The Far Horizon | Page 7

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