doubted the small boy's immediate reduction to obedience. A few
others dared to suspect that English society was suffering from wealth
apoplexy and the many unlovely symptoms which, in all ages of history,
have accompanied that form of seizure, and to doubt whether
blood-letting might not prove salutary. Dominic Iglesias was among
these. His recent observations upon and excursions into the world of
fashion, stray words let drop by Poppy St. John on the one hand, and by
unhappy de Courcy Smyth on the other, had begotten in him the suspicion
that the sobering and sorrowful influences of war might be healthful
for the body politic, just as a surgical operation may be healthful for
the individual body. Next to the Jew, the Dutchman is the most
stubbornly tenacious of human creatures. He is a fighting man into the
bargain. Iglesias could not flatter himself that the campaign would
result in an easy walk-over for so much of the British army as a supine
and annoyed Government condescended to place in the field. The whole
affair lay heavy on his soul. It lay there all the heavier that a few
days subsequent to the declaration of war Mr. Iglesias' thought was
unexpectedly swept back into the arena of speculative finance.
In the portion of his morning paper allotted to business subjects, he
had lighted on a long and evidently inspired article dealing with the
flotation of a company just now in process of acquiring control over
extensive areas in Southeast Africa. The prospects held out to
investors were of the most golden sort. The land was declared to be not
only remarkably rich in precious stones and precious metals, but also
adapted for corn-growing on a vast scale--thus, both above and below
the surface, promising prodigious wealth were its resources adequately
developed.
Iglesias did not dispute the truth of these statements. The data quoted
appeared trustworthy enough. Moreover, he was already fairly conversant
with the enterprise, since Mr. Reginald Barking--that junior member of
the great banking firm whose name has been mentioned in connection with
strenuous modern business methods--was, to his knowledge, deeply
interested in the promotion of it. That which troubled him, striking
him as unsound and misleading, was the fact that the profits, as set
forth in the newspaper article, were calculated--so at least it was
evident to Iglesias--on the results of such development when completed,
irrespective of the lapse of time required for such development;
irrespective of possible and arresting accident; irrespective, too, of
immediate and even protracted loss by the tying-up of huge sums of
money which could yield but little or no return until the said process
of development was an accomplished fact. To Iglesias' clear-seeing and
logical mind the enterprise, therefore, presented itself as one of
those gigantic modern gambles of which the incidental risks are
emphatically too heavy, since they more often than not make rich men
poor, and poor men paupers, before they come through--if, indeed, they
even come through at all.
Reginald, in virtue of his youth, his energy, and relentless
concentration of purpose, had rapidly become the ruling spirit of the
house of Barking Brothers & Barking. Iglesias had no cause to love him,
since to him he owed his dismissal. But that fact failed to colour his
present meditations. Under the influence of his cherished and new-found
charity, Dominic had little time or inclination for personal
resentment. Too, the habits of the best part of a lifetime cannot be
thrown aside in a day. Directly he touched business on the large scale,
it became to him serious and imposing. And so the future of the firm
and the issue of its operations, in face of current events, concerned
him deeply, all the more that he gauged Reginald Barking's temper of
mind and proclivities.
The young man's father--now happily deceased--had offered an
instructive example of social and religious survival--survival, to be
explicit, of the once famous Clapham Sect, and that in its least
agreeable aspect. His theology was that of obstinately narrow
misinterpretation of the Scriptures; his piety that of self-invented
obligations; his virtue that of unsparing condemnation of the sins of
others. His domestic morality was Hebraic--death kindly playing into
his hands in regard of it. He married four times--Reginald, the only
child of his fourth marriage, having the further privilege of being his
only son. The boy was delicate and of a strumous habit. This fact,
combined with his parents' ingrained conviction that a public school is
synonymous, morally speaking, with a common sewer, caused his education
to be conducted at home by a series of tutors as undistinguished by
birth as by scholarship--tentative apologetic young men, the goal of
whose ambitions was a wife and a curacy, failing which they resigned
themselves to the post of usher in some ultra-Protestant school. Sport
in all its forms, art and literature, being alike forbidden, the boy's
hungry energy had found no reasonable outlet. He had been miserable,
peevish, ailing, until at barely eighteen--after a discreditable
episode with a scullery-maid--he had been shipped off to New York to
learn business in the house of certain brokers and bill-discounters
with whom Messrs. Barking Brothers had extensive financial relations.
Life in the land of the Puritans was not, even at that time of day,
inevitably immaculate. Freedom from parental supervision and the
American climate went to the lad's head. He passed through a phase of
commonplace but secret vice, emerging there-from with an unblemished
social reputation; a blank scepticism in matters religious, combined
with bitter animosity against the Deity whom he declared non-existent;
and a fiercely driving ambition, not so much for wealth in itself, as
for that control ever the destinies of men, and even of nations, with
which wealth under modern conditions endows its possessor. He was a
pale, dry, lizard-like young man, suggesting light without heat, and
excitement without emotion. Early in his career he recognised that the
great sources of wealth and power lie with the younger countries, in
the development of their natural and industrial resources, of their
railways and other forms of transport. The phenomenal advance of
America, for example, was due to her enormous territory and the
opportunities of expansion, with the bounds of nationality, which this
afforded her people. But he also recognised that America was
essentially for the Americans, and that it was useless for an outsider,
however skilful, however even unscrupulous, to pit his business
capacity against that of the native born. His dreams of power and
speculative activity directed themselves, consequently, to the British
Colonies, and to those as yet unappropriated spaces of the earth's
surface where British influence is still only tentatively present.
Meanwhile he had espoused Miss Nancy Van Reenan, daughter of a famous
transatlantic merchant prince, first cousin, it may be added, to the
beautiful Virginia Van Reenan whose marriage with Lawrence Rivers, of
Stoke Rivers in the county of Sussex, so fluttered the smartest section
of New York society a few years ago. He returned to England in the
spring of 1897, convinced that America had taught him, commercially
speaking, all there was to know. This knowledge he prepared to apply to
waking up the venerable establishment in Threadneedle Street, while
employing the unimpeachable respectability and solvency of the said
establishment as a lever towards the realisation of his own
far-reaching ambitions. He brought with him from the United States, in
addition to his elegant wife, two dry, pale children, whose contours
were less Raphaelesque than gnat-like, and the acuteness of whose
critical faculty was very much more in evidence than that of their
affections. These bright little results of modernity and applied
science--in the shape of the incubator--took their place in the social
movement, at the ages of three and five respectively, with the hard and
chilling assurance of a world-weary man and woman. They never exhibited
surprise. They rarely exhibited amusement. They were radically
disillusioned. They frequently referred to their nerves and their
digestions, in the interests of which they consistently repudiated
every form of excess.
With these rather terrible little gentry Dominic Iglesias was, happily
for himself, unacquainted; but with their father he was very well
acquainted, as has already been stated. Hence his fears. Folding his
newspaper together, he laid it on the table and proceeded to walk
meditatively up and down his sitting-room. The morning was keen with
sunshine, the leaves of the planes and balsam-poplars fell in brown and
yellow showers upon the Green, on the further side of which the details
of the red and yellowish grey houses stood out in high relief of
sharp-edged light and shadow. Mr. Iglesias had risen in a hopeful frame
of mind. Of late it had become his habit to call weekly on Poppy St.
John. Today was the one appointed for his visit. Since he had spoken to
her about his mother his friendship with Poppy St. John had entered
upon a new phase. It was no longer experimental, but absolute, the more
so that she had in no way presumed upon his confidence. He felt very
safe with her--safe to tell or safe to withhold as inclination should
move him. And in this there was a strange and delicate lessening of the
burden of his loneliness, without any encroachment on his pride. He had
found, moreover, that behind her patter lay an unexpected acquaintance
with public affairs and the tendencies of current events, so that it
was possible to talk on subjects other than personal with her. He was
coming to have much faith in her judgment as well as in her sincerity
of heart. And, so, with the prospect of seeing her before him, Dominic
had risen in the happiest disposition, had so remained till the
newspaper article disturbed his mind. For what, as he asked himself,
did it portend, this extravagant puff of the company's lad and the
company's prospects, at this particular juncture? Why was it so
urgently and eloquently forced upon the market just now? Was it but
another proof of the contemptuous attitude adopted by Englishmen of all
classes towards the Boer Republics? Or did it take its origin very much
elsewhere--namely, in the fact that Reginald Barking had so deeply
involved the capital and pledged the credit of the firm that it became
necessary to make violent and doubtfully honest bid for popular support
before the position of the said firm, through difficulty and accident
induced by war, became desperate?
This last solution of the perplexing question aroused all Mr. Iglesias'
loyalty towards his old employers. He saw before them the ugly
possibility of failure and disgrace. The mere phantom of the thing hurt
him as unseemly, as a shame and dishonour to those who in their
corporate capacity had benefited him, and therefore as a shame and
dishonour, at least indirectly, to himself. The thought agitated him.
He needed to take council with someone; and so, pushed by a necessity
of immediate action uncommon to him, he laid hands on hat and coat and
set forth to talk matters over with his old friend and former
colleague, George Lovegrove.
Out of doors the air was stimulating. The voice of London had a tone of
urgency in it, as the voice of the young and strong who court the
coming of stirring events.
"The moods of the monstrous mother are inexhaustible," Iglesias said to
himself. "She is changeful as the great ocean. To-day she is virile,
and shouts for battle--. well, it may be she will get her fill of that
before many months are out!"
Then the thought of his afternoon visit returned upon him. If the air
would remain as exhilarating, the sunshine as daring as now, these
would heighten enjoyment.
Mr. Iglesias smiled to himself, an emotion of tenderness mingling with
his anxiety. He felt very much alive, very ready to meet any demand
which the future might make on him--battle for him, too, perhaps, and
at this moment he welcomed the thought of it! Thus, a little exalted in
spirit, Dominic walked on rapidly across the Green between the iron
railings, conscious of colour, of light, and of sound; but unobservant
of the details of his immediate surroundings, until a drifting female
figure barred his path, undulating uncertainly before him. He moved to
the right to let it pass. It moved to the right also. He moved to the
left, it did so, too.
"I beg your pardon," he said.
"Oh!" cried Serena Lovegrove.
"I beg your pardon," Iglesias repeated, raising his hat. "Excuse me, I
did not see who it was."
"How very odd!" Serena remarked. She stood still in the middle of the
path. Her eyes snapped. Her silk petticoat rustled. Serena was very
particular about her petticoats. It gave her great moral and social
support to hear them rustle. "How very odd!" she said again. "Did you
not know that I had come back?"
Dominic might truthfully have replied that he did not know that she had
ever gone away; but he abstained.
"It must be a great pleasure to your cousins to have you with them," he
said courteously.
Serena looked at the falling leaves.
"I wonder whether it is--I mean I wonder whether it is a pleasure to
them, or whether they ask me out of a sense of duty." She paused,
gazing at Mr. Iglesias. "Of course, I know George has a strong regard
for me, and for Susan. It is only natural, as we are first cousins. But
I am not sure about Rhoda. Of course we never heard of Rhoda until she
married George."
"She has made him an excellent wife," Iglesias put in.
"I suppose she has," Serena said reflectively. "But I sometimes wonder
whether, if George had married somebody else, it might not have been
more satisfactory in some ways."
Serena felt very proud in making this remark. It elicited no reply,
however, from Mr. Iglesias.
"I wonder if he really sees that Rhoda is on a different level from us,
and won't admit it; or whether he doesn't see. If he doesn't see, of
course that means a good deal."
"Do you usually go out walking in the morning?" Dominic inquired. The
silence was becoming protracted. Courtesy demanded that he should break
it.
Serena looked at him with heightened intelligence.
"We were always brought up to take a walk twice a day. Mamma was very
particular about it. She believed that health had so much to do with
regular exercise. Sometimes I wonder whether she did not carry that too
far. But, of course, Susan is very strong, much stronger than I am. I
believe she would have been strong in any case, even if mamma had not
insisted on our taking so much exercise." Serena paused. "But I did not
know you went out in the morning. That is, I mean I have never seen you
go out before."
"Indeed," Iglesias exclaimed, a little startled at the close
observation of his habits implied by this remark.
"No," she said; "of course one can see Cedar Lodge very plainly from
George's house, and I often look out of window. I think it among the
pleasures of London to look out of window. I have never seen you go out
in the morning before." Again she paused, adding reflectively: "It
really seems rather odd that neither George nor Rhoda should have told
you that I had come back."
To this remark no suitable answer suggested itself. Moreover, Mr.
Iglesias was growing slightly impatient. He wished she would see fit to
move aside and let him pass.
"You will get cold standing here," he said. "You must not let me detain
you any longer."
Serena's eyes snapped. She was excited. She was also slightly offended.
"He is very abrupt," she said to herself; but she did not move aside
and let him pass. "Yes, he is abrupt," she repeated; "still, he has a
very good manner. If one didn't know that he had been a bank clerk, I
wonder if one would detect it. I don't think it would be a thing that
need be mentioned, for instance, at Slowby. Only Susan would be sure to
make a point of mentioning it. Susan has an idea she owes it to herself
to be truthful. Of course, it would be wrong to deny that anyone had
been a bank clerk; but that is different from telling everybody. I
wonder if Susan would feel obliged to tell everybody."
When she reached the near side of the Green, Serena looked back. Mr.
Iglesias was in the act of entering the Lovegroves' front door, which
the worthy George held open for him. Serena stood transfixed.
"So he was going there!" she said to herself. "How extraordinary not to
mention it to me. What could have been his object in not mentioning it?
I wonder if he has only gone to see George, or to see Rhoda as well. If
he has gone to see Rhoda, then I think he has been exceedingly rude to
me. And he has been very short-sighted, too, if he didn't want me to
know, for he might have taken it for granted that of course I should
look back. Unless he did do it on purpose, meaning to be rude. But--"
Serena resumed her walk. She was very much excited.
"Of course he may have done it on purpose that I should see, and
understand that he meant something special--that he was going to speak
to George and Rhoda about something in particular, which he could not
say before me. He may have wanted to sound them. But then it is so very
odd that he should have said that George had never told him I had come
back. But I don't believe he ever did say that." Serena was growing
more and more excited. She drifted along the pavement, in her rustling
petticoats, with the most unusually animated expression of countenance.
"I remember--of course he did not say it. He avoided the question each
time. How very extraordinary! I think he must mean me to understand
something by that. I wonder if George will refer to it at luncheon. If
he does I must find out from Rhoda, but without letting her suspect
that I observed anything, of course."
Serena had quite ceased to be offended. Her fancy, indeed, had taken a
most wildly ingenious flight. She felt very remarkable, very acute,
quite dangerous, in short--and these sensations, however limited their
justification by fact, were highly agreeable to her.