The Far Horizon | Page 7

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