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THE FAR HORIZON

BY

LUCAS MALET

(MRS. MARY ST. LEGER HARRISON)




BY THE SAME AUTHOR

_The Wages of Sin_

_A Counsel of Perfection_

_Colonel Enderby's Wife_

_Little Peter_

_The Carissima_

_The Gateless Barrier_

_The History of Sir Richard Calmady_




"Ask for the Old Paths, where is the Good Way, and walk therein, and ye
shall find rest."--JEREMIAS.


"The good man is the bad man's teacher; the bad man is the material
upon which the good man works. If the one does not value his teacher,
if the other does not love his material, then despite their sagacity
they must go far astray. This is a mystery of great import."--FROM THE
SAYINGS OF LAO-TZU.


..."Cherchons à voir les choses comme elles sont, et ne voulons pas
avoir plus d'esprit que le bon Dieu! Autrefois on croyait que la canne
à sucre seule donnait le sucre, on en tire à peu près de tout
maintenant. Il est de même de la poésie. Extrayons-la de n'importe
quoi, car elle git en tout et partout. Pas un atome de matière qui ne
contienne pas la poésie. Et habituons-nous à considerer le monde comme
un oeuvre d'art, dont il faut reproduire les procédées dans nos
oeuvres."--GUSTAVE FLAUBERT.




CHAPTER I


Dominic Iglesias stood watching while the lingering June twilight
darkened into night. He was tired in body, but his mind was eminently,
consciously awake, to the point of restlessness, and this was unusual
with him. He had raised the lower sash of each of the three tall,
narrow windows to its extreme height, since the first-floor
sitting-room, though of fair proportions, appeared close. His thought
refused the limits of it, and ranged outward over the expanse of
Trimmer's Green, the roadway and houses bordering it, to the far
northwest, that region of hurried storm, of fierce, equinoctial passion
and conflict, now paved with plaques of flat, dingy, violet cloud
opening on smoky rose-red wastes of London sunset. All day thunder had
threatened, but had not broken. And, even yet, the face of heaven
seemed less peaceful than remonstrant, a sullenness holding it as of
troops in retreat denied satisfaction of imminent battle.

Otherwise the outlook was wholly pacific, one of middle-class suburban
security. The Green aforesaid is bottle-shaped, the neck of it
debouching into a crowded westward-wending thoroughfare; while Cedar
Lodge, from the first-floor windows of which Mr. Iglesias contemplated
the oncoming of night, being situate in the left shoulder, so to speak,
of the bottle, commanded, diagonally, an uninterrupted view of the
whole extent of it. Who Trimmer was, how he came by a Green, and why,
or what he trimmed on it, it is idle at this time of day to attempt to
determine. Whether, animated by a desire for the public welfare, he
bequeathed it in high charitable sort; or whether, fame taking a less
enviable turn with him, he just simply was hanged there, has afforded
matter of heated controversy to the curious in questions of suburban
nomenclature and topography. But in this case, as in so many other and
more august ones, the origins defy discovery. Suffice it, therefore,
that the name remains, as does the open space--the latter forming one
of those minor "lungs of London" which offer such amiable oases in the
great city's less aristocratic residential districts. Formerly the
Green boasted a row of fine elms, and was looked on by discreetly
handsome eighteenth-century mansions and villas, set in spacious
gardens. But of these, the great majority--Cedar Lodge being a happy
exception--has vanished under the hand of the early Victorian
speculative builder; who, in their stead, has erected full complement
of the architectural platitudes common to his age and taste. Dignity
has very sensibly given place to gentility. Nevertheless the timid red,
or sickly yellow-grey, brick of the existing houses is pleasingly
veiled by ivy and Virginia creeper, while no shop front obtrudes
derogatory suggestion of retail trade. The local authorities, moreover,
some ten years back girdled the Green with healthy young balsam-poplar
and plane trees and enclosed the grass with iron hurdles--to rescue it
from trampling into unsightly pathways--thus doing a well-intentioned,
if somewhat unimaginative, best to safeguard the theatre of long ago
Trimmer's beneficence or infamy from greater spoliation.

Hence it follows that, certain inherent limitations admitted, the scene
upon which Dominic Iglesias' eyes rested was not without elements of
attraction. And of this fact, being a person of an excellent temperance
of expectation, he was gratefully aware. His surroundings, indeed,
constituted, so it appeared to him, the maximum of comfort and
advantage which could be expected by a middle-aged gentleman, of
moderate fortune, in the capacity of a "paying guest." Not only in word
but in thought--for in acknowledgment of obligation he was scrupulously
courteous. He frequently tendered thanks to his neighbour and old
school-fellow, Mr. George Lovegrove, first for calling his attention to
Mrs. Porcher's advertisement, and subsequently for reassuring him as to
its import. For, though incapable of forming so much as a thought to
her concrete disparagement, Mr. Iglesias was not without a quiet sense
of humour, or of that instinct of self-protection common to even the
most chivalrous of mankind. He was, therefore, perfectly sensible that
"the widow of a military officer," who describes herself in print as
"bright, musical and thoroughly domesticated," while offering "a
cheerful and refined home at the West End, within three minutes of Tube
and omnibus"--"noble dining and recreation rooms, bath h. and c."
thrown in--to unmarried members of the stronger sex, must of necessity
be a lady whose close acquaintance it would be foolhardy to make
without a trifle of preliminary scouting.

Happily not only George Lovegrove, but his estimable wife was at hand.
The latter hastened to prosecute inquiries, beginning with a visit to
the Anglican vicar of the parish, the Rev. Giles Nevington. He reported
Mrs. Porcher an evening communicant at the greater festivals, and a not
ungenerous donor to parochial charities; adding that a former curate
had resided under her roof with perfect impunity. Mrs. Lovegrove
terminated her researches by an interview with the fishmonger, who
assured her that "Cedar Lodge always took the best cuts," sternly
refused fish or poultry which had suffered cold storage, and paid its
housebooks without fail before noon on Thursday. She ascertained,
further, from a source socially intermediate between clergyman and
tradesman, that Mrs. Porcher's husband, some time veterinary surgeon of
a crack regiment, had died in the odour of alcohol rather than in that
of sanctity, leaving his widow--in addition to his numerous and heavy
debts--but a fraction of the comfortable fortune to procure the
enjoyment of which he had so considerately married her. The solid
Georgian mansion was her freehold; and it was to secure sufficient
means for continued residence in it that the poor lady started a
boarding-house, or in the politer language of the present day, had
decided to receive paying guests.

Encouraged by the satisfactory nature of the above information, Mr.
Iglesias--shortly after his mother's death, now nearly eight years
ago--had become a member of Mrs. Porcher's household. He had never, so
far, had reason to regret that step. And it was with a consciousness of
well-being and repose that he returned daily--after hours of strenuous
work in the well-known city banking house of Messrs. Barking Brothers &
Barking--to this square first-floor sitting-room, to its dimly white
panelled and painted walls, its nice details of carved work in
chimney-piece and ceiling, and the outlook from its tall, narrow
windows. A touch of old-world stateliness in its aspect satisfied his
latent pride of race. To certain natures not obscurity or slender
means, but the pretentious vulgarity which, in English-speaking
countries, too often goes along with these constitutes the burden and
the offence.

To-night, however, things were different. Material objects remained the
same; but the conditions of existence had taken on a strange
appearance, and with that appearance Iglesias was bound to reckon,
being uncertain as yet whether it was destined to prove that of a
friend or of an enemy. In furtherance of such reckoning, he had
declined dining at the public table, in company with his hostess, Miss
Eliza Hart, her devoted friend and companion, and the three
gentlemen--Mr. de Courcy Smyth, Mr. Farge, and Mr. Worthington--who
shared with him the hospitalities of Cedar Lodge. He had dined here,
upstairs, solitary; and Frederick, the German-Swiss valet, had just
finished clearing the table and departed. Usually under such
circumstances Iglesias would have taken a favourite book from the
carved Spanish mahogany bookcase containing his small library; and,
reading again that which he had often read before, would have found
therein the satisfaction of friendship, along with the soothing
influences of familiarity. But to-night neither Gibbon's _Rome_--a
handsome early edition in many volumes--_The Travels of Anacharsis_,
Evelyn's _Diary_, Napier's _Peninsular War_, John Stuart Mill's
_Logic_, Byron's _Poems_, nor those of Calderon, nor of that so-called
"prodigy of nature," Lope de Vega, not even the dear and immortal _Don
Quixote_ himself, served to attract him. His own thoughts, his own
life, filled his whole horizon, leaving no space for the thoughts or
lives of others. He found himself a prey to a certain mental
incoherence, a bewildering activity of vision. More than once before in
the course of his laborious, monotonous, and, as men go, very virtuous
life had this same thing happened to him--the tides of the obvious and
accustomed suddenly receding and leaving him stranded, as on some
barren sand-bank, uncertain whether the ship of his individual fate
would lie there wind-swept and sun-bleached till rusty rivets fell out
and planks parted, disclosing the ribs of her in unsightly nakedness,
or whether the kindly tide, rising, would float her off into blue water
and she would sail hopefully once again.

It was inevitable that this present experience should recall these
other happenings, evoking memories poignant enough. The first time the
ship of his fate thus stranded was when, as a lad of seventeen, he left
school. Living alone with his mother in a quaint little house in
Holland Street, Kensington, eagerly ambitious to make his way in the
world and to obtain, it had dawned on him that there was something
strange, unhappy, and not as it was wont to be with that, to him, most
beautiful and beloved of women. The mere suspicion was as a blasphemy
against which his young loyalty revolted. For Dominic, with the
inherent pieties of his Latin and Celtic blood, had none of that
contemptuous superiority in regard of his near relations so common to
male creatures of the Protestant persuasion and Anglo-Saxon race. He
took his parents quite seriously; it never having occurred to him that
fathers and mothers are given us merely for purposes of discipline, or
as helot-like examples of what to avoid. He was simple-minded enough
indeed to regard them as sacred, altogether beyond the bounds of
legitimate criticism--and this, as destiny would have it, with intimate
and life-long results.

Vaguely, through the mists of infancy, he could remember a hurried
exodus--after sound of cannon and sight of blood--from Spain, the
fierce and pious country of his birth. Since then, while his mother
lived--namely, till he was a man of over forty--always and only the
house in the Kensington side street, with its crooked creaking
stairways, its high wainscots--behind which mice squeaked and
scampered--its clinging odour of ancient woodwork, its low ceilings,
and uneven floors. At the back of it was a narrow strip of garden,
glorious for one brief week in early summer, with the gold of a big
laburnum; and fragrant later thanks to faithful effort on the part of
the white jasmine clothing its enclosing walls. In fair weather the
morning sun lay warm there; while the sky showed all the bluer overhead
for the dark lines of the adjacent housetops, and upstanding
deformities in the matter of zinc cowls and chimney-pots. Frequented by
cats, boasting in the centre a rockery of gas clinkers and chalk flints
surmounted by a stumpy fluted column bearing a stone basin--in which,
after rain, sparrows disported themselves with much conversation and
fluttering of sooty wings--the garden was, to little Dominic, a place
of wonder and delight. He peopled it with beings of his own fancy,
lovely or terrific, according to his passing humour. Granted a measure
of imagination, the solitary child is often the happiest child, since
the social element, with its inevitable materialism, is absent, and the
dear spirit of romance is unquenched by vulgar comment.

His father, grave and preoccupied, whose arrivals after long periods of
absence had in them an effect of secrecy and haste, was to the small
boy a being, august, but remote. During his brief sojourns at home the
quiet house awoke to greater fulness of life, with much coming and
going of other grave personages, strange of dress, and with a certain
effect of hardly restrained violence in their aspect. A spirit of fear
seemed to enter with them, demanding an unnatural darkening of windows
and closing of doors. Before Dominic they were of few words; but became
eloquent enough, in sonorous foreign speech, as his ears testified when
he was banished from their rather electric presence to the solitude of
the nursery above. And so it came about that a sense of mystery, of
large issues, of things at once strong and hidden, impenetrable to his
understanding and concerning which no questions might be asked,
encircled Dominic's childhood and passed into the very fabric of his
thought. While through it all his mother moved, to him tender and
wholly exquisite, but with the reticence of some deep-seated enthusiasm
silently cherished, some far-reaching alarm silently endured, always
upon her. And this resulted in an atmosphere of seriousness and
responsibility which inevitably reacted on the boy, making him sober
beyond his years, tempering his natural vivacity with watchfulness, and
pitching even his laughter in a minor key.

Only many years later, when after his mother's death it became his duty
to read letters exchanged between his parents during this period, did
Dominic Iglesias touch the key to the riddle, and fully measure the
public danger, the private strain and stress which had surrounded his
childhood and early youth. For his father, a man of far from ignoble
nature, but of narrow outlook and undying hatreds, was deeply involved
in revolutionary intrigue of the most advanced type--a victim of that
false passion of humanity which takes its rise not in honest desire for
the welfare of mankind, but in blind rebellion against all forms of
authority. His self-confidence was colossal; all rule being abominable
to him--save his own--all rulers hideous, save himself. The anarchist,
rightly understood, is merely the autocrat, the tyrant, turned inside
out. And this man, as Dominic gathered from the perusal of those old
letters, to whom the end so justified the means that red-handed crime
took on the fair colours of virtue, his mother had loved, even while
she feared him, with all the faithfulness and pure passion of her Irish
blood. Pathetic combination, the patience and resignation of the one
ever striving to temper the flaming zeal of the other, as though the
spindrift of the Atlantic, sweeping inland from the dim sadness of far
western coasts, should strive with relentless fierceness of sunglare
outpoured on some high-lying walled city of arid central Spain! Mist is
but a weak thing as against rock and fire; and what his mother must
have suffered in moral and spiritual conflict, let alone all question
of active dread, was to her son almost too cruel to contemplate,
although it explained and justified much.

In 1860, when Dominic was a schoolboy of fourteen, his father left home
on one of those sudden journeys the object and objective of which were
alike concealed. For about a year letters arrived at irregular
intervals, hailing from Paris, Naples, Prague, and finally Petersburg.
Then followed silence, broken only by rumours furtively conveyed by a
former associate, one Pascal Pelletier--an angel-faced, long-haired,
hysteric creature, inspired by an impassioned enthusiasm for infernal
machines and wholesale slaughter in theory, and, in practice, by a
gentle doglike devotion to Mrs. Iglesias and young Dominic. He would
arrive depressed and shadowy in the shadowy twilights. But, once in the
presence of the beings whom he loved, he became effervescent. His
belief was unlimited in the Head Centre, the Chief, in his demonic
power and fertility of resource. That any evil should befall
him!--Pascal snapped his thin fingers; while, with the inalienable
optimism of the born fanatic, he proceeded to state hopeful conjecture
as established fact, thereby doing homage to the spirit of delusion
which so conspicuously ruled him even to his inmost thought. But a
spell of cold weather in the winter of 1862 struck a little too
shrewdly through Pascal's seedy overcoat, causing that tender-hearted
subverter of society to cough his life out, with all possible despatch,
in the third-floor back of a filthy lodging-house off Tottenham Court
Road.

This was the end as far as information went, whether authentic or
apocryphal. But Dominic, his horizon still bounded by the world of
school, greedy of distinction both in learning and in games, away all
day and eagerly, if somewhat sleepily, busy over the preparation of
lessons at night, was very far from realising that. Poor voluble
kind-eyed Pascal he mourned with all his heart; yet the months of his
father's absence accumulated into years almost unnoticed. The same
thing had so often happened before; and then, at an unlooked-for
moment, the wanderer had returned. Moreover, the old habit of obedience
was still strong in him. It was understood that concerning his father's
occupations and movements no comment might be made, no questions might
be asked.

Meanwhile, the small house in Holland Street was ever more still, more
unfrequented. As he grew older Dominic became increasingly sensible of
this--sensible of a sort of hush falling on him as he crossed the
threshold, so that instinctively he left much of his wholesome young
animality outside, while his voice took on softer tones in speech, and
his quick light footsteps became more scrupulously noiseless as he ran
up the little crooked stairs.

"When your father comes home we must decide what profession you shall
follow, my Dominic," it had been his mother's habit to declare. But,
even before the time for such decision arrived the boy had begun to
understand he must see to all that unaided. For his mother was ill, how
deeply and in what manner he could not tell. He shrank, indeed, from
all clear thought, let alone speech, on the subject, as from something
indelicate, in a way irreverent. Her beauty remained to her,
notwithstanding a gradual wasting as of fever. A peculiar, very
individual grace of dress and of bearing remained to her likewise. But
she was uncertain in mood, the victim of strange fancies, a being
almost alarmingly far removed from the interests of ordinary life. Long
ago, in submission to her husband's anti-clerical prejudices, she had
ceased to practise her religion, so that the services of the Church no
longer called her forth in beneficent routine of sacred obligation. Now
she never left the house, living, since poor Pascal Pelletier's death,
in complete seclusion. Little wonder then that a hush fell on Dominic
crossing the threshold, since so doing he passed from the world of
healthy action to that of acquiescent sickness, from vigorous
hoarse-voiced realities to the intangible sadness of unrelated dreams!
The effect was one of rather haunting melancholy; and it was
characteristic of the lad that he did not resent it, though rejoicing
in the reputation at school of being high-spirited enough, impatient of
restraint or of any frustration of purpose. His mother had always been
sacred. She remained so, even though her sympathies had become
imperfect, and she moved in regions which his sane young imagination
failed to penetrate. One thing was perfectly plain to him, though it
cut at the root of ambition--namely, that he could not leave her. So,
in that matter of a profession, he must find work which would permit of
his continuing to live at home; and, since her income was narrow, the
work in question must make no heavy demand in respect of preliminary
expense.

Here was a problem more easy of statement than of solution, in face of
Dominic's pride, inexperience, and the singular isolation of his
position! There followed dreary months wherein his evenings were spent
in studying and answerings advertisements; and his days, till late
afternoon, in walking the town from end to end for the interviewing of
possible employers and the keeping of fruitless appointments. He would
set forth full of hope and courage in the morning, only to return full
of the dejection of failure at night. And it was then London began to
reveal herself to him in her solidarity, under the cloud of dun-blue
coal smoke--it was wintertime--which, at once hanging over and
penetrating her immensity, adds the majesty of mystery to the majesty
of mere size. He noted how, in the chill twilights, London grew
strangely and feverishly alive. Lamps sprang into clearness along the
pavements. A dazzling glitter of shop windows marked the great
thoroughfares, while often the angry glare of a fire pulsed along the
sky-line. When night comes in the country, so Dominic told himself, the
land sinks into peaceful repose. But in cities it is otherwise. There
the light leaves heaven for earth; and walks the streets, with much
else far from celestial, until the small hours move towards the dawn
and usher in the decencies of day.

Never before had he seen London thus and understood it in all its
enormous variety, yet as a unit, a whole. How much he actually beheld
with his bodily eyes, how much through the working of a rather exalted
condition of imagination induced by loneliness and bodily fatigue, he
could never subsequently determine. But the great city presented
herself to him in the guise of some prodigious living creature,
breathing, feeding, suffering, triumphing, above all mating and
breeding, terrible in her power and vitality, age old, yet still
unspent. Presented herself to him as horribly prolific, ever outpassing
her own unwieldy limits, sending forth her children, year after year,
all the wide world over by shipping or by rail; receiving some tithe of
them back, proud with accomplished fortune to enhance her glory, or,
disgraced and broken, slinking homeward to the cover of her fog and
darkness merely to swell the numbers of the nameless who rot and die.
He thought of those others, too--and this touched his young ardour with
a quick shudder of personal fear--whom she never sends forth at all;
but holds close in bondage all their lives long, enslaved to her
countless and tyrant activities by their own poverty, or by their
fellow-creatures' misfortune, cruelties, and sins. Was it thus she was
going to deal with him, Dominic Iglesias? Was he to be among the great
city's bondmen through the coming years, better acquainted with the
very earthly light which walks her streets by night, than with the
heavenly light which gladdens the sweet face of day in the open country
and upon the open sea? And for a moment the boy's heart rebelled,
hungry for pleasure, hungry for wide experience, hungry even for
knowledge of those revolutionary intrigues which, as he was beginning
to understand, had surrounded his childhood, and, as he was beginning
to fear, had cost his mother her reason and his father both liberty and
life. Thus did the ship of poor Dominic's fate appear to be stranded or
ever it had fairly set sail at all.

Meanwhile, if London claimed him, she did so in very cynical fashion,
mocking his willingness to labour, refusing to feed him even while she
refused to let him go. Everything, he feared, was against him--his
youth, his foreign name, his limited acquaintance, the impossibility of
giving definite information regarding his father's past occupations or
present whereabouts. Moreover, his spare young figure, his thin shapely
hands and feet, his blue-black Irish eyes and black hair, his energetic
colourless face, his ready yet reticent speech--all these marked him as
unusual and exotic. And for the unusual and exotic the British employer
of labour--of whatever sort--has, it must be conceded, but little use.
He is half afraid, half contemptuous of it, instinctively disliking
anything more alert and alive than his own most stolid self. But while
men, distrusting the distinctness of his personality and his good
looks, refused to give Dominic work, women, relishing them, were only
too ready to give him enjoyment--of a kind. The boy, in those solitary
wanderings, ran the gauntlet of many temptations; and was
presented--did he care to accept it--with the freedom of the city on
very liberal lines. Happily, inherent cleanliness of nature saved him
from much; and reverent shame at the thought of entering the hushed and
silent house where his mother lived--spotless, amid pathetic memories
and delicate dreams--with the soil of licence upon him, saved him from
more. Crime might have come close to him in his childhood, but vice
never; and the influences of vice are far more insidious, and
consequently more damaging, than those of crime.

Still, one way and another, the boy came very near touching the
confines of despair. Then the tide rose and the stranded ship of his
fate began to lift a little. By means of a series of accidents--the
illness of his former school-fellow, the already mentioned George
Lovegrove, whose post he offered temporarily to fill--he drifted into
connection with the banking house of Messrs. Barking Brothers &
Barking. There his knowledge of modern languages, his industry, and a
certain discreet aloofness commended him to his superiors. A minor
clerkship fell vacant; it was offered to him. And from thenceforth, for
Dominic Iglesias, the monotony of fixed routine and steady labour,
until the day when, as a man of past fifty, restless and somewhat
distrustful both of the present and the future, he watched the dying of
the sullen sunset over Trimmer's Green from the windows of the
first-floor sitting-room of Cedar Lodge.




CHAPTER II


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.




CHAPTER III


Thus had the chapter of labour ended, and that of leisure opened. And
it was with the sadness of things terminated very strongly upon him
that, as Frederick, the German-Swiss valet, finished clearing the
dinner-table and departed, Mr. Iglesias looked forth over the neatly
protected verdure of Trimmer's Green in the evening quiet. The smugly
pacific aspect of the place irritated him. He was aware of a great
emptiness. And very certainly the scene before him offered no solution
of the problem of the filling of that emptiness. And somehow or other
it had to be filled--Iglesias knew that, knew it through every fibre of
him--or life would be simply insupportable. Meanwhile from the public
drawing-room below came sounds of revelry, innocent enough yet hardly
calculated to soothe over-strained nerves. Little Mr. Farge--whose thin
and reedy tenor carried as does a penny whistle--gave forth the refrain
of a song just then popular in metropolitan music-halls.

"They're keeping latish hours at the Convalescent Home," piped Mr.
Farge; while his friend and devout admirer, Albert Edward Worthington,
tore at the banjo strings and the ladies tittered.

Iglesias listened in a somewhat grim spirit of endurance. On the far
side of the Green he could see the gaslights in the Lovegroves'
dining-room. These appeared to watch him rather uncomfortably, as with
three supplicating and reproachful eyes. He debated whether he would
not take his hat, step across, and tell his old friend what had
happened--it would at least relieve him of the sound of little Farge's
serenading. But his pride recoiled somehow. Good souls, man and wife,
they would be full of solicitude and kindness; but they would say the
wrong thing. They would not understand. How, indeed, should they, being
wholly at one with their surroundings--unimaginative, domestic, British
middle-class, with its virtues and limitations aggressively in
evidence? George Lovegrove would suggest some minor municipal office,
or membership of the local borough council, as a crown of consolation.
His wife would skirt round the subject of matrimony. She had done so
before now; and Iglesias, while presenting a dignified front to the
enemy, had inwardly shuddered. She was an excellent, estimable woman;
but when ponderously arch, when extensively sly! Oh, dear no! It didn't
do. Her gambols were too sadly suggestive of those of a skittish
hippopotamus. Dominic Iglesias was conscious that he had a skin too
little to-night; he could not witness them with philosophy. The
kindliest intention, the best-meant words, might cause him extravagant
annoyance.

He turned away from the window and took a turn the length of the
room--a tall, distinct, and even stately figure in the thickening dusk.
He felt rather horribly desolate. He was fairly frightened by the
greatness of the emptiness, within and about him, engendered by absence
of employment. He had little to reproach himself with. His record was
cleaner than most men's--he could not but know that. He had sacrificed
personal ambition, personal happiness, to the service of one supremely
dear to him. Not for a moment did he regret it. Had it to be done all
over again, without hesitation he would do it. Still there was no
blinking facts. Here was the nemesis, not of ill living, but of
good--namely, emptiness, loneliness, homelessness, Old Age here at his
elbow, Death waiting there ahead.

"The routine has gone on too long," he said to himself bitterly. "I
have lost my pliability, lost my humanity. I am a machine now, not a
man. To the machine, work is life. Work over, life is over; and the
machine is just so much lumber--better broken up and sent to the rag
and bottle shop, where it may fetch the worth of its weight as
scrap-iron."

He turned, came back to the open window again and stood there, rather
carefully avoiding the three reproachful eyes of the Lovegroves'
dining-room gaselier, and fixing his gaze on that sullen fierceness of
sunset still hanging in the extreme northwest.

"Unluckily there is no rag and bottle shop where superannuated bank
clerks of five-and-fifty have even the very modest market value of
scrap-iron!" he went on. "Of all kinds of uselessness, that of we
godlike human beings is the most utterly obvious when our working day
is past. Mental decay and bodily corruption as the ultimate. And, this
side of it, a few years of increasing degradation, a mere senseless
killing of time until the very unpleasing goal is reached--along with a
growing selfishness, and narrowness of outlook; along, possibly, with
some development of senile sensuality, the more detestable because it
lacks the provocations of hot blood. Oh! Dominic Iglesias, Dominic
Iglesias, is that the ugly road you are doomed to travel--a toothless
greed for filling your belly with fly-blown dainties off the
refuse-heap?"

And through the open window, in sinister accompaniment to little Mr.
Farge's sophisticated and unpastoral pipings, came the voice of the
great city herself in answer--low, multitudinous, raucous, without
emphasis but without briefest relief of interval or of pause. And this
laid hold strongly of Iglesias' imagination, reminding him of all the
intimate wretchedness of that first stranding of the ship of his fate.
Reminding him of his long and fruitless trampings in search of
employment--good looks, energy, youth itself, seeming but an added
handicap--when London revealed herself to him in her solidarity,
revealed herself as a prodigious living creature, awful in her
mysterious vigour, ever big with impending birth, merciless with
impending death. As she showed herself to him then, with life all
untried before him, so she showed herself still when, in the blackness
of his present humour, all life worth the name appeared over and
passed. He had changed, so he believed, to the point of nullity and
final ineptitude. She remained strong, active, relentless as ever. As
long ago, so now, she struck him as monstrous. Yet now, though all the
conditions were changed, he had, as long ago, an instinct that from her
there was no escape.

"I have served you honestly enough all these years," he said--since she
had voice to speak, she had also ears to hear, mayhap--"and you have
taken much and given little. To-day you have turned me off, told me to
quit. But where, I ask you, can I go? I am too stiffened by work,
unskilled in travel, too unadaptable to begin again elsewhere.
Moreover, you hold the record of my experience, all my glad and
sorrowful memories. I might try to leave you, but it's no use. I am
planted and rooted in you, monstrous mother that you are. If I know
myself, I should go only to come back."

For the moment the calm of long self-control was broken up within him.
Dominic Iglesias dwelt, consciously and sensibly, in the horror of the
Outer Darkness--which horror is known only to that small and somewhat
suspect minority of human beings who are also capable, by the operation
of the divine mercy, of dwelling in the glory of the Uncreated Light.
The swing of the pendulum is equal to right as to left. He was
staggered by the misery of his own isolation--a stranger, as he
suddenly realised, by temperament and ideals, as well as by race! Then
resolutely he turned his back on this, with an instinct of
self-preservation directing his thought to things practical and average.

For example, that question of the pension--concerning which he now
found, to his slight surprise, he was no longer the least in doubt.
This money was his by right. The hard strain in his nature was
dominant--to the full he would claim his rights. And since in moments
of despair the human mind invariably requires a human victim, be it
merely a simulacrum, a waxen image of a man to melt in the fires of its
humiliation and revolt, Iglesias remembered, with much contemptuous
satisfaction, the ironical portrait of Sir Abel Barking adorning the
wall of the latter's private room at the bank. He hailed the diabolic
talent of the artist who had laid bare with such subtle skill the
flatulence of his sitter. It was a pretty revenge, very assuaging just
now to Iglesias. For the real man, as he reflected, was not the man who
sat heavily self-complacent in a library chair, exuding platitudes and
pride of patronage; but the man who hung upon the wall forever
ridiculous while paint and canvas should last. Thus would he go down to
posterity! And to Dominic Iglesias, just now, it seemed very excellent
that posterity should know him for the wind-bag hypocrite he
essentially was. Securely entrenched behind his own large prosperity,
uxoriousness, paternity, had he not counted his, Iglesias', blessings
to him; counselling amusement, rest, congratulating him on just all
that which made for his present distress--namely, his obscure position,
his enforced idleness, his absence of human ties, the general
meagreness of his state in life? The more he thought of the incident,
the more it filled him with indignation and disgust. Therefore, very
certainly he would claim his pension; claim an infinitesimal but actual
fraction of this man's great wealth; would live long so as to claim it
as long as possible, till the paying of it, indeed, should become a
weariness to the payer. And he would spend it, too, unquestionably he
would. Mr. Iglesias' rare and gracious smile had an almost cruel edge
to it.

"The machine shall become a man again," he said. "And the man shall
amuse himself. How, I don't yet know, but I will find out. Work has
made me dull and inept."

He straightened himself up, tired, yet unbroken, defiant, aware--though
the horror of the Outer Darkness was yet upon him--of purpose still
militant and unspent.

"Play may make me the reverse of dull and inept. I have always been
diligent and methodical. I will continue to be so. This enterprise
admits of no delay. I will begin at once, begin to-morrow, to amuse
myself."

It is characteristic of the Latin to see things written in fire and
blood, which the slower-brained Anglo-Saxon only sees written in red
paint--if, indeed, he ever arrives at seeing them written at all.
To-night the Latin held absolute sway in Dominic Iglesias. With freedom
had come a curious reversion to type. His humour, like his smile, was a
trifle cruel. He observed, criticised, judged, condemned unsparingly,
all mental courtesies in abeyance. When, therefore, at this juncture
the three eyes of the Lovegroves' dining-room gaselier winked slowly,
and closed their lids--so to speak--ceasing to watch and to supplicate,
he suffered no self-reproach. The good, simple couple were shutting up
house and going to bed, he supposed. They sought repose betimes; and,
unless supper had been more aggressively cold and heavy than usual,
slept, till broad day, a dreamless sleep. Decidedly it was well he had
not taken his hat and stepped across to visit them, for, beyond all
question, they would not have understood! The voice of London, for
instance, meant nothing to them. They had no notion London had a voice.
Still less had they any notion she was a prodigious living creature.
London was the place where they resided--that was all, and, since the
streets are admittedly noisy and dusty, they had taken a house in this
genteel and convenient suburb. Of the tremendous life and force of
things, miscalled man-made and inanimate, they had no faintest
conception. Small wonder they went to bed betimes and slept a dreamless
sleep! Thinking of which--notwithstanding their kindness and
affection--they became, just now, to Iglesias as truly astonishing
phenomena in their line as Sir Abel Barking in his. He saw in them
merely specimens, though good ones, of the great majority of the
British public, a public so overlaid and permeated by convention, so
parochial in outlook, so hidebound by social tradition and insular
prejudice, that it is really less in touch with everlasting fact than
the animals it pets, demoralises, and eats. These at least have
instinct, and so are at one with universal nature. In perception, in
spontaneity of action, good Mrs. Lovegrove was as an infant compared to
her parrot or her pug. So was little Mr. Farge with his sophisticated
warblings--so, for that matter, were all the other persons among whom
his, Iglesias', lot was cast. His sense of isolation deepened. If
amusement was his object, most certainly the society of Trimmer's Green
would not supply it. He must look further afield for all that.

In the far northwest the last of the sunset had faded; only the cloud
remained. Yet the horizon, above the broken line of the house-roofs and
chimney-pots, pulsed with light--the very earthly light which, in great
cities, flares out when the light of heaven dies, to walk the streets,
with much else of doubtful loveliness, till it is shamed by the cold
chastity of dawn. And along with that outflaring, a certain
meretricious element introduced itself into the aspect of Trimmer's
Green. Across the roadway, the gaslamps showed cones of vivid yet
sickly brightness, bringing at regular intervals the sharply indented
leaves of the plane trees and the shivering silver of the
balsam-poplars into an arresting and artificial distinctness. Between
were spaces of vacancy and gloom. And from out such a space,
immediately opposite, slowly emerged a shambling and ungainly figure,
in which Dominic Iglesias recognised the third of his fellow-lodgers,
Mr. de Courcy Smyth. His acquaintance with the said lodger was of the
slightest, since the latter had but recently entered into residence and
rarely appeared at meals. Mrs. Porcher habitually referred to him with
a pitying respect as "a gentleman very influential in literary and
professional circles, but unfortunate in his married life"; ending with
a sigh and upward glance of her still fine eyes, as one who could
sympathise, having herself been through that gate. Influential or not,
it occurred to Iglesias that the man presented a sorry spectacle
enough. For a minute or so he stood aimlessly in the full glare of a
gaslamp. His thin, creasy Inverness cape was thrown back, displaying
evening dress. He carried a soft grey felt hat in one hand. His whole
aspect was seedy, disappointed, dejected; his face pale and puffy, his
sparse reddish hair and beard but indifferently trimmed. It was borne
in upon Iglesias, moreover, that the man was hungry, that he had
not--and that for some time--had enough to eat. Voluntary poverty is
among the most beautiful, involuntary poverty among the ugliest, sights
upon earth; and to which order of poverty that of de Courcy Smyth
belonged, Mr. Iglesias was in no doubt. This was a sordid sight, a
sight of discouragement, adding the last touch to the melancholy which
oppressed him. The seedy figure crossed the road, fumbled for a minute
with a latchkey. Then nerveless footsteps ascended the stairs, passed
the door, and took their joyless way up and onward to the
bed-sitting-room immediately above.

Down below the music had ceased, while sounds arose suggestive of a
little playfulness on the part of the two young men in bidding their
hostess and Miss Eliza Hart good-night. Very soon the house became
silent. But Dominic Iglesias, though tired, was in no humour for sleep.
He drew forward a leather-covered armchair and sat near the open
window, in at which came a breathing of night wind. This was soothing,
touching his forehead as with delicate pressure of a cool and
sympathetic hand; so that, without any sense of surprising transition,
he found himself in the garden of the little house in Holland Street,
Kensington, once again. The laburnum was in full blossom, and the
breeze uplifted the light drooping branches of it, making all their
golden glory dance in the sunshine. There must have been rain in the
night, too, for the stone basin was full of water, in which the
sparrows were busy washing, sending up tiny iridescent jets and
fountains from their swiftly fluttering wings. It was delicious to
Dominic. He felt very safe, very gay. Only a heavy ill-favoured tabby
cat came from nowhere. It had designs upon the sparrows. Twice it
climbed stealthily up the broken bricks and gas clinkers. Twice the
little boy drove it away. It was not a nice cat. It had a broad white
face, deceitful little eyes, and grey whiskers. It declared it only
caught sparrows for their good and for the good of the community. It
assured Dominic he was guilty of a grave error of judgment in
attempting to interfere. It said a great deal about moral
responsibility and the heavy obligations persons of wealth and position
owe to themselves.

Just then Pascal Pelletier, carrying a square Huntley Palmer's biscuit
tin, containing an infernal machine, under his arm, his angelic
countenance radiant in the sunshine, came down the steps from the
dining-room window. And, while Dominic ran to greet him, the cat crept
back again--its face was the face of Sir Abel Barking, and it made a
spring at the sparrows. But the pillar broke and the basin toppled
over, pinning it, across the loins, down on to the clinkers under the
edge of the stone lip.

"Oh! you've spoilt my garden, you've spoilt my garden!" Dominic cried.
"The basin has fallen. The sparrows will never wash in it any more."

But Pascal Pelletier patted him on the head tenderly.

"Do not weep over the fallen basin, very dear one," he said. "Rather
sing aloud Te Deum in praise of the glorious goddess of Social
Revolution who has delivered the enemy of the people into our hands.
This is no affair of cat and bird, but of the capitalist and the
proletariat on which he battens. So for a little space let the unholy
creature lie there writhing. Let it understand what it is to have a
back broken by the weight of an impossible burden. Let it try vainly to
drag its limbs from beneath an immovable load. Observe it, let it
suffer. Very soon we will finish with it, and explode the iniquitous
system it represents. See, in the name of humanity, of labour, of the
unknown and unnumbered millions of the martyred poor, I set a match to
this good little fuse, and, with the rapidity of thought, blow
blasphemous tyrant Capital into a thousand fragments of reeking flesh
and splintered bone!"

But to the little boy, words and spectacle alike had become unendurably
painful.

"No, no, Pascal, you cannot cure everything that way. It is not just,"
he cried. And running forward with all his strength he lifted the stone
basin off the wounded creature--cat, man, beast of prey, modern
financier, be it what it might. He stopped to gather it up in his arms,
and, repulsive though it was, to comfort and protect it. But just then
came a thunderous rattle and crash knocking him senseless.

Mr. Iglesias sat bolt upright in his chair, uncertain of his identity
and surroundings, shaken and bewildered.

Upstairs, de Courcy Smyth--spent and stupefied by the writing of a
would-be smart critique on the first-night performance of a screaming
farce, for one of to-morrow's evening papers--had stumbled, upsetting
the fire-irons, as he slouched across his room to bed. Iglesias heard
the creak of the wire-wove mattress as the man flung himself down; and
that familiar sound restored his sense of actualities. Yet all his mood
was changed and softened. The return to childhood had made a strange
impression upon him, filling him with a great nostalgia for things
apparently lost, but exquisite; and which, having once been, might,
though he knew not by what conceivable alchemy of time or chance, once
again be. Meanwhile, he must have slept long, for the wind had grown
chill. The voice of London, the monstrous mother, had grown weak and
intermittent. And the earthly light, pulsing along the horizon, had
grown faint, humbled and chastened by the whiteness of approaching dawn.




CHAPTER IV


A quarter-mile range of high unpainted oak paling, well seasoned, well
carpentered, innocent of chink or shrinkage, impervious to the human
eye. Visible above it the domed heads of enormous elm trees steeped in
sunshine, rising towards the ample curve of the summer sky. At
intervals, with tumultuous rush and scurry, the thud of the hoofs of
unseen horses, galloping for all they are worth over grass. The suck
and rub of breeches against saddle-flaps, the rattle of a curb chain or
the rings of a bit. A call, a challenge, smothered exclamations. The
long-drawn swish of the polo stick through the air, and the whack of
the wooden head of it against ball, or ground, or something unluckily
softer and more sentient. A pause, broken only by distant voices, and
the sound, or rather sense, of men and horses in quiet and friendly
movement; followed by the tumultuous rush and scurry, and all the
moving incidents of the heard, yet unwitnessed, drama over again.

For here it was that gallant and costly game beloved of Oriental
princes--rather baldly described to Mr. Iglesias yesterday by the
driver of the Hammersmith 'bus as a "kind of hockey on horseback"--in
very full swing no doubt. Only unfortunately Iglesias found himself on
the wrong side of the palings. And, since he had learned, indirectly,
from the observations of the monumental police-sergeant--directing the
stream of carriages at the entrance gates--to other would-be
spectators, that to the polo ground, as to so much else obviously
desirable in this world, there is "no admission except by ticket," on
the wrong side of these same palings he recognised he was fated to
stay. It was a disappointment, not to say an annoyance. For he had come
forth, in accordance with his determination, to make observations and
inquiries regarding that same matter of amusement. And, since the
influence of that which is to be acts upon us almost, if not quite, as
strongly as the influence of that which has been, the handsome, eager
countenance of young Alaric Barking and the graceful figure of his fair
companion, as seen from the 'bustop, occurred very forcibly in this
connection to Dominic Iglesias' mind. He would go forth and behold that
which they had gone forth to behold. He would witness the sports of the
well-born and rich. From these he elected, somewhat proudly, to take
his first lessons in the fine art of amusement. So here he was; and
here, too--very much here--were the palings, spelling failure and
frustration of purpose.

Fortunately unwonted exercise and the pure invigorating atmosphere
tended to generate placidity, and agreeable harmony of the mental and
physical being. It followed that active annoyance was short-lived. For
a minute or two Mr. Iglesias loitered, listening to the moving music of
the unseen game. Then, walking onward to the end of the enclosure,
where the palings turn away sharply at the left, he crossed the road
and made for a wooden bench just there amiably presenting itself. It
was pleasant to rest. The walk had been a long one; but it now appeared
to him that the labour of it had not been wholly in vain. For around
him stretched a breezy common, broken by straggling bramble and furze
brakes, and dotted with hawthorn bushes, upon the topmost branches of
which the crowded pinkish-white blossoms still lingered. From one to
another small birds flitted with a pretty dipping flight, uttering
quick detached notes as in merry question and answer. Through the rough
turf the bracken pushed upward, uncurling sturdy croziers of brownish
green. Away to the right, beyond the railway line, rose the densely
wooded slopes of Roehampton and Sheen; while, against the purple-green
gloom of them, the home signals of Barnes Station--hard white lines and
angles tipped with scarlet and black--stood out in high relief like the
gigantic characters of some strange alphabet. Down the wide road motors
ground and snorted; and carriages moved slowly, two abreast, the
menservants sitting at ease, talking and smoking while waiting to take
up at the police-guarded gate, back there towards the heat and smoke of
London, when the polo match should be played out.

But immediately London, the heat, and smoke, and raucous voice of it,
seemed far enough away, the wholesome charm of the country very
present. For a while Dominic Iglesias yielded himself up to it.
Receptive, quiescent, contented, he basked in the sunshine, his mind
vacant of definite thought. But for a while only. For as physical
fatigue wore off, definite thought returned; and with it the sense of
his own loneliness, the oppression of a future empty of work, the
bitterness of this enhanced by the little disappointment he had lately
suffered. He leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees,
looking at the bracken croziers pushing bravely upward through the
rough turf to air and light. Even these blind and speechless things
worked, in a sense, fulfilling the law of their existence. He went back
on the dream of last night, on his own childhood, the happiness, yet
haunting unspoken anxiety of it, his father's fanaticism, fierce
revolutionary propaganda, and mysteriously uncertain fate.

"And to think that was the pit out of which I, of all men, was digged!"
he said to himself. "Have I done something to restore the family
balance in respect of right reason, or is the shame of incapacity upon
me? Have I sacrificed myself, or cowardly have I merely shirked living?
Heaven knows--I don't, only----"

But here his uncheerful meditations were broken in on by a voice,
imperative in tone, yet perceptibly shaken by laughter.

"Cappadocia!" it called. "Cappadocia! Do you hear? Come here, you
little reprobate."

Then Dominic Iglesias perceived that he had ceased to be sole occupant
of the bench. A dog, a tiny toy spaniel, sat beside him. It sidled very
close, gazing at him with foolishly prominent eyes. Its ears, black
edged with tan, soft and lustrous as floss silk, hung down in long
lappets on either side its minute and melancholy face. The tip of its
red tongue just showed. It was abnormally self-conscious and solemn. It
planted one fringed paw upon Iglesias' arm and it snored.

"Cappadocia!--well, of all the cheeky young beggars----"

This time the voice broke in unmistakable merriment, wholly
spontaneous, as of relief, even of mischievous triumph; and Mr.
Iglesias, looking up, found himself confronted by a young woman. She
advanced slowly, her trailing string-coloured lace skirts gathered up
lazily in one hand. About her shoulders she wore a long blue-purple
silk scarf, embroidered with dragons of peacock, and scarlet, and gold.
These rather violent colours found repetition in the nasturtium leaves
and flowers that crowned her lace hat, the wide brim of which was tied
down with narrow strings of purple velvet, gipsy fashion, beneath her
chin. Under her arm she carried another tiny spaniel, the creature's
black morsel of a head peeping out quaintly from among the forms of the
embroidered dragons, which last appeared to writhe, as in the heat of
deadly conflict, as their wearer moved. Her face was in shadow owing to
the breadth of the brim of her hat. Otherwise the sunshine embraced her
whole figure, conferring on it a glittering yet singularly
unsubstantial effect, as though a column of pale windswept dust were
overlaid, here and there, with splendour of rich enamel.

And it was just this effect of something unsubstantial, in a way
fictitious and out of relation to sober fact, which struck Dominic
Iglesias, robbing him for the moment of his dignified courtesy. Frankly
he stared at this appearance, so strangely at variance with the
realities of his own melancholy thought. Meanwhile the little dog
snuggled up yet closer against him.

"Yes--pray don't disturb yourself," the young lady went on volubly
"It's too bad, I know, to intrude on you like this. But as Cappadocia
refuses to come to me, it is clear I have to come after Cappadocia.
It's simply disgraceful the way she carries on when one takes her out,
making acquaintances like this, casually, all over the place. The maids
flatly refuse to air her, even on a string. They say it becomes a
little too compromising. But, as I explain to them, she's not a bit the
modern woman. She belongs to a stage of social development when pretty
people infinitely preferred being compromised to being squelched." The
speaker laughed again quietly. "I'm not altogether sure they weren't
right. When you are squelched, finished, done for, it matters precious
little whether you've been compromised first or not. Don't you agree?
Any way, Cappadocia's not going to be squelched if she can help it.
She's horribly scared, or pretends to be, at motors. Let one toot and
she forgets all her fine-lady manners, and just skips to anybody for
protection. She'll take refuge in the most unconventional places to
escape."

The part of wisdom, in face of this very forthcoming young person,
would have been no doubt to arise and withdraw. But to Dominic
Iglesias, just then, dogs, woman, conversation, were alike so remote
and unreal, part merely of the scene which he had been contemplating,
that he failed to take them seriously. Divorced from routine, he was
divorced, in a way, from habitual modes of mind and conduct. He neither
consented nor refused, but just let things happen, attaching little or
no meaning to them. If this feminine being chose to prattle--well, let
her do so. Really he did not care.

"I am not very modern myself," he said, with a shade of weariness. "So
perhaps your small dog had some intuition of a kindred spirit when
taking refuge with me."

"All the same, you hardly date from the social era of Charles II., I
fancy," the young lady answered quickly.

As she spoke she raised her chin with a slightly impudent movement,
thus bringing her countenance into the sunlight. For the first time
Iglesias clearly saw her face. It was small, the features
insignificant, the skin smooth and fine in texture, but sallow. Her
hair, black and very massive, was puffed out and dressed low, hiding
her ears. Her lips were rather positively red, and the tinge of colour
on either cheek, though slight, was not wholly convincing in tone. Even
to a person of Mr. Iglesias' praiseworthy limitation of experience in
such matters, her face was vaguely suggestive of the footlights--would
have been distinctly so but for her eyes. These were curiously at
variance with the rest of her appearance. They belonged to a quite
other order of woman, so to speak--a woman of finer physique, of higher
intelligence, possibly of nobler purposes. They were arrestingly large
in size, thereby helping to dwarf the proportions of her face. In
colour they were a rather light warm hazel, with a slight film over
both iris and pupil, and a noticeably bluish shade in the whites of
them. In these last particulars they were like a baby's eyes; but very
unlike in the reflective intensity of their observation as she fixed
them upon Dominic Iglesias.

"Cappadocia may be a fool about motors," she remarked, "but she's
uncommonly shrewd in reading character. She seems to like you, to have
taken you on, don't you know; and she's generally right. So I'll sit
down, please. Oh! no, no, come along now"--this as Mr. Iglesias rose
and made a movement to depart--"why, dear man, the very point of the
whole show is that you should sit down, too."




CHAPTER V


And so it came about that the Lady of the Windswept Dust sat at one end
of the flat bench and Dominic Iglesias at the other, with the two
absurd and exquisite little dogs in between. And the lady chattered.
Her voice was sweet and full, with plaintive tones and turns of
laughter in it; and, though the vowel sounds were not wholly
impeccable, having the tang in them common to the speech of the cockney
bred, the aspirates happily remained inviolate. And Iglesias listened,
still with a curious indifference, as, sitting in the body of the
house, he might have listened to patter from the other side of the
footlights. It passed the time. Presently he would get up, taking the
whole of his rather sorrowful personality along with him, and go out by
the main entrance, while she left by the stage door--and so vanished,
little dogs and all.

"It's my habit to play fair," she announced. "If I'm going to ask
personal questions at the finish, I always lead up to them by supplying
personal information at the start. It's mean to induce other people to
give themselves away unless you give yourself away first--also, I
observe it is usually quite unsuccessful. Well, then, to begin with,
his name"--she gently poked the tiny spaniel beside her, causing it to
wriggle uneasily all the length of its satiny back--"is Onions.
Graceful and distinguished, isn't it? But I give you my word I couldn't
help myself. Cappadocia's so duchessy that I had to knock the conceit
out of her somehow, or it would not have been possible to live with
her. She was altogether too smart for me--used to look at me as if I
was a cockroach. So I consulted a friend of mine about it; for it's a
little too much to be made to feel like a black-beetle in your own
house, and by a thing of that size, too! And he--my friend--said there
is nothing to compare with a _mésalliance_ for taking the stuffing out
of anyone. I own I was not exactly off my head about that speech of
his. In a way it was rather a facer; but when I got cool I saw he was
right. After all, he knew, and I knew--and he knew that I knew----"

The lady paused. Her voice had taken on a plaintive inflection. She
looked away at the domed heads of the enormous elm trees above the
range of oak palings.

"For the life of me I can't imagine why you're here," she exclaimed,
"instead of inside there with all the rest of them! However, we haven't
got as far as that yet. I was telling you about my King Charleses. So
my friend brought me this one"--again she poked the little dog gently.
"His pedigree's pretty fair, but of course it's not a patch on
Cappadocia's. Her prizes and the puppies--you don't mind my alluding
quite briefly to the puppies--are a serious source of income to me. But
I believe she would have ignored the defective pedigree. He is rather
nice-looking, you see, and Cappadocia is rather superficial. It is the
name that worries her--Onions, Willie Onions, that's where the real
trouble comes in. Not like it? I believe you. She's capable of saving
up all her pocket-money to buy him a foreign title, as a rich, ugly
woman I once knew did who married a man called Spittles. He was a bad
lot when she married him, and he stayed so. But as the Comte d'Oppitale
it didn't matter. Vices became merely quaint little eccentricities. If
he beat her it was with an umbrella with a coronet on the handle, and
that made all the difference. Everything for the shop window, you see,
with a nature like hers or Cappadocia's. But I don't rub it in, I
assure you I don't. I only remind Cappadocia of the fact by calling her
Mrs. W. O. when she's a pest and a terror. And that's better than
smacking her, anyhow, isn't it?"

To this proposition Mr. Iglesias gravely assented. The lady drew her
blue-purple scarf a little closer about her shoulders, causing the
embroidered dragons to writhe as in the heat of conflict, while the
sunlight glinted on the gold thread of their crests and claws, and
glittered in their jewelled eyes. She gazed at the elm trees again.

"It's quite nice to hear you speak, you know," she remarked
parenthetically. "The conversation has been a little one-sided so far.
I was beginning to be afraid you might be bored. But now it's all
right. I flourish on encouragement! So, to go on, my name is
Poppy--Poppy St. John--Mrs. St. John. Rather good, isn't it?"

"Distinctly so," said Mr. Iglesias. Her unblushing effrontery began to
entertain him somewhat. And then he had sallied forth in search of
amusement. This was not the form of amusement he would have selected;
but--since it presented itself?

"I'm glad you like it," she returned. "I've always thought it rather
telling myself--an improvement on Mrs. Willie Onions, anyhow. Oh! yes,
a vast improvement," she repeated. "My friend was quite right. I tell
you it's an awful handicap to have a name which gives you away
socially. The man, the husband, I mean, may be the best of the good.
Still, it's difficult to forgive him for labelling you with some
stupidity like that. There's no getting away from it. You feel like a
bottle of pickles, or boot-polish, or a tin of insecticide whenever a
servant announces you. Everybody knows where you do--and don't--come
in. But, to go on, I am barely three--only I fancy you are the sort of
person who is rather rough on lying, aren't you? Well, in that case,
quite between ourselves--I am just turned nine-and-twenty."

She faced round on Dominic Iglesias, fixing on him those curiously
arresting eyes, which at once emphasised and redeemed the commonness of
her face, as the sweetness of her voice emphasised and redeemed the
commonness of her accent, and the quietude of her manner and movements
mitigated the impertinence of her words and vulgarity of her diction.

"And really that's about all it is necessary for you to know at
present," she asserted. "We shall see later, if we keep it up--if
Cappadocia keeps it up, I mean, of course. She is fearfully gone on you
now, that's clear; and she may be capable of a serious attachment. I
can't tell. An unfortunate marriage has been known to turn that way
before now. Anyhow, we'll give her the benefit of the doubt."

Poppy laughed softly, leaning forward and still looking at Mr. Iglesias
from under the shadow of her wide-brimmed hat.

"Now," she said, "come along. I've shown you I play fair all round,
even to a stuck-up little monkey of a thing like Cappadocia. It's your
turn to stand and deliver. I had been watching you and speculating for
ever so long before our introduction. Tell me, who on earth are you?"

Iglesias' figure stiffened a little; but it was impossible to be
annoyed with her. To begin with, she was too unreal, too unsubstantial
a being. And, to go on with, invincible good-temper is so very
disarming.

"Who am I? Nobody," he answered gravely.

"Bless us, here's a find!" Poppy cried, apparently addressing the
little dogs. "Hasn't he so much of a name even as Willie Onions?
Where's it gone to? It must be nearly as awkward for him as it was for
the man who had no shadow. Come, though," she added in tones of
remonstrance, "you must play fair. Cards on the table and no
humbugging. To put it another way, what do you do?"

"Since yesterday, nothing," he answered.

The young lady regarded him with increasing interest.

"But, my gentle lunatic," she said, "you didn't exactly begin your
acquaintance with this planetary sphere yesterday--couldn't, you know,
though you are very beautiful to look at. So, if you don't very
particularly much mind, we'll hark back to before yesterday."

Dominic Iglesias' gravity gave way slightly. He smiled in spite of his
natural pride and reticence.

"For over thirty-five years I was a clerk in a city bank."

"Pshaw!" Poppy cried hotly. "And pray what variety of congenital idiot
do you take me for? If you are going to decline upon fiction, please
let it be of a higher order than that. I tell you it's unworthy of you!"

She pursed up her lips and moved her head slowly from side to side in
high disgust.

"Don't be childish," she said. "Don't be transparently silly. If you
want to gas, do put a little more intelligence into it. You--you--out
of sight the most distinguished-looking man I've ever met except
Lord--well, we won't name names, it sounds showy--you a clerk in a city
bank! There, excuse me, but simply--" Poppy snapped her fingers like a
pair of castanets, making the little dogs start and whimper. "Fiddle!"
she cried; "tell it to a bed-ridden spinster in a blind
asylum!--Fiddle-de-dee!"

And for the life of him Dominic Iglesias could not help laughing. It
was a new sensation. It occurred to him that he had not laughed for
years--hardly since the days of poor Pascal Pelletier and the little
garden in Holland Street, Kensington.

Poppy watched him, her eyes dancing. Her expression was very charming,
wholly unselfconscious, in a way maternal, just then. But Iglesias was
hardly sensible of it.

"That's good," she said. "Now you'll feel a lot better. I saw there was
something wrong with you from the start which needed breaking up. Now,
suppose you quit inadequate inventions and just tell the truth."

"Unfortunately, I have done so already," Mr. Iglesias said.

The lady paused a moment, her face full of inquiry and doubt.

"Honest injun?"

The term was not familiar to her hearer, but he judged it to be of the
nature of an asseveration, and assented.

"And do you mean to tell me that for all those years you went through
that drudgery every day?"

"I had my Sundays," Iglesias answered; "and, since their invention, my
bank holidays. Latterly I got three weeks' holiday in the summer,
formerly a fortnight."

Laughter had speedily evaporated; and, his harsher mood returning upon
him, Iglesias found a certain bitter enjoyment in setting forth the
extreme meagreness of his life before this light-hearted, unsubstantial
piece of womanhood. Again he classed her with the absurd and exquisite
little dogs as something superfluous, out of relation to sad and sober
realities.

"And yet you manage to look as you do! It beats me," Poppy declared. "I
tell you it knocks me out of time completely. For, if you'll excuse my
being personal, there is an air about you not usually generated by an
office stool--at least, in my experience. Where do you get it from? You
can't be English?"

"I am a Spaniard by extraction," Mr. Iglesias said, with a slight lift
of the head.

"There now, my dear man, don't you go and freeze up again. We were just
beginning to get along so nicely," Poppy put in quickly. "I am having a
capital good time, and you're not having an altogether bad one, are
you? But, tell me, how long ago were you extracted?"

"Very long ago. I was brought to England as a baby child."

"Oh! I didn't mean it that way," she returned. "I was not touching on
the unpardonable subject of age; not that it would matter much in your
case, for you are one of the lucky sort with whom age does not count. I
only meant are you an all-round foreigner?"

"Practically--my mother was partly Irish."

Dominic Iglesias looked away to those densely wooded slopes of Sheen
and Roehampton, against the purple-green gloom of which the home
signals of Barnes Station--hard white lines and angles tipped with
scarlet and black--stood out like the gigantic characters of some
strange alphabet. The air was sweet with the scent of new-mown hay. The
birds flirted up and down the hawthorn bushes and furze brakes. It was
all very charming; yet that same emptiness and distrust of the future
were very present to Iglesias. He forgot all about his companion, aware
only that those two unbidden guests, Old Age and Loneliness, stood
close beside him, claiming harbourage and entertainment.

"Ah! your mother," Poppy said slowly, with the slightest perceptible
inflection of mockery. "And she is alive still?"

Dominic Iglesias turned upon the poor Lady of the Windswept Dust
fiercely. She had come too close, come from her proper place--were not
her lips painted?--behind the footlights, and laid her hands upon that
which was holy. He was filled with unreasoning anger towards her--anger
towards himself, too, that he should have departed from his habitual
silence and reticence, submitted to be cross-questioned, and listened
to her feather-headed patter so long. He rose to his feet, for the
moment young, alert, full of a pride at once militant and protective.

"God forbid!" he said sternly. "Dear saint and martyr, she is safe from
all misreading at last. She is dead."

He stood a moment trying to choke down his anger before addressing her
again.

"It is time I should go," he said presently. "I think we have talked
enough."

But Poppy St. John presented a singular appearance. All the audacity
had departed from her. She sat huddled together, looking very small and
desolate; her eyes--the one noble feature of her face--swimming with
tears.

"No, no; don't go," she cried in tones of childlike entreaty. "Why
should you go? I like you, and I meant no harm. I've had the beastliest
day, and meeting you was a let-up. You did me good somehow. Cappadocia
was quite right in taking to you. I only wanted to know about you
because--well, you are different. Pshaw, don't tell me. I know what I
am talking about. You're straight. You're good right through."

The words were poured forth so rapidly that Iglesias hardly gathered
the exact purport of them. But one thing was clear to him--namely, that
this frivolous and meretricious being must be human after all, since
she could suffer.

"Don't go," she repeated. "I'm miserable. I'll explain. I'll tell you.
Just sit down again. It would be awfully kind. You see, I've been
expecting a friend. It was all-important I should see him to-day,
because there were things to be said. I've been awake half the night
screwing up my courage to saying them. And then he never turned up. I
got nerves waiting hour after hour--anybody would, waiting like that.
And I began to imagine every kind of pestilent disaster."

Poppy swallowed a little and dabbed her pocket-handkerchief against her
eyes.

"I shall be all right in a minute," she went on. "Do sit down, please.
You say you're nobody and have nothing to do, so you can't very well be
in a hurry. I am like this sometimes. It's awfully silly, but I can't
help it. Some rotten trifle sets me off, and then I can't stop myself.
I begin to go over all my worst luck.--Doesn't it occur to you there's
no earthly good in standing? It obliges me to talk loud, and it's
stupid to take all Barnes Common into our confidence. Thanks; that's
very nice of you.--Well, you see when I'm like his, the flood-gates of
memory are opened--which sounds pretty enough, but the prettiness is
strictly limited to the sound for most of us, at least as far as my
experience goes. The water is generally a bit dirty, and there are too
many dead things floating about in it; and, when they reel by, as the
current takes them, they turn and seem to struggle and come half alive."

She paused, hitching the embroidered dragons up about her shoulders.

"That is why I put on this scarf to-day. It was given me by a man who
was awfully fond of me before--I married. He bought it in the bazaar at
Peshawur, and sent it home to me just as he was starting on one of
those little frontier wars the accounts of which they keep out of the
English papers. And he was killed, poor dear old boy, in some footy
little skirmish. And this is all I've got left of him."

Poppy spread out the ends of the scarf for Mr. Iglesias' inspection.

"It must have cost a lot of money. The stones are real, you see; and
that gold thread is tremendously heavy. Just feel the weight. It was
all his people's doing. They didn't consider me smart enough for
him--or rather for themselves. They weren't anybody in particular, but
they were climbing. The society microbe had bitten them badly. So they
bundled him off to India. What another pair of shoes it would have been
for me if he'd lived! At least it seems so to me when I'm down on my
luck, as I am to-day. But after all, I don't know." Poppy began to be
impudent, to laugh again, though somewhat brokenly. "Sometimes I don't
believe one can count on any of you men till you are well dead, and
then you're not much use, you know, faithful or unfaithful."

She dabbed her eyes once more and looked at Mr. Iglesias, smiling
ruefully.

"Life's a pretty rotten business, at times, all round, isn't it?" she
said. "You must have found it so with that thirty years' drudgery in a
city bank. By the way, what bank was it?"

And Dominic Iglesias, touched by that very human story, attracted, in
spite of himself, by the frankness of his companion, a little shaken by
the novelty of the whole situation, answered mechanically:

"The bank? Oh, yes! Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking of Threadneedle
Street."

For a moment Poppy sat silent, her mouth round as an O. Then she drew
her open hand down sharply behind poor Willie Onions, and shot the
small dog, in a sitting position, off the bench on to the rough grass.
His fringed legs stuck out stiff as sticks, while his enormous lappets
of ears flew up and back, giving him the most wildly demented
appearance during this brief inglorious flight through space.

"Catch birds!" she cried, "catch birds, I tell you! Think of your
figure. My good child, take exercise or you'll be as round as a tub!"

She clapped her hands encouragingly, but the little animal,
half-scared, half-offended, came closer, fawning upon her trailing
string-coloured skirts. Poppy leaned down, resting her elbows upon her
knees, and napped at the unhappy Onions with her handkerchief.

"Go away, you silly billy. Have a little decent pride, can't you? Don't
bestow attentions when they're unwelcome." Then she addressed herself
to Mr. Iglesias, but without looking up. "I beg your pardon, all this
must seem rather abrupt. But sometimes one's duty to one's family takes
one on the jump, as you may say; and one repairs neglect right away
also on the jump. But--but--there's one thing I should like to
know--when I told you my name just now--Poppy St. John, Mrs. St.
John--you remember?"

"I remember," he said.

"Well, didn't it convey--didn't it mean anything special to you?"

"I am afraid not," Iglesias answered. "You must pardon my ignorance,
since I have lived very much out of the world. I know nothing of
society."

"So much the better. The world is a vastly overrated place, and society
is about the biggest fraud going." She left off teasing the little dog,
sat bolt upright, and looked full at Dominic Iglesias, her eyes
serious, redeeming all the insignificance of her features and those
little doubtful details of the general effect of her. "Don't make any
mistake about either of them," she said. "Let the world and society
alone as you value your peace of mind and independence. They're dead
sea fruit to all outsiders such as--well--you and me. I hate them; only
they've got me, and will have me in some form or other till the end, I
suppose. But you are different, and I warn you"--Poppy's voice took on
an odd inflection of mingled bitterness and tenderness--"they are not a
bit adapted for a beautiful, innocent, uncrowned king like you."

She got up as she spoke, gathering her trailing skirts about her, and
called sharply to the little dogs.

"The dew is rising," she said, "and Cappadocia's a regular cry-baby if
she gets her feet wet. I must take her home. There's my card. You see
the address? You can come when you like, only let me know the day
beforehand, because I should be sorry to have people with me or to be
out. Cappadocia 'll want you. So shall I. You do me good. I'll play
quite fair, I promise you. Good-night."

The sun stood in a triumph of crimson and gold, which passed into the
fine blue of a belt of earth mist. Eastward the sky blushed, too, but
with brazen blushes, tarnished by the breath of the great city--the
pure blue of the earth mist exchanged for the murk of coal smoke and
the thousand and one exhalations of steaming streets, public-houses and
restaurants. Poppy St. John walked slowly along the footpath, her
figure dyed by the effulgence of the skies to the crimson and gold of
her name. About her shoulders the embroidered dragons glittered as she
moved, while the two tiny spaniels trotted humbly at her heels. For a
brief space she showed absolutely resplendent. Then suddenly an
interposing terrace of smart much-be-balconied and beflowered little
houses shut off the sunset; and in their rather vulgar shadow Dominic
Iglesias, watching, beheld her transformed into the unsubstantial, in a
way fictitious, Lady of the Windswept Dust and of the footlights once
again.




CHAPTER VI


That weekly ceremony--well known to Trimmer's Green--Mrs. Lovegrove's
afternoon at-home, was in progress. She wore her black satin gown, and
her white Maltese lace fichu, just to give it a touch of summer
lightness. It must be added that she was warm and uncomfortable, having
conscientiously superintended preparations in respect of commissariat
in the overheated atmosphere of the basement; hurried upstairs--the
imagined tinkle of the front-door bell perpetually in her ears--to pull
her stays in at the waist and project herself into the aforementioned
official garments--a very trying process on a June day to a person of
ample contours and what may be described as the fluidic temperament.
Later she had cooled off, or tried so to cool--for on such occasions
there is invariably some window-blind, ornament, or piece of furniture
actively in need of straightening--sitting in her somewhat fog-stained
and sun-faded drawing-room during that evil period of waiting in which
the intending hostess first suffers acute mortification because she is
"quite sure nobody will come," and then gets hot all over from the
equally agitating certainty that everybody she has ever known will
appear simultaneously, and that there will be neither cakes nor
conversation enough to go round.

But this disquieting and oft-repeated preface to the afternoon's
festivity was now happily over. And the good lady, oblivious of
discomfort and a slightly disorganised complexion, sat purring with
satisfaction upon her best Chesterfield sofa, Dr. Giles Nevington
beside her. "Pleasure, not business, to-day, Mrs. Lovegrove. For once I
am going to make no demands on my faithful and able coadjutor. This
call is a purely friendly one--no subscription lists of any sort or
description in my pocket," the clergyman had said in his resonant bass
when clasping her hand.--A large, dark, clean-shaven man of forty, a
studied effect of geniality and benevolence about him, slightly
tempered, perhaps, by cold and watchful blue-grey eyes, fixed--so said
his detractors--with unswerving determination upon the shovel-hat,
apron, and gaiters of the Anglican episcopate.

Rhoda Lovegrove, however, was very far from being among the detractors.
She relished this gracious speech enormously. She also approved the
attitude of her husband at this juncture; since, with praiseworthy
tact, he engaged the attention of her two other guests, a Mrs. Ballard
and her daughter. These ladies were rich, the younger had pretensions
both to beauty and fashion; but their present was, alas! stained by
Noncomformity, their past contaminated by association with retail
trade. At the entrance of the vicar, remembering these sad defects,
George Lovegrove rose to the occasion. Gently, but firmly, he pranced
round them heading them towards the doorway.

"Who are those?" Dr. Nevington inquired, with some interest. "Not
parishioners, I fancy."

"Not in any true sense," Mrs. Lovegrove replied. "Dissenters, and I am
sorry to say rather spiteful against the Church."

The clergyman leaned back and crossed his legs comfortably.

"Ah! well, poor human nature! A touch of jealousy perhaps," he remarked.

Mrs. Lovegrove beamed.

"Very likely--still I should be just as well pleased not to continue
their acquaintance. I don't like to hear things that are disrespectful.
I should have ceased to call, but relatives of theirs are old friends
of Mr. Lovegrove's mother's family."

"Quite so, quite so," the other returned. Even when silent the sound of
him seemed to encompass him, as the roll of a drum seems to salute you
when merely beholding that instrument. His speech filled all the room,
flowing forth into every corner, sweeping upward in waves to the very
cornice. The feminine members of his congregation found this most
beautiful; having, indeed, been known to declare that did he preach in
Chinese, they would still receive edification and spiritual
benefit.--"Quite so," he repeated, "the breaking of old family ties is
certainly to be avoided. And then, moreover, we should always guard
against any appearance of harshness or illiberality in dealing with
Christians from whom we have reason to differ in minor questions of
doctrine or practice. We must never forget that the Nonconformists,
though they went out from us, do remain the brethren of all
right-minded Churchmen in a very special sense, since they have the
great lessons of the Reformation at heart. I could wish that certain
parties within the Church were animated by the same manly and
intelligent intolerance of idolatry and superstition as the majority of
the dissenters whom I meet. Personally I should welcome greater freedom
of intercourse, and a frequent interchange of pulpits."

"We know who'd be the gainers," Mrs. Lovegrove put in gracefully.

"Ah! well, I am prepared to believe that the gain might not be
exclusively on one side."

Mrs. Lovegrove folded her fat hands, purring almost audibly. He seemed
to her so very wise and good.

"That's so like you, Dr. Nevington," she said. "As I always tell Mr.
Lovegrove, we have a great responsibility in having you for our pastor
and friend. You are a standing rebuke to many of us, being so
wide-minded yourself."

"Hardly that, hardly that," he answered with becoming modesty. "In my
humble way I do strive towards unity, that is all. Even towards the
Church of Rome I would extend a friendly and helpful hand. We cannot,
of course, go to her, yet she should never be discouraged from coming
to us.--But here is your good husband back again--ceased to be unevenly
yoked with the unbeliever, eh, Lovegrove?"

"I was glad you took them away, Georgie," Mrs. Lovegrove put in. "Still
I'm sorry for you, for the vicar's been talking so nobly. You've missed
such a lot."

"Ah, hardly that. I have merely been giving your dear good wife a
little lecture on Christian charity. How is Mrs. Nevington? Thank you,
wonderfull well, earnest and energetic as ever. I do not know how I
could meet the demands of this large parish without her."

"A true helpmeet," purred Mrs. Lovegrove.

"Truly so--and specially in all questions of organisation. She is
altogether my superior in administrative capacity. Indeed, it is an
understood thing between us that I relieve her of what may be called
the bad third of her marriage vow. If she will love and honour, I
assure her I am ready to obey. A capital working rule for husbands--eh,
Lovegrove?--always supposing they have found the right woman, as you
and I have."

In the midst of this delicious badinage the hostess had to rise to
receive further guests. Conflicting emotions struggled within her ample
bosom--namely, regret at leaving that thrice happy sofa, and
satisfaction that others should behold the glory thereon so visibly
enthroned.

"How d'ye do, Mrs. Porcher? How d'ye do, Miss Hart?" she said. "Very
kind of you to come and call. Only a few friends as yet, but perhaps
that's just as pleasant this warm afternoon. Dr. Nevington, as you see,
and at his very best"--she lowered her voice discreetly. "So at home,
so full of great thoughts, and yet so comical--quite a privilege for
all to hear him talk."

Encouraged by recent commendation, George Lovegrove again rose with
praiseworthy tact to the occasion. It may be stated in passing that, in
person, he was below the middle height, a thick oblong man, his figure,
indeed, not unsuggestive of a large carapace, from the four corners of
which sprouted short arms and legs. His face was round, fresh-coloured,
and clean to the point of polish. His yellowish grey hair, well
flattened and shining, grew far back on his forehead. And this,
combined with small blue eyes, clear as a child's, a slight inward
squint to them, produced an effect of permanent and innocent surprise
not devoid of pathos. In character he was guileless and humble-minded.
The spectacle of cruelty or injustice would, however, rouse him to the
belligerent attitude of the proverbial _brebis enragé_. He believed
himself to be very happy--an added touch of pathos perhaps--and was
pained and surprised if it was brought home to him that others found
life a less comfortable and kindly invention than he himself did. Hence
reports of suicides worried him sadly. He would always have returned a
verdict of temporary insanity, this being to him the only explanation
conceivable of a voluntary exit from our so excellent present form of
existence. Yet George Lovegrove was not without his little secret
sorrow--who indeed is? A deep-seated regret for nonexistent small
Lovegroves possessed him, the instinct of paternity being strong in
him. He loved children, and, when alone, often lingered beside
perambulators in Kensington Gardens fondly observing their contents.
Yet not for ten thousand pounds sterling would he have admitted this
weakness, lest in doing so he should hurt "the wife's feelings." And it
was in obedience to consideration for the said feelings that he now
threw himself gallantly into the breach. For, after acting as
appreciative chorus to an interlude of sonorous trifling on the part of
the clergyman with the newcomers, he adroitly--under promise of showing
her recent additions to his collection of picture postcards--detached
Miss Eliza Hart from the neighbourhood of the sofa and conveyed her to
the farther side of the room. Mrs. Porcher, neat, pensive, and
sentimental, could be trusted to play the part of attentive listener;
but the great Eliza, as he knew by experience, was liable to develop
dangerous energy, to get a little above herself, shake her leonine mane
of upstanding sandy hair, and become altogether too talkative, not to
say loud, for such distinguished company. Personally he had a soft spot
in his heart for Eliza. But, if she put herself forward, he feared for
"the wife's feelings," therefore did he skilfully detach her.

And he had reason to congratulate himself on this manoeuvre, for Eliza
undoubtedly was in a frolicsome humour.

"Yes," she remarked, contemplating the portrait of a celebrated
actress. "That is very taking and stylish; and it is just what I should
like to have done with my Peachie." This graceful _sobriquet_ was
generally understood to bear testimony to the excellence of Mrs.
Porcher's complexion. "Now, if we wanted a gentleman guest or two more
at any time, a picture postcard of her like this, just slightly tinted,
in answer to inquiries?"

Miss Hart, her head on one side, looked playfully at Mr. Lovegrove.

"What about a subsequent summons for over-crowding?" he chuckled. The
whole breadth of the room, well understood, was between him and the
wife's feelings, not to mention the august presence beside her upon the
sofa.

"No doubt that has to be thought of!" Eliza nodded sagely. "But is she
not looking sweeter than ever to-day? Do not pretend you have not
noticed it, Mr. Lovegrove. There's no deceiving me! I know you."

Like all mild and moral men, Lovegrove flushed with delight at any
suggestion that he was a gay dog, a dashing blade. His good, honest
face took on a higher polish than ever.

"You are too clever by half, Miss Hart."

"Well, somebody has to keep their wits about them, with such a love as
Peachie to care for. I dressed her myself to-day. 'The pearl-grey gown
if you like,' I said, 'but not a scrap of black with it. Just a touch
of colour at the throat, please.' 'No, dear Liz,' she said, 'it would
call for remark, since I have never done so since I lost Major
Porcher.' But there, Mr. Lovegrove, I insisted. For why she should go
on wearing complimentary mourning all her life for a wretch that nearly
broke her heart and ruined her, passes me. 'Forget the serpent,' I
said, 'and put on a little turquoise tulle pompom.' Now just look at
her!"

"Rather dangerous for some people, is it not?" Lovegrove inquired quite
slyly.

"Hard on our gentlemen, you mean? Well, perhaps it is. But then they
always have the sight of me to put up with.--No compliments, thank you.
I have my eyesight and my toilet-glass, and they have let me know I was
no Venus ever since I can remember. It would not do to depress our
gentlemen too much. They might leave, and then wherever would Cedar
Lodge be?"

Miss Hart became suddenly serious and confidential. "And that reminds
me," she went on. "I wanted to have a private word with you to-day
about a certain gentleman."

"Who may be?" the good George inquired.

"You can guess, can't you? Your own candidate."

"Mr. Iglesias?"

The lady nodded.

"Peachie must be spared anxiety, therefore I speak, Mr. Lovegrove.
Something is going on, and she is getting worried. You cannot approach
the person to whom we are alluding as you can either of our others.
Rather stand-offish, even now after nearly eight years that he has been
with us. Between you and me and the bedpost, Mr. Lovegrove, I am just a
wee bit nervous of that person. So if you could hint, quite in
confidence, what his plans may be for the future it would' be really
friendly."

"Dear me, dear me! Plans? I do not quite follow you, Miss Hart. Nothing
wrong with him, I trust?"

"That is just what we cannot find out. No spying, of course, Mr.
Lovegrove. Neither Peachie nor I would descend to such meanness. Our
gentlemen have perfect liberty. We would scorn to put questions. But it
is close on a week now since the person we are alluding to has been to
the City."

"Bless me! You surprise me. He cannot have left Barking Brothers &
Barking?"

The great Eliza shook her leonine mane.

"I believe that is just exactly what he has done."

"You do surprise me. I can hardly credit it. Nearly a week, and he as
punctual and regular as clockwork! I must run over this evening and
catch him. Something must be wrong. And yet why has he not been here?
Dear me. Miss Hart, you----"

But the end of the sentence was lost in the bass notes issuing from the
presence upon the sofa.

"Truly, the prosperity of the nation," Dr. Nevington was saying, "of
this dear old England of ours that we so love, is wholly bound up with
the prosperity of her national Church. I use the word prosperity in a
plain, manly, straightforward sense. Personally I should rejoice to see
the bonds of Church and State drawn closer. It could not fail to make
for the welfare of both. Then, among other benefits, we should see the
poverty of many members of my cloth, which is now a crying scandal--"

"You do hear very sad tales from the country districts, certainly,"
sighed Mrs. Lovegrove.

"The state of affairs is more than sad, it is iniquitous. And therefore
the Church must assert herself. The individual minister must assert
himself, and claim a higher scale of remuneration. Help yourself, show
push and principle, cultivate practical aims--that is what I preach to
young men reading for Holy Orders. We have no place in these days for
visionaries and dreamers. We want men who march with the times, who are
interested in politics, and can make themselves felt."

So did the great voice roll on and outward. Very beautiful to the
listeners in sound--though, in sense, it may be questioned whether it
conveyed very definite ideas to them--but highly embarrassing to the
house-parlourmaid, whose feminine tones quite failed to make headway
against the volume of it. With the consequence that Dominic Iglesias
was left standing in the shadow of the doorway unheeded.

He was aware, and that not without surprise, how much these few days of
freedom and leisure had quickened his perceptions. His mental attitude
had changed. His demand had ceased to be moderate. Hence he suffered a
hundred offences to taste and sensibility hitherto unknown, or at least
unregistered. He knew when a woman was plain, when a conversation was
vapid or vulgar, a manner pretentious, a speech lacking in sincerity.
Consciously he stood aside, no longer out of humility or indifference,
but critically observant, challenging things however familiar, and
passing judgment upon them. For example, the unlovely character of Mrs.
Lovegrove's drawing-room engrossed his attention--the dirty-browns and
tentative watery blues of it, the multiplicity of flimsy, worthless,
little ornaments revealing a most lamentable absence of artistic
perception. In that fine booming clerical voice he detected a kindred
absence of delicate perception, a showiness born of very inadequate
conception of relative values. Indeed, the voice and the sentiments
given forth by it, in as far as he caught the drift of them, raised a
definite spirit of antagonism in him. The voice seemed to trample.
Dominic Iglesias was taken with an inclination--very novel in him--to
trample, too. He crossed the room, an added touch of gravity and
dignity in his aspect and manner.

The clergyman gazed at him with some curiosity, while Mrs. Lovegrove
surged up off the sofa.

"Mr. Iglesias! Well, of all people! Whoever would have expected to see
you at this early hour of the day?"

"Talk of a certain gentleman and that gentleman appears," Miss Eliza
Hart whispered. Then wagging her finger at her host, "Now don't you
forget that little question of mine. Find out his intentions, just, as
you may say, under the rose. But there's Peachie signalling to go."

In the ensuing interval of farewells, which were slightly protracted
owing to friskiness on the part of the fair Eliza, Iglesias found
himself standing beside the clergyman. The latter still regarded him
with curiosity. But, whatever his faults, not his worst enemy could
accuse Dr. Nevington of being a respecter of persons unless he was well
assured beforehand whom such persons might be. He therefore turned to
Iglesias with the easy air of patronage not uncommon to his cloth, as
one who should say: "My good sir, don't be afraid. I am a man of the
world as well as a Christian. I will handle you gently. I won't hurt
you."

"I think I caught a foreign name," he remarked. "You are paying a visit
to London? I hope our capital makes an agreeable impression upon you."

"The visit has been of such long duration," Iglesias answered, "that
impressions have, I am afraid, become slightly blurred by usage."

"Ah! indeed--no doubt that happens in some measure to all of us. I am
to understand that you are a resident?"

Iglesias assented.

"In this district?"

Again he assented.

"Indeed. Really, I wish I had known it sooner. It always gives me
pleasure to meet persons of another nationality than my own.
Intercourse with them makes for liberality of view. It often dispels
anti-English prejudice. I am always glad to be helpful to strangers."

"You are very kind," Iglesias said with gravity.

"Not at all--not at all. I hold very practical views not only regarding
the duties of the Englishman to the alien, but of the pastor towards
his flock. But I find it almost impossible, I regret to say, to become
personally acquainted with all my parishioners. My curates are capital
young fellows--earnest, active, go-ahead. But in a large area such as
this there is always a shifting population with which the clergy,
however energetic, find it difficult to keep in touch. We are obliged
to discriminate between dwellers and sojourners. As soon as any person
is proved to be a _bona fide_ dweller my curates pass his or her name
on to me, and either I or my wife call in due course."

Dominic Iglesias permitted himself to smile.

"An excellent system, no doubt," he remarked.

"I find it works very well on the whole. But no system is infallible.
There must be occasional oversights, and you have been the victim of
one. I mention this to disabuse your mind of the idea of any
intentional neglect. Well, Mrs. Lovegrove, and so our good friends Mrs.
Porcher and Miss Hart have gone--estimable women both of them in their
own line. I ought to be running away, too, and I have just been having
a word with your other guest here, Mr.----"

"Iglesias," Dominic put in coldly. He was in a state of pretty high
displeasure. To hear his name mispronounced might, he felt, precipitate
a catastrophe.

"Iglesias?--ah! yes, thank you--I have been explaining to Mr. Iglesias
our system of parochial visiting and quoting our well-known joke about
the dwellers and sojourners. You remember it? He has, I regret to find,
been counted among the latter, while he has qualified as one of the
former. The mistake must be remedied. Well, good-by to you, Mrs.
Lovegrove; I shall see your good husband on my way downstairs. Good-day
to you, Mr. Iglesias. I shall hope to meet you again."

And with that he, and the encompassing sound of him, moved towards the
door. Mrs. Lovegrove subsided upon the sofa. The supreme glory had
departed, yet an afterglow from the effulgence of it remained in her
beaming face as she looked up at Mr. Iglesias.

"It was a good fairy that brought you in so early to-day," she said.
"Really, I am pleased you should have had the chance to meet Dr.
Nevington. And I could see he was quite taken with you, by the way he
began to talk before I had the chance to introduce you. But that's the
vicar all over! He never is one to stand upon ceremony."

"So I can believe," Dominic said.

"You saw it? Ah, part of his thoughtfulness, wanting to put everybody
at their ease. And I'm sure if there's one thing more disheartening
than another, it is to have two of your friends standing up side by
side, as stiff as a couple of pokers, without so much as a word. I know
I am too ready to enter into conversation with strangers; but if there
is a thing I cannot bear, it's any appearance of coolness."

She passed her handkerchief round her forehead and across her lips. She
was marshalling her energies for a daring effort.

"Very warm, is it not?" she remarked, perhaps superfluously. Then she
came to the point. "I know you are not very much of a churchgoer, Mr.
Iglesias."

"I am afraid not"--he paused a moment. "You see, I was born and brought
up in another faith."

"Yes--so George has told me. But I am sure none of us would ever be so
illiberal as to throw that up against you. The vicar has been talking
so beautifully about Christian charity; and we all know it was a thing
you could not help. It was your misfortune, anybody would understand
that, not your fault. Too, it's all over long ago and forgotten."

Dominic looked rather hard at her; but it was clear her words were
innocent of any intention of offence.

"I suppose it is," he said sadly, Old Age and Loneliness laying their
hands upon him, for some reason, very sensibly once again.

"Not that that's anything to be otherwise than thankful for," she
added, with a slightly misplaced effort at consolation. "Of course
anyone must feel how providential it is to be saved from all those
terrible false doctrines and practices--not that I know anything about
them. There's so much, don't you think, it is so much better not to
know anything about. Then one feels more at liberty to speak."

Mr. Iglesias smiled.

"I am not sure that the matter had occurred from exactly that point of
view before."

"Really now, and a clever person like you!" Mrs. Lovegrove passed her
handkerchief across her forehead again. "George has a wonderful opinion
of your cleverness, you know. And that is why I have always wished you
and the vicar could be brought together. I have--yes, I own to it--I
have been afraid sometimes you were a little unsettled about religion,
and that it might unsettle Georgie, too. But I knew if you once met the
vicar that would all be set right. As I often say to George, let
anybody just _see_ Dr. Nevington and then they will begin to have an
inkling of all they miss in not hearing him in the pulpit."

But here, perhaps fortunately, the master of the house trotted back.
He, too, beamed. He was filled with innocent rejoicing. Had he not
successfully protected the wife's feelings, and was not Iglesias--who
remained to him a wonderful being, stirring whatever element of romance
might be resident in his guileless nature--present in person?

"Why, what's the meaning of this, Dominic?" he chuckled. "You've turned
over a new leaf, gadding round to at-home days! Where's Threadneedle
Street? What's come over you?"

"Threadneedle Street and I have agreed to part company."

"What, for good? Never?" this from both husband and wife.

"Yes, for good," Iglesias said.

Mr. Lovegrove ceased to beam. He became anxious again, and consequently
solemn.

"Well, you do surprise me," he said. "Nothing gone wrong, I trust? Not
any unpleasantness happened?"

"None," Iglesias answered. In breaking the news to these kindly but
rudimentary souls he had determined to treat it very lightly. "I have
come to the conclusion that I have worked long enough. It is a mistake
to risk dying in harness. You retired, Lovegrove, three years ago. I am
going to look about me a little and see what the rest of the world is
doing."

"You'll miss the bank, and feel a little strange at first. Georgie did,
though he had his home to interest him," Mrs. Lovegrove remarked.

"Undoubtedly George was more fortunate than I am," Iglesias replied, in
his most courtly manner.

"Not but that all that could be easily remedied," she added, with a
touch of archness. Then Mr. Iglesias thought it time to depart. In the
hall his host held him, literally by the buttonhole, looking up with
squinting blue eyes into his face.

"It's all rather sudden, Dominic," he said. "I do not want to intrude
upon your confidence; but if there is anything behind, anything in
which I can help?"

Mr. Iglesias shook his head.

"Nothing, my good old friend," he said.

"The wife's right, you know. You'll miss the bank, the regular hours,
and the occupation. She's quite right. I did at first."

"I know. But already I have pretty well got through that phase, I
think."

"Ah, you have a bigger mind than mine. You can rise to a wider view.
Change affects a commonplace man like myself most. I was dreadfully
lost at first--more than the wife knew. Females are very sensitive, and
it would have hurt her to know all I felt. If the Almighty is good
enough to give a man a faithful woman to look after him, he can't be
too scrupulous in sparing her pain--at least, so I think." Suddenly his
tone changed. "But you are not going to leave us, Dominic?--you are not
going to move, I do hope?"

He was mindful of his promise to Eliza Hart, but he was also mindful of
himself. It had occurred to him for how very much in the interest and
pleasure of his life Dominic Iglesias really stood.

"Why, should you regret my going? Should you miss me?" the other asked,
struck by his tone.

"Miss you," he said, "and after a friendship covering forty years! I
know you are my superior in every way. I know I am not on your level.
All the advantage is on my side in our friendship, always has been. But
that is just where it is. Why, you know, Dominic--next to the wife of
course--all along you have been the best thing I had."

Then it came to Iglesias, looking down at him, that among the many
millions of his fellow-mortals, this whimsical childlike being stood
nearest to him in sympathy and in love. The thought moved him
strangely, at once deepening his sense of isolation and lessening the
load of it.

"In that case I will not move. I will stay here, at Trimmer's Green,"
he said.

When Mr. Lovegrove reentered the sun-faded drawing-room his wife
greeted him in these words:

"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 siècle_,
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----"

He leaned his elbows on the table, hiding his face in his hands, and
his shoulders shook.

"For I have talent," he cried, in a curiously thin voice. "Before God I
have. They may refuse to publish me, refuse to play me, force me to
pick up scraps of hack-work on fourth-rate papers to earn a bare
subsistence--at times hardly that. Yet all the same, no supercilious
beast of an editor or actor-manager--curse the whole stinking
lot--shall rob me of my faith in myself--of my belief that I am
great--if I had justice, nothing less than that, I tell you, nothing
less than great."

Dominic Iglesias drew himself up, sitting very still, his lips rigid,
not from defect, but from excess of sympathy. The restaurant was empty
now, save for a man, four tables down, safely ensconced behind the pink
pages of an evening paper, and for a couple, at the far end, in the
window--a young Frenchwoman, whose coquettish hat and trim rounded
figure were silhouetted against the yellow silk curtain, and a
precocious black-haired youth, with a skin like pale, pink satin, round
eyeglasses and an incipient moustache. His attention was entirely
occupied with the young woman; hers entirely occupied with herself. And
of this Dominic Iglesias was glad. For the matter immediately in hand
was best conducted without witnesses. He found it strangely engrossing,
strangely moving. However vain, however madly exaggerated even, de
Courcy Smyth's estimate of himself, there could be no question but that
his present emotion was as actual and genuine as his past hunger had
been. The man was utterly spent in body and in spirit. Offensive in
speech, slovenly in person, yet these distasteful things added to,
rather than detracted from, Iglesias' going out of sympathy towards
him. He had rarely been in contact with a fellow-creature in such
abandonment of distress. It was terrible to witness; yet it gave him a
sense of fellowship, of nearness, even of power, which had in it an
element of deep-seated satisfaction. While he waited for the moment
when it should become clear to him how to act, his thought travelled
back to the Lady of the Windswept Dust. He saw, not her over-red lips,
but her serious eyes; saw her tearful and in a way broken, for all her
light speech, her fanciful garments, and her antics with her absurd
little dogs amid the sweetness of sunshine and summer breeze on Barnes
Common. She was far enough away, so he judged, in sentiment and
circumstance from the embittered and poverty-haunted man sitting
opposite to him. Yet though superficially so dissimilar, they were
alike in this, that both had dared to reveal themselves, passing beyond
conventional limits in intercourse with him, Iglesias. Both had cried
out to him in their distress. And then, thinking of that recently
visited altar of the dead, thinking of the one perfect relationship he
had known--his relationship to his mother--it came to him as a
revelation that not participation in the pride of life and the
splendour of it--still less association in mere pleasure and
amusement--forms the cement which binds together the units of humanity
in stable and consoling relationship; but association in sorrow, the
cry for help and the response to that cry, whether it be help to the
staying of the hunger of the heart and of the intellect, or simply to
the staying of that baser yet very searching hunger of overstrained
nerves and an empty stomach. The revelation was partial. Iglesias
groped, so to speak, in the light of it uncertain and dazzled. But he
received it as real--an idea the magnitude of which, in inspiration and
application, he was as yet by no means equal to measure. Still he
believed that could he but yield himself to it, and, in yielding,
master it, it would carry him very far, teaching him that language of
the spirit which he desired to acquire; and hence placing in his hand
that earnestly coveted key to an adjustment between the exterior and
interior life, the life of the senses and the life of the spirit, which
must needs eventuate, manward and godward alike, in triumphant harmony.

Meanwhile there sat de Courcy Smyth, blear-eyed, sandy-red bearded,
unsavoury, trying, poor wretch, to rally whatever of manhood was left
in him and swagger himself out of his fit of hysteria. The Latin,
however dignified, is instinctively more demonstrative than the
Anglo-Saxon. Iglesias leaned across the table and laid his hand on the
other man's shoulder.

"Wait a little," he said. "Drink your coffee and smoke. We need not
hurry to move."

There was a pause, during which Smyth obediently swallowed his coffee,
swallowed his _chasse_ of cognac.

"I have made an egregious ass of myself," he said sullenly.

"No, no," Iglesias answered. "You have honoured me by taking me into
your confidence. It rests with me to see that you never have cause to
regret having done so."

"I believe you mean that."

"Certainly I mean it," Iglesias answered.

Smyth's hands trembled as he took a cigar and held a match to it.

"I am unaccustomed to meeting with kindness," he said in a low voice.
Then recovering himself somewhat, he began to speak volubly again. "Of
course I understand it all well enough. They are simply afraid of my
work, those beasts of editors and playwrights. It is too big for them,
they dare not face it and the consequences of it. It is strong stuff,
Mr. Iglesias, strong stuff with plenty of red blood in it, and with
scholarship, too. And so they pigeon-hole my stories and drames in
self-defence, knowing that if these once reached the public, either in
print or in action, their own fly-blown anæmic productions would be
hissed off the stage or would ruin the circulation of the periodical
which inserted them. It is all jealousy, I tell you, Mr. Iglesias,
rank, snakish jealousy, bred by self-interest out of fear--a truly
exalted parentage!"

He shifted his position restlessly, again setting his elbows upon the
table and fingering the broken bread upon the cloth.

"At times, when I can rise above the immediate injustice and cruelty
which pursue me," he went on, "I glory in my martyrdom. I range myself
alongside those heroes of literature and art, who, because they were
ahead of the age in which they lived, were scorned and repudiated by
their contemporaries; but they found their revenge in the worship of
succeeding generations. My time will come just as theirs did. It
must--I tell you it must. I know that. I am safe of eventual
recognition; but I want it now, while I am alive, while I can glut
myself with the joy of it. I want to see the men who lord it over me,
just because they have influence and money, who affect to despise me
because they are green with envy and fear of me, brought to their
knees, flattened so that I can wipe my boots on them. And--and"--he
looked full at Dominic Iglesias, spreading out both hands across the
narrow table, his pale prominent eyes blood-shot, his face working--"I
want to see someone else--a woman--brought to her knees also. I want to
make her feel what she has lost--curse her!--and have her come back
whining."

"And if she did come back," Iglesias asked, almost sternly, "what would
you do? Forgive her?"

De Courcy Smyth's hands dropped with a queer little thud on the table.

"I don't know. I suppose so. If she wanted to she could always get
round me." Then he turned on Iglesias with hysterical violence. "But
what do you know? Why do you ask that? Are you among her patrons? I
trusted you. I believed you were a gentleman in feeling--and it is a
dirty trick to get me in here and fill me up with food and liquor, when
you must have seen my nerves were all to pieces, and then spring this
upon me. Oh! hell!" he cried, "is there no comfort anywhere? Is
everyone a traitor?"

And seeing his utter abjectness, Iglesias' heart went out to the
unhappy man in immense and unqualified pity.

"I am grieved," he said gently, "if I have pained you unnecessarily.
But truly I have sprung nothing upon you. How could I do so? I know
nothing whatever of your circumstances save that which you yourself
have told me during the last hour."

"Then why did you ask that question about--about her?"

"Because," Dominic answered, "I am ready to fight for you, in as far as
you will allow me to do so; but I do not fight against women."

"You must have had uncommonly little experience of them then," Smyth
answered with a sneer.

To this observation Mr. Iglesias deemed it superfluous to make any
answer. A silence followed. The restaurant was empty, but for the
waiters, who stood in a little knot about the door amusing themselves
by watching the movement of the street. Looking round to make sure no
one was within hearing, Smyth rose unsteadily to his feet.

"You meant what you said just now, Mr. Iglesias--that you were ready to
fight for me?" he asked ungently yet cringingly.

"Certainly I meant it," Dominic replied, "the proviso I have made being
respected."

"Yes, yes, of course--but what do you understand by fighting for me?
Money?"

Dominic had risen, too. He remained for a moment in thought.

"Within reasonable relation to my means, yes," he said.

"I only want my chance," the other asserted. "The rest will follow as a
matter of course. You would risk nothing, Mr. Iglesias. It would be an
investment, simply an investment. The play is not finished yet--I have
been too disheartened and disgusted recently to be able to work at it.
But it is great, I tell you, great. When it is done will you give me my
chance, and take a theatre for me and finance a couple of _matinées?_"

Again Dominic Iglesias thought for a moment, and again, driven by that
strange necessity of fellowship--though knowing all the while he was
putting his hand to a very questionable adventure--he replied in the
affirmative.




CHAPTER IX


On that same evening, and at the same hour at which Dominic Iglesias
bound himself to the practical assistance of a personally unsavoury and
professionally unsuccessful playwright, a conversation was in progress
between two persons of more exalted social station in the drawing-room
of a pleasant house in Chester Square. The said drawing-room,
mid-Victorian in aspect, was decorated in white and gold and
unaggressive green. The ground of the chintz was very white, sprinkled
over with bunches of shaded mauve roses unknown to horticulture. Lady
Constance Decies' tea-grown was white and mauve also. For she was still
in half-mourning for her father, the late Lord Fallowfeild, who had
died some eighteen months previously at a very venerable age, and with
a touching modesty as though his advent in another world might savour
of intrusion. He had always been a humble-minded man. He remained so to
the last.

The windows stood open to the balcony. And the effect of the woman, and
of the soft lights and colours surrounding her, was reposeful. For at
the age of fifty Lady Constance, though stately, was a mild and very
gentle person upon whom the push of the modern world had laid no hand.
All the active drama of her life had been crowded into a few weeks of
the early summer of her eighteenth year; since which, now remote,
period she had enjoyed a tranquil existence, happy in the love of her
husband and the care of her children. Her pretty brown hair was
beginning to turn grey upon the temples. Her eyes, set remarkably far
apart, had a certain vagueness and a great innocence of expression. She
was naturally timid, and cared but little for any society beyond that
of her near relations. To-night she was particularly content, mildly
radiant even, thanks to the presence of her favourite brother, the
present Lord Fallowfeild, and his avowed admiration of her younger
daughter--a maiden of nineteen, who stood before her, with shining
eyes, in all the delicate splendour of a spotless ball-dress.

"Yes, darling, you look very sweet," she said. "Just lean down--the
lace has got caught in the flowers on your _berthe_. That's right.
Don't keep your father too late."

"And in all things be discreet"--this from Lord Fallowfeild. "It's been
my motto through life, as your mother knows. And you couldn't have a
brighter example of the excellent results of it than myself.
Good-night, my dear. Enjoy yourself," and he patted her on the cheek,
avoiding the kiss which she in all innocence proffered him. "Pretty
child, Kathleen, uncommonly pretty," he continued as the door closed
behind the graceful figure. "It strikes me, Con, your girls have all
the good looks of the family in the younger generation, with the
exception of Violet Aldham. But she's getting pinched, a bit pinched
and witch-like. Then she makes up too much. I have no prejudice against
a woman's improving upon nature where nature's been niggardly. But it
is among the things that'll keep. It's a mistake to begin it too early.
In my opinion Violet has begun it too early--might quite well have
given herself another ten years' grace.--Maggie's girls are gawky, you
know; and, between ourselves, so terribly flat, poor things, both fore
and aft. Upon my word, I'm not surprised they don't marry."

"I am afraid Maggie feels it a good deal," said Lady Constance.
Satisfaction mingled with pity in her soul. The disabilities of other
women's children are never wholly distressing to a tender mother's
heart. "You see, she's so anxious the girls should not marry the
bishop's chaplains; and yet really they hardly see any other young men.
I think it is a very difficult position, that of a bishop's wife."

Lord Fallowfeild smiled, settling himself back in the corner of the
wide sofa and crossing his long legs. He had thought more deeply on a
good many subjects than the majority of his acquaintance supposed; with
the consequence that he occasionally surprised his fellow-peers by the
acuteness of his observations in debate. Lord Fallowfeild, it may be
added, took his recently acquired office of hereditary legislator with
a commendable mixture of humour and seriousness.

"Their position is an anomalous one," he said; "and an anomalous
position is inevitably a difficult one--ought to be SO; in my opinion.
But that's not to the point. We were talking, not about the episcopal
ladies, but about this little business of Kathleen's. So you believe
Lady Sokeington has views and intentions?"

"I know that she has. But you see, Shotover," Lady Constance went on,
returning to the name which that gentleman had rendered somewhat
notorious in earlier years by a record in sport, in debts, in amours,
and in irresistible sweetness of temper--"I want to be quite sure he is
really good. Because the affair has not gone very far yet and it might
be put a stop to--at least I hope and think it might--without making
darling Kathleen too dreadfully unhappy. You do believe he really is
good?"

Lord Fallowfeild leaned forward and rubbed a hardly perceptible atom of
fluff off his left trouser leg just above the ankle.

"My dear Con," he answered, "you are very charming, but you are a
trifle embarrassing, too, you know. Haven't you learned, even at this
time of day, that very few men in our world are good in a good woman's
sense of the word?"

Lady Constance's smooth forehead puckered into fine little lines.

"Shotover, dear," she said, "you're not getting embittered, I hope?"

"Me? Bless you, no, never in life!" he returned, smiling very
reassuringly at her. "Don't worry yourself under that head. I quarrel
with nobody and nothing, not even the consequences of my past
iniquities. It is a very just world, take it all round, and has been
kinder to me than I deserve."

"Oh! but you do nothing, you--you are what--you won't think me rude,
Shotover?--what the boys call 'very decent' now."

Lady Constance spoke hurriedly, her colour rising in the most engaging
manner.

"As decent as I know how, you dear soul," he said, taking her hand in
his. "But that makes no difference to one's knowledge of one's own
ways, in the past, or of the ways of other men."

"But Alaric Barking?"

"Neither better nor worse than the rest."

Then Lord Fallowfeild shut his small and beautiful mouth very tight, as
though he would be glad to avoid further cross-questioning. Lady
Constance's forehead remained puckered.

"It's dreadfully difficult when one's girls grow up," she said
plaintively. "One can be comfortable about them, poor darlings, and
enjoy them when they are in the nursery--even in the schoolroom, though
governesses are worrying. They know so much about quantities of
subjects which seem to me not to matter. One never refers to them in
ordinary conversation; and if one should be obliged to it is so easy to
ask somebody to tell one. And yet they manage to make me feel
dreadfully uncomfortable and ignorant because I know nothing about
them. But when they grow up----"

"Who, the governesses?" Lord Fallowfeild inquired. "I never supposed
they stood in need of that process--thought they started out of the egg
all finished, as you might say, and ran about at once like chickens."

"No, no, the girls, poor darlings," Lady Constance replied. "One does
get dreadfully anxious about them, Shotover, really one does--specially
if one has escaped something very frightening oneself and has been very
happy--lest they should fall in love with the wrong people, or lest
they should be anything which one did not know beforehand and then
everything should turn out dreadful. I should be so miserable. I don't
think I could bear it. I know it is wrong to say that, because if one
was really good, one would accept whatever God sent without murmuring.
So I could for myself, I think. In any case I should earnestly try to.
But for the children it is so much harder. If they were unhappy I
should feel ashamed of having had them--as if I'd done something
horribly selfish; because, you see, there can be nothing so delightful
as having children."

She looked at Lord Fallowfeild in the most pathetic manner, the corners
of her mouth a-shake. And he took her hand and held it again, touched
by the sincerity of her confused utterance, and the great mother-love
resident in her. Touched, perhaps, by the age-old problem of man and
maid, also.

"Dear little Con, dear little Con," he said, "I'm awfully sorry you
should be worried, but I'm afraid we've got to look facts in the face.
And it's no kindness for me to lie to you about these matters. I don't
pretend to say what's right or what's wrong; I only say what it is. We
can't make society, and the ways of it, all over again even to save
Kathleen a heartache. I don't want to seem a brute, but she must just
take her chance along with the rest of you. Marriage always has been a
confounded uncertain business, and will always remain so, I suppose.
The sort of remedies excited persons suggest to mitigate the dangers of
it are a good deal worse than the disease, in my opinion. Every woman
has to take her chance. Every man has to take his, too, you know--and
the chance strikes some of us as such an uncommonly poor one, that,
upon my honour, it seems safest to wash one's hands of it altogether."

"But you're not unhappy, Shotover, dear? You're not lonely?" Lady
Constance inquired anxiously.

"Abominably so sometimes, Con. But I manage, oh! I manage. I have my
consolations"--he smiled at her, perhaps a trifle shamefacedly. "But
now about Kathleen," he went on, "as I say, she must take her chance
along with the rest of you, poor little dear. After all, you took your
chance when you married Decies, and it has not turned out so badly, you
know."

Lady Constance became radiant once more, as some mild-shining summer
moon emerging from behind temporarily obscuring clouds.

"Oh! but then," she said, "of course that was so entirely different."

Lord Fallowfeild patted her hand, his head bent, looking at her
somewhat merrily.

"Was it, my dear, was it?--I wonder," he said.

She withdrew her head with a certain dignity. Notwithstanding her
softness and tenderness, there were occasions--even with those she
loved best--when Lady Constance could delicately mark her displeasure.

"I think you are a little embittered, Shotover," she asserted.

He leaned back, still smiling, and shaking his head at her.

"Old and wise--unpleasantly old, and not quite such a fool as I used to
be, that's all," he answered.

For a time there was silence, both brother and sister thinking their
own thoughts. Then the latter spoke. Like many gentle persons, she was
persistent. She always had been so.

"I should be so grateful if you would tell me, because I think I ought
to know, and then I should try to turn the course of darling Kathleen's
affections before it all becomes too pronounced. Is there any
entanglement, anything amounting to what one calls an impediment,
in--well--you understand--against Alaric Barking?"

Lord Fallowfeild got up, took a turn across the room, came back, and
stood in front of her.

"I wish you wouldn't, Con," he said. "Upon my soul, I wish you
wouldn't. It's a nasty thing for an old man, who has gone the pace in
his day pretty thoroughly, to give away a lad who may have made a slip
just at the start, and who is doing his best to get his feet again and
run straight. Alaric Barking's a good fellow. I like him. I never have
been and never shall be partial to that family. Your sister Louisa
cried up their virtues and their confounded solvency, in the old days,
till she made them a positive nuisance. She's not a happy way of
inculcating a moral economic lesson, hasn't Louisa. But I own I'm fond
of this boy. He's far the best of the whole lot--gentlemanlike, and a
sportsman, and good-looking--unusually so for one of that family--and,
my dear, he's downright honestly in love with Kathleen. I've watched
him--did so when he was down at Ranelagh one day last month with her
and Victoria Sokeington--and I know the real thing when I see it."

"But--but, I am afraid, Shotover, you mean me to understand there is
some impediment?" Lady Constance repeated.

"Oh! well, hang it all, I'm awfully sorry, but if you are determined to
have it, Connie, perhaps there is. Only for heaven's sake don't be in
too much of a hurry. Between ourselves, I happen to know the boy's
doing his best to shake himself free in an honourable manner. So don't
rush the business. Like the dear tender-hearted creature you are, have
a little mercy on the poor beggar. Let the whole affair drift a little.
It may straighten out."

Lady Constance meditated for a minute or so.

"It's very dreadful that there should be any impediment," she said.

"I'll back Alaric to agree with you there," Lord Fallowfeild answered.

"You'll do what you can, Shotover, won't you, to help Kathleen? I never
forget how you helped me once!"

Lord Fallowfeild's handsome face expressed rather broad amusement.

"I'm afraid the two cases are hardly parallel, my dear," he said.




CHAPTER X


"The play's on the other side, the crowd's on the other side, all the
fun's on the other side, and I am on this side with nothing more lively
than you, you little shivering idiot, for company."

Poppy St. John drew the spaniel's long silky ears through her fingers
slowly.

"I am bored, Cappadocia," she said, with a yawn which she made not the
slightest effort to stifle, "bored right through to my very marrow. Oh
dear, oh dear, oh dear, how I do wish something would happen!"

Poppy sat, propped up with scarlet silk cushions, in a cane deck-chair,
on the white-railed balcony upon which the first-floor bedroom windows
opened. Around her were strewn illustrated magazines and ladies'
papers; but unfortunately the stories in the former appeared to her
every bit as silly as the fashion-plates in the latter. Both had
equally little to do with life as the ordinary flesh and blood human
being lives it. She was filled with a rebellious sense of the banality
of her surroundings this afternoon. Even from her coign of vantage upon
the balcony, whence wide prospects disclosed themselves, everything
looked foolish, pointless, of the nature of an unpardonably stale joke.

The said balcony, divided into separate compartments by the
interposition of wooden barriers, extended the whole length of the
terrace of twenty-seven houses. And these were all precisely alike,
with white wood and stucco "enrichments," as the technical phrase has
it. Cheap stained and leaded glass adorned the upper panels of the
twenty-seven front doors, which were approached by twenty-seven flights
of steps--thus securing a measure of light and air to the twenty-seven
basements. The front doors were set in couples, alternating with
couples of bay windows. There was a determination of cheap smartness, a
smirking self-consciousness about the little houses, a suggestion of
having put on their best frocks and high-heeled shoes and standing very
much on tiptoe to attract attention. The balconies, narrow where the
upper bays encroached on them, wide where the house fronts were
recessed above the twin front doors, broke forth into a garland of
flower-boxes. Cascades of pink ivy-leaf geranium, creeping-jenny, and
nasturtiums backed by white or yellow Paris daisies, flowed outward
between the white ballusters and masked the edge of the woodwork. The
effect, though pretty, was not quite satisfactory--being suggestive of
millinery, of an over-trimmed summer hat.

Immediately below was the roadway, bordered by an asphalt pavement on
either side, then the high impenetrable oak paling, which had baffled
Dominic Iglesias' maiden effort at participation in the amusements of
the rich. From Poppy's balcony, however, the palings offered no
impediment to observation. All the green expanse of the smaller
polo-ground was visible. So was the whole height of the grove of
majestic elms on the right and the back of the club house; and, and the
left, between _massifs_ of shrubbery, a vista of lawns sloping towards
the river peopled by a sauntering crowd.

It was upon this last that Poppy directed her gaze. To the naked eye
the units composing it showed as vertical lines of grey, brown, and
black, blotted with bright delicate colour, and splashed here and there
with white, the whole mingling, uniting, breaking into fresh
combinations kaleidoscope fashion. Through the opera-glasses figures of
men, women, and horses detached themselves, becoming quaintly distinct,
neat as toys, an assemblage of elegant highly finished marionnettes.
There was a fascination in watching the movement of these brilliant,
clear-cut silent little things upon that amazingly verdant carpet of
grass. But it was a fascination which, for Poppy, had by now worn
somewhat thin. The interest proved too far away, too impersonal. Indeed
it may be questioned whether any who have not within themselves large
store of resignation, or of hope, can look on at gaiety, in which they
have no share, without first sadness and then pretty lively irritation.
And of those two most precious commodities, resignation and hope, Poppy
had but limited reserve stock at present. So she pulled the little
dog's ears rather hard and lamented:

"Oh! my good gracious me, if only something would happen!"

Then, the words hardly out of her mouth, she shot the much-enduring
Cappadocia off her lap and, restoring her elbows on the rails, leaned
right out over the balcony.

"Come here, dear beautiful lunatic, come here," she cried. "For pity's
sake don't pass by!"

Perhaps fortunately this very unconventional invitation was lost upon
Dominic Iglesias, soberly crossing the road with due observance of the
eccentricities of the drivers of motor-cars and riders of bicycles.
Looking up, he was aware of a vision quite sufficiently indicative of
welcome, without added indiscretion of words.--The white balustrade,
the trailing fringe of nasturtiums, succulent leaves and orange-scarlet
blossoms; the woman's bust and shoulders in her string-coloured lace
gown, her small face, curiously vivid in effect, capped by the heavy
masses of her black hair, her singular eyes full of light, the red of
her lips and tinge of stationary pink in her cheeks supplemented by a
glow of quick excitement. A few weeks ago the ascetic in Iglesias might
have taken alarm. Now it was different. He had his idea, and, walking
in the strength of it, dared adventure himself in neighbourhoods
otherwise slightly questionable.

Five minutes later Poppy advanced across the little drawing-room to
meet him.

"Well," she said, "of course you might have come sooner. But, equally
of course, you might never have come at all, so I won't quarrel with
you about the delay, though I would like you to know it has worried me
a good deal."

"Has it? I am sorry for that," Dominic answered gravely.

"Yes, be sorry, be sorry," she repeated. "It is comfortable to hear you
say so."

She looked at him with the utmost frankness, took his hand and led him
to a settee filling in the right angle between the fireplace and the
double doors at the back of the room.

"Sit down," she said, "and let us talk. Have another cushion--so--and
if you're good I'll give you tea presently. And understand, you needn't
be careful of yourself. I'll play perfectly fair with you. I've been
thinking it all out during this time you didn't come; and I never go
back on my word once given. So, look here, you needn't account for
yourself in any way. I don't even want to know your name--specially I
don't want to know that. It might localise you, and I don't want to
have you localised. Directly a person is localised it takes away their
restfulness to one. One begins to see just all the places where they
belong to somebody else, notice-boards struck up everywhere warning one
to keep off the grass. And that's a nuisance. It raises Old Nick in
one, and makes one long to commit all manner of wickedness which would
never have entered one's head otherwise."

Poppy held her hands palm to palm between her knees, glancing at
Dominic Iglesias now and again sideways as she spoke. The bodice of her
dress, cut slightly _en coeur_, showed the nape of her neck, and the
whole of her throat, which was smooth and rounded though rather long.
Her make altogether was that not uncommon to London girls of the lower
middle-class: small-boned and possibly anæmic, but prettily moulded,
and with an attraction of over-civilisation as of hot-house-grown
plants. Just now her head seemed bowed down by the weight of her dark
hair, as she sat gathered together, making herself small as a child
will when concentrating its mind to the statement of some serious
purpose.

"I've knocked about a lot," she went on. "It's right you should know
that. And there's not very much left to tell me about a number of
things not usually set down in conversation books designed for
_débutants_. But just on that account I may be rather useful to you in
some ways.--Don't go and be offended now, there's a dear, good man,"
she added coaxingly. "Because judging by what you told me the other
day, there's no doubt that, under some heads, you are very much of a
_débutant_."

"I suppose I am," Iglesias said slowly. It was very strange to him to
find himself in so sudden and close an intimacy with this at once so
wise and so artificial woman creature. But he had his idea. Moreover,
increasingly he trusted her.

"Of course you are," she asserted. "That's just where the beauty of it
all comes in. You're the veriest infant. One has only to look into your
face to see that.--Don't go and freeze up now. You belong to another
order of doctrine and practice to that current in contemporary society."

Poppy gazed at the floor, still making herself small, the palms of her
hands pressed together between her knees.

"And that's just why you can be useful to me, awfully useful, if you
choose--I don't mean money, business, anything of the kind. I'm
perfectly competent to manage my own affairs, thank you. But you're
good for me, somehow. You rest me."

She began to rock herself gently backwards and forwards, but without
taking the heels of her shoes off the ground.

"Yes, you rest me, you rest me," she repeated.

"I am glad," Iglesias said. He felt soberly pleased, thankful almost.

Again Poppy glanced at him sideways.

"Yes, I believe you are," she said. "And that shows things have
happened to you--in you, more likely--since we last met. You have come
on a great piece."

"I doubt if I have come on, so much as gone back, to influences of long
ago," he answered; "to things which had been overlaid by the dust of my
working years almost to the point of obliteration."

"Was it pleasant to go back?" Poppy asked.

"Not at all. The going was painful. It required some courage to brush
off the dust."

"It usually does require courage--at least that's my experience--to
brush off the dust."

Dominic Iglesias made no immediate answer. He was a little startled at
his companion's acute reading of him, a little touched by her
confidence. Her words seemed to suggest the possibility of a
relationship which fitted in admirably with the development of his
idea. He sat looking away across the room, and, doing so, became aware
that the said room possessed unexpected characteristics, calculated to
elucidate his impressions of its owner's character. It was a man's room
rather than a woman's, innocent of furbelows and frills. Two low, wide
settees, well furnished with cushions and upholstered in dark
yellowish-red tapestry, fitted into the corners on either side the
double doors. A couple of large armchairs and a revolving book-table
occupied the centre of the room. An upright piano, in an ebonised case,
draped across the back with an Indian phulkari--discs of looking-glass
set in coarsely worked yellow eyelet holes forming the border of
it--stood at right angles to the wall just short of the bay window. In
the window, placed slant-wise, was a carved black oak writing-table, a
long row of photographs stuck up against the back shelf of it. The
walls were hung with a set of William Nicolson's prints, strong, dark,
distinct, slightly sinister in effect; a fine etching of Jean François
Millet's _Gleaners_; and, in noticeable contrast to this last, a
mezzotint of Romney's picture of Lady Hamilton spinning. Upon the
book-table were a silver ash-tray and cigarette-box. The air was
unquestionably impregnated with the odour of tobacco, which the burning
of scent-sticks quite failed to dissemble.

While Mr. Iglesias thus noted the details of his surroundings, his
companion observed him, closely, intently. Suddenly she flung herself
back against the piled-up cushions.

"Let the dust lie, let it lie," she cried, almost shrilly. And as
Dominic turned to her, surprised at her vehemence, she added, "Yes,
it's safest so. Let it lie till it grows thick, carpeting all the
surface, so that, treading on it, one's footsteps are muffled, making
no sound!"

Poppy jumped up, crossed swiftly to the writing-table, swept the long
row of photographs together and pushed them into a drawer.

"There you go, face downwards, every man Jack of you," she said. "And,
for all I care, there you may stay."

Then she turned round, confronting Dominic Iglesias, who had risen
also, her head carried high, her teeth set.

"You may not grasp the connection of ideas--I don't the very least see
how you should, and I've no extra special wish that you should. But you
must just take my word for it that's one way of thickening the dust, in
my particular case, and not half a bad way either!"

She pushed the heavy masses of her hair up from her forehead, crossed
the little room again and stood before Iglesias smiling, her hands
clasped behind her back.

"Yes, you rest me," she said, "you do, even more than I expected. I
wanted awfully to see you; and yet I was half afraid if I did we
mightn't pull the thing off. But we are going to pull it off, aren't
we?"

This direct appeal demanded a direct answer; and Iglesias, looking down
at her, felt nerved to a certain steadiness of resolve.

"Yes, we are," he said gravely. "That, at least, is my purpose. I have
very few friends. I should value a new one." Then he added, with a
certain hesitancy, "I am glad you are not disappointed."

"Ah! you have come on--not a question about it," Poppy cried. "Sit down
again. You needn't go yet. And we are through with disturbances for
this afternoon anyhow. An anti-cyclone, as the weather reports put it,
is extending over all our coasts. I feel quite happy. Let me enjoy the
anti-cyclone while it lasts--and I'll give you your tea."

But of that tea Dominic Iglesias was fated not to drink. A ring at the
bell, a parley at the front door, followed by the advent of an elderly
parlourmaid bearing a card on a small lacquer tray.

"His lordship says if you're engaged he could wait a little, ma'am. But
he wants particularly to see you to-day."

Poppy took the card, glanced at it, and then at Dominic Iglesias.

"I'm afraid, I'm awfully afraid I shall have to let you go," she said.
She took both his hands, and holding them, without pressure but with a
great friendliness, went on: "Don't be offended, or you'll make me
miserable. But he's an old friend; and he's been a perfect brick to
me--stood by me through all my worst luck. I can't send him away. You
won't be off ended?"

"No," Iglesias said.

"And you will come again? You make me feel all smooth and good. You
promise you'll come?"

"Yes," Iglesias said.

In the narrow passage a tall, eminently well-dressed middle-aged
gentleman stood aside to let him pass. Dominic Iglesias received the
impression of a very handsome person, whose possible insolence of
bearing received agreeable modification, thanks to the expression of
kindly humorous eyes and a notably beautiful mouth.

Upon the centre table of the square first-floor sitting-room at Cedar
Lodge a note awaited Mr. Iglesias, addressed in George Lovegrove's neat
business hand.

"Dear old friend," it ran--"the wife asks you to take supper with us
to-morrow night. Step across as early as you like. My cousin, Miss
Serena Lovegrove, is paying us a visit. Yours faithfully, G. L.--N. B.
Come as you are: no ceremony. G. L."




CHAPTER XI


"Hullo, girlie," called the red and green parrot, as it helped itself
up the side of its zinc cage with beak as well as claws.

Serena Lovegrove had opened the door suddenly. Then, seeing that Mr.
Iglesias alone occupied the room, neither her host nor hostess being
present, she paused in the doorway, a large floppy yellow silk work-bag
in her hands, undecided whether to retreat or to proceed. And it was
thus that the bird, discovering her advent, announced it, while the
pupils of his hard, round yellowish grey eyes dilated and
contracted--"snapped," as Serena would have said--maliciously.

Serena was a tall, elegant, faded woman, dressed in black, her little
upright head balanced upon a long thin stalk of neck. Though undeniably
faded, there was, as now seen in the quiet evening light, a suggestion
of youthfulness about her. He brown eyes, pretty though rather small,
snapped even as did those of the parrot. Excitement--to-night she was
very much excited--invariably produced in Serena an effect of clutching
at her long-departed girlhood, an effect sufficiently pathetic in the
case of a woman well on in the forties. And it was precisely this
ineffectual throw-back to a Serena of seventeen or eighteen which lent
a sharp edge of irony to the strident salutations of the parrot, as it
called out again:

"Hullo, girlie! Polly's own pet girlie," then with a prolonged and
ear-piercing whistle:--"Hi, four-wheeler! girlie's going out." And
hoarsely, with a growl in its throat: "Move on there, stoopid, can't
yer? Shut the door."

During the delivery of these final admonitions Mr. Iglesias had
recognised the shadowy figure standing on the threshold and advanced.
This decided Serena. Still twisting the ribbons of the yellow work-bag
round her thin fingers, she drifted into the room.

"I think I have had the pleasure of meeting you once or twice before,
Miss Lovegrove," Dominic said. His manner was specially gentle and
courtly, for he could not but feel the poor lady was at a disadvantage,
owing to the very articulate indiscretions of the parrot.

"Oh! yes," Serena answered. "Certainly we have met. But you are wrong
as to the number of times. It is more than once or twice. Five times, I
think; or it may have been six. No, it is five, because I remember you
were expected, in the evening, the day before I went home the winter
before last; and at the last moment you were unable to come. That would
have made six. Now it is only five."

"You have an excellent memory," Iglesias said. "It is kind of you to
remember so clearly."

"I wonder if it is--I mean, I wonder whether it is kind," Serena
rejoined.

She was quite innocent of any intention of sarcasm. But her mind, like
those of so many unoccupied, and consequently self-occupied persons,
was addicted to speculation of a minor and vacuous sort. She was also
liable--as such persons often are--to mistake cavilling for spirit and
wit--a most tedious error!

"Still you are right in saying I have a good memory," she added.
"People generally observe that. But then I was always taught it was
rude to forget. Forgetfulness is the result of inattention. At school I
never had any difficulty in learning by heart."

"You must have found that both a useful and pleasant talent."

"Perhaps," Serena replied negligently. She was determined not to commit
herself, having arrived at the conclusion that Mr. Iglesias' address
was too civil. "It was bad manners of him not to remember how often we
had met," she said to herself, "and now he is trying to pass it off.
But that won't do!" Serena had many and distinct views on the subject
of manner and manners. She was never certain that civility did not
argue a defect of sincerity. She agreed with herself to think that over
again later. Meanwhile she would carefully remark Mr. Iglesias. "If he
is insincere, as I fear he is, he is sure to betray it in other ways.
Then I shall be on my guard." Forewarned is, of course, forarmed, and
Serena felt very acute. Though against exactly what she was taking such
elaborate precautions, it would have been difficult for her, or for
anyone else, to have stated. However, just now it was incumbent upon
her to make conversation. As is the way with persons not very fertile
in ideas, she had recourse to the simple expedient of asking a leading
question.

"Are you fond of animals?" she inquired.

"I am afraid I have very little knowledge of animals," Iglesias replied.

Serena laughed dryly. This was so transparent a subterfuge.

"What a very odd answer!" she said. "Because everybody must really know
whether they like animals or not."

"I am afraid I stand by myself then, a solitary exception. I have had
little or nothing to do with animals, and have therefore had no
opportunity of discovering whether they attract me or not."

"How very odd!" Serena repeated.

She moved across to the centre-table where Mr. Lovegrove's books of
picture postcards, the miscellaneous consequences of many charity
bazaars, and kindred aesthetic treasures reposed, and deposited her
work-bag in their company. Her movement revived the attention of the
parrot, who had been nodding on its perch.

"Poor old girlie, take a brandy and soda? Kiss and be friends.
Good-night, all," it murmured hoarsely, half asleep.

"If your question bore reference to that particular animal, I stand in
no doubt as to my sentiments," Dominic remarked. "I am anything but
fond of it. I think it an odious bird."

"Ah! you see you do know," Serena exclaimed. "I was sure you did." She
felt justified in her suspicion of his sincerity. "But nobody would
agree with you, Mr. Iglesias, because of course it is really a very
clever parrot. They very seldom learn to say so many things."

"How fortunate!" Dominic permitted himself to ejaculate.

"I don't see why you should say it is fortunate."

"Do not its remarks strike you as somewhat impertinent and intrusive?"

"I wonder if an animal can be impertinent," Serena said reflectively.

But here to her vexation, for it appeared to her that she had just
started a really interesting subject of discussion, Mrs. Lovegrove
bustled into the room.

"Well, Mr. Iglesias," she began, "I am sure I am very delighted to see
you, and so will Georgie be. He was remarking only yesterday we don't
seem to see so much of you as we used to do. He's just a little behind
time, is Georgie, having been kept by the dear vicar at a meeting about
the Church Workers' Social Evenings Guild at the Mission Room in Little
Bethesda Street. You wouldn't know where that is, Mr. Iglesias--though
I can't help hoping you will some day--but Serena knows, don't you,
Serena? It's where Susan--her elder sister, Miss Lovegrove"--this aside
to Dominic--"gave an address once to the members of the Society for the
Conversion of the Jews."

"No doubt I remember; but Susan is always giving addresses somewhere,"
Serena said loftily.

"And very good and kind of her it is to give addresses," Mrs. Lovegrove
rejoined. "Even the dear vicar says what a remarkable gift she has as a
speaker, and there's no question as to the worth of his praise."

"I wonder if it is--I mean I wonder if it is good and kind of Susan to
give addresses," Serena remarked. "Because of course she enjoys giving
them. Susan likes to have a number of people listening to her."

"But if the object is a noble one?"--this from Mrs. Lovegrove, a little
nonplussed and put about.

"Still, if you enjoy doing anything, how can it be good and kind to do
it?" Serena said argumentatively. "Susan is very fond of publicity. I
think people very often deceive themselves about their own motives."

She looked meaningly at Dominic Iglesias as she spoke. And he looked
back at her gravely and kindly, though with a slightly amused smile.
His thoughts had travelled away--they had done so pretty frequently
during the last twenty-four hours--to the smirking self-conscious
little house on the verge of Barnes Common. Unpromising though it had
appeared outwardly, yet within it he believed he had found a friend--a
friend who was also an enigma. Perhaps, as he now reflected, all women
are enigmas. Certainly they are amazingly different. He thought of
Poppy. He looked at Serena. Yes, doubtless they all are enigmas;
only--might Heaven forgive him the discourtesy--all are not enigmas
equally well worth finding out.

George Lovegrove arrived. Supper, a somewhat heavy and hybrid meal,
followed--"all comfortable and friendly," as Mrs. Lovegrove described
it, "no ceremony and fal-lals, but everything put down on the table so
that you could see it and please yourself."

Serena, however, was difficult to please. She picked daintily at the
food on her plate. Her host observed her with solicitude.

"Do take a little more," he said, in an anxious aside, Mrs. Lovegrove
being safely engaged in conversation with Mr. Iglesias, "or I shall
begin to be nervous lest we aren't offering you quite what you like."

But Serena was obdurate.

"Pray don't mind, George," she said. "You know I never eat much. I am
quite different from Susan, for instance. She always has a large
appetite, and so have all her friends. Low Church people always have, I
think. But I never care to eat a great deal, especially in hot weather."

Serena was really very glad indeed to come to London just now. Still,
there were self-respecting decencies to be observed, specially in the
presence of another guest. Relationship does not necessarily imply
social equality; and, as Serena reminded herself, the family always had
felt that poor George had married beneath him. Therefore it was well to
keep the fact of her own superior refinement well in view. In the case
of good George Lovegrove this was, however, a work of supererogation.
For he had a, to himself, positively embarrassing respect for Serena's
gentility--embarrassing because at moments it came painfully near
endangering the completeness of his consideration for "the wife's
feelings." The two ladies frequently differed upon matters of taste and
etiquette, with the result that the good man's guileless breast was
torn by conflicting emotions. For had not Serena's father been a
General Officer of the Indian army? And had not Serena herself and her
elder sister Susan--a person of definite views and commanding
character--long been resident at Slowby in Midlandshire, an inland
watering-place of acknowledged fashion? It followed that her
pronouncements on social questions were necessarily final. Yet to
uphold her judgment, as against that of the wife, was to risk
mortifying the latter. And to mortify the wife would be to act as a
heartless scoundrel. Hence situations, for George Lovegrove, difficult
to the point of producing profuse perspiration.

That night Serena prepared for rest with remarkable deliberation. Clad
in a blue and white striped cotton dressing-gown, she sat long at her
toilet-table. And all the time she wondered--a far-reaching, mazelike,
elaborately intricate and wholly inconclusive wonder. Hers was a nature
which suffered perpetual solicitation from possible alternatives,
hearing warning voices from the vague, delusive regions of the might-be
or might-have-been. She had never grasped the rudimentary but very
important truth that only that which actually is in the least matters.
And so to arrive at what is, with all possible despatch--in so far as
such arriving is practicable--and then to go forward, comprises the
whole duty of the sane human being. Par from this, Serena's mind
forever fitted batlike in the half-darkness of innumerable small
prejudices and ignorances. She moved, as do so many women of her class,
in a twilight, embryonic world, untouched alike by the splendour and
terror of living.

Nevertheless, on this particular occasion, as she brushed her hair and
inserted the tortoise-shell curling-pins which should secure
to-morrow's decorative effects, she felt almost daring and dangerous.
She wondered whether she had really enjoyed the evening or not; whether
she had held her own and shown independence and spirit. She laboured
under the quaint early-Victorian notion that, in the presence of
members of the opposite sex, a woman is called upon always to play
something of a part. She should advance, so to speak, and then retreat;
provoke interest by a studied indifference; yield a little, only to
become more elegantly fugitive. It may be doubted whether these wiles
have even been a very successful adjunct to feminine charms. But in the
case of so negative and colourless a creature as Serena, they were
pathetically devoid of result. Play a part industriously as she might,
the majority of her audience was wholly unaware that she was, in point
of fact, playing anything at all! They might think her a little
capricious, a little foolish, but that there was intention or purpose
in her pallid flightiness passed the bounds of imagination. Never mind,
if the audience had no sense of the position, Serena had, and she
enjoyed it. Excitement possessed her, and her eyes snapped even yet as,
thinking it all over, she fastened the curlers in her hair.

She wondered whether George and Rhoda--how intensely she disliked the
name Rhoda!--had any special reason for asking her just now, and
talking so much about Mr. Iglesias, or whether it was a coincidence.

"Of course it is not of the slightest importance to me whether they
have or not," she reflected. "I think it would be rather an
impertinence if they had. Still, I think I had better find out; but
without letting Rhoda suspect, of course. If you give her any
encouragement Rhoda is inclined to go too far and say what is rather
indelicate. I always have thought Rhoda had a rather vulgar mind. I
wonder if poor George feels that? I believe he does, before me. Once or
twice to-night he was very nervous. How dreadfully coarse poor Rhoda's
skin is getting! I wonder if Rhoda has given Susan a hint, and if that
was what made Susan so gracious about my leaving home? But I don't
believe she did--I mean that Susan suspected that George and Rhoda had
any particular reason for inviting me. I wonder if I shall ever make
Susan see that I am not a cipher? Of course if George and Rhoda really
have any particular reason, and Susan comes to know it, that will show
her that other people do not consider me a cipher. I wonder what most
people would think of Mr. Iglesias? Of course he has only been a bank
clerk; but then so has George. Only then he is a foreigner, and that
makes a difference. I wonder whether, if anything came of it, Susan
would make his being a foreigner an objection?"

But this was growing altogether too definite and concrete. With a sort
of mental squeak Serena's thought flitted into twilight and embryonic
regions.

"I think if they have any particular reason, it is rather scheming of
George and Rhoda. I wonder if it is nice of them? If they have, I think
it is rather deceitful. I wonder if they have said anything to Mr.
Iglesias?"

Serena, with the aid of a curling-pin, was controlling the short fuzzy
little hairs just at the nape of her neck; and this last wonder proved
so absorbing a one that she remained, head bent and fingers aimlessly
fiddling with the bars of the curler, till it suddenly occurred to her
that she was getting quite stiff.

"If they have, I think it is very presuming of them," she continued
wrathfully, stretching her arms, for they ached--"very presuming. How
glad I am I was on my guard. I wonder if they saw I was on my guard? I
believe George did. I wonder if that helped to make him nervous?"

Serena fastened in the last of the curlers. There was no excuse for
sitting up any longer; yet she lingered.

"I must be more on my guard than ever," she said.

Meanwhile Dominic Iglesias, after sitting in the dining-room with his
old friend while the latter smoked a last pipe, made his way across the
Green in the deepening mystery of the summer night. The sky was
moonless; and at the zenith, untouched by the upward streaming light of
the great city, the stars showed fair and bright. A nostalgia of wide
untenanted spaces, of far horizons, of emotions at once intimate and
rooted in things eternal, was upon him. But of Serena Lovegrove, it
must be admitted, he thought not one little bit.




CHAPTER XII


Only one of the trees from which Cedar Lodge derives its name was still
standing. This lonely giant, sombre exile from Libanus, overshadowed
all that remained of the formerly extensive garden and sensibly
darkened the back of the house. Its foliage, spread like a deep pile
carpet upon the wide horizontal branches, was worn and sparse, showing
small promise of self-renewal. Yet though starved by the exhausted
soil, and clogged by soots from innumerable chimneys, it remained
majestic, finely decorative as some tree of metal, of age-old bronze
roughened by a greenness of deep-eating rust. From the first moment of
his acquaintance with Cedar Lodge it had been to Dominic Iglesias an
object of attraction, even of sympathy. For he recognised in it
something stoical, an unmoved dignity and lofty indifference to the
sordid commonplace of its surroundings. It made no concessions to
adverse circumstances, but remained proudly itself, owning for sole
comrade the Wind--that most mysterious of all created things, unseen,
untamed, mateless, incalculable. The wind gave it voice, gave it even a
measure of mobility, as it swept through the labyrinth of dry
unfruitful branches and awoke a husky music telling of far-distant
times and places, making a shuddering and stirring as of the resurgence
of long-forgotten hope and passion.

When Dominic entered into residence at Cedar Lodge, a pair of stout
mauve-brown wood-pigeons--migrants from the pleasant elms of Holland
Park--had haunted the tree. But they being, for all their dolorous
cooings, birds of a lusty, not to say truculent, habit, grew weary of
its persistent solemnity of aspect. So, at least, Dominic judged. He
had been an interested spectator of the love-makings, quarrels, and
reconciliations of these comely neighbours from his bedroom window
daily while dressing. But one fine spring morning he saw them fly away
and never saw them fly back again. Clearly they had removed themselves
to less solemn quarters, leaving the great tree, save for fugitive
visitations from its comrade the wind, to solitary meditation within
the borders of its narrow prison-place.

Besides presenting in itself an object altogether majestical, the cedar
performed a practical office whereby it earned Iglesias' gratitude. For
its dark interposing bulk effectually shut off the view of an
aggressively new rawly red steam laundry, with shiny slate roofs and a
huge smoke-belching chimney to it, which, to the convulsive disgust of
the gentility of the eastern side of Trimmer's Green, had had the
unpardonable impertinence to get itself erected in an adjacent street.
It followed that when, one wet evening, yellow-headed little Mr. Farge
had advised himself to speak slightingly of the cedar tree, Iglesias
was prepared to defend it, if necessary, with some warmth.

The conversation had ranged round the subject of the hour, namely, the
possibility--as yet in the estimation of most persons an incredible
one--of war with the Boer Republics, when the young man indulged in a
playful aside addressed to Miss Hart, at whose right hand he was seated.

"If I could find fault with anything belonging to the lady at the head
of the table," he said, "it would be the gloomy old party looking in at
these back windows."

"What, the dear old cedar tree! Never, Mr. Farge!" protested Eliza.

"Yes, it would, though," he insisted, "when, as tonight, it is drip,
drip, dripping all over the shop. No touch of Sunny Jim about him, is
these now, Bert?"--this to the devoted Worthington sitting immediately
opposite to him on Miss Hart's left.

"Truly there is not, if I may venture so far," the other young
gentleman responded, playing up obediently. "And if anything could give
me and Charlie a fit of the blues, I believe that old fellow would in
rainy weather."

"Makes you think of the cemetery, does it not now, Bert?"

"You have hit it. Paddington--not the station though, Charlie, just
starting for a cosey little trip with your best girl up the river."

"For shame, Mr. Worthington," Eliza protested again, giggling.

"Suggestive of the end of all week-ends, in short," de Courcy Smyth,
who contrary to his custom was present at dinner that evening, put in
snarlingly. "One last trip up the River of Death for you, with a ticket
marked not transferrable, eh, Farge? Then an oblong hole in the reeking
blue clay, silence and worms."

His tone was spiteful to the point of commanding attention. A hush fell
on the company, broken only by the drifting sob of the rain through the
branches of the great cedar. Mr. Farge went perceptibly pale. Mrs.
Porcher sighed and turned her fine eyes up to the ceiling. Iglesias
looked curiously at the speaker. Eliza Hart was the first to find voice.

"Pray, Mr. Smyth," she said, "don't be so very unpleasant. You're
enough to give one the goose-skin all over."

"I am sorry I have offended," he answered sullenly. "But I beg leave to
call attention to the fact that I did not start this subject. I was
rather interested in the previous discussion, which gave an opportunity
of intelligent conversation not habitual among us. Farge is responsible
for the interruption, and for the cemeteries, and consequently for my
comment. Still, I am sorry I have offended."

He shifted his position, glancing uneasily first at his hostess, and
then at Dominic Iglesias, who sat opposite him in the place of honour
at that lady's right hand.

"You have not offended, Mr. Smyth," Mrs. Porcher declared graciously.
"And no doubt it is well for us all to be reminded of death and burial
at times. Though some of us hardly need reminding"--again she sighed.
"We carry the thought of them about with us always." And she turned her
fine eyes languidly upon Mr. Iglesias.

"My poor sweet Peachie," the kind-hearted Eliza murmured, under her
breath.

"But at meals, perhaps, a lighter vein is more suitable, Mr. Smyth,"
Mrs. Porcher continued. "At table the thought of death does seem rather
disheartening, does it not? But about our poor old cedar tree now, Mr.
Farge? You were not seriously proposing to have it removed?"

"Well, strictly between ourselves, I am really half afraid I actually
was."

"You forget it sheltered my childhood. It is associated with all my
past."

"Can a rosebud have a past?" Farge cried, coming up to the surface
again with a bounce, so to speak.

Mrs. Porcher smiled, shook her head in graceful reproof, and turned
once more to Dominic.

"I think we should all like to know how you feel about it, Mr.
Iglesias," she said. "Do you wish the poor old tree removed?"

"On the contrary, I should greatly regret it's being cut down," he
answered. "It would be a loss to me personally, for I have always taken
a pleasure both in the sound and the sight of it. But that is a minor
consideration."

"You must allow me to differ from that opinion," Mrs. Porcher remarked,
with gentle emphasis. "We can never forget, can we, Eliza, who is our
oldest guest? Mr. Iglesias' opinion must ever carry weight in all which
concerns Cedar Lodge."

Here Farge and Worthington made round eyes at one another, while de
Courcy Smyth shuffled his feet under the table. He had received a
disquieting impression.

"Oh! of course, Peachie, dear," Miss Hart responded. She hugged herself
with satisfaction. "The darling looks more bonny than ever," she
reflected. "To-night what animation! What tact! She seems to have come
out so lately, since that Serena Lovegrove has been stopping over the
way. Not that there could be any rivalry between her and that poor
thread-paper of a thing!"

Dominic Iglesias, however, received his hostess' pretty speeches with a
calm which turned the current of the ardent Eliza's thoughts, causing
her to refer, mentally, to the degree of emotion which might be
predicated of monuments, mountains, stone elephants, and kindred
objects.

"You are very kind," he said. "But on grounds far more important than
those of any private sentiment the cutting down of the cedar calls for
careful consideration. I am afraid you would find it a serious loss to
the beauty of your property. What the house loses in light, it
certainly gains in distinction and interest from the presence of the
tree."

"Yes," Mrs. Porcher returned, folding her plump pink hands upon the
edge of the table and looking down modestly. "It does speak of family
perhaps."

"And in your case, dear, it speaks nothing more than the truth," Eliza
declared. "Just as well a certain gentleman should reckon with
Peachie's real position," she said to herself--"specially with that
stuck-up Serena Lovegrove cat-and-mousing about on the other side of
the Green. It does not take a Solomon to see what she's after!"

"I am afraid the verdict is given against you, Mr. Farge. The cedar
tree will remain." Mrs. Porcher rose as she spoke.

The young man playfully rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, feigning
tears. Then a scrimmage ensued between him and Worthington as to which
should reach the dining-room door first and throw it open before the
ladies. At this exhibition of high spirits de Courcy Smyth groaned
audibly, while Mrs. Porcher, linking her arm within that of Miss Hart,
lingered.

"You will join our little circle in the drawing-room to-night, will you
not, Mr. Iglesias?" she pleaded.

Again the young men made round eyes at one another. De Courcy Smyth had
come forward. He stood close to Iglesias and, before the latter could
answer, spoke hurriedly:

"Can you give me ten minutes in private? I don't want to press myself
upon you, but this is imperative."

Iglesias proceeded to excuse himself to his hostess, thereby causing
Miss Hart to refer mentally to monuments and mountains once again.

"Thank you," Smyth gasped. His face was twitching and he swayed a
little, steadying himself with one hand on the corner of the
dinner-table.

"I loathe asking," he continued, "I loathe pressing my society upon
you, since you do not seek it. It has taken days for me to make up my
mind to this; but it is necessary. And, after all, you made the
original offer yourself."

"I am quite ready to listen, and to renew any offer which I may have
made," Iglesias answered quietly.

"We can't talk here, though," Smyth said. "That blundering ass of a
waiter will be coming in directly; and whatever he overhears is sure to
go the round of the house. All servants are spies."

"We can go up to my sitting-room and talk there," Iglesias replied.

Yet he was conscious of making the proposal with reluctance, pity
struggling against repulsion. For not only was the man's appearance
very unkempt, but his manner and bearing were eloquent of a certain
desperation. Of anything approaching physical fear Dominic Iglesias was
happily incapable. But his sitting-room had always been a peaceful
place, refuge alike from the strain and monotony of his working life.
It held relics, moreover, wholly dear to him, and to introduce into it
this inharmonious and, in a sense, degraded presence savoured of
desecration. Therefore, not without foreboding, as of one who risks the
sacrifice of earnestly cherished security, he ushered his guest into
the quiet room.

The gas, the small heart-shaped flames of which showed white against
the dying daylight coming in through the windows, was turned low in the
bracket-lamps on either side the high mantelpiece. Dominic Iglesias
moved across and drew down the blinds, catching sight as he did
so--between the tossing foliage of the balsam-poplars which glistened
in the driving wet--of the unwinking gaselier in the Lovegroves'
dining-room, on the other side of the Green. He remembered that he
ought to have called on Mrs. Lovegrove and Miss Serena, and that he had
been guilty of a lapse of etiquette in not having done so. But he
reflected poor Miss Serena was a person whose existence it seemed so
curiously difficult to bear actively in mind. Then he grew penitent, as
having added discourtesy to discourtesy in permitting himself this
reflection. He came back from the window, turned up the lights, drew
forward an armchair and motioned Smyth to be seated; fetched a
cut-glass spirit decanter, tumblers, and a syphon of soda from the
sideboard and set them at his guest's elbow.

"Pray help yourself," he said. "And here, will you not smoke while we
talk?"

Smyth's pale, prominent eyes had followed these preparations for his
comfort with avidity, but now, the handsome character of his
surroundings being fully disclosed to him, he was filled with
uncontrollable envy. Silently he filled his glass, by no means stinting
the amount of alcohol, gulped down half the contents of the tumbler,
paused a moment, leaning his elbow on the table, and said:

"We were treated to a public exhibition of feminine cajolery in your
direction, Mr. Iglesias, at the end of dinner. It occurs to me we might
have been spared that. I have never had the honour of penetrating into
your apartments before; but the aspect of them is quite sufficient
indication as to who is the favoured member of Mrs. Porcher's
establishment."

Dominic had remained standing. Hospitality demanded that he should do
all in his power to secure his guest's material comfort; but there, in
his opinion, immediate obligation ceased. In thus remaining standing he
had a quaint sense of safeguarding the sanctities of the place. The
man's tone was curiously offensive. Involuntarily Mr. Iglesias' back
stiffened a little.

"I took these rooms unfurnished," he said. And then added: "May I ask
what your business with me may be?"

Smyth had recourse to his tumbler again. His hand shook so that his
teeth chattered against the edge of the glass.

"I am a fool," he said sullenly. "But my nerves are all to pieces. I
cannot control myself. I have come here to ask a favour of you, and yet
some devil prompts me to insult you. I hate you because I am driven to
make use of you. And this room, in its sober luxury, emphasises the
indignity of the position, offering as it does so glaring a contrast to
my own quarters--here under the same roof, only one flight of stairs
above--that I can hardly endure it. Life is hideously unjust. For what
have you done--you, a mere Canaanite, hewer of wood and drawer of water
to some grossly Philistine firm of city bankers--to deserve this
immunity from anxiety and distress; while I, with my superior culture,
my ambition and talents, am condemned to that beastly squeaking
wire-wove mattress upstairs, and a job-lot of furniture which some
previous German waiter has ejected in disgust from his bedroom in the
basement? But there--I beg your pardon. I ought to be accustomed to
injustice. I have served a long enough apprenticeship to it.
Only--partly, thanks to you, I own that--I have seemed to see the
dawning of hope again--hope of success, hope of recognition, hope of
revenge; and just on that account it becomes intolerable to run one's
head against this paralysing, stultifying dead wall of poverty and
debt."--He bowed himself together, and his voice broke.--"I owe Mrs.
Porcher money for my miserable bedsitting-room and my board, and I am
so horribly afraid she will turn me out. The place is detestable;
unworthy of me--of course it is--but I am accustomed to it. And I am
not myself. I am terrified at the prospect of any change. In short, I
am worn out. And they see that, those beasts of editors. The _Evening
Dally Bulletin_ has given me my _congé_. I have lost the last of my
hack-work. It was miserable work, wholly beneath a man of my capacity;
still it brought me in a pittance. Now it is gone. Practically I am a
pauper, and I owe money in this house."

"I am sorry, very sorry," Iglesias said. "You should have spoken
sooner. I could not force myself into your confidence; but, believe me,
I have not been unmindful of my engagement. I have merely waited for
you to speak."

His manner was gentle, yet he remained standing, still possessed by an
instinct to thus safeguard the sanctities of the place. He paused,
giving the other man time to recover a measure of composure: then he
asked kindly, anxious to conduct the conversation into a happier
channel: "Meanwhile, how is the play advancing? Well, I hope--so that
you find solace and satisfaction in the prosecution of it."

Smyth moved uneasily, looking up furtively at his questioner.

"Oh! it is grand," he said, "unquestionable it is grand. You need have
no anxiety under that head. Pray understand that anything that you may
do for me in the interim, before the play is produced, is simply an
investment. You need not be in the least alarmed. You will see all your
money back--see it doubled, certainly doubled, probably trebled."

"I was not thinking of investments," Iglesias put in quietly.

"But I am," Smyth asserted. "Naturally I am. You do not suppose that I
should accept, still less ask, you help, unless I was certain that in
the end I should prove to be conferring, rather than incurring, a
favour? You humiliate me by assuming this attitude of disinterested
generosity. Let me warn you it does not ring true. Moreover, in
assuming it you do not treat me as an equal; and that I resent. It is
mean to take advantage of my sorrows and my poverty, and exalt yourself
thus at my expense. Of course I understand your point of view. From
your associations and occupations you must inevitably worship the god
of wealth. One cannot expect anything else from a business man. You
gauge every one's intellectual capacity by his power of making money.
Well, wait then--just wait; and when that play appears, see if I do not
compel you to rate my intellectual capacity very highly. For there are
thousands in that play, I tell you--tens of thousands. It is only in
the interim that I am reduced to this detestable position of
dependence. I know the worth of my work, if----"

But Iglesias' patience was beginning to wear rather thin. He interposed
calmly, yet with authority.

"Pardon me," he said, "but it is irrelevant to discuss my attitude of
mind or my past occupations. It will be more agreeable for us, both now
and in the future, to treat any matters that arise between us as
impersonally as possible. Therefore, I will ask you to tell me, simply
and clearly, how much you require to clear you from immediate
difficulty; and I will tell you, in return, whether I am in a position
to meet your wishes or not."

For a moment Smyth sat silent, his hands working nervously along the
arms of the chair.

"You understand it is merely a temporary accommodation?"

"Yes," Iglesias answered. "I understand. And consequently it is
superfluous to indulge in further discussion."

"You want to get rid of me," Smyth snarled. "Everyone wants to get rid
of me; I am unwelcome. The poor and unsuccessful always are so, I
suppose. But some day the tables will be turned--if I can only last."

And Dominic Iglesias found himself called upon to rally all his
humanity, all his faith in merciful dealing and the reward which goes
along with it. For it was hard to give, hard to befriend, so thankless
and ungracious a being. Yet, having put his hand to the plough, he
refused to look back. He had inherited a strain of fanaticism which
took the form of unswerving loyalty to his own word once given. So he
spoke gravely and kindly, as one speaks to the sick who are beyond the
obligation of showing courtesy for very suffering. And truly, as he
reminded himself, this man was grievously sick; not only physically
from insufficient food, but morally from disappointment and that most
fruitful source of disease, inordinate and unsatisfied vanity.

"I do not wish to get rid of you; I merely wish to take the shortest
and simplest way to relieve you of your more pressing anxieties, and so
enable you to give yourself unreservedly to your work. Want may be a
wholesome spur to effort at times; but it is difficult to suppose any
really sane and well-proportioned work of art can be produced without a
sense of security and of leisure."

"How do you come to know that? It is not your province," Smyth said
sharply.

Mr. Iglesias permitted himself to smile and raise his shoulders
slightly.

"I come of a race which, in the past, has given evidence of no small
literary and artistic ability. The experience of former generations
affects the thought of their descendants, I imagine, and illuminates
it, even when these are not gifted individually with any executive
talent."

For some minutes Smyth sat staring moodily in front of him. At last he
rose slowly from his chair.

"I am an ass," he said, "a jealous, suspicious, ungrateful ass. It is
more than ever hateful to me to ask a favour of you, just because you
are forbearing and generous. I wish to goodness I could do without you
help; but I can't. So let me have twenty-five pounds. Less would not be
of use to me. I should only have to draw on you again, and I do not
care to do that. Look here, can I have it in notes?"

"Yes," said Mr. Iglesias.

"I prefer it so. There might have been difficulties in cashing a
cheque. Moreover, it is unpleasant to me that your name, that any name,
should appear. It is only fair to save my self-respect as far as you
can."

Then, as Dominic put the notes into his hand, he added, and his voice
was aggressive again and quarrelsome in tone: "I don't apologise. I
don't explain. I do not even thank you. Why should I, since I simply
take it as a temporary accommodation until my play is finished--my
great play, which is going--I swear before God it is going--not only to
cancel this paltry debt, but a far more important one, the debt I owe
to my own genius, and justify me once and forever in the eyes of the
whole English-speaking world."

With that he shambled out of the room, letting the handle of the door
slip so that it banged noisily behind him.

For a while Dominic Iglesias remained standing before the fireplace. He
was sad at heart. He had given generously, lavishly, out of proportion,
as most persons reckon charitable givings, to his means. But, though
the act was in itself good, he was sensible of no responsive warmth, no
glow of satisfaction. The transaction left him cold; left him, indeed,
a prey to disgust. Not only were the man's faults evident, but they
were of so unpleasant a nature as to neutralise all gladness in
relieving his distress. Mechanically Iglesias straightened the chair
which his guest had so lately occupied, put away tumbler and spirit
decanter, pulled up the blind and opened one of the tall narrow
windows, set the door giving access to his bed-chamber wide, and opened
a window there, too, so creating a draught right through the apartment
from end to end. He desired to clean it both of a physical and a moral
atmosphere which were displeasing to him. And, in so doing, he let in,
not only the roar of London, borne in a fierce crescendo on the breath
of the wind, but a strange multitudinous rustling from the sombre
foliage and stiff branches of the lonely cedar tree. Two limbs,
crossing, sawed upon one another as the wind took them, uttering at
intervals a long-drawn complaint--not weakly, but rather with virility,
as of a strong man chained and groaning against his fetters.

The sound affected Dominic Iglesias deeply, begetting in him an almost
hopeless sense of isolation. The vapid talk at dinner, poor little Mrs.
Porcher's misplaced advances--the fact of which it appeared to him
equally idle to deny and fatuous to admit--the dreary scene with his
unhappy fellow-lodger, the good deed done which just now appeared
fruitless--all these contributed to make the complaint of the exiled
cedar's tormented branches an echo of the complaint of his own heart.
For a long while he listened to these voices of the night, the great
city, the great tree, the wind and the wet; and listening, by degrees
he rallied his patience in that he humbled himself.

"After all, I have been little else but self-seeking," he said, half
aloud. "For I gave not to the man, but to myself. I clutched at a
personal reward, if not of spoken gratitude yet of subjective content.
It has not come. I suppose I did not deserve it."

And then, somehow, his thoughts turned to that other human creature
who, though in a very different fashion to de Courcy Smyth the
unsavoury, had claimed his help. He thought not of her over-red lips,
but of her wise eyes; not of her irrepressible effervescence and
patter, but of her serious moments and of the honesty and courage which
at such moments appeared to animate her. About a fortnight ago he had
called at the little flower-bedecked house on the confines of Barnes
Common, but had obtained no response to his ringing. He supposed she
was engaged, or possibly away. With a certain proud modesty he had
abstained from renewing his visit. But now, listening to the roar of
London and the complaint of the cedar tree, he turned to the thought of
her as to something of promise, of possible comfort, of equal
friendship, in which there should be not only help given, but help
received.




CHAPTER XIII


Dominic Iglesias stood on Hammersmith Bridge looking upstream. The
temperature was low for the time of year, the sky packed with
heavy-bosomed indigo-grey clouds in the south and west, whence came a
gusty wind chill with impending rain. The light was diffused and cold,
all objects having a certain bareness of effect, deficient in shadow.
The weather had broken in the storm of the preceding night; and, though
it was but early September, summer was gone, autumn and the melancholy
of it already present--witness the elms in Chiswick Mall splotched with
raw umber and faded yellow. The tide had still about an hour to flow.
The river was dull and leaden, save where, near Chiswick Eyot, the wind
meeting the tide lashed the surface of it into mimic waves, the crests
of which, flung upward, showed against the gloomy stretch of water
beyond, like pale hands raised heavenward in despairing protest.
Steam-tugs, taking advantage of the tide, laboured up-stream in the
teeth of the wind, towing processions of dark floats and barges. Long
banners of smoke, ragged and fleeting, swept wildly away from the
mouths of the tall chimneys of Thorneycroft's Works, which rose black
into the low, wet sky. The roadway of the huge suspension bridge
quivered under the grind of the ceaseless traffic, while the wind cried
in the massive pea-green painted iron-gearing above. There was a sense
of hardly restrained tumult, of conflict between nature and the
multiple machinery of modern civilisation, the two in opposition, alike
victims of an angry mood. And Iglesias stood watching that conflict
among the crowd of children, and loafers, and decrepit, who to-day--as
every day--thronged the foot-way of the bridge.

Poppy St. John stood on the foot-way, too. She had crossed from the
southern side. But, though by no means insensible to the spirit or the
details of the scene around her, she was less engaged in watching the
drama of the stormy afternoon than in watching Dominic Iglesias--as yet
unconscious of her presence. His tall, spare, shapely figure, grave,
clean-shaven face, and calm, self-recollected manner--which removed him
so singularly from the purposeless neutral-tinted human beings close
about him--delighted her artistic sense.

"If one had caught him young," she said to herself, "if one had only
caught him young, heavenly powers, what a time one might have had, and
yet stayed good--oh! very quite good indeed!"

Then she made her way between much undeveloped and derelict humanity.

"Look at me, dear man," she said, "look at me--really I am worth it. I
got home late last night and I was possessed by a great longing to see
you.--Excuse my shouting, but things in general are making such an
infernal clatter.--I was determined to see you. I set my whole mind to
making you come. And I felt so sure you must come that this afternoon I
have journeyed thus far to meet you. And here you are, and here I am."

Poppy stood before him bracing her back against the hand-rail of the
bridge.

"Tell me, are you glad?" she said.

And Dominic Iglesias, surprised, yet finding the incident curiously
natural, answered simply:

"Yes, I am, very glad."

"That's all right," she rejoined; "because, after all, coming was a
pretty lively act of faith on my part. I have superstitious turns at
times; and the weather, and things that had happened, had made me feel
pretty cheap somehow. I don't mind telling you as you are here that if
you'd failed me there would have been the devil to pay. I should have
been awfully cut up."

Iglesias still smiled upon her. Poppy presented herself under a new
aspect to-day, and that aspect found favour in his sight. She was no
longer the Lady of the Windswept Dust, arrayed in fantastic flowery hat
and trailing skirts, but was clothed in trim black workman-like
garments, which revealed the delicate contours of her figure and gave
her an unexpected air of distinction. Yet, though charmed, the caution
of pride--which, in his case, was also the caution of modesty--made him
a trifle shy in addressing her. He paused before speaking, and then
said, with a certain hesitancy:

"I fancy my attitude of mind last night was the complement of your own.
I, too, had fallen on rather evil days. I wanted to see you. I came out
this afternoon to find you. If I had failed to do so, it would have
gone a little hard with me, too, I think."

Poppy looked at him questioningly, intently, for a minute, her teeth
set. Then she whirled round, leaned her elbows on the hand-rail, pulled
her handkerchief out of the breast pocket of her smartly fitting coat
and dabbed her eyes with it, finely indifferent to possible comment or
observation.

Iglesias remained immediately behind her, but a little to the right, so
as to save her from being jostled by the passers-by. He had a sense of
being only the more alone with her because of the traffic and the
crowd; a sense, moreover, of dependence on her part and protection on
his; a sense, in a way, of her belonging to him and he to her. And this
was very sweet to him, solemnly sweet, as are all things of beauty and
moment holding in them the promise of enduring result. Old Age ceased
to threaten and Loneliness to haunt. Over Iglesias' soul passed a wave
of thankful content.

Suddenly Poppy straightened herself up and faced him. Her lips laughed,
but her eyes were wet.

"I'll play fair," she said; "by the honour of the mother that bore you,
I'll play fair."

Then she laid her hand on his arm and pointed London-wards.

"Now, come along, dear man, for I have got to pull myself together
somehow. Let us walk. Take me somewhere I've never been before,
somewhere quiet--only let us walk."

Therefore, desiring to meet her wishes, a little way up the broad
straggling street Dominic Iglesias turned off to the left into the
narrow old-world lanes and alleys which lie between the river frontage
and King Street West. The district is a singular one, suggestive of
some sleepy little dead-alive seaport town rather than of London.
Quaint water-ways, crossed by foot-bridges, burrow in between small low
cottages and warehouses. Some of these have overhanging upper stories
to them, are half-timbered or yellow-washed. Some are built wholly of
wood. There is an all-pervading odour of tar and hempen rope. Small
industries abound, though without any self-advertisement of plate-glass
shop fronts. Chimney-sweeps and cobblers give notice of their presence
by swinging signs. Newsvendors make irruption of flaring boards upon
the pavement. Little ground-floor windows exhibit attenuated stores of
tinware, string, and sweets. Modest tobacconists mount the image of a
black boy scantily clothed or of a Highlander in the fullest of tartans
above their doors. Cats prowl along walls and sparrows rise in flights
from off the ill-paved roadways. But of human occupants there appear to
be but few, and those with an unusual stamp of individuality upon them;
figures a trifle strange and obsolete--as of persons by choice hidden
away, voluntarily self-removed from the levelling rush and grind of the
monster city. The small heavy-browed houses are very secretive, seeming
to shelter fallen fortunes, obscure and furtive sins, sorrows which
resist alleviation and inquiry. Seen, as to-day, under the low-hanging
sky big with rain, in the diffused afternoon light, the place and its
inhabitants conveyed an impression low-toned, yet distinct, finished in
detail, rich though mournful in effect as some eighteenth-century Dutch
picture. A linnet twittered, flitting from perch to perch of its cage
at an open window. A boy, clad in an old mouse-brown corduroy coat,
passed slowly, crying "Sweet lavender" shrilly yet in a plaintive
cadence. Occasionally the siren of a steam-tug tore the air with a
long-drawn wavering scream. Otherwise all was very silent.

And, as they threaded their way through the maze of crooked streets,
Dominic Iglesias and Poppy St. John were silent also; but with the
silence of intimacy and good faith, rather than with that of
embarrassment or indifference. Each was very fully aware of the
presence of the other. So fully aware, indeed, that, for the moment,
speech seemed superfluous as a vehicle for interchange of thought.
Then, as they emerged on to the open gravelled space of the Upper Mall
with its low red-brick wall and stately elm trees, Poppy held out her
hand to Mr. Iglesias.

"You are beautifully clever," she said. "You give me just what I
wanted. I'm as steady as old Time now. But what a queer rabbit-warren
of a place it is! How did you find your way?"

"I came here often, in the past," he said, "at a time when I was
suffering grave anxiety. I could not leave home, after my office work
was over, for more than an hour together. And in the dusk or at night,
with its twinkling and evasive lights, the place used to please me,
leading as it does to the river bank, the mystery of the ebbing and
flowing tide, the ceaseless effort seaward of the stream, and those
low-lying spaces on the Surrey side. It was the nearest bit of nature,
unharnessed, irresponsible nature, which I could get to; and it
symbolised emancipation from monotonous labour and everlasting bricks
and mortar. I could watch the dying of the sunset, and the outcoming of
the stars, the tossing of the pale willows--there on the eyot--in the
windy dusk, undisturbed. And so I have come to entertain a great
fondness for it, since it tranquillised me and helped me to see life
calmly and to bring myself in line with fact, to endure and to forgive."

While he spoke Poppy's hand continued to rest passively in his.

"You are a poet," she said, "and you are very good."

Dominic Iglesias smiled and shook his head.

"No," he answered. "I am neither a poet nor am I very good. Far from
that. I only tried to keep faith with the one clear duty which I saw."

Poppy moved forward across the Mall and stood by the river wall,
looking out over the flowing tide. It was high now, and washed and
gurgled against the masonry.

"You did and suffered all that for some woman," she said. "A man like
you always breaks himself for some woman. I hope she was worth
it--often they aren't. Who was she? The woman you loved? Your wife?"

"The woman I loved," Iglesias answered, "but not my wife."

Poppy looked at him sharply, her eyes full of question and of fear, as
though she dreaded to hear very evil tidings.

"Not your mistress?" she said. "Don't tell me that. The Lord knows I've
no right to mind. But I should mind. It would be like switching off all
the lights. I couldn't stand it. So, if it's that, just let us part
company at once. I've no more use for you.--I know where I am now. If I
go up into St. Peter's Square I can pick up a hansom and drive back
home--I suppose I may as well call it home, as I have no other. And as
for you, if you've any mercy in you, never let me see you again. Never
come near me. I have no use for you, I tell you. So leave me to my own
devices--what those devices are is no earthly concern of yours."

She paused breathless, her eyes blazing, her face very white. She
seemed to have grown tall, and there was a tremendous force in her of
bitterness, repudiation, and regret.

"After all," she cried, "I don't so much as know your name; and so,
thank heaven, it can't be so very difficult to forget you."

Her aspect moved Iglesias strangely, seeming as it did to embody the
very spirit of the angry sky, of the gloomy river, all the sorrow of
the dead summer and stormy autumn light. For a moment he watched her in
silence. Then he took both her hands in his and held them, smiling at
her again very gently.

"No, dear friend," he said, "the woman was not my mistress. She was my
mother." His voice shook a little. "I never talk of her. But I think of
her always. She was very perfect and very lovely. And she suffered
greatly, so greatly that it unhinged her reason. Now do you understand?
For years she was mad."




CHAPTER XIV


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.




CHAPTER XV


The heavens remained clear, the air exhilarating, and Iglesias set
forth on his weekly pilgrimage in a serene frame of mind. George
Lovegrove's view had been reassuring.

"I know you are much more far-sighted than I am," he had said, his
honest face beaming with combined cleanliness and affection, "so I
always hesitate to set up my opinion against yours. It would be
presumptuous. Still, you do surprise me. I never had an inkling of
anything of the sort; and between ourselves--for I should never hint at
the subject before the wife, you know--it might upset her, females are
so sensitive--but between ourselves it would fairly unman me to think
there could be any unsoundness in Barking Brothers & Barking. You know
the phrase current in the city about them--'as safe as the Bank of
England'? And I have always believed that. I know I left before Mr.
Reginald had any active share in the business, and I never have cared
about American speculation. It is all beyond me. Still I cannot suppose
the senior partners would let him have too much his own way. Depend
upon it, Sir Abel keeps an eye on him. And then as to this war, of
course you have studied it all more deeply than I have the power to do;
still I cannot help thinking you distress yourself unnecessarily. As I
said to the wife when I first heard of it, it's suicidal. One can only
feel pity for such poor ignorant creatures, rushing headlong on their
ruin. Depend upon it, they will very soon come to their senses and
deplore their own rash action. A very few weeks will see the finish of
it all. I only hope there will not be much bloodshed first, for of
course they couldn't stand up against English troops for an hour, poor
things."

Encouraged by which cheerful optimism Dominic Iglesias began to think
his fears exaggerated, as he descended from an omnibus top at
Hammersmith Bridge that afternoon, crossed the river, and walked on
down the long suburban road. The sky was sharply blue. Multicoloured
leaves danced down from the trees in the villa gardens. Gaily clad
children, pursued by anxious mothers and nursemaids, ran and shouted,
the sunshine and fresh air having gone to their heads. Perched on the
brick pier of an entrance gate, a robin uplifted its voice in
piercingly sweet song. Autumn wore her fairest face, speaking of
promise rather than of decay. It was good to be alive. Even to Mr.
Iglesias' sober and chastened spirit horror of war, disgrace of
financial failure, seemed remote and inconsiderable things, morbid
delusions such as sane men brush aside scorning to give them harbourage
so much as of thought.

Poppy was mirthful, too, in her greeting of him.

"My dear man," she cried, "the house is out of windows! You find us in
the throes of a great domestic event. Cappadocia has done her duty by
posterity. She has been brought to bed, if you'll excuse my mentioning
it, of four puppies. Perfect little lambs, not a white hair among them.
And she shows true maternal feeling, does Cappadocia. Whenever you go
near her she tries to bite."

Poppy spoke very fast, holding his hand, looking him full in the face,
her singular eyes very gentle in expression, yet all alight.

"Ah! it's good to see you. My stars, but it is good to see you," she
said.

And Dominic, moved beyond his wont, stood silent for a space.

"You're not offended? Surely, at this time of the day, you're not going
to stiffen up?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"No, no, dear friend," he said; "but this greeting is a little
wonderful to me. Except my mother, years ago, nobody has ever cared
whether I came or went."

"More fools they," Poppy answered, with a fine disregard of grammar.
"But all that's over now. You know it's over. All the same I can't be
altogether sorry it was so, because it gives me my chance.--Sit down;
I'll expound to you. Let us talk.--You see, my beautiful innocent, with
most men worth knowing--I am not talking about boys running about with
the shell still on their heads and more affections to place than they
can find a market for, but men. Well then, with most all of them, when
one comes to discuss matters, one finds one's had such an awful lot of
predecessors. At best one comes in a bad third--more often a bad
three-and-twentieth--I mean nothing risky. Don't be nervous. But they
have romantic memories of half-a-dozen women. And so, though they are
no end nice and kind to one, play up and give one a good time and have
a jolly good one themselves--trust 'em to take care of that--one knows
all the while, if one knows anything, that the whole show's merely a
_réchauffé_. Visions of Clara and Gladys, and dear little Emily, and
Rosina, and Beatrice, and the lovely Lucinda--angels, every one of
them, if you haven't seen them for ten years, and wouldn't know them
again if you met them in the street--haunt the background of every
man's mind by the time he's five-and-thirty, and cut entrancing capers
against the sky-line, so that--when one comes to thrash the matter
out--one finds the actually present woman, here in the foreground,
hasn't really any look-in at all."

Poppy threw her head back against the yellowish red cushions of the
settee, her teeth showing white as she laughed.

"Boys aren't worth having. They're too crude, too callow. Moreover, it
isn't playing the game. One doesn't want to make a mess of their
futures, poor little chaps. And grown men, except as I say of the very
preëngaged sort, are not to be had. So don't you understand, most
delightful lunatic, how it comes to pass that you and your friendship
are precious to me beyond words? When you go I could cry. When you come
I could dance."

Her tone changed, becoming defiant, almost fierce.

"And it is all right," she said, "thank heaven, right,--right, clean,
and honest, and good for one's soul. Now I've done. Only we are very
happy in our own quaint way, aren't we? And we can leave it at that.
Oh, yes, we can very well leave it at that if"--she looked sideways at
Mr. Iglesias, her expression half-humorous, half-pathetic--"if only it
will stay at that and not play the mischief and scuttle off into
something quite else."

She got up quickly, with a little air of daring and bravado.

"I must move about. I must do something--there, I'll make up the fire.
No, sit still, dear man"--as Dominic prepared to rise also--"I like
doing little odd jobs with you here. It takes off the company feeling,
and makes it seem as if you belonged, and like the bicycle, had 'come
to stay.'"

Poppy threw a couple of driftwood logs upon the smouldering fire.
Around them sharp tongues of flame--rose and saffron, amber, sea-green,
and heliotrope, glories as of a tropic sunset--leaped upward. She stood
watching these, her left hand resting on the edge of the mantelpiece,
her right holding up the front of her black skirt. Her right foot
rested on the fender curb, thereby displaying a discreet interval of
openwork silk stocking and a neatly cut steel-buckled shoe. The
many-hued firelight flickered over her dark figure; over the soft lace
jabot at her throat and ruffles at her wrists; over her pale profile;
and glinted in the heavy masses of her hair. The room, facing east, was
cold with shadow, which the thin fantastic colours of the flames
appeared to emphasise rather than to relieve. And Iglesias, obedient to
her entreaty, sat quietly waiting until it should again please her to
speak. For he had begun to accept her many changes of mood as an
integral element of her personality--a personality rich in rapid and
subtle contradictions. Often he had no clue to the meaning of these
many changes. But he did not mind that. Not absence of vulgar curiosity
alone, but an unwilling sub-conscious shrinking from any too close
acquaintance with the details of her life contributed to render him
passive. He had a conviction, though he had never formulated it even in
thought, that ignorance in relation to her made for security and
content. And there was a refined charm in this--namely, that each to
the other, even while friendship deepened, should remain something of
an undiscovered country. Moreover, had she not told him that he rested
her? To ask questions, however sympathetic, to volunteer consolation,
however delicately worded, is to risk being officious; and to be
officious, in however mild a degree, is to drive away the shy and
illusive spirit of rest. And so Dominic Iglesias was coming, in the
good nautical reading of that phrase, simply "to stand by" and wait
where this woman was concerned. After all, it was but the reapplication
of a lesson learned long ago for the support and solace of another
woman, by him supremely loved. To act thus was, therefore, not only
natural but poignantly sweet to him, as a new and gentle offering laid
upon the dear altar of his dead. It rejoiced him to find that now, as
of old, the demand created a supply of silent but sustaining moral
force, ready to pass into the sphere of active help should necessity
arise.

Nevertheless as the minutes passed, while daylight and firelight alike
began to fade, Dominic Iglesias grew somewhat troubled and sad. And it
was with a distinct movement of relief that he, at last, saw Poppy draw
herself up, push the soft masses of her hair back from her forehead
with a petulant gesture, and turn towards him. As she did so she let
her hands drop at her sides, as though she had finished with and
dismissed some unwelcome form of thought, while her face showed wan,
and her eyes large and vague, as though they saw beyond and through all
that which they actually looked on.

"There, there," she said harshly, with an angry lift of her head, "what
a silly fool I am, wasting time like this when you are here. But my
soul went out of my body; and I could afford to let it go, just because
you were here, and I felt safe." Her tone softened. "Sure I don't bore
you?" she asked.

Dominic shook his head, smiling.

"Very sure," he said.

"Bless you, then that's all right." Poppy strolled back and sat down
languidly. "I've gone confoundedly tired," she said. "You see, I sat up
half the night acting Gamp to Cappadocia--if you excuse my again
alluding to the domestic event.--Oh! my being tired doesn't matter. My
dear man, I'm never ill. I'm as strong as a horse. Let's talk of
something more interesting--let's review the topics of the hour--only
for the life of me I can't remember what the topics of the hour are!
Yes, I know though--the management of the Twentieth Century Theatre has
given Dot Parris a leading part. Does that leave you cold? Impossible!
Why, in theatrical circles it's a world-shaking event. I own I'm
curious to see how she does in legitimate drama, after her career in
musical comedy and at the halls, myself. I'm really very fond of her,
poor little Dot. She's going to call herself Miss Charlotte Colthurst
in the future, I understand. Did you ever hear such cheek? But then she
always had the cheek of the old gentleman himself, and that makes for
success. Cheek does go an awfully long way towards bringing you
through, don't you think so?"

"Probably," Dominic said. "My opportunities of exercising that
particular form of virtue have been so limited that I am quite prepared
to accept your ruling on the point."

Poppy laughed softly, looking at him with a great friendliness.

"Ah! but it wouldn't have been cheek in your case, anyhow. It would
merely have been that you stepped into your right place, ascended any
throne that happened to be right divine. I can see you doing it, so
statelily and yet so innocently. It would be a perfectly delicious
sight. I believe you will do it yet, some day, somehow, and make a lot
of people sit up. But that reminds me, joking apart, there is a topic
of the hour I wanted to ask you about. Tell me what you think of this
war."

And Dominic Iglesias, once more obedient to her changing mood, replied
with quiet sincerity:

"I am told I am an alarmist. I hope I may prove to be so, for in this
matter I should much prefer the optimists to be in the right. But I
confess I do not like the outlook. Both on public and private grounds
this war makes me anxious."

Poppy's languor had vanished. She had grown very much alive again. Now
she leaned forward, pressing her hands together, palm to palm, between
her knees, and making herself small, as a child does when it is deeply
in earnest and wants to think.

"You're right," she assented. "I'm perfectly certain all this cocksure
Johnny-head-in-air business, 'sail to-day and see you again at tea
tomorrow, so it's not worth while saying good-by'--you know the
style?--is fatuous and idiotic. It is not bluff, because the English
officer-man doesn't bluff. He hasn't the brains, to begin with, and
then he is a very sound sort of an animal. He doesn't need to hide his
fright for the simple reason that he's not frightened. A friend of mine
was talking about it all yesterday. He thinks as you do, and he's no
silly, though he is a member of the House of Lords.--After all, he
can't help that, poor dear old chap," she added apologetically, looking
sideways at Mr. Iglesias. "But there, you've seen him, I believe. You
met him the first time you came here. Don't you remember, I had to turn
you out because I had to see him on business, and you ran across him in
the hall as you were going?"

"I remember meeting someone," Dominic said, rather loftily. He did not
want to hear any more. The conversation had become displeasing to him,
though he could have given no reason for his displeasure. But Poppy
suddenly turned mischievous and naughty. She patted her hands gently
together between her knees and swayed with rather impish merriment.

"Ah, of course you were much too grand to take any particular notice of
him, poor brute. But he wasn't a bit too grand to take a lot of notice
of you. He was fearfully impressed. Yes, I tell you he was. Don't be
cross. I am speaking the veracious truth. I give you my word I'm not
gassing. He was awfully keen to know who you were, and where you came
from, and how I met you. And it was the sweetest thing out to be able
to reply that I'd been introduced to you on a bench--a mighty
uncomfortable one, too, with no back to it!--on Barnes Common by
Cappadocia; and that as to your name and local habitation I hadn't the
faintest ghost of a notion what they were. Are you cross? Don't be
cross," Poppy pleaded.

"No, no, of course not," Mr. Iglesias answered, goaded from his
habitual calm and speaking almost sharply.

Poppy patted her palms together again, swaying backwards and forwards.
Her eyes were dancing.

"Oh! but you are, though," she cried. "You're just a wee bit jealous.
You are--you know you are, and I'm not a scrap sorry. On the contrary,
I'm enchanted. For it shows that you are human after all, and must have
a name and address tucked away somewhere about you. I don't want to
know what they are, but it's comfortable to be assured of their
existence. It shows you don't drop straight down from heaven--as I was
beginning to be afraid you did--once a week, into the Mortlake Road,
and then go straight up again. It shows that I could get on to you by
post, or telephone, or other means of communication common to mortals,
if I was in a tight place and really wanted you, without walking as far
as Hammersmith Bridge and waiting in the wind and the wet on the bare
chance you might take it into your august head to materialise, and
break out of paradise, and take a little stroll round our sublunary
sphere."

For a moment Poppy laid her hand lightly on Mr. Iglesias' shoulder.

"Yes, be cross," she repeated. "Just as cross as ever you like, so long
as you don't keep it up too protractedly. It's the most engaging piece
of flattery I've come across for a month of Sundays. Only you needn't
worry in this particular instance, dear man, I give you my word you
needn't. It's a sheer waste of feeling. For Fallowfeild's always been
perfectly decent with me. I know people think him an awfully risky lot,
but they're noodles. He's racketed in his day--of course he has. But if
he'd been more of a hypocrite, people would have talked less. As the
man says in the play, it's not the sin but the being found out which
makes the scandal. And Fallowfeild was too honest. He never pretended
to be better than he was. He is a man of good nature who has done wrong
things, which is quite different to being a man of bad nature who does
wrong things, and still more different to being a man of weak nature
who pretends to do right things. That last is the sort I hate most, and
I speak out of beastly intimate experience."

She made a most expressive grimace, as though she had a remarkably
disagreeable taste in her mouth.

"No salvation for that sort, I believe," she went on, "either here or
hereafter. Now, are you better? You do believe it has always been
perfectly square and above-board between Fallowfeild and me, don't you?"

"Unquestionably, I believe it," Dominic answered. He spoke slowly.

Poppy turned her head sharply and looked hard at him.

"Ah! but I don't quite like that," she said. "I've muddled it
somehow--I see I have. I've hurt and offended you. You're farther off
than you were ten minutes ago. In spirit you've got up and gone away. I
have muddled it. I have made you distrust me."

"No," Dominic answered, "you have not made me distrust you; but you
have perplexed me. It is the result of my own dulness, no doubt. My
imagination is not agile enough to follow you, and so--"

He hesitated. That which he had in his mind was not easy to put into
words without discourtesy. He would far rather have left it unsaid; but
to do so would have been, in truth, to stand farther off, to erect a
barrier which might prove insuperable to happy companionship in the
future.

"Yes?" Poppy queried. Her voice shook just perceptibly. In the
deepening dusk neither could see the other distinctly, and this
contributed to Dominic's decision to speak.

"It pains me," he said at last, "if you will pardon my frankness, that
you should think it necessary to account for yourself and justify
yourself as you often appear to do."

"Yes?" Poppy queried again.

"That you should do so distresses and disturbs me."

"Yes," Poppy murmured.

"I am afraid I grow selfish," Iglesias went on gently; "but you have
been good enough to tell me that my poor friendship is of value to you.
Does it not occur to you that yours is of far greater value to me? And
that for many and obvious reasons--these among others, that while you
are young, and have a wide circle of acquaintances, and in a future to
which, brilliant as you are, you may look forward with hope and
assurance, I am absolutely alone in the world. Save for one old
school-fellow, who has been very faithful to me, there is no one to
whom it matters, except in the most superficial degree, whether I live
or die."

"Ah!" Poppy said softly.

"Do not misunderstand me, I do not complain," Iglesias added. "I
entertain no doubt but that the circumstances in which I find myself
are the right and profitable ones for me, if I only lay to heart the
lessons they teach, and use the opportunities which they afford me."

"I don't know about that--I doubt that," Poppy put in hastily.

"You doubt it because you are young," he answered, "and your
circumstances are capable of alteration and development. Except under
very exceptional conditions, resignation is no virtue in the young. It
is more often an excuse for cowardice and sloth. But at my age the
world changes its complexion. My circumstances are incapable of
alteration and development. They are final. Therefore I do well to
accept them unreservedly. The work of my life is done. I do not say
that it has been a failure, for I fulfilled the main object I had in
view. But it has certainly been obscure and inglorious. The sun will
sink dimly enough into a bank of fog. My present is meagre in interest
and activity. My future, a brief enough one in all probability, must of
necessity be meagre likewise. Therefore your friendship is of supreme
importance to me."

Iglesias paused. His voice was grave, distinct, weighted with feeling.
He did not look at his companion; he could not trust himself to do so,
for he had discovered in himself unexpected depths of emotion.

"And just on that account," he went on, "I grow childishly nervous,
childishly apprehensive if anything arises which seems to cloud or, in
however small a measure, to endanger the serenity of our intercourse."

He turned and looked at her.

"This constitutes no slight to you, dear friend."

"No," she said, "very certainly it is no slight. On the contrary, it is
very beautiful; but it's an awful responsibility, too."

She sat quite still, her head carried high, her hands clasped in her
lap.

"I've underrated the position, I see. I've only thought of myself so
far and how you pleased me. But though I'm pretty cheeky, too--almost
as cheeky as little Dot--I never had the presumption to put the affair
the other way about."

Poppy began to sway slightly again and pat the palms of her hands
together between her knees.

"It's been a game, the finest game I've ever played; and I swore by all
my gods to play fair. But, as you look at it, our friendship amounts to
a good deal more than a game. It goes very deep. And I'm not sure--.
no, I'm not--whether I'm equal to it."

She glanced at Iglesias strangely through the clinging grey of the dusk.

"Dear unknown," she said, "I give you my word I'm frightened--I who've
never been frightened at any man yet. In my own little way I've played
pitch and toss with their hearts and made footballs of them--except
that poor young fellow--I told you about him the first time we met--who
gave me the scarf, and whose people wouldn't let him marry me. But this
affair with you is different. It goes very far, it means--it means
nothing short of revolution for me, of putting away and renouncing very
much."

Poppy got up, stood pushing her hair back with both hands from her
forehead. Then she moved across to the further side of the fireplace.
Dominic had risen also. He stood on the near side of the hearth. He was
penetrated with the conviction that a crisis was upon them both,
involving all the happiness of their future relation to one another.

"You don't understand," Poppy cried passionately. "And I don't want you
to understand--that's half the trouble. I want to keep you. Your
friendship's the loveliest thing I've ever had. And yet I don't know.
For I'm not one woman--I'm half-a-dozen women, and they all pull all
sorts of ways so that I daren't trust myself. I want to keep you, I
tell you, I want horribly to keep you. Yet I'm ghastly afraid I'm not
equal to it. The price is too big."

As she spoke Poppy dashed her hand against the push of the electric
bell, and held it there, ringing a prolonged alarum, in quick response
to which Phillimore, the respectable elderly parlour maid, appeared,
bearing two rose-shaded lamps. Noiselessly and deftly--as one
accustomed to agitations, whose eyes did not see or ears hear if it
should be unadvisable to permit them to do so--she drew the curtains,
made up the fire, set out the tea-table. And with that change of scene
and shutting out of the dusk, Poppy seemed to change also; gravity and
strength of purpose departing from her, and leaving
her--notwithstanding her sober dress--unreal, fictitious, artificial,
the red-lipped carmine-tinted lady of the footlights, of the windswept
dust and embroidered dragons again. She chattered, moreover,
ceaselessly, careless of interruption, and of criticism alike.

"Here, let's hark back to the ordinary conduct of material existence,"
she said. "Tea? Won't you sit down? No--well, just as you like best.
Take it standing. Let me see, what were we discussing when we got
switched on to unexpectedly personal lines of conversation? The
war--yes, I remember. I was just going to tell you that Fallowfeild
believes it's going to be a nasty dragging unsatisfactory business.
Everyone gasses about the Boers being a simple pastoral people. But
Fallowfeild says their simplicity is just another name for guile, and
that he anyway can't conceive a more disconcerting job than fighting a
nation of farmers and huntsmen and gamekeepers in their own country,
every inch of which they know. People say they've no military science.
But so jolly much the better for them. They can be unfettered
opportunists, with nothing to think of but outwitting the enemy and
saving their property and their skins. The poor British Tommy will be
no match for them; nor will the British officer-man either, till he's
unlearned his parade-ground etiquette, and his haw-haw red-tape methods
and manner, and learned their very primitive but very cute and foxy
ones. By which time, Fallowfeild says, the mourning warehouses here at
home will have made a record turnover, and there will be altogether too
many new graveyards for comfort in South Africa."

Poppy paused in her harangue, for Dominic Iglesias had set down his
cup, its contents untasted. He was sad at heart.

"Are you going?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered. "It grows late. It's time I went, I think."

"Perhaps it is." Poppy's eyes had become inscrutable. "I really ought
to attend to my Gamping, and pass the time of day with Cappadocia. Her
snappishness has scared the maids. They refuse to go within a measured
furlong of her."

Poppy bent down over the tea-table, arranging the teacups with
elaborate neatness.

"Good-by," she said. "I don't quite know when we shall meet again."

"Why?" Iglesias asked. The muscles of his throat were rigid. He had
much ado to speak plainly and naturally. "Are you leaving home?"

"Home?" she answered. "Yes, I'm leaving it. Good-by again. Don't let me
keep you. Certainly I'm leaving home. Indeed, I believe I have left it
already--for good."

And she threw back her head and laughed.

Upon the doorstep a cold rush of air met Mr. Iglesias. Above, the sky
was blue-black and very clear. The road was vacant and grey with frost.
The flame of the gaslamps quivered, giving off a sharp brightness in
the keen atmosphere. Mr. Iglesias turned up the collar of his coat and
descended the steps. Just then a hansom emerged from the distance and
drew up with a rattle and grind against the curb some twenty paces
ahead. The occupant, a young man, flung back the doors with a thud, and
stood a moment on the footboard paying the driver, who raised himself,
leaning forward with outstretched hand across the glistening black roof
of the cab. Then the young man turned round, swung himself down on to
the asphalt pavement, and came forward as rapidly as a long motor-coat,
reaching to his heels, would permit. He was tall and fair,
well-favoured, preoccupied, not to say morose. He did not vouchsafe Mr.
Iglesias so much as a glance as he brushed past him. The road was still
vacant, and in the frosty air sounds carried. Mr. Iglesias distinctly
heard him race up a neighbouring flight of steps, heard the click and
turn of a latchkey in a lock, heard the slam of a front door pulled to
violently. And so doing Dominic turned cold and a little faint. He
would not condescend to look back; but he had recognised Alaric
Barking, and was in no doubt which house he had entered.

"Keb, sir? 'Ere yer are, sir," the cabby called cheerily. "Very cold
night. Just set one gentleman down, and 'appy to tike another up. Want
to get back to my comfy little West End shelter, so I'll tike yer for
'alf fares, sir, though we are outside the blooming radius."

But Iglesias shook his head. The horse stood limply in a cloud of
steam. Alaric Barking had evidently pushed the pace. But even had the
animal been in better condition, Iglesias had no desire to drive in
that particular cab. He would rather have walked the whole way to Cedar
Lodge.

Opposite the Bell Inn, where the roads fork--one turning away through
Mortlake, the other leading to Barnes Common, Roehampton, and
Sheen--the row of smart little houses degenerates into shops. By the
time he reached these Mr. Iglesias discovered that he was unaccountably
tired. The keen air oppressed his chest, making his breath come short.
It was useless to attempt to go home on foot. Then, with a sense of
relief, he saw that on the far side of the road a couple of omnibuses
stood, the horses' heads turned Londonwards. He crossed, climbed the
stairway of the leading vehicle slowly, and sank into a seat. The
'bustop was unoccupied, yet Dominic was not by himself. Two companions
had climbed the winding stairway with him and taken their places beside
him, Old Age on his left hand, Loneliness on his right. All up the long
suburban road, while the omnibus bumped and jolted and the fallen
leaves whirled and scurried before the searching breath of the night
wind Iglesias' two companions seemed to lean across him, talking. There
were tones of mockery in their talk, while behind and through it, as
some discordant refrain, he heard the ring of a young man's eager
footsteps, the click and turn of a latchkey, and the slam of a door as
it shut. On nearing the river the cold grew intense. Crossing the
bridge, the waterside lights were reflected in the surface of the
stream, which ran full and strong from the autumn rains, swirling
seaward with an ebbing tide. To Iglesias' eyes the reflections
converted themselves into fiery dragons, writhing in the heat of deadly
conflict, as upon Poppy St. John's oriental scarf. A glare hung over
London, palpitating as with multitudinous and angry life; and when the
omnibus slowed up in Hammersmith Broadway the voice of the streets grew
loud--the monstrous city, so it seemed to Dominic Iglesias, shouting
defiance to the majestic calm and solemnity of the eternal stars.




CHAPTER XVI


"He says it is nothing serious, only a slight chill; and sends kind
regards and many thanks for kind inquiries, and hopes to be out in a
day or two, when he will call and thank you in person."

This from George Lovegrove to his wife, the latter arrayed in garments
of ceremony and seated upon the Chesterfield sofa awaiting guests. It
was her afternoon at-home.

"Well, I'm sure I hope it is no more than that, Georgie," she answered
comfortably. "Chills are always going about in November, and very often
gentlemen encourage them--especially bachelors--by not changing into
their winter vests and pants early enough. A great deal of illness is
contracted that way."

Here Serena rustled audibly. She stood by the window, holding the lace
curtain just sufficiently aside to get a narrow and attenuated view of
the fog-enshrouded Green. The outlook was far from inspiriting, and
Serena was keenly interested in the conversation going forward between
her host and hostess. But it was not in her programme to let this
appear. She, while straining her ears to listen, therefore maintained
an air of detachment. The word "pants" was, however, too much for her
fortitude, and she rustled. "Really, Rhoda does use the most dreadfully
unladylike expressions sometimes," she commented inwardly. "She never
seems to remember that everyone is not married, though even if they
were I should hope they would not mention those sort of things. Rhoda
is wanting in refinement. I wonder if George notices that and feels it.
If he does notice it, I think he ought to tell her about it, because--"

But here she fell to listening again, since the said George took up his
parable once more.

"Still, I own I don't like his looks somehow. His face is so thin and
drawn. It reminds me of the time his mother, poor Mrs. Iglesias, died.
I told him, just jocularly, that his appearance surprised me, but he
put it all aside--you know he has a very high aristocratic manner at
times that makes you feel you have been intrusive--and then talked of
other things."

"He has lived too solitary," Mrs. Lovegrove said judicially, "too
solitary, and that tells on any one in middle life. I should never
forgive myself if we left him to mope. You must just try to coax him
over here to stay, Georgie, and I'll nurse him up and humour him, and
fortunately Serena's here, you see, for pleasant company."

Mrs. Lovegrove looked meaningly at her spouse, while the figure at the
window again rustled.

"I am sure you would exert yourself to help cheer poor Mr. Iglesias up,
if he came over to stay, would you not now, Serena?" she inquired
insinuatingly.

"Are you speaking to me, Rhoda?"

"Yes, about Mr. Iglesias coming here to stay."

Serena turned her head and answered over her shoulder.

"Of course you and George are quite at liberty to ask anyone here whom
you like. And if Mrs. Iglesias came I should be perfectly civil to him.
But I should not care, Rhoda, to bind myself to anything more than
that, because I do not find him an easy person to get on with."

She turned to her contemplation of the fog with a renewed assumption of
indifference. George Lovegrove's shiny forehead puckered into little
lines. He looked anxiously at his wife. The good lady, however, laid a
fat forefinger upon her lips and nodded her head at him in the most
archly reassuring manner.

"That's funny," she said, "because Mr. Iglesias is quite the cleverest
of all Georgie's gentlemen friends--except, of course, the dear
vicar--and so I always took for granted anyone like yourself was sure
to get on nicely with him, Serena. Even I hardly ever find him
difficult to talk with."

"I never talk easily to strangers," Serena put in loftily.

"Oh! but you'd hardly call Mr. Iglesias a stranger."

"Yes, I should," Serena declared with emphasis. "I should certainly
call him a stranger. I always call everyone a stranger till I know them
intimately. It is much safer to do so. And it would be absurd to
pretend that I know Mr. Iglesias intimately. You, of course, do, but I
do not. You and George may have seen him frequently since I have been
here, but I have really seen him very seldom, four or five times at the
outside. He has generally appeared to call when I was likely to be out.
I could not help observing that. It may be a coincidence, of course.
But I cannot pretend that I have not thought it rather marked."

Serena had advanced into the centre of the room. She held herself
erect. She enjoyed making a demonstration. "Rhoda may think I am a
cipher," she said to herself, "but she is mistaken. She may think I can
be hoodwinked and used as a mere tool, but I will let her see that I
cannot." She felt daring and dangerous, and her eyes snapped. The
rustling of her skirts and the emphatic tones of her voice aroused the
parrot, which had been dosing on its perch, its head sunk between its
shoulders and its breast-feathers fluffed out into a little green apron
over its grey claws.

"Pollie's own pet girlie," it murmured drowsily, with dry clickings of
its tongue against its beak, the words jolting out in foolish twos and
threes. "Hi! p'liceman--murder! fire! thieves!--there's another jolly
row downstairs."

Poor George Lovegrove gazed in bewilderment from Serena to the parrot,
from the parrot to his wife, and then back to Serena again.

"You do surprise me! And I am more mortified than I can say that you
should have the most distant reason, Serena--or Susan either--ever to
feel the least slighted in this house. You do surprise me--I can't
believe it has been the least intentional on Iglesias' part. But I
would not have had anything of the kind happen for twenty pounds."

"Pray don't apologise, George," Serena cried, "or I shall feel quite
annoyed. Of course everyone has a right to their own preferences; but I
had been led to expect something different. As I say, it may only be a
coincidence. Nothing may have really been meant. Only it has seemed
rather marked. But in any case it has not been your fault, George."

"I am very glad you allow that, Serena," the good creature said humbly.

"Oh! yes. I quite excuse you of any intentional slight, George. I quite
trust you. Still, nothing could be more unpleasant than for me to feel
that my being here put any restriction upon your friends coming to the
house. Of course I know Susan and I move in rather different society
from Rhoda and yourself."

"Yes," he assented hurriedly, agonised as to the wife's feelings--"yes,
yes."

"And so it is quite possible that I may not suit some of your
acquaintances."

"Excuse me," he panted--"no, Serena, I cannot think that."

"I am not sure," she returned argumentatively. "Not at all sure,
George. And nothing could be more unpleasant to me than to feel I was
the least in the way. Of course, I should never have come back if I had
supposed I should be in the way; but Rhoda made such a point of it."

Here the parrot broke forth into prolonged and earpiercing shriekings,
flapping its wings violently and nearly tumbled backwards off its perch.

"Throw a handkerchief over the poor bird's cage, Georgie dear," cried
Mrs. Lovegrove from the sofa. Her face was red. She had become
distressingly hot and flustered.--"And just as I was flattering myself
it was all turning out so nicely, too," she said to herself.--"No, not
your own, Georgie dear"--this aloud--"you may need it later. The red
bandana out of the right-hand corner of the top drawer of the
work-table."

"I think it would be much simpler for me to go," Serena continued, her
voice pitched in a high key to combat the cries of the parrot and the
rattle of the table drawer, which George Lovegrove in his present state
of agitation found it impossible to shut with accuracy and despatch.

"Of course, it may inconvenience Susan to have me return sooner than
she expected. She is away speaking at a number of missionary meetings
in the North. And the maids will be on board wages, and the
drawing-room furniture will have been put into holland covers. She
counted on my staying here till I go to my cousin, Lady Samuelson, in
Ladbroke Square, the third week in December. But, of course, all that
must be arranged. I can give up my visit. Lady Samuelson will be
annoyed, and I don't know what excuse I can make to her. Still, I think
I had really much better go; and then you can have Mr. Iglesias, or any
other of your and Rhoda's friends, to stop here without my feeling that
I am in the way. Nothing could be more odious to me than feeling I was
encroaching or forcing myself upon you. Mamma would never have
countenanced such behaviour. It is the sort of thing we were always
brought up to have the greatest horror of. It is a thing I never have
done and never could do. I hope you understand that, George. Nothing
could be further from my thoughts when I accepted Rhoda's invitation
to----"

"Miss Hart, please, ma'am," the little house-parlour-maid trumpeted,
her face very pink from the exertion of attracting her mistress's
attention and making herself heard. Mrs. Lovegrove bounced up from the
sofa. Usually, it must be allowed, the great Eliza was rather at a
discount. Now she was astonishingly welcome. Her hostess's greeting,
though silent, was effusively cordial. She clutched at her guest's hand
as one in imminent risk of drowning at a lifebelt. The said guest was
in her sprightliest humour. She was also in a scarlet flannel blouse
thickly powdered with gradated black discs. This, in conjunction with
purple chrysanthemums in a black hat, her tawny hair and freckled
complexion, did not constitute a wholly delicious scheme of colour; but
to this fact Mrs. Lovegrove was supremely indifferent.

"Good-afternoon," Miss Hart said in a stage whisper, glancing towards
Serena, still bright-eyed and erect. "Don't let me interrupt, pray. My
conversation will keep. I will just sit and listen."

"Listen to what?" Serena cried, almost inarticulate with indignation.

"Why, to your recitation. Our gentlemen often treat us to a little in
that line of an evening, Mrs. Lovegrove, after dinner. I dote on
recitation. Pieces of a comic nature specially, when well delivered."

"I should never dream of reciting," Serena declared heatedly.

"No, really now," Miss Hart returned. "That seems quite a pity. It is
such a pleasant occupation for a dull afternoon like this, do you not
think so, Miss Lovegrove? I declare I was quite sure, from the moment I
came into the hall--while I was taking off my waterproof--that your
cousin was giving you a little entertainment of that kind, Mr.
Lovegrove. Her voice was running up and down in such a very telling
manner."

If glances could scorch, Miss Hart would unquestionably have been
reduced to a cinder, for rage possessed Serena. She had worked herself
up into a fine fume of anger over purely imaginary injuries. And now,
that Eliza Hart, of all people in the world, should intervene with
suggestions of comic recitations!

"Detestable person!" Serena said to herself. "Her conduct is positively
outrageous. Of course she knew perfectly well I was doing nothing of
the kind. Really, I believe anybody would feel her manner quite
insulting. I wonder how George and Rhoda can tolerate her. It shows
George has deteriorated much that he should tolerate her. I am not so
surprised at Rhoda. Of course she never had good taste. I think I ought
to go to my room. That would mark my displeasure. But then she may have
come on purpose to say something particular. I wonder if she has done
so? Of course if she has, she wants to get rid of me. That is her
object. But she is mistaken if she thinks that I shall gratify her. I
think I owe it to myself to make sure exactly what is going on. I will
certainly stay. That will show her I am on the watch."

During this protracted, though silent, colloquy, Serena had remained
standing in the middle of the room. Now she rustled back to the window,
held aside the lace curtain and resumed her contemplation of the
fog-enshrouded Green. Good George Lovegrove gazed after her in deep
dejection and perplexity. Somebody, it appeared to him, had been
extremely unreasonable and disagreeable; but who that somebody was for
the very life of him he could not tell. The wife was out of the
question; while to suppose it Serena approached high treason. Still he
was very sure it could not be that most scrupulously courteous
personage Dominic Iglesias. There remained himself--"Yet I wouldn't
knowingly vex a fly," he thought, "and as to vexing Serena! Sometimes
ones does wish females were not quite so sensitive."

Miss Hart, meanwhile, had taken the unaccustomed post of honour beside
her hostess upon the sofa. She was enjoying herself immensely. She had
a conviction of marching to victory.

"Yes," she said, "Mrs. Lovegrove, dear Peachie Porcher asked me just to
run across as she has missed your last two afternoons, lest you should
think her neglectful. I am well aware I am but a poor substitute for
Peachie--no compliments now, Mr. Lovegrove, if you please!"

"Mrs. Porcher is in good health, I trust"--this from Rhoda.

"At present, yes, I am happy to say, thank you. But how long it will
continue," Miss Hart spoke impressively--"at this rate I am sure I
cannot tell."

"Indeed," George Lovegrove inquired anxiously. "You don't tell me so?
Nothing wrong, I trust."

"Well, as I always tell her, her sense of duty amounts almost to a
fault--so unselfish, so conscientious, it brings tears to my eyes often
at times. I hope it is appreciated in the right quarter--I do hope
that, Mr. Lovegrove."

Here Rhoda's bosom heaved with a generous sigh.

"There is much ingratitude in the world, Miss Hart, I fear," she said
pensively.

Her husband looked at her in an anguish of apology--whether for his own
sins or those of others he knew not exactly.

"So there is, Mrs. Lovegrove," Eliza responded warmly. "And nobody is a
more speaking example of that truth than Peachie Porcher. When I think
of all she went through during her married life, and yet so
unsuspicious, so trusting--it is enough to melt an iceberg, that it is,
Mrs. Lovegrove. Now, as I was saying to her only this morning, 'You
must study yourself a little, get out in the air, take a peep at the
shops, and have some amusement.' But her reply is always the
same.--'No, Liz, dear,' she says, 'not at the present time, thank you.
I know the duties of my position as mistress of Cedar Lodge. When any
one of our gentlemen is ailing, my place is at home. I must remain in
the house in case of a sudden emergency. I should not have an easy
moment away from the place,' she says."

Miss Hart looked around upon her hearers demanding approbation and
sympathy.

"Very affecting, is it not?" she inquired.

After a moment's embarrassed silence, George Lovegrove murmured a
suitable, if timid, assent. His wife assumed a bolder attitude. Goaded
by provocations recently received, she went over--temporarily--to the
side of the enemy.

"I always have maintained Mrs. Porcher was full of heart," she
declared, throwing the assertion across the room, much as though it was
a stone, in the direction of the figure at the window.

Serena drew herself up with a rustle.

"I wonder exactly what Rhoda means by that?" she commented inwardly. "I
think it very odd. Of course, she must have some meaning, and I wonder
what it is. She seems to be changing her line. I am glad I stayed. I am
afraid Rhoda is rather deceitful. I excuse George of deceit. I believe
George to be true; but he is sadly influenced by Rhoda. I am rather
sorry for George."

"So she is, Mrs. Lovegrove," Eliza Hart resumed--"Peachie's too full of
heart, as I tell her. She is forever thinking of others and their
comforts. She grudges neither time nor money, does not Peachie. There
is nothing calculating or cheese-paring about her--not enough, I often
think. Fish, sweetbreads, game, poultry, and all of the very
best--where the profits are to come from with a bill of fare like that
passes my powers of arithmetic, and so I point out to her. I hope it is
appreciated--yes, I do hope that, Mr. Lovegrove"--there the speaker
became extremely coy and playful. "A little bird sometimes seems to
twitter to me that it is. And yet I am sure I don't know. The members
of your sex are very misleading, Mr. Lovegrove. Do not perjure yourself
now. You cannot take me in. And a certain gentleman is very close, you
know, and stand-offish. It is not easy to get at his real sentiments,
is it, now?"

Serena laid back her ears, so to speak. "I was quite right to stay,"
she reflected wrathfully.

"I think Mr. Iglesias is unusually considerate, Miss Hart," George
Lovegrove said tentatively. "He is quite sensible of Mrs. Porcher's
kind attentions. But naturally he is very tenacious of upsetting her
household arrangements and giving additional trouble."

"And then the position of a bachelor is delicate, Miss Hart, you must
admit," Mrs. Lovegrove chimed in. "That's what I always tell Georgie.
It may do all very well in their younger days to be unattached, but as
gentlemen get on in life they do need their own private establishments.
I am sure I am sorry for them in chambers, or even in good rooms like
those at Cedar Lodge. For it is not the same as a home, Miss Hart, and
never can be. There must be awkwardnesses on both sides at times,
especially when, it comes to illness."

Then the great Eliza gathered herself together, for it appeared to her
her forecast had been just and that she was indeed marching to victory.

"Yes, there is no denying all that," she said, "and I am more than glad
you see it in that light, Mrs. Lovegrove. Between ourselves, I have
more and more ever since a certain gentleman gave up work in the City.
It would be premature to speak freely; but, just between friends and
under the rose, you being interested in one party and I in the other,
there can be no harm in dropping a hint and ascertaining how the land
lies. Of course if it came to pass, it would be to my own disadvantage,
for I do not know how I should ever bear to part with Peachie Porcher.
Still, I could put myself aside, if I felt it was for her happiness."

"You do surprise me," George Lovegrove exclaimed. He was filled with
consternation, his hair nearly rising on his head. "I had no notion.
Dear me, you fairly take away my breath." He could almost have wept.
"To think of it!" he repeated. "Only to think of it! Miss Hart, you do
surprise me."

"Oh! you must not run away with the notion anything is really settled
yet," she replied. "And I could not say Mrs. Porcher really would, when
it came to the point, after the experiences she had in her first
marriage. She is very reserved, is Peachie. Still, she might. And very
fortunate a certain gentleman would be if she did--it does not take
more than half an eye to see that."

"Dr. Nevington, please, ma'am," announced the parlour-maid, and the
fine clerical voice and clerical presence filled all the room.
Thereupon Serena graciously joined the circle. She was unusually
self-possessed and definite. She embarked in a quite spirited
conversation with the newcomer. And when Eliza Hart, after a few
pleasantries of a parochial tendency with the said newcomer--in whose
favour she had vacated the place of honour upon the sofa--rose to
depart, Serena bowed to her in the most royally distant and superior
manner. Her amiability remained a constant quantity during the rest of
the evening; and when an opportunity occurred of speaking in private to
her cousin, she did so with the utmost cordiality.

"I do hope, George," she said, "you will not think any more of our
little unpleasantness. I can truly say I never bear malice. I own I was
annoyed, for I felt I had not been quite fairly treated by Rhoda. But,
of course, I may have been mistaken. I am quite willing to believe so
and to let bygones be bygones, and stay, as Rhoda pressed me to do,
until I go to my cousin, Lady Samuelson, in December. Of course it
would be more convenient to me in some ways. But I am not thinking of
that. I am thinking of you and Rhoda. I should not like to disappoint
her by leaving her when she wants me to help entertain your friend, Mr.
Iglesias. Of course, I cannot pretend I take easily to strangers. Mamma
was very particular whom we associated with, and so I have always been
unaccustomed to strangers, and I cannot pretend I am partial to making
new acquaintances. Still, I should be very sorry to seem
unaccommodating, or to hurt you and Rhoda by refusing to stay and
assist you."

"Thank you truly, Serena; I am sure you are very kind," the good man
answered. And the best, or the worst, of it was he actually believed he
was speaking the truth!




CHAPTER XVII


The easterly wind blew strong and shattering, bleak and dreary, against
the windows of the bedchamber at the back of the house. The complaint
of the cedar tree, as the branches sawed upon one another, was
long-drawn and loud. These sounds reached Iglesias in the sitting-room,
where he sat, alone and unoccupied, before the fire. For more than a
week now he had been confined to the house. He had set the door of
communication between the two rooms open, so as to gain a greater sense
of space and that he might take a little exercise by walking the whole
length of them. The cry of the wind and the moan of the sawing branches
was very comfortless, yet he made no effort to shut it out. To begin
with, he was so weak that it was too much trouble to move. To go on
with, the melancholy sounds were not ill-suited to his present humour.
For a great depression was upon him, a weariness of spirit which might
be felt. Out of doors London shivered, houses and sky and the expanse
of Trimmer's Green, with its leafless trees and iron railings, livid, a
greyness upon them as of fear. Dominic had no quarrel with this either.
Indeed it gave him a certain bitter satisfaction, as offering a not
inharmonious setting to his own thought.

Though not robust he was tough and wiry, so that illness of such a
nature as to necessitate his remaining within doors was a new and
trying experience. Crossing Hammersmith Bridge on the 'bustop ten days
previously, the chill of the river had struck through him. Yet this, in
all reasonable probability, would merely have resulted in passing
physical discomfort, but for the moral and spiritual hurt immediately
preceding it. How far the mind has power to cure the body is still an
open question. But that the mind can actively predispose the body to
sickness is indubitable. To realise and analyse, in their several
bearings, the causes and consequences of that same moral hurt Iglesias'
pride and loyalty alike refused. In respect of them he set his jaw and
sternly averted his eyes. Yet, though the will may be steady to resist
and to abstain, the tides of feeling ebb and flow, contemptuous of
control as those of some unquiet sea. They defy volition, notably in
illness when vitality is low. Refuse as he might to go behind the fact,
it remained indisputable that the Lady of the Windswept Dust had given
him his dismissal. Out of his daily life a joy had gone, a constant
object of thought and interest. Out of his heart a living presence had
gone, leaving a void more harsh than death. And all this had happened
in a connection peculiarly painful and distasteful to him; so that it
was as though a foul miasma had arisen, and, drifting across the face
of his fair friendship, distorted its proportions, rendering all his
memories of it suspect. Further, in this discrediting of friendship his
hope of the discovery of that language of the soul which can alone
effect a true adjustment between the exterior and interior life had
suffered violent eclipse. He had been thrown back into the prison-house
of the obvious and the material. The world had lost its poetry, had
grown narrow, sordid, dim, and gross. His own life had grown more than
ever barren of opportunity and inept. In short, Dominic Iglesias had
lost sight of the far horizon which is touched by the glory of the
Uncreated Light; and, so doing, dwelt in outer darkness once again,
infinitely desolate.

On the afternoon in question he had reached the nadir of disillusion
and distrust. He leaned back in the red-covered chair, his shapely
hands lying, palms downward, along the two arms of it, his vision of
the room and its familiar contents blurred by unshed tears. It was an
hour of supreme discouragement.

"Nothing is left," he said, half aloud, "nothing. The future is as
blank as the present. If this is to grow old, then indeed those whom
the gods love have need enough to die young."

For a space he listened to the shattering wind as it cried in the
window-sashes, to the branches of the cedar sawing upon one another and
moaning as in self-inflicted pain. Newsboys were calling early
specials. The coarse cockney voices, strangled by the easterly blast,
met and crossed one another, died away in a side street, to emerge
again and again encounter. Such words as were distinguishable seemed of
sinister import, agitating to the imagination. Then de Courcy Smyth's
shuffling footsteps crossed the floor of the room overhead. The
wire-wove mattress of his bed creaked as he sat on the edge of it,
kicking off his slippers and putting on walking boots, as might be
gathered from floppings followed by an equally nerveless but heavier
tread. A door opened, closed, and the footsteps descended the stairs.
On the landing without they paused for an appreciable time; but, to Mr.
Iglesias's great relief, deciding against attempt of entry, continued
their cheerless progress down to the hall below. Yet, just now Iglesias
could have found it in his heart to envy the man, notwithstanding his
unsavouriness of attitude and aspect. For in him ambition still
stirred. He had still definite work to do, and the hope of eventual
fame to support him during the doing of it; had the triumph of the
theatre, the applause of an audience in the white heat of enthusiasm to
dream of and strive after.

"But, for me, nothing," Iglesias repeated, "whether vital as of those
far-away southern battle-fields, or fictitious and close at hand as of
the stage. Not even the sting of poverty to whet appetite and give an
edge to bodily hunger. Nothing, either of fear or of hope. The measure
of my obscurity is the measure of my immunity from change of fortune,
bad or good. I am worthless even as food for powder. Danger herself
will have none of me, and passes me by."

With that he raised his hands and let them drop despairingly along the
arms of the chair again, while the unbidden tears overflowed. For a
minute or more he remained thus, weeping silently with bowed head.
Then, a movement of self-contempt taking him, he regained his calm, sat
upright, brushing away the tears.

And it was as though, in thus regaining a clearer physical vision, he
regained a clearer mental vision likewise. Purpose asserted itself as
against mere blind acquiescence. Iglesias looked up, demanding as of
right some measure of consolation, some object promising help. So
doing, his eyes sought a certain carven oak panel set in an ebony
frame. From his earliest childhood he remembered it, for it had hung in
his mother's bedchamber; and in those far-away years, while she still
had sufficient force to disregard opposition and make an open practice
of prayer, she had kneeled before it when engaged in her devotions.
Waking at night--when as a baby-child, during his father's long
absences, he slept in her room--Dominic had often seen the delicate
kneeling figure, wrapped in some loose-flowing garment, the hands
outstretched in supplication. Even then, in the first push of conscious
intelligence, the carven picture had spoken to him as something
masterful, for all its rigidity and sadness, and very strong to help.
It had given him a sense of protection and security, so that his little
soul was satisfied; and he could go to sleep again in peace, sure that
his mother was in safe keeping while--as he said--she "talked to it."
In the long interval which had elapsed since then he had lost touch
with the spirit of it, though preserving it as among the most cherished
of his family relics. His appreciation of it had become aesthetic
rather than religious. But now, as it hung on the dimly white wall
above his writing-table on the window side of the fireplace, the dreary
London afternoon light took the surface of it, bringing all the details
of the scene into prominence. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the old power
declared itself. The picture came alive as to the intention and meaning
of it. It spoke to him once again, and that with no uncertain voice.

Three tall narrow crosses uplifted against a cloudless sky. Below, a
multitude of men, women, and horses, carved in varying degrees of
relief. Some starting into bold definiteness, some barely indicated and
as though imprisoned in the thickness of the wood; but all grave,
energetic, and, whether inspired by compassion or by mockery, fierce.
These grouped around a great web of linen--upheld by some of them at
the four corners, hammock-wise, high at the head, low at the
foot--wherein lay the corpse of a man in the very flower of his age, of
heroic proportions, spare yet muscular, long and finely angular of
limb, the articulations notably slender, the head borne proudly though
bent, the features severely beautiful, the whole virile, indomitable
even in the physical abjection of death.

In this Spanish presentment of the closing act of the Divine Tragedy
the sensuous pagan element, which mars too many otherwise admirable
works of religious art, was absent. Its appeal was to the intellect
rather than to the emotions, inculcating effort rather than inviting
any sentimental passion of pity. Its message was that of conquest, of
iron self-mastery and self-restraint. This was bracing and
courage-begetting even when viewed from the exclusively artistic
standpoint. But now not merely the presentment of the event held
Iglesias' attention, but the event presented, the thing in itself. His
heart and intelligence grasped the meaning of it, not only as a matter
of supreme historic interest in view of its astonishing influence upon
human development during the last two thousand years; but as an
ever-present reality, as an exposition of the Absolute, of that which
everlastingly has been, and everlastingly will be, and hence of
incalculable and immediate importance to himself. It spoke to him of no
vague and general truth; but of a truth intimate and individual, coming
to him as the call to enter upon a personal inheritance. Of obedience
to the dictates of natural religion, and faithful practice of the
pieties of it, Dominic Iglesias had, all his life, been a remarkable if
unconscious exponent. But this awakening of the spirit to the
actualities of supernatural religion, this crossing of that dark
immensity of space which appears to interpose between Almighty God and
the mind of man, was new to him. He had sought a language of the soul
which might effect an adjustment between the exterior and interior
life. Here, in the Word made Flesh, with reverent amazement he found
it. He had sought it through the instrumentality of the things of time
and sense; and they, though full with promise, had proved illusory. He
had fixed his hope on relation to the creature. But here, all the
while, close beside him, waiting till the scales should fall from his
eyes and he should see and understand, had stood the Creator. Fair,
very fair--while it lasted--was human friendship. But here, had he but
strength and daring to meet it, was a friendship infinitely fairer,
immutable, eternal--namely, the friendship of Almighty God.

The easterly wind still cried in the window-sashes, harsh and
shattering. The branches of the exiled cedar tree sawed upon one
another, uttering their long-drawn complaint. The voices of the
newsboys, hoarse and raucous, shouting their sinister message, still
came and went. The livid light of the winter afternoon grew more dreary
as it sank into, and was absorbed by, the deepening dusk. But to
Dominic Iglesias these things had ceased to matter. Dazzled, enchanted,
confounded, alike by the magnitude and the simplicity of his discovery,
he remained gazing at the carven panel; gazing through and beyond it to
that of which it was the medium and symbol, gazing, clear-eyed and
fearlessly, away to the far horizon radiant with the surpassing glory
of the Uncreated Light.




CHAPTER XVIII


The Black Week had just ended; but the humiliation of it lay, as a dead
weight, upon the heart of London. Three crushing reverses in eight
days--Stormberg, Magersfontein, and finally Colenso! There was no
getting rid of the facts, or the meaning of them in respect of
incapacity, blundering, and reckless waste of personal valour. It was a
sorry tale, and one over which Europe at large chuckled. It has been
universally assumed that the English are a serious nation. This is an
error. They are not serious, but indifferent, a nation of
individualists, each mainly, not to say exclusively, occupied with his
own private affairs. With the vast majority unity of sentiment is
suspect, and patriotism a passive rather than an active virtue. But at
this juncture, under the stress of repeated disaster, unity of
sentiment and patriotism--that is, a sense of the national honour and
necessity for the vindication of it--became strongly evident. London
was profoundly and visibly moved. Not with excitement--that came later,
manifesting itself in hysterical outcries of relief--but with a grim
anger and sadness of astonishment that such things could indeed be.
Strangers, passing in the street, looked one another in the eyes
questioningly, a common anxiety forging unexpected bonds of kinship.
The town was curiously hushed, as though listening, always listening,
for those ugly messages rushed so perpetually by cable from overseas.
Men's faces were strained by the effort to hear, and, hearing, to judge
justly the extent and the bearings of both national and individual
damage. Already mourning struck a sensible note in women's dress. If
the Little Englander capered, he was careful to do so at home, or in
meeting-places frequented only by persons likeminded with himself. It
may be questioned whether he is not ever most courageous when under
covert thus; since shooting out of windows or from behind hedges would
appear to be his inherent, and not particularly gallant, notion of
sport. The newsboys alone openly and blatantly rejoiced, dominating the
situation--as on Derby Day or Boat-race Night--and putting a gilded
dome to the horror by yelling highly seasoned lies when truth proved
insufficiently evil to stimulate custom to the extent of his desires.
Depression, as of storm, permeated the social atmosphere. Churches were
full, places of amusement comparatively empty. To laugh seemed an
indiscretion trenching on indecency.

Amid surrounding bravery of imperial purple, cream-colour, and gold,
Poppy St. John sat at the extreme end of the first row of balcony
stalls in the newly opened Twentieth Century Theatre. This was a calm
and secluded spot, since the partition, dividing off the boxes, flanked
it on the right. Partly on this account Poppy had selected it. Partly,
also, because it afforded an excellent view of the left of the stage;
and it was on the left--looking from the body of the house--that the
principal action of the piece, as far as Dot Parris's part was
concerned, took place. Poppy was unattended. She wanted an evening's
rest, an evening free of conversation and effort; but she wanted
something to look at, too, something affording just sufficient
emotional stimulus to keep importunate thought at bay. This the theatre
supplied. It had ceased long ago to tire her. She knew the ways of it
from both sides of the footlights uncommonly well, and loved them
indifferently much. She was a shrewd and cynical critic. Nevertheless,
to go to the play was a sort of going home to her--a home neither very
socially nor morally exalted, perhaps, but one offering the advantages
of perfect familiarity.

Huddled in a black velvet fur-lined sacque, reaching to her feet and
abundantly trimmed with jet embroidery and black lace, she settled
herself in her place. The soft fur was cosey against her bare neck. She
felt chilly. Later she might peel, thereby exhibiting the values of the
rest of her costume. But it was not worth while to do so yet. The first
piece was over, but the house was still a poor one. It might fill up.
She hoped it would for Dot's sake; for few things are more
disheartening than to play to empty benches. But, at present, the
audience was altogether too sparse for it to be worth while to
sacrifice comfort to effect. In point of fact, Poppy was cold from
sheer fatigue. For the last month, to employ her own rather variegated
phraseology, she had racketed, had persistently and pertinaciously been
"going the pace." No doubt they do these things better in France; yet,
as she reflected, provided you are unhampered by prejudice, are fairly
in funds and know the ropes, even grimy fog-bound London is, in this
particular connection, by no means to be sneezed at. And truly Poppy's
autobiography during the said month would have made extremely merry
reading, amounting in some aspects to a positive classic--though of the
kind hardly suited as a basis of instruction for the pupils of a young
ladies' school. Setting aside adventures of a more questionable
character, a positively alarming good luck had pursued her, everything
she touched turning to gold. Even in this hour of financial depression
the market favoured her both in buying and selling. If she put money on
a horse, that horse was sure to win. If she played cards--and she had
played pretty constantly--she inevitably plundered her opponents. This
last alone, of all her doubtful doings, really troubled her; for her
opponents had frequently been youthful, and it was contrary to Poppy's
principles to pluck the but half-fledged chick.

Barring this solitary deflection from her somewhat latitudinarian code
of ethics, she had, on the face of it, ample cause for
self-congratulation. Never had she been more gaily audacious in word or
deed. Never had she been better company, keeping her audience--an
almost exclusively masculine one--in a roar, all the louder perhaps
because of inward defiance of the news from over-seas, the humiliation
of which had now culminated in the disasters of the Black Week. Flame
only shows the brighter for a sombre background. And Poppy, during this
ill-starred period, had been as a flame to her admirers and
associates--a fitful, prankish flame, full of provocation and
bedevilment, the light of it inciting to all manner of wild doings and,
in the end, not infrequently scorching those pretty shrewdly who were
over-bold in warming themselves at the heat of it. For fires of the
sort lighted by Poppy are not precisely such as contribute to the peace
and security of the domestic hearth.

But now she was tired. The fun seemed fun no longer; so that,
notwithstanding her successes, she found herself a prey to
dissatisfaction, discontent, and a disposition to recall all the less
happy episodes of her varied career. She yawned quite loudly, as she
laid opera-glasses and play-bill upon the velvet cushion in front of
her, and pulled the soft fur-lined garment up closer about her
shoulders.

"The first act's safe to be poorish anyhow, and Dot does not come on
till just the end of it. I wonder if I dare go to sleep?" she asked
herself, gently rubbing her eyes. "It would be awfully nice to forget
the whole blooming show, past, present, and to come, for a little while
and plunge in the waters of oblivion. Oblivion with a capital O--a dose
of that's what I want. Beautiful roomy consolation-stakes of a word,
oblivion, if one could only believe in the existence of it--which,
unluckily, some-how I can't."

Here the strains of the orchestra ceased. The lights were turned low in
the body of the house. The curtain went up. As it did so a cold draught
drew from regions behind the stage, laden with that indefinable odour
of gas, glue, humanity, flagged stair and alleyways, paint, canvas,
carpentry, and underground places the sun never penetrates, which
haunts the working part of every theatre. Poppy smiled as she snuffed
it, with a queer mingling of enjoyment and repulsion. For as is the
smell of ocean to the seafarer, of mother-earth to the peasant, of
incense to the priest, so is the smell of the theatre to the player.
Nature may revolt; but the spell holds. Once an actor always an actor.
The mark of the calling is indelible. Even to the third and fourth
generation there is no rubbing it out.

"I suppose it would have been wiser if I had stuck to the profession,"
Poppy commented to herself. "I should have been a leading lady by now,
drawing my thirty to forty pounds a week. I had the root of the matter
in me. Have it still, worse luck; for it's the sort of root which
asserts its continued existence by aching at times like that of a
broken tooth. It was a wrench to give it all up. But then those rotten
plays of his, inflated impossible stuff, which would never
act--couldn't act!--and I carrying them round to manager after manager
and using all the gentle arts I knew to get them accepted. Oh! it was
very dignified, it was very pretty! And then his perpetual persecutions
for money, his jealousy and spite, and his fine feelings, his infernal
superiority--yes, that was what really did the job. Flesh and blood
couldn't stand it. To prove to a woman, at three meals daily, that she
couldn't hold a candle to you in birth, or brains, or education; and
then expect her to slave for you--and make it jolly hot for her if she
didn't, too--while you sat at home and caressed the delusion of your
own heaven-born genius in the only decently comfortable chair in the
house! No, it was not good enough--that it was not."

Poppy surveyed the stage, unseeing, her great eyes wide with unlovely
memories.

"I wonder what's become of him," she said presently. "He hasn't dunned
me for months. Has he found some other poor wretch to bleed? Must have,
I imagine, for he always declared he was on the edge of starvation.
Supposing that was true, though--supposing he has starved?"

Her thought sank away into a wordless reverie of the dreariest
description. Suddenly she roused herself, clenching her hands in her
lap.

"Well, supposing he has, what does it matter to me? If ever a man
deserved to starve, he did, vain, lazy, cowardly, self-seeking jackal
of a fellow. Why in the name of reason should I trouble about
him--specially to-night? But then why, whenever I am a bit done, does
the remembrance of him always come back?"

Poppy yawned again, staring blankly at the persons on the stage,
hearing the sound of their speech but knowing only the sense of her own
thought.

"Why? Because it's like him, because it's altogether in the part. He
was always on the watch for his opportunity; wheedling or
blackguarding, directly he saw one had no fight left in one, till he
got his own way."

She leaned forward, resting her hands on the velvet cushion.

"I am confoundedly tired," she said. "All the same, it's rather
horrible. If the thing came over again, which mercifully it can't, I
should do precisely the same as I did. And yet I'm never quite sure
which of us was really in the right. And, therefore, I suppose just as
long as I live, whenever I'm dished--as I am to-night--I shall work the
whole hateful business through again, and the remembrance of him will
always come back."

She pushed the soft heavy masses of hair up from her forehead with both
hands.

"In the main it was your own fault, de Courcy Smyth, and you know that
it was. Most women would not have held out nearly as long as I did. So
lie quiet. Let me be. Starve, if you've got as far on the downgrade as
that. What do I care? I owe you nothing. You never gave me a child. So
starve, if you must--yes, starve," she said.

Then she gathered herself back into her stall. Her expression changed.

"Ah, there's Dot. They're giving her a reception. Bless them--how
awfully sweet! Hurrah for poor little Dot!" Her hands went up to
applaud. And for the ensuing ten minutes her fatigue was forgotten. She
became absorbed in the action of the piece.




CHAPTER XIX


Dot Parris earned a recall at the end of the first act, conquering by
sheer force of personality that gloomy and half-hearted audience. And
Poppy St. John--among whose many faults lack of generosity certainly
could not be counted--standing up, leaned right out over the
velvet-cushioned barrier of the dress circle, crying "Brava!" and
clapping her hands. To achieve the latter demonstration with befitting
resonance she had stripped off her gloves. Then as the lights were
turned up and the curtain swung into the place, she proceeded to
further stripping--namely, that of her black embroidered sacque, which
she threw across the back of the empty stall beside her, thereby
revealing a startling costume. For she was clothed in rose-scarlet from
shoulder to foot; and that without ornament of any description to break
up the daring uniformity of colour, save the stiff unstanding black
aigrette in her hair, tipped with diamond points which flashed and
glittered as she moved. The soft _mousseline-de-soie_ of which her
dress was made swathed her figure, cross-wise, without apparent
fastening, moulding it to the turn of the hips. Thence the skirt flowed
down in a froth of rose-scarlet gaugings and fluted frills, which
trailed behind her far. The bodice was cut in a deep V back and front,
showing her bare neck. Her arms were bare, too, from the elbow. Her
skin, somewhat sallow by day, took on a delicate ivory whiteness under
the electric light. By accident or design she had omitted to tinge her
cheeks to-night; and the even pallor of her face emphasised the
largeness of her eyes--luminous, just now, with sympathy and
enthusiasm. For the artist in Poppy dominated all else, vibrant and
alert. The glamour of the actor's life was upon her; the seamy side of
it forgotten--its unworthy rivalries and bickerings, the slangings and
prolonged weariness of rehearsals, its many disappointments,
heart-burnings, and sordid shifts. These were as though they were not;
so that the stage called her, even as the sea calls one, and
mother-earth another, and religion a third.

"Pou-ah! aren't I just hot, though!" she said, half aloud, as she flung
off her sacque. "And what a changeling imp of a creature Dot is, after
all! An imp of genius.--well, she's every right to that, as one knows
when one looks at James Colthurst's pictures. He'd genius. He didn't
shirk living. My stars! there was a man capable of adding to the number
of one's emotions! And she's inherited his gifts on her own lines. What
a voice, what gestures! She is as clever as she can stick. Oh! she's a
real joy of a demon of a thing, bless her; and she's nothing like come
to her full strength yet."

Then growing aware that she herself and her vivid attire were beginning
to attract more attention than, in the interests of a quiet evening,
she desired, Poppy subsided languidly into her stall, and, picking up
her opera-glasses, slowly surveyed the occupants of the house.

There to begin with was Bobby Saville in the second row of the stalls,
flanked on either hand by a contingent of followers. His round dark
head and the set of his tremendous shoulders were unmistakable. Saville
was very far from being a model young man, yet Poppy had a soft spot in
her heart for this aristocratic bruiser and bravo. His constancy to Dot
Parris was really touching. With a dog-like faithfulness and docility,
this otherwise most turbulent of his sex had followed the object of his
affections from music-hall to comic opera, from comic opera to the high
places of legitimate drama. And Dot meanwhile remained serenely
invulnerable, tricking and mocking her high-born heavy-weight lover,
telling him cheerfully she really had no use for him, though his
intentions were strictly honourable. Twenty-five years hence, she
added, when he was an elderly peer, and she had begun to grow broad in
the beam, and the public had begun to grow tired of her, she might
perhaps contemplate the thraldom of wedlock. But not yet awhile--no,
thank you. Her art held all her love, satisfied all her passions; she
had none to waste upon mankind. Two days hence, as Poppy knew, Bobby
Saville would sail for South Africa, to offer an extensive target to
Boer bullets. He had come to bid farewell, to-night, to the obdurate
object of his affections. And his followers--some of whom were also
bound for the seat of war--had come to support him during those
pathetic proceedings.

In the boxes she recognised more than one woman whose rank of riches
had rendered her appearance common property through the medium of the
illustrated papers. But upon these social favourites she bestowed scant
scrutiny. To her they did not matter, since she had a comfortable
conviction that, given their chances, she might safely have backed
herself to beat them at their own game. One large and gentle-looking
lady did attract her, by the innocence of her mild eyes set noticeably
wide apart, and by the beauty of her small mouth. Her light brown hair,
touched with grey, rippled back from her low forehead under a drapery
of delicate lace. She was calm, yet there was an engaging timidity in
her aspect as she sheltered behind the farther curtain of the box.
Beside her sat a young girl, white-clad, deliciously fresh in
appearance, an expression of happy half-shy expectation upon her
charming face. Behind them, in the shadow, kindly, handsome, debonnair,
stood Lord Fallowfeild. His resemblance to the large and gentle lady
declared them brother and sister. Poppy St. John watched the little
party with a movement of tenderness. She perceived that they were very
fond of one another; moreover they were so delightfully simple in
bearing and manner, so excellently well-bred. But of what was the
pretty maiden so shyly expectant? Of something, or somebody, far more
immediately interesting to her than players or play--so Poppy judged.

Turning from the contemplation of these pleasant people with a sigh she
could hardly have explained--even to herself--Poppy swept the dress
circle with her opera-glasses. Presently she paused, and with a lift of
surprise looked steadily again, then let both hands and glasses drop
upon her rose-scarlet cap. Four rows up and back, on the far side, in a
stall next the stepped gang-way, a man sat. His face was turned away,
his shoulder being towards her, as he leaned sideways talking to the
woman beside him--a slender, faded, yet elegant person of uncertain
age, dressed in fluffy black. In the seat beyond, also leaning forward
and taking part in the conversation, was another man of so whimsical an
appearance as very nearly to make Poppy laugh aloud. She would
unquestionably have done so had she been at leisure; but she was not at
leisure. Her eyes travelled back to the figure beside the gang-way,
which intrigued both her interest and her memory. Tall, spare,
faultlessly dressed, yet with an effect of something exotic, aloof,
unusual about him, he provoked her curiosity with suggestions of times
and places quite other than of the present.

"Who is it?" Poppy said to herself. "Surely I know him. Who the Dickens
is it?"

The conversation ceased. The man drew himself up, turned his head; and
Poppy gave a little choking cry, as she found herself staring Dominic
Iglesias straight in the face.

Whether he recognised her she did not know, did not want to know just
yet. For she needed a minute or two to reckon with the position. It was
so wholly unexpected. It affected her more deeply than she could have
anticipated. Not without amusement she realised that she had never,
heretofore, quite believed in him as an ordinary mortal, who ate and
drank, went to plays, had relations with human beings other than
herself, and conducted himself generally on the commonplace lines of
modern humanity. Therefore to see him under existing circumstances was,
in a sense, a shock to her. She did not like it. Absurd and
unreasonable though it undoubtedly was to feel it so, yet his presence
here struck her as in a way unseemly, derogatory. She had never thought
of him in this connection, and it took a little time to get accustom to
this aspect of him. Then she discovered, with half-humorous annoyance,
that she was called upon to get accustomed to something else as
well--namely, to her memories of the past month since she parted from
him. For it was undeniable that the said memories took on a queer
enough complexion in the light of this sudden encounter with Dominic
Iglesias. If an hour ago they had been unsatisfactory, now they were
very near odious. And that seemed hardly fair. Poppy turned wicked.

"For what's the worry, after all?" she asked herself. "Why on earth am
I either disappointed or penitent? Is he no better than the rest of us,
or am I no worse? And with what am I quarrelling, in any case--his
being less of a saint, or I less of a sinner than I'd been pleased to
imagine? I'm sure I don't know."

Instinctively her eyes sought that kindly worlding, Lord Fallowfeild.
With him at least, as she reflected, one knew exactly where one was,
since his feet were always very much upon the floor. But here again
discomfiture, alas! awaited her. For another person, and evidently a
welcome one, had joined that pleasant little party. Standing beside the
large and gentle lady, speaking quickly, gaily, his face keen and
eager, she beheld Alaric Barking. Lord Fallowfeild, smiling, patted the
young man affectionately on the shoulder. And then, with a shudder of
pain gnawing right through her, Poppy St. John, glancing at the
graceful white-clad maiden, understood of whose coming this one had
been so sweetly and gladly expectant.

To the strong there is something exhilarating in all certainty, even
certainty of disaster. And it was very characteristic of Poppy that at
this juncture no cry came to her lips, no sob to her throat. She
shuddered that once, it is true. But then, setting her teeth, the whole
daring of her nature rose to the situation, as a high-mettled horse
rises to a heavy fence. What lay on the other side of that fence she
did not know as yet, nor did she stop to consider. Desperate though it
looked, she took it gallantly without fuss or funking.

"Well, there's no ambiguity about this affair, anyhow," she said
grimly. "Of course it had to come sooner or later, and I knew it had to
come. Well, here it is, that's all, and there's no use whining. And
that's why he's been so jumpy lately: he had a bad conscience. Poor old
chap, he must have been having a beastly bad time of it."

Poppy mused a little.

"Still, it's a facer," she added, "and a precious nasty one, too."

She stretched herself, shaking back her head, while the diamond points
of her aigrette danced and glittered. Took a deep breath, filling her
lungs; listened to herself, so to speak, noting with satisfaction that
neither heart nor pulse fluttered.

"No serious damage," she commented. "I must have the nerves of a
locomotive. Here I am perfectly sound, perfectly sober, standing at the
parting of the ways, between the dear old devil of love and the deep
sea of friendship. Poppy Smyth, my good soul, you've always been rather
fatally addicted to drama. Are you satisfied at last? For just now,
heaven knows, you've jolly well got your fill of it."

Then, for a space, she sat staring out into the house, thinking hard,
intently, yet without words. The future, as she knew, hung in the
balance, for herself and for others; but, as yet, she could not decide
into which scale to throw the determining weight. Presently she looked
steadily at Dominic Iglesias. He was again engaged in conversation,
trying, with his air of fine old-world courtesy, suitably to entertain
his strangely assorted neighbours. Poppy had an idea he found it rather
hard work. She was not in the least sorry. That faded piece of feminine
elegance, in fluffy black, bored her. She entertained a malicious hope
that the said piece of feminine elegance bored Mr. Iglesias also.
Finally, with rather bitter courage, she turned her eyes once more upon
Lord Fallowfeild and his companions.

"Poor little girl, poor little girl," she said, quite gently, "so
that's your heaven on earth, is it? I'm afraid a mighty big crop of
wild oats is on show in your Garden of Eden. Still to you, apparently,
it is a blissful place enough. Only the question is, do I intend to
relinquish my rights in that particular property and make it over to
you in fee simple, my pretty baby, or do I not? Shall I give it you, or
shall I keep it? For it is mine to give or to keep still--very much
mine, if I choose to make a fight for it, I fancy."

Yet even as she communed thus with herself, the white-clad maiden and
the other occupants of the box became indistinct and shadowy. The buzz
of conversation in the theatre had ceased; so had the strains of the
orchestra. The lights had been turned low and the curtain had risen
upon the second act.

About half-way through that act Poppy St. John got up, threw her velvet
sacque over her arm, and, slipping past the three intervening stalls,
made her way up the steps of the near gang-way to the swing-doors
opening out to the couloir. Her movements, though studiously quiet,
were, owing to the vivid hue of her attire, very perceptible even in
the penumbra of the dress circle, provoking attention and smothered
comment. The lady in fluffy black, for example, followed her with
glances of undisguised and condemnatory interest, finally calling the
attention of both her cavaliers to the progress of this glowing figure.

The New Century Theatre is one of those enterprises of trans-Atlantic
origin, undertaken with the praiseworthy and disinterested object of
teaching the Old World "how to do it," and is built and furnished
regardless of expense. The couloirs are wide, lofty, richly carpeted;
the walls of them encrusted with pale highly polished marbles,
pilasters of which, with heavily gilded capitals, flank vast panels of
looking-glass. The moulded ceilings are studded with electric lights,
the glare of which is agreeably softened by pineapple-shaped globes of
crystal glass. The scheme of colour, ranging from imperial purple
through crimson and rose-pink to softest flesh tints, formed an
harmonious setting to the rose-scarlet of Poppy's dress, with its froth
of trailing frills and flounces, as she stood discoursing to a smart,
black-gowned, white-aproned box-keeper.

"You understand, fourth row on the left, next the gang-way? Tell him a
lady wishes particularly to speak to him between the acts. Then bring
him to me here."

"Yes, madam, I quite understand," the young person replied, with much
intelligence, scenting something in the shape of an adventure.

Poppy moved across and sat down on one of the wide divans, and so doing
began to know, once more, how very tired she was. A new tiredness
seemed, indeed, to have been added to the original one. That first was,
at worst, bored and irritable. This was of a different, a more sad and
intimate character.

"I feel as if I had been beaten all over," she said to herself. "Well,
perhaps that's just what it is. I have been beaten. I wish I could
sleep. Oh! dear, oh! dear, how I wish I could sleep."

Her thought fell away into the vague, the inarticulate, though she did
not sleep. Still there was a temporary suspension of volition, of
conscious mental activity, which, in a degree, rested her. Persons,
passing now and again, looked with curiosity at the brilliant figure,
and inscrutable eyes in the dead-white face. The smart box-keeper,
moved by some instinct of pity, came back more than once, finally
offering one of those unwholesome-looking cups of coffee and boxes of
chocolate of which so few have the requisite audacity to partake. Poppy
roused herself sufficiently to reject these terrible delicacies, while
smiling at the conveyor of them. Then she relapsed into the vague
again, and waited, just waited.

"There's the end of the act, madam," the young woman remarked at last
encouragingly.

"All right," Poppy answered. "Go straight away and bring the gentleman
here to me. I'm in a hurry. I want to get home."

The glass doors of the exits swished back and forth, letting out the
confused stir and murmur of the house, letting out a crowd of men as
well. And the aspect the said crowd presented to Poppy's overstrained
nerves and exalted sensibility was repulsive. For it suggested to her a
flight of gigantic black locusts, strong-jawed, pink-faced, and
white-breasted, driven forth by a common hunger, rather cruelly active
and intent. Her sense of humour was in abeyance, as was her usually
triumphant common sense; so that her thought, going behind appearances
and the sane interpretation of them, declined to that fundamental
region in which the root laws of animal life become hideously bare and
distinct. Out of the deep places of her own womanhood a hatred towards
this crowd of men arose; that secular enmity which exists between the
sexes asserting itself and, for the time being, obscuring both reason
and justice. For upon what, as she asked herself bitterly, when all is
said and done, do these male human locusts pasture, save on the souls
and bodies of women, finding a garden before them, and, too often,
leaving but a desert behind? Sex as sex became abhorrent to her, its
penalties unpardonable, its pleasures as loathsome as its sins.

But from the black-coated throng the trim figure of the box-keeper just
then detached itself; and a moment later Poppy, looking up, beheld
Dominic Iglesias standing before her.




CHAPTER XX


"You sent for me, so I have come," Iglesias said, for Poppy St. John,
usually so voluble, just now appeared speechless.

From the moment he had become aware of her presence in the theatre,
Dominic had been sensible that she presented herself under a new
aspect. Of the many different Poppys he had seen, this was by far the
most powerful and dramatic. She stood out from the rest of the audience
as some splendid tropic flower stands out from a thick-set mass of
foliage, conspicuous in form and colour and in promise. There were
handsome women, smart women, beautifully dressed women in plenty, but
Poppy did not shade in with all these, making but part of a general
effect. She remained unique, solitary; and this not merely on account
of her vivid raiment. The effect of her told upon the mind quite as
much as upon the sight. Yet she did not look out of place. She looked,
indeed, preeminently at home. Out of doors, in the country sunshine,
she had struck Dominic as a slight creature, unreal and fictitious.
Here, amid highly artificial and conventional surroundings, she seemed
to him the most natural and vital being present, retaining the
completeness of her individuality, the energy and mystery of it alike,
almost aggressively evident and untouched. Iglesias ceased to consider
her in relation to his and her broken friendship, or in relation to
that which he so reluctantly divined of her private life. He
contemplated her in herself, finding an element of things primitive in
her, which commanded his admiration, though it failed, so far, to touch
his heart. And if this was the impression he received seeing her at a
comparative distance, that impression was greatly intensified seeing
her now at close quarters. The contrast between the subtle softness and
the flare--as of a conflagration--of her dress, the weariness of her
attitude, and the unfathomable melancholy of her eyes, stirred him
profoundly.

"Yes," she answered quietly, almost coldly, "I know I sent. This was
about the last place I should have expected to run across you. I
flattered myself I was safe enough here. I didn't wish to meet you one
little bit. Still, when I did see you, I wanted you. You're the most
plaguey impossible person to rid oneself of somehow"--her voice and
manner softened a little--"so I sent for you. I don't know why, because
now I've got you I seem to have changed my mind. I have nothing to say."

"I can easily go," Iglesias remarked gravely.

"No, no, no," she replied, "why should you hurry? I'm sure those two
freaks you're herding--the beetle turned hind-side before and the
withered leaf--can't be frantically interesting. And I like to look at
you. I never saw you before in evening dress, and you're more _grand
seigneur_ than ever. But something's happened to you. I can't tell
off-hand what it is, whether you've come on or gone back. But you're
altered."

"I have had an illness," Iglesias said simply; "and I have been very
unhappy."

"Neither of those are good enough," Poppy answered. "The alteration is
right inside you, in your soul. But you're well again now?" she added.

"Yes, I am well again now."

"And you're no longer unhappy?"

"No," he said. "I am sad, for life is sad; but I am no longer unhappy."

"That's a nice distinction," Poppy put in, with a rather scornful
inflection. "What's cured your unhappiness? Not an affair of the heart?
Please don't tell me it's anything to do with a woman, for I warn you
I'm awfully off the affections to-night."

"You can make yourself quite easy on that point," Dominic said with a
lift of the head, his native pride asserting itself.

"Ah! that's more like old times!" Poppy's voice softened again, so did
the expression of her face. "Suppose you sit down, dear lunatic. This
wait is a long one, I know. Dot Parris told me it was. Let the freaks
play about together for a little. It will do them good. And I find I
wanted you rather more than I knew at first. I'm beginning to have
something to say after all. Words, only words, perhaps; still it's a
_soulagement_ to sit here with you like this." The corners of Poppy's
mouth drooped and quivered. "I'm having an infernally bad time; and
there's worse ahead."

"I am sorry. I am grieved," Iglesias said. For the charm had begun to
work again, and friendship, as he began to know, although
broken-winged, was very far from dead.

"We won't talk about that," she put in, "or I might make a fool of
myself. Dear man, I think I'd better go home. I'm awfully tired. Still,
I'm better for seeing you." She stood up. "Just help me on with my
coat. Thanks--that's right. Oh! I say, there are the freaks on the
prowl, looking for you!" Poppy's tragic eyes turned naughty, malicious,
gay even for a moment. "What sport!" she said--"unhappy freaks! The
withered leaf has intentions. I see that. She'd like to eat me without
salt. Don't marry her--promise me you won't. Ah! heavenly, heavenly,"
she cried. "I need no promises, bless you. Your face is quite enough.
Wretched withered leaf! But look here," she went on, as she gathered
the soft warm garment about her, "I'm tired of your incognito. Give me
your card. I may want you again. So let me have your name and address."

And Iglesias giving it to her as she requested, she studied it for a
minute silently. Then she turned away.

"I want nothing more. Don't come down with me. One of the boys will get
me a hansom. I'd rather be alone; so just go back to your flabbergasted
freaks, beloved and no-longer-nameless one," she said.




CHAPTER XXI


Thin sunshine slanted in through the lace curtains of the dining-room
window. Encouraged thereby, the parrot preened its feathers, making
little snapping and clicking noises meanwhile with its tongue and beak.
The grass of the Green, seen between the black stems of the encircling
trees, glittered with hoarfrost, while the houses on the opposite side
of it looked flat and featureless owing to the interposing veil of
bluish mist. Tradesmen's carts clattered by at a sharp trot, the
defined sound of them breaking up the all-pervading murmur of London,
and dying out into it again as they passed. At the street corner, some
twenty yards away, a German band discoursed doubtfully sweet music, the
trombone making earnest efforts to keep the rest of the instruments up
to their work by the emission of loud and reproachful tootings. It was
a pleasant and cheery morning as December mornings go, yet constraint
reigned at the Lovegrove breakfast-table.

The day of Serena's oft-discussed departure had dawned. A few hours
hence she would remove herself and her boxes to her cousin Lady
Samuelson's residence in Ladbroke Square. This should have proved a
source of regret to her host and hostess; and they were
conscience-stricken, confessing to themselves--though not to one
another, since each accredited the other with more laudable sentiments
than his or her own--that relief rather than regret did actually
possess them. A secret from one another, and that a slightly
discreditable one, was so foreign to the experience of the excellent
couple that it lay heavy upon their hearts. Each, moreover, was aware
of shame in the presence of Serena, as in that of a person upon whom
they had inflicted an injury. Hence constraint, which the sunshine was
powerless to dissipate.

"May I pass you the eggs, or bacon, or both, Serena?" George Lovegrove
inquired, his childlike blue eyes meanwhile humbly imploring pardon for
his lack of sorrow at her impending departure. Serena's manner was
stiff and abstracted. This, combined with the rustling of her
petticoats, filled him with anxiety. Was it possible that she knew?

"Thank you, George, only an egg. Not that one, please, it is much too
large. I prefer the smallest. I am not feeling hungry."

"I should never call you much of a breakfast-eater, Serena," Mrs.
Lovegrove observed in her comfortable purring voice, from behind the
tea urn. She was desirous to pacify her guest. "Now I am rather hearty
myself in the morning, always have been so. I do not know whether it is
a good thing or not, as a habit. Still, I think to-day you should force
yourself a little. You should always make provision against a journey.
And then no doubt you are rather fatigued with packing and getting home
so late from the theatre. I am pleased to think you had an outing your
last night here, Serena. Georgie tells me the play was very comical."

"I dare say it was," Serena replied. "Of course George would be a much
better judge of that than I am. Mamma was always very particular what
we heard and saw when we were children, and I know I am inclined to
think things vulgar which other people only find amusing."

"I did not remark any vulgarity, and do not think Mr. Iglesias would
countenance anything of that kind in the presence of a lady. He would
ascertain beforehand the nature of the piece to which he invited any
lady"--this from George Lovegrove tentatively.

"Oh! of course I don't say there was anything vulgar. I should not like
to commit myself to an opinion. I really have been to the theatre very
seldom. Mamma never encouraged our going. And then, of course, old Dr.
Colthurst, the rector of St. Jude's at Slowby, whose church we always
attended, disapproved of the theatre. He had great influence with
mamma. And he thought it wicked."

"Indeed," Mrs. Lovegrove commented. "I should be sorry to think that,
as so many go. But he may have come across the evils of it personally.
He had a son, an artist, who was very wild, I believe. And I remember
to have heard our dear vicar speak of Dr. Colthurst as stern, but a
true Protestant and a very grand preacher."

"I dare say he was--I don't mean that his son was wild--I know nothing
about that, of course, but that Dr. Colthurst was a great preacher."

Serena spoke abstractedly, inspecting the yolk of her poached egg
meanwhile as though on the watch for unpleasant foreign bodies.

"But," she continued, "I cannot, of course, be expected to remember his
sermons, though I may have been taken to hear him. I suppose I
certainly was taken, but I was quite too much of a child to remember.
Susan remembers them, but then Susan was so very much older."

She ceased to contemplate her egg, and looked up at her hostess.

"Susan must be very nearly your age, Rhoda; or she may be a year or
eighteen months younger. Yes, judging by the difference between her age
and mine, she must be quite eighteen months younger. Of course, now,
Susan thinks going to the play wicked. I often wonder whether that is
not partly because she dislikes sitting still and listening when other
people are doing something. Susan likes to take part in everything
herself. I often wonder what she would do in church if it was not for
the responses and the singing. I am sure she would never sit out a
service where the congregation did not join in. Susan cannot bear a
choral service. She calls it un-English and Romanising. I do not
dislike it--I mean I do not dislike a choral service. But then I do not
consider the theatre wicked. I am not prejudiced against it, as Susan
is. Still, I cannot deny that I think you do hear very odd things and
see very over-dressed people at the theatre."

Serena looked severely at her host, thereby heightening the anxiety
which possessed him. For once again, as so often during the past eight
or ten hours, a picture presented itself perplexing and fascinating to
his mental vision--namely, that of his dear and honoured friend, the
grave and stately Dominic Iglesias, helping an unknown lady, of
remarkably attractive personal appearance, on with a wonderful black
velvet garment--doing so in the calmest way in the world, too, as
though it were an event of chronic occurrence--while the frills and
furbelows of her voluminous skirts flowed in rosy billows about his
feet. What did the picture portend, George Lovegrove asked himself, and
still more, what did Serena suppose it portended?

"Do you, indeed?" Mrs. Lovegrove put in, in amiable response to her
guest's last remark. She was sensible of being hurt by the allusion to
her age. But then Serena was going, and she knew that fact did not
distress her as deeply as it might have done. She therefore rose
superior to wounded feelings. "It's many years since I've been much of
a playgoer," she continued, "and people tell me it's all a good deal
changed, and not for the better. I suppose the dressing nowadays is
sadly extravagant. I am sure I don't know, and I should always be timid
of condemning anybody or their amusements. But there, as I always do
say, if you want to keep a happy mind there is so much it is well to be
ignorant of."

"I wonder if it is--I mean I wonder if it is well to be ignorant of
things," Serena said reflectively. "Of course, if people think you are
willing to be ignorant, it encourages them in deceiving you. I think it
is very wrong to be deceitful. Sooner or later it is sure to come out,
and then it is very difficult to forgive people. Indeed, I am not sure
it is right to forgive them."

With difficulty George Lovegrove restrained a groan. His food was as
ashes in his mouth; his tea as waters of bitterness.

"Oh! I should be sorry to go as far as that, Serena," Mrs. Lovegrove
remonstrated. "If you give way to unforgiving feelings you can never
tell quite where they may carry you. But as I was going to say, though
I am not much of a playgoer, I was very pleased to have Mr. Iglesias
invite me. Only, as I explained to him, I am very liable to find the
seats too narrow for comfort in places of amusement, and the atmosphere
is often so very close, too. He was most polite and sympathising; but
then that's Mr. Iglesias all over. He always is the perfect gentleman."

Serena paused, her fork arrested in mid-transit to her mouth.

"I am not sure that I agree with you, Rhoda," she said. "I am not sure
whether I think Mr. Iglesias is really polite, or whether he only
appears to be so because it suits his purpose. Of course you and George
know him far better than I do. Perhaps you understand--I cannot pretend
that I understand him. I may be wrong, but I often wonder whether there
is not a good deal which is rather insincere about Mr. Iglesias."

After throwing which bomb, Serena gave her whole attention to her
breakfast. Usually George Lovegrove would have waxed valiant in defence
of his friend, but a guilty conscience held him tongue-tied. Not so
Rhoda; strive as she might, those allusions to her age still rankled.
And, under cover of protest against injustice to the absent, she paid
off a little of her private score, to her warm satisfaction.

"Well, I am sure," she cried, "I never could have credited that anybody
could question Mr. Iglesias's genuineness! I would sooner doubt
Georgie, that I would, and fear him deceitful."

Again the good man came near groaning. It was as though the wife
planted a poignard in his heart.

"And after you playing the piano to him so frequently the few days Mr.
Iglesias stopped here, and seeming so comfortable together and
friendly, and his inviting us all to the theatre! Really, I must say I
do think you sadly changeable, Serena, that I do."

"No, I am not changeable, Rhoda," the other lady declared, both voice
and colour rising slightly. "Nobody ever accused me of being changeable
before, and I do not like it. I do not think you are at all justified
in making such an accusation. But I am observant. I always have been
so. Even Susan allows that I am very observant. I cannot help being so,
and I do not wish to help it. I think it is much safer. It helps you to
find out who you can really trust. And, of course, I observed a great
deal that happened last night. I felt from the first that I owed it to
myself to be particularly on my guard, because certain insinuations had
been made--you know, Rhoda, you have made them more than once
yourself--and some people might have thought that things had gone
rather far when Mr. Iglesias was stopping here. I believe Mrs. Porcher
and that dreadful Miss Hart did think it. I do not say that things did
go far; I only say that people might naturally think that they had. On
several occasions Mr. Iglesias' conduct did seem very marked. And, of
course, nothing could be more odious to me than to be placed in a false
position. One cannot be too careful, especially with foreigners. Mamma
always warned us against foreigners when we first came out. I never had
any experience of foreigners until I met Mr. Iglesias, here at your
house. But, I am sorry to say, I believe now mamma was perfectly right."

As she ended her harangue, Serena with a petulant movement of her thin
hands pushed her plate away from the table edge, leaving a vacant space
before her. This was as a declaration of war. She scorned further
subterfuge. She announced a demonstration. A bright spot of colour
burned on either cheek, her small head, on its long stalk of neck, was
carried very erect. It was one of those pathetic moments when--the
merciless revelations of the morning sunshine notwithstanding--this
slim, faded, middle-aged spinster appeared to recapture, and that very
effectively, the charm and promise of her vanished youth. Excited by
foolish anger, animated by a sense of insult wholly misplaced and
imaginary, she became a very passably pretty person, the immature but
hopeful Serena of eighteen looking forth from the eyes of the
narrow-souled disappointed Serena of eight-and-forty.

"Of course, George may have some explanation of what happened last
night," she went on, speaking rapidly. "If he has, I think it would be
only fair that he should offer it to me. I took for granted he would do
so this morning as soon as we met; or that he would send you to me,
Rhoda, to explain if he felt too awkward about speaking himself. But as
you both are determined to ignore what happened, I am forced to speak.
I dare say it would be much more convenient to you, knowing you have
made a mistake, to pass the whole thing over in silence. But I really
cannot consent to that. If Mr. Iglesias meant nothing all along, then I
think he has behaved disgracefully. If he did mean something at first,
and then"--the speaker gasped--"changed his mind, he might at least
have given some hint. He ought to have refused to stop here, of course."

"He did refuse," George Lovegrove faltered. This was really dreadful,
far worse than anything he had anticipated--and he had not a notion
what it was safe to say. "I do wish females' minds were a little less
ingenious," he commented to himself. "They see such a lot which would
never have entered my head, for instance."

"Still, Mr. Iglesias came," cried the belligerent Serena.

"Yes, I over-persuaded him. He was very unwilling, very so indeed,
saying that staying out was altogether foreign to his practice. But I
pointed out to him that you and the wife might feel rather mortified if
he omitted to come, having taken such an interest in his illness and--"

"If you made use of my name, George, you took a great liberty."

"I am very distressed to hear you say that, Serena. Both the wife and I
certainly supposed you wished him to come."

He looked imploringly at his spouse, asking support. But for once the
large kindly countenance failed to beam responsive. A plaintive
expression overspread its surface. Then the unhappy man stared
despondently out into the misty morning sunshine, plastering down his
shiny hair with a moist and shaky hand. Even the wife turned against
him, making him feel an outcast at his own breakfast-table. He could
have wept.

"I have been so very guarded throughout," Serena resumed, "that it is
impossible you should have the slightest excuse for using my name. But,
of course, if you have done so, my position is more than ever odious.
There is nothing for me to do but to go. Fortunately I am going--and I
am thankful. If I had followed my own inclinations, I should have gone
long ago. Then I should have been spared all this, and nothing would
have been said. Now all sorts of things may be said, because, of
course, it must all look very odd. It shows how foolish it is to allow
one's judgment to be overruled. I stayed entirely to oblige Rhoda. And
I cannot but see I have been trifled with."

"No, no, Serena, not that--never that," her host cried distractedly.
"If I have been in the wrong, I apologise from my heart. But trifling
never entered my thoughts. How could it do so, with all the respect I
have for you and Susan? I may have been clumsy, but I acted for the
best."

"I am afraid I cannot agree," she retorted. "It is useless to
apologise. I am sorry to tell you so, George, for I have trusted you
until now; but I do feel, and I am afraid I always shall feel, I have
been very unkindly treated by you and Rhoda."

She rose, rustling as she spoke, the parrot, meanwhile, leaving off
preening its feathers, regarding her, its head very much on one side,
with a wicked eye.

"No, please leave me to myself," she said. "I do not want anybody to
help me, and if I do I shall ring for the maids. I want to compose
myself before I go to Lady Samuelson's. After all this unpleasantness,
it is much better for me to be alone."

"Good-bye, girlie, poor old girlie. Hi! p'liceman, bring a
four-wheeler," shrieked the parrot, as Serena opened and closed the
dining-room door, flapping wildly in the sunshine till the sand and
seed husks on the floor of its cage arose and whirled upwards in a
crazy little cloud.

George Lovegrove, who had risen to his feet, sank back into his chair,
resting his elbows on the table and covering Ids face with his hands.

"I would rather have forfeited my pension," he murmured. "I would
rather have lost a hundred pounds."

Then raising his head he gazed imploringly at his wife. And this time
her tender heart could not resist the appeal. He had not been open with
her, but she relented, giving him opportunity to retrieve his error.
Moreover--but that naturally was a very minor consideration--she was
bursting with curiosity.

"Georgie," she asked solemnly, "whatever did happen last night?"

"Mr. Iglesias met a lady friend. She sent for him to talk to her, in
the lobby, between the acts," he answered, the red deepening in his
clean fresh-coloured face.

"Not any of that designing Cedar Lodge lot?"

"Oh! dear no, not all," he replied, his childlike eyes full of
gratitude. He blessed the magnanimity of the wife. But speedily
embarrassment supervened. He found this subject singularly difficult to
deal with. "Not at all of their class. I confess it did surprise me,
for though I have always taken it for granted Dominic belonged to a
higher circle by birth than that in which we have known him, I had no
idea he had such aristocratic acquaintances. His looks and manner in
public, last night, made him seem fitted for any company. Still, I was
surprised."

"Did he not introduce you?"

"No. I cannot say he had a convenient opportunity, and the lady may not
have wished it. I could fancy she might hold herself a little above us.
But, between ourselves, I believe that was what so upset Serena."

"I am of opinion Mr. Iglesias is just as well without Serena," Mrs.
Lovegrove declared. "I suppose she cannot help it, but her temper is
sadly uncertain. I begin to fear she would be very exacting in
marriage. But was the lady young, Georgie?"

The good man blushed furiously.

"Yes, under thirty, I should suppose, and very striking to look at.
Serena had called my attention to her already. She thought her
over-dressed. I am no judge of that, but I could see she was very
beautiful."

"Oh! Georgie dear!" This in high protest. For the speaker belonged to
that section of the British public in which puritanism is even yet
deeply ingrained, with the dreary consequence that beauty, whether of
person or in art, is suspect. To admit its existence trenches on
immodesty; to speak of it openly is to skirt the edges of licence.

George Lovegrove, however, had developed unaccustomed boldness.

"So she was, my dear," he repeated, not squinting in the least for
once. "She was beautiful, dark and splendid, with eyes that looked
right through you, mocking and yet mournful. They made a noble couple,
she and Dominic, notwithstanding the disparity of age. As they stood
there together I felt honoured to see them both. And if Dominic
Iglesias is to have friends with whom we are unacquainted--though I do
not deny the thing hurt me a little at first--I am glad they should be
so handsome and fine. It seems to me fitting, and as if he was in his
true sphere at last."

A silence followed this profession of faith, during which Mrs.
Lovegrove's face presented a singular study. She stared at her husband
in undisguised amazement, while the corners of her mouth and her large
soft cheeks quivered.

"Well, I should never have expected to hear you talk so, Georgie," she
said huskily. "It seems unlike you somehow, almost as though you were
despising your own flesh and blood."

"No, no," he answered, "I could never do that. I could never be so
forgetful of all I owe to my own family and to yours, Rhoda. I am under
deep obligations to both. But it would be dishonest to deny that I set
a wonderfully high value on Dominic Iglesias' regard, and have done so
ever since we were boys together at school. To me Dominic has always
stood by himself, I knowing how superior he was to me in mind and in
all else, so that it has been my truest honour and privilege to be
admitted to intimacy with him. But the difference between us never came
home to me as it did when I saw him in other company last night. He is
fitted for a higher position than he has ever filled yet--we all used
to allow that in old days at the bank--or for any society we can offer
him. So, though I felt humiliated in a measure, I felt glad. For I can
grudge him nothing in the way of new friends, even though they may be
differently placed to ourselves and should come between him and me a
little, making our intercourse less frequent and easy than in the past.
From my heart I wish him the very best that is going, although it
should be rather detrimental to myself."

Mrs. Lovegrove's cheeks still quivered, but the expression of her face
was unresponsive once more, not to say obstinate. Jealousy, indeed,
possessed her. For the first time in her whole experience she realised
her husband as an individual, as a human entity independent of herself.
To contemplate him otherwise than in the marital relation was a shock
to her. She felt deserted, a potential Ariadne on Naxos. Hence
jealousy, resentment, cruel hurt.

"Well, to be sure, what a long story!" she cried, in tones approaching
sarcasm, "and all about someone who is no relation, too! Whatever
possesses you, Georgie? You aren't a bit like yourself. It seems to me
this morning everybody's bewitched." She heaved herself up out of her
chair. "I shall go and try to make it up with Serena," she continued.
"It is only Christian charity to do so; and, poor thing, I can well
understand she may have had cause enough for mortification now I have
made out what really did take place last night."

Usually, left alone in the dining-room, George Lovegrove would have
proceeded methodically to do a number of neat little odd jobs, humming
softly the while funny, shapeless little tunes to himself in the
fulness of his guileless content. He would have piled up the fire with
small coal and dust, thus keeping it alight but saving fuel till
luncheon-time, when one skilful stir with the poker would produce a
cheerful blaze. Then he would have proceeded to the little conservatory
opening off his box of a sanctum at the back of the house--containing
his roller-top desk, his papers, Borough Council and parish reports,
his magazines, his best and second-best overcoats hung on pegs against
the wall along with his silk hat. In the conservatory, still humming,
he would have smoked his morning pipe, feeding the gold-fish in the
small square glass tank--a tiny fountain in the centre of which it
pleased him to set playing--and later carefully examining the ferns and
other pot-plants in search of green-fly, scale, or blight. But to-day
the innocent routine of his life was rudely broken up. He had no heart
for his accustomed tidy potterings, but lingered aimlessly, fingering
the gold watch-chain strained across the convex surface of his
waistcoat, sand looking pitifully enough between the lace curtains out
on to the Green.

The sun had climbed the sky, burning up the hoarfrost and mist, so that
the houses opposite had become clearly discernible. Presently he beheld
a tall, upright figure emerge from the front door of Cedar Lodge. For a
moment Mr. Iglesias stood at the head of the flight of immaculately
white stone steps, rolling up his umbrella and putting on his gloves
preparatory to setting forth on his morning walk. And, watching him, a
wave of humility and self-depreciation swept over George Lovegrove's
gentle and candid soul, combined with an aching or regret that destiny
had not seen fit to deal with him rather otherwise than it actually
had. He felt a great longing that he, too, were possessed of a stately
presence, brains, breeding, and handsome looks. There stirred in him an
almost impassioned craving for romance, for escape from the
interminable respectabilities and domesticities of English middle-class
suburban life. He went a step further, rebelling against the feminine
atmosphere which surrounded him, in which "feelings" so constantly
usurped the place of actions, and suppositions that of fact. Then, the
vision of a beautiful woman with a strange rose-scarlet dress, in whose
eyes sorrow struggled with mocking laughter, once again assailed him.
Who she might be, and what her history, he most emphatically knew not;
yet that she breathed a keener and more tonic air than that to which he
was habituated, that feelings in her case did not stand for actions, or
suppositions for fact, he was fully convinced.

"Poor old chappie, take a brandy and soda. Got the hump?"--this,
shrilly, from the parrot hanging head downwards from the roof of its
cage.

At the sound of that at once unhuman and singularly confidential voice
close beside him, George Lovegrove gave a guilty start.

"Yes, the wife is quite right," he said, half aloud. "If you want to
keep a happy mind there is very much of which it is as well to be
ignorant."

Then shame covered him, for in his recent meditations and apprehensions
had he not come very near turning traitor, and being, in imagination at
all events, subtly unfaithful to that same large kindly comfortable
wife?




CHAPTER XXII


Two months had passed, and February was about to give place to
March--two months empty of outward event for Dominic Iglesias, but big
with thought and consolidation of purpose. He had been more than ever
solitary during this period, for his acquaintance, even to the faithful
George Lovegrove, stood aloof. But Dominic hardly noticed this. Though
solitary, he had not been lonely, since his mind was absorbed in
question, in pursuit, in the consciousness of deepening conviction. For
the recognition not merely of religion, but of Christianity, as a
supreme factor in earthly existence, which had come to him in the
dreary December twilight, as, broken in health and in spirit, he gazed
upon the carven picture of Calvary, had proved no fugitive experience.
It remained by him, entracing his imagination and satisfying both his
heart and his intelligence; so that he looked back upon the hour of his
despair thankfully, seeing in it the starting-point of a journey the
prosecution of which promised not only to be the main occupation of his
remaining years here in time, but, the river of death once crossed, to
stretch onward and onward through realms, at present inconceivable, of
beauty, of knowledge, and of love. And so, for the moment, solitude was
sweet to him, leaving him free of petty cares and anxieties--he moving
forward, ignorant of the gossip which in point of fact surrounded him,
innocent of the feminine plots and counterplots of which his blameless
bachelorhood was at once the provoking cause and the object; while in
his eyes--though of this, too, he was ignorant--dwelt increasingly
reflection of that mysterious and lovely light which, let obstinately
purblind man deny it as he may, lies forever along the far horizon, for
comfort of godly wayfarers and as beacon of the elect.

Yet it must not be supposed that the outset of Iglesias' spiritual
journey was wholly serene, free from obstacle or hesitation, from risk
of untoward selection, or rejection, of the safe way. Many roads, and
those bristling with contradictory signposts, presented themselves.
Noisy touts, each crying up his own special mode and means of
conveyance, rushed forth at every turn.

Modern Protestantism, as he encountered it in the pages of popular
newspapers and magazines, at Mrs. Porcher's dinner-table, or in the
good Lovegroves' drawing-room, had small attraction for him, since it
appeared to advance chiefly by negations stated with rather blatant
self-sufficiency and self-conceit. It might tend to the making of
respectable municipal councillors; but, in his opinion, it was idle to
pretend that it tended to the making of saints--and for the saints,
those experts in the divine science, Iglesias confessed a weakness. Of
spirituality it showed, to his seeing, as little outward evidence as of
philosophy or of art. The phrases of piety might still be upon the lips
of its votaries; but the attitude and aspirations engendered by piety
were unfortunately dead. Its system of ethics was frankly utilitarian.
Its goal, though hidden from the simple by a maze of high-sounding
sentiment, was Rationalism pure and simple. Its god was not the creator
of the visible universe, of angels and archangels, dominions,
principalities, and powers, of incalculable natural and supernatural
forces, but a jerky loose-jointed pasteboard divinity, the exclusive
possession, since it is the exclusive invention, of the Anglo-Saxon
race, through whose gaping mouth any and every self-elected prophet was
free to shout, as heaven-descended truth, in the name of progress and
liberty, whatever political or social catchword chanced to be the
fashion of the hour.

Nor did the neo-mystics, whose utterances are also sown broadcast in
contemporary literature and who are so lavish with their offers of
divine enlightenment, please Iglesias any better. For his mind, thanks
to his Latin ancestry, was of the logical order, while a business
training and long knowledge of affairs had taught him the value of
method, giving him an unalterable reverence for fact, and impressing
upon him the existence of law, absolute and immutable, in every
department of nature and of human activity--law, to break which is to
destroy the sequence of cause and effect, and so procure abortion.
Therefore this new school of thinkers--if one can dignify by the name
of thinkers persons of so vague and topsy-turvy a mental
habit--nourishing themselves upon the windy meat of secular and
time-exploded fallacies, upon the temple-sweepings of all the
religions, oriental and occidental, old and new, combined with
ill-attested marvels of modern physical and psychological experiment,
were far from commending themselves to his calm and patient judgment.
Such excited persons, as a slight acquaintance with history proves
beyond all question, have existed in every age; and, suffering from
chronic mental dyspepsia, have ever been liable to mistake the
rumblings of internal flatulence for the Witness of the Spirit. In
their current pronouncements Iglesias met with a wearisome passion for
paradox, and an equally wearisome disposition to hail all eccentricity
as genius, all hysteria as inspiration. While in their exaltation of
the "sub-conscious self"--namely, of those blind movements of instinct
and foreboding common to the lower animals and to savage or degenerate
man alike--as against the intellect and the reasoned action of the
will, he saw a menace to human attainment, to civilisation--in the best
meaning of that word--to right reason and noble living, which it would
be difficult to overestimate. These good people, while pouring contempt
on the body, and even denying its existence, in point of fact thought
and talked about little else. All of which struck him as not only very
tiresome and very silly, but very dangerous. Modern Protestantism might
eventuate in Rationalism, in a limiting of human endeavour exclusively
to the end of material well-being. But this worship of the
pseudo-sciences, this tinkering at the accepted foundations and
accepted decencies of the social order, this cultivation of
intellectual and moral chaos, could, for the vast majority of its
professors at all events, eventuate only in the mad-house. And to the
mad-house, whether by twentieth-century esoteric airship or occult
subway, Dominic Iglesias had not the very smallest desire to go.

For he had no ambition to be "on time" and up-to-date, to electrify
either himself or his contemporaries by an exhibition of mental
smartness. He merely desired, earnestly yet humbly, to be given grace
to find the road--however archaic in the eyes of the modern world that
road might be--which leads to the light on the far horizon and beyond
to the presence of God. The more he meditated on these things the more
inconceivable it became to him but that this road veritably existed;
and that, not by labour of man, but by everlasting ordinance of God. It
was absurd, in face of a state of being so complex, so highly
organised, so universally subjected to law, as the one in which he
found himself, that a matter of such supreme importance as the channel
of intercourse between the soul and its Maker should have been left to
haphazard accident or blundering of lucky chance. And so, having
supplemented his researches in print, by listening to the discourses of
many teachers, from one end of London to the other in lecture-hall,
chapel, and church, having even stood among the crowds which gather
around itinerant preachers in the Park, Dominic found his thought
fixing itself with deepening assurance upon the communion in which he
had been born and baptised, which his father, in the interests of the
revolutionary propaganda, had so bitterly repudiated, and from which
his mother, broken by the tyranny of circumstance and bodily weakness,
had lapsed.

Outside that communion he beheld only weltering seas of prejudice and
conflicting opinion, heard only the tumult of confused and acrimonious
contest. Within he beheld the calm of fearlessly wielded authority and
of loyal obedience; heard the awed silence of those who worship being
glad. For the Catholic Church, as Iglesias began to understand, is
something far greater than any triumphant example of that which can be
attained by cooperation and organisation. It is not an organisation,
but an organism; a Living Being, perfectly proportioned, with inherent
powers of development and growth; ever-existent in the Divine Mind
before Time was; recipient and guardian of the deepest secrets, the
most sacred mysteries of existence; endlessly adaptable to changing
conditions yet immutably the same. Hence it is that Catholicism
presents no questionable historic pedigree and speaks with no uncertain
voice. Claiming not only to know the road the soul must tread would it
reach the far horizon, but to be the appointed warden of that same road
and sustainer of it, she points with proud confidence to the vast
multitude which, under her guidance, has joyfully trodden it--a
multitude as diverse in gifts and estate, as in age and race--as proof
of the authenticity of her mission to the toiling and sorrowful
children of men.

Yet, since unconditional surrender must ever strike a pretty shrewd
blow at the roots both of personal pride and worldly caution, Dominic
Iglesias hesitated to take the final step and declare himself. To one
who has long lived outside the creeds, and that not ungodly, still less
bestially, it is no light matter to subject attitude of mind and daily
habit to distinct rule. Not only does the natural man rebel against the
apparent limiting of his personal freedom, but the conventional and
sophisticated man fears lest agreement should, after all, spell
weakness, while indifferentism--specially in outward
observances--argues strength. A certain shyness, moreover, withheld
Iglesias, a not unadmirable dread of being guilty of ostentation. It
was so little his custom to obtrude himself, his opinions, and his
needs upon the attention of others, that he was scrupulous and
diffident in the selection of time and place. The affair, however,
decided itself, as affairs usually do when the intention of those
undertaking them is a sincere one--and thus.

The tide of war had begun to turn. Earlier in the week had come the
news of General Cronje's surrender, after the three days' shelling of
his laager at Paardeberg. Hence satisfaction, not only of victory but
of compassion, since a sense of horror had weighed on the hearts of
even the least sentimental at thought of the stubborn thousands, penned
in that flaming rat-trap of the dry river-bed, ringed about by
sun-baked rock and sand and death-belching guns. To-day came news of
the relief of long-beleaguered Ladysmith, and London was shaken by
emotion, under the bleak moisture-laden March sky, the air thick with
the clash of joy-bells, buildings gay with riotous outbreak of
many-coloured flags, the streets vibrant with the tread and voices of
surging crowds.

Iglesias, who early that afternoon had walked Citywards to see the
holiday aspect of the town and glean the latest war news, growing
somewhat weary on his homeward journey of the humours of his
fellow-citizens--which became beery and boisterous as the day drew
on--turned in at the open gates of the Oratory, in passing along the
Brompton Road. His purpose was to gain a little breathing space from
the jostling throng, by standing at the head of the steps under the
wide portico of the great church. Looking westward, above the wedge of
mean and ill-assorted houses that marks the junction of the Fulham and
the Cromwell Roads--the muddy pavements of which, far as the eye
carried, were black with people--the yellowish glare of a pallid sunset
spread itself across the leaden dulness of the sky. The wan and sickly
light touched the architrave and columns of the facade of the great
church, bringing this and the statue of the Blessed Virgin which
surmounts it into a strange and phantasmal relief--a building not
material and of this world, but rather of a city of dreams. To Iglesias
it appeared as though there was an element of menace in that cold and
melancholy reflection of the sunset. It produced in him a sense of
insecurity and distrust, which the roar of the traffic and horseplay of
the crowd were powerless to counteract. London, the monstrous mother,
in this hour of her rejoicing showed singularly unattractive. Her
features were grimed with soot, her dull-hued garments foul with slush,
her gestures were common, her laughter coarse. His soul revolted from
the sight and sound of her; revolted against the fate which had bound
him so closely to her in the past, and which bound him still. The
spirit of her infected even the sky above her, painting it with the sad
colours of perplexity and doubt. He stepped farther back under the
portico, moved by desire to escape from the too insistent thought and
spectacle of her. Doing so, he became aware of music reaching him
faintly from behind the closed doors of the church, fine yet sonorous
harmonies supporting the radiant clarity of a boy's voice.

Then Iglesias understood that he was presented here and immediately
with the moment of final choice. Delay was dishonourable, since it was
nothing less than a shirking of the obligations which his convictions
had created. So there, on the one hand--for so the whole matter
pictured itself to his seeing--was London, the type, as she is in fact
the capital, of the modern world--of its ambitions, material and
social, of its activities, of its amazing association of pleasure and
misery, of the rankest poverty and most plethoric wealth--at once
formless, sprawling, ugly, vicious, while magnificent in intelligence,
in vitality, in display, as in actual area and bulk. On the other hand,
and in the eyes of the majority phantasmal as a city of dreams, was
Holy Church, austere, restrictive, demanding much yet promising little
save clean hands and a pure heart, until the long and difficult road is
traversed which--as she declares--leads to the light on the far horizon
and beyond to the presence of God.

"If one could be certain of that last, then all would be simple and
easy," Iglesias said to himself, looking out over the turbulence of the
streets to the pallid menace of the western sky. "But it is in the
nature of things, that one cannot be certain. Certainty, whether for
good or evil, can only come after the event. One must take the risk.
And the risk is great, almost appallingly great."

For just then there awoke and cried in him all the repressed and
frustrated pride of a man's life--lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes,
overweening ambition of power and place, of cruelty even, of gross
licence and debauch. For the moment he ceased to be an individual,
limited by time and circumstances, and became, in desire, the possessor
of the passions and reckless curiosity of the whole human race. So
that, in imagination he suffered unexampled temptations; and, in
resisting them, flung aside unexampled allurements of grandeur and
conceivable delight. Not what actually was, or ever had been, possible
to and for him, Dominic Iglesias, bank-clerk, assailed him with
provocative vision and voice; but the whole pageant of earthly being,
and the inebriation of it. Nothing less than this did he behold, and
drink of, and, in spirit, repudiate and put away forever, as at last he
pulled open the heavy swing doors and passed into the church.

Within all was dim, mist and incense smoke obscuring the roof of the
great dome, the figures of the kneeling congregation far below showing
small and dark. Only the high altar was ablaze with many lights, in the
centre of which, high-uplifted, encircled by the golden rays of the
monstrance, pale, mysterious, pearl of incalculable price, showed the
immaculate Host.

Quietly yet fearlessly, as one who comes by long-established right,
Dominic walked the length of the nave, knelt devoutly on both knees,
prostrating himself as, long ago, in the days of early childhood his
mother had taught him to do at the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.
Now, after all these years--and a sob rose in his throat--he seemed to
feel her hand upon his shoulder, the gentle pressure of which enjoined
deepest reverence. Then rising, he took his place in the second row of
seats on the gospel side, and remained there, through the concluding
acts of the ceremonial, until the silent congregation suddenly finds
voice--penetrated by austere emotion--in recitation of the Divine
Praises.

Some minutes later he knelt in the confessional, laying bare the
secrets of his heart.

Thus did Dominic Iglesias cast off the bondage of that monstrous
mother, London-town, cast off the terror of those unbidden companions,
Loneliness and Old Age, using and, taking the risks, humbly reconcile
himself to Holy Church.




CHAPTER XXIII


Good George Lovegrove wandered solitary in Kensington Gardens. He had
chosen the lower path running parallel with Kensington Gore, which
leads, between flowerborders and thickset belts of shrubbery, from the
Broad Walk to the railings enclosing the open space around the Albert
Memorial. This path, being sheltered and furnished with many green
garden seats, is specially nurse and baby haunted, and it was to see
the babies, whether sturdily on foot or seated in their little
carriages, that George Lovegrove had come hither, being sad. Thrushes
sang lustily from the treetops. The flowerborders grew resplendent with
polyanthus, crocus yellow, purple, and white, with early daffodils, and
the heaven blue of _scilla sibirica_. Above, here and there a froth of
almond or cherry blossom overspread the dark twigs and branches, while
a ruddiness of burgeoning buds flushed the great elms. But babies of
position, looking like tiny pink-faced polar bears, still wore their
long leggings and white furs, the March wind being treacherous. They
galloped, trumpeting, the clean air and merry sunshine going to their
heads in the most inebriating fashion. It was early, moreover, so that
they were full of the energy of a good night's sleep, of breakfast, and
of comfortable nursery warmth. And George Lovegrove stepped among them
carefully, watching their gambols moist-eyed, nervously anxious lest
his quaintly solid figure should obstruct the erratic progress of
toy-horse, or hoop, or ball. He craved for notice, for even the veriest
scrap of friendly recognition, yet was too diffident to attempt any
direct intercourse with these delectable small personages, who, on
their part, were royally indifferent to his existence so long as he did
not get in their way. This he clearly perceived, yet for it bore them
no ill-will, preferring, as does every truly devout lover, to worship
the beloved from a respectful distance rather than not worship at all.

And it was thus, even as a large and dusky elephant picking its way
very gently through a flock of skippeting and lively lambs, that Mr.
Iglesias, entering the sheltered walk from the far end, first caught
sight of him. To Dominic, it must be admitted, babies, song-birds,
burgeoning buds and blossoms, alike presented themselves as but
elements in the setting of the outward scene--a scene sweet enough had
one leisure to contemplate it, touched by the genial vernal influence,
witness to nature's undying youth. But his appreciation of that
sweetness was just now cursory and indirect. His thought was absorbed
and eager, penetrated by apprehension of matters lying above and beyond
the range of ordinary human speech. For he was in that exalted interval
of a many hours' fast when the spiritual intelligence is wholly alive
and awake, the body becoming but the vesture of the soul--a vesture
without impediment or weight, a beautifully negligible quantity in the
general scheme of existence. Later reaction sets in. The claims of the
body become dominant; and the exalted moment is too often paid for
sorrowfully enough in sluggish brain and irritated nerves. Dominic,
however, had not reached that stage of the tragi-comedy of the marriage
of flesh and spirit. He was happy, with the white unearthly happiness
of those who have been admitted to the Sacred Mysteries. And it was not
without a sense of shock, as of rough descent to common things, of pity
and of regret, that he recognised good George Lovegrove cruising thus,
elephantine, among the roystering babes. Then Iglesias checked himself
sternly. To humble themselves, remembering their own great
unworthiness, to come down from the Mount of Transfiguration to the
dwellers in the plain, and be gentle and human towards them--this
surely is the primary duty of those who have assisted at the Divine
Sacrament? And so Iglesias went forward and hailed his old
school-fellow in all tenderness and friendship, causing the latter to
raise his eyes from pathetic contemplation of those charming but wholly
self-absorbed small human animals, and look up.

"Dominic!" he cried. "Well, to be sure, you do surprise me. Who would
have expected to meet you out at this hour of the morning? I do
congratulate myself. I am pleased," he said. His honest face beamed,
his fresh colour deepened. As a girl at the unlooked-for advent of her
lover, he grew confused and shy. And Iglesias warmed towards him.
Whimsical in appearance, simple-minded, not greatly skilled in any sort
of learning, yet he had a heart of gold--about that there could be no
manner of doubt.

"Turn back then, and let us walk together," Iglesias said
affectionately. "It is a long while since we have had a quiet
talk--that is, of course, if you have no particular business which
calls you to town."

"I have no business of any description," he answered. "And between
ourselves, Dominic, since I lost my seat on the borough council, I have
had too much time on my hands, I think. It is beginning to be quite a
trouble with me."

"Is life too softly padded, too dead-level easy and comfortable?"
Iglesias inquired. "Are you beginning to quarrel a little with your
blessings?"

George Lovegrove became very serious.

"Yes," he said, "I am afraid you are right. As usual you have laid your
finger on the spot. I do reproach myself for unthankfulness often. I
know I have a good home, and everything decent and respectable about
me; more so, indeed, than a man in my position has any right to expect.
And yet I regret the old days in the city, Dominic, that I do. I should
enjoy to be back at my old desk at the bank--just the little snap of
anxiety in the morning as to whether one would catch the 'bus; the long
ride through the streets with one's morning paper; the turning out with
the other clerks--good fellows all of them, on the whole, were they
not?--to get a snack of lunch. And then the coming home at night, with
some trifling present or dainty to please the wife; and a look round
the greenhouse and garden afterwards in your lounge suit; and hearing
and retailing all the day's news, and talking of the good time coming
when you would retire and be quite the independent gentleman; and the
half-day on Saturday, too, taking some nice little outing to Richmond
or Kew, or an exhibition or something of the sort, and then the
Sunday's rest."

He hesitated and sighed, looking wistfully at the white-clad babies.

"If one had two or three of those little people of one's own it might
be very different--though I would never breathe a word of such a
thought to the wife. Females are so easily upset; and if it raises
regrets in us men, it must be much more trying for them, poor things,
to be childless. But where was I? Yes, well now the good time has
come--and I feel a criminal in saying so, but it appears to me to be
growing stale already, Dominic. It was better in anticipation than in
fact. I am an ungrateful fellow, that I am, I know it; but sometimes I
am inclined to ask myself whether all the things we set such fond hopes
on are not like that."

"No, not all," Iglesias answered, with a certain subdued enthusiasm.
"There are things--a few--which never grow stale. One may build on them
as on a foundation of rock. If they ever seem to fail us, to be shaken
and overthrown, it is an evil delusion, and the cause lies not in them
but in ourselves. It is we who fail, who are shaken and overthrown
through palsied will and feebleness of faith. They remain forever
inviolate."

"I suppose so," the other man said timidly. He was unused to such
vehemence of assertion on the part of his friend. He wondered to what
it could refer. His thought, carrying back to the evening at the
theatre, played around visions of distinguished amours. Then he
steadied himself to heroic resolve.

"I suppose it is," he repeated, "and that makes my conduct appear all
the more discreditable to me. My circumstances are too comfortable and
easy. It is just that. And so I take to fretting over trifles and
seeing slights and unkindness where none were intended." He looked up
at Iglesias, his squinting eyes full of apology and admiration. "Yes, I
am sadly poor-spirited and I have no excuse. I have been nursing a
sense of injury towards those to whom I have most occasion for
gratitude--the wife and you. Dominic, believe me I am heartily ashamed
of myself."

"Come, come," Iglesias answered, brought very much back to earth, yet
touched and softened. "My dear friend, you of all men have small cause
for self-reproach. In every relation of life--and our knowledge of one
another dates back to early youth--I have found you perfect in loyalty
and unselfish kindness."

George Lovegrove walked on for a moment in silence. He had to clear his
throat once or twice before he could command his voice.

"Praise from you is very encouraging," he managed to say at last. "But
I am afraid I do not deserve it. I have felt mortified lately
sometimes, and I am afraid envious. I--but after your last words I am
more than ever ashamed to own it--I have fancied that you were becoming
distant and that an estrangement was growing up between us. Of course I
have always understood, though we happened to be school-fellows and in
the same employment afterward, that your position and mine were
different. And I want you to know that I would never be a clog on you,
Dominic"--he spoke with an admirably simple dignity--"believe me, I
never would be that. Lately I have been troubled by the thought that I
had extracted a promise from you to remain at Trimmer's Green. Now I
beg of you most earnestly not to let that promise, given in a moment of
generous indulgence, weigh with you in the slightest, if circumstances
have arisen which point at your residing in a more fashionable part of
the town."

"But why should I want to go to a more fashionable part of London?"
Iglesias asked, smiling.

"Well, you see," the other returned, his face growing furiously red,
"it came to my knowledge, unexpectedly, that you have acquaintances in
quite another walk of life to ours--the wife's and mine, I mean. And it
would pain me deeply, very deeply, Dominic, that any promise given to
me, regarding your place of residence, should stand between you and
mixing as freely with those acquaintances as you might otherwise do."

They had come to the place where the sheltered pathway is crossed by
the Broad Walk--the upward trend of which showed blond, in the
sunshine, against the brilliant green of the grass and the dark boles
of the great trees bordering it. Here Iglesias paused. He was not
altogether pleased.

"I do not quite follow you," he said coldly. Then looking at the
guileless and faithful being beside him, he softened once more. Was it
not only more just, but more honourable, to treat this matter with
candour? "You are alluding to the lady who was good enough to send for
me the night you and Miss Lovegrove went with me to the play?"

"Yes," the excellent George assented in a strangled voice. He wanted to
know badly. He was agonised by fear of having committed an indiscretion
offensive to his idol.

"Set your mind quite at rest on that point then, my dear friend. Her
world is not my world and never will be. In it I should be very much
out of place."

Iglesias moved forward again, crossing the Broad Walk and making
towards the small iron gate, at the lower corner of the Gardens, which
opens on to Kensington High Street. But he walked slowly, becoming
conscious that he grew tired and spent. The glory of the spirit
dominant was departing, the tyranny of the body dominant beginning to
reassert itself. His features contracted slightly. He felt
unreasoningly sad.

George Lovegrove walked beside him in silence, his eyes downcast, his
heart stirred by vague tumultuous sympathy, his modest nature at once
inflamed and abashed, recognising in his companion the hero of an
exalted and tragic romance.

"Well, he looks it. It suits his character and appearance," he said to
himself, adding aloud--for the very life of him he could not help
it--"But she was very beautiful, Dominic."

"Yes," Iglesias answered, "she is beautiful and very clever and--very
unhappy."

The good George's heart positively thumped against his ribs. "And to
think of all the plans the wife and I have been making!" he said to
himself.

"If she wants me, she will send for me," Iglesias continued quietly,
"and I shall go to her at once, as I went that evening, without
hesitation or delay, wherever she may be. But," he added, "it becomes
increasingly improbable that she will send for me. I have not seen her
or heard from her since that night. And so, my dear friend, you
perceive that your kindly fears of having circumscribed my liberty of
choice in respect of a place of residence are quite unfounded. I have
no reason for leaving Cedar Lodge or altering my accustomed habits."

Iglesias smiled affectionately, as dismissing the whole matter.

"And now," he continued, "that little misunderstanding being cleared
up, will you mind my turning into the restaurant just here, in High
Street, for a cup of coffee and a roll? I have not breakfasted yet."

Whereupon George Lovegrove pranced before him, incoherent in kindly
remonstrance and advice.

"At 11 A. M., and after your severe indisposition at Christmas, too,
out walking on an empty stomach! It is positively suicidal. Where have
you been to?" he cried.

"To Mass," Iglesias answered, still smiling, though with something of a
fighting light in his eyes and a lift of his head.

His companion stared at him in blank amazement.

"To what?" he said.

"To Mass," Iglesias repeated. "I have been waiting for a suitable
opportunity to speak to you of this, George. I, too, have felt the
weight of enforced leisure. It has not been a particularly cheerful
experience; but it has given me time to read, and still more to think,
with the consequence that I have returned to the faith of my childhood.
I have made my peace with the Church."

They continued to walk slowly onward; but George Lovegrove drew away to
the further side of the path as though contact might be dangerous, as
though infection was hanging about. He kept his eyes averted, his head
bent.

"You do surprise me," he said at last. "I had not the slightest inkling
that you were contemplating such a step. I give you my word, you have
fairly taken away my breath. I do not seem to be able to grasp it, that
you, whom I have always looked up to as so mentally superior, so
independent in your thought, should have become a Romanist--for that is
your meaning, I take it, Dominic?"

"Yes, that is my meaning," Iglesias answered.

"You do surprise me," George Lovegrove said again presently, and in a
lamentable voice. "My mind refuses to grasp it. I would rather have
lost five hundred pounds than have heard this. I declare I am fairly
unmanned. I have never received a greater shock."

Iglesias remained silent. He was weary and sad. But he straightened
himself, trying to keep his gaze fixed steadily upon the far horizon
where dwells the everlasting light.

"It is presumptuous in me to criticise your action, perhaps," his
companion continued. "I never did such a thing before, having always
hesitated to set up my views against yours; but I cannot but fear you
have made a sad mistake. And if you were contemplating any change of
this kind, why did you not come into our own national English Church?"

"Very much because it is English and national, I think," he answered.
"In my opinion there is an inherent falsity of conception in subjecting
our approach to the Absolute to restrictions imposed by country or by
race, if these can, by any means, be avoided. Why hamper yourself with
a late, expurgated, and mutilated edition, when the original, in all
its splendour and historic completeness, bearing the sign-manual of the
Author, is there ready to your hand?"

Again Iglesias spoke with subdued but unmistakable enthusiasm. The two
friends had just reached the iron gate leading into High Street. Here
George Lovegrove stopped. He still kept carefully at a distance,
averting his eyes as from some distressing, even disgraceful, sight,
while his good honest face worked with emotion.

"I think if you will kindly excuse me, I will go no farther," he
faltered. "What you say may be true--I am sure I don't know. It is all
beyond me. But I should prefer not to talk any more about it until I
have accustomed myself to the thought of this change in you. Nothing
does come between people like religion," he added with unconscious
irony. "So I think, if you will kindly excuse me, I will just go away,
Dominic."

And, without more ado, he turned back into the Gardens.

The small polar bears, meanwhile, satiated with exercise, air, and
light, had begun to grow restive and fretty. Their stomachs cried
cupboardwards, and they were disposed to filch each other's toy horses
and hoops, and use each other's small persons as targets for balls,
thrown as bombs in a fashion far from polite. Anxious maids and nurses
hunted them homewards, not without slight asperity on the one part, on
the other occasional squealings and free fights. But upon the babies,
engaging even in naughtiness, George Lovegrove had ceased to bestow any
attention. He went forward blindly, cruising among them and their
attendants and smart little carriages, elephantine, careless where he
placed his feet, to the obstruction of traffic and heightening of
general annoyance, as sorrowful a man as any would need to meet. For it
seemed to him things had gone wrong, just then, past all hope of
setting right. His idol, light of his eyes and joy of his guileless
heart, has fallen from his high estate, discovering capacity of playing
the most discreditable and soul-harrowing pranks. Prejudice is
myriad-lived here on earth; and in George Lovegrove all the bigotry,
all the semi-superstitious, terror fostered by the accumulated
ignorance which generations of Protestant forefathers have bequeathed
to the English middle-class, reared itself, not only stubborn, but
militant. His thought travelled back to those barbarities of rougher
ages which are, in point of fact, more common to the secular than to
the religious criminal code; but which Protestant teachers, even yet,
find it convenient to put down wholly to the account of the Catholic
Church. Practically ignorant of the spoliation and persecution
practised under Henry the Eighth--of blessed domestic memory--of the
further persecution which disfigured the "spacious days of great
Elizabeth," not to mention the long and shameful history of the Penal
Laws, he fixed his mind upon lurid legends of the reign of unhappy Mary
Tudor, illustrated by prints in Fox's Book of Martyrs; upon
inquisitorial tortures, the very thought of which--even out of doors in
the pleasant spring sunshine--made him break into a heavy sweat, and
which, by some grotesque perversion of ideas, he believed to be not
only the necessary outcome of, but vitally essential to, the practice
of the Faith. Against this hideous background he set the calm and
stately figure of his beloved friend Iglesias--seeing him no longer as
the faithful comrade of more than half a lifetime, but as a foreign
being, an unknown quantity, a worshipper of graven images, a
participant in blasphemous rites, a believer, in short, in just all
that which sound, respectable, and godly British common sense cast
forth, with scorn and contumely, close on four centuries back. He was
frightened. His everyday, comfortable, jog-trot, little odd and end of
a local parochial suburban middle-class world was literally turned
upside down and inside out.

"And however will the wife take it--however will she take it?" he
mourned to himself. "To think we have been harbouring a Papist in
disguise! I dare not contemplate her feelings. She will be upset. I
must keep it from her as long as possible. And Serena, too, and Susan!
I don't know how I can face them. Females are so very eloquent when put
out. Of course I have known there was something wrong for a long time
past. I saw there was a change in him, and felt there was some cause of
coldness; but it never entered my head it could be as bad as this. Oh!
my poor, dear friend. Oh! my poor Dominic, perhaps I have been
overattached to you and this comes as a judgment. It would be hard
enough to have anything break up our friendship, but this folly, this
dreadful doting apostasy--"

He walked on blindly along the sheltered path between the
flower-borders, deaf to remonstrant nurses and scornful, beautiful
babes clothed in spotless white.

"If anything must come between us I would rather it was a woman," he
mourned, "ten thousand times rather, whoever and whatever she was, than
this."




CHAPTER XXIV


It happened on the afternoon of that same day that Eliza Hart, in
pursuance of her domestic avocations, had occasion to go into Mr.
Farge's room on the first floor to lay out a new coverlet on his bed.
When, as thus, compelled to enter the apartments of either of the
gentlemen guests of the establishment it was her practice to leave the
door half open, as a concession to propriety in the abstract and a
testimony to her own discretion in the concrete. The handsome mahogany
doors of Cedar Lodge, unhappily painted white by some vandal of a
former inhabitant, being heavy were hung on a rising hinge. Hence, when
half open, a space of some three inches was left between the back of
the door and the jamb, through which it was easy to get a good view of
the hall or the landing unobserved. Little Mr. Farge professed a warm
predilection for gay colours, and Eliza had selected the new bedspread
with an eye to this fact. It was of bright raspberry-red cotton twill,
enriched with a broad printed border in a flowing design of
lemon-yellow tulips and bottle-green leaves. The salesman, in
exhibiting it to her, had described it as "very chaste and pleasing."
Eliza herself qualified it as "tasty"; and had just disposed it, much
to her own satisfaction, upon the young man's bed, when her attention
was arrested by the tones of an unknown feminine voice in the hall
below. Shortly afterwards she heard Frederick, the valet's large
footsteps hurtling upstairs at a double, followed by a prolonged and
leisurely whispering of silken skirts. Here, clearly, was a matter into
which, for the reputation of Cedar Lodge, it was desirable to look
without delay. Eliza, therefore, moved to the near side of the door,
and, through the three-inch aperture afforded by the rising hinge,
raked the landing with a vigilant eye.

The door of Mr. Iglesias's sitting-room immediately opposite stood
open. In the doorway Frederick indulged in explanatory gesticulation.
While, slowly ascending the last treads of the stairs, was a lady of
unmistakable elegance, arrayed in a large black hat with drooping
plumes to it, a sable cape--the price of which, Eliza felt assured, ran
easily into three figures--and a black cloth dress in the cut of which
she read the last word of contemporary fashion. Arrived at the
stair-head the intruder stood still, calmly surveying her surroundings,
presenting, as she turned her head, a pale face, very red lips, and
eyes--so at least it appeared to the vigilant orbs of Eliza--quite
immodestly large and lustrous, melancholy and somehow extremely
impertinent, too. Then Mr. Iglesias emerged from his sitting-room, an
expression upon his countenance which startled Eliza. She very
certainly had never seen it before. For a moment the lady looked up at
him, as though silently asking some question. Then she patted him
lightly upon the back, and passed into the sitting-room hand in hand
with him, while Frederick with his best flourish closed the door.

"Well, of all the things!" cried Eliza, half aloud; and, oblivious both
of discretion and of the new raspberry-red cotton twill coverlet, she
backed, and sat, plump, upon the edge of the bed. Just then, as she
asserted in subsequently recounting this remarkable incident, you might
have knocked her down with a feather.

"Of all the things!" she repeated, after an interval of breathless
amazement. "And how long has this been going on, I should like to know?
So that is the reason of a certain gentleman's iciness, and his
stand-offish high-mightiness. Well, I never! And poor darling Peachie,
so trustful and confiding all the time; not that she need fear
comparison with anybody.--Bah! the serpent."

Nevertheless she was deeply impressed, and fell into a vein of furious
speculation as to who this unlooked-for smart lady might be. Then,
suddenly remembering the highly compromising nature of her own existing
position sitting not only in the lively little Farge's bed-chamber, but
actually upon his bed, she rose with embarrassment and haste, and made
her way downstairs to the offices--treading circumspectly in dread of
creaking boards--to interview Frederick. But from that functionary she
obtained scant information.

"Zee lady she ask for Mr. Iglesias. I tell her I go to find him. I put
her in zee drawing-room."

"Quite right, Frederick,"--this encouragingly from Eliza.

"But she no stay zere. She come again out quick. She not any name, not
any visiting card give; only write somezing, very fast, on a piece of
paper and screw it togezzer. Zen she not wait till I return, but behind
me upstairs chase."

So there was nothing for it, as the great Eliza perceived, but to
retire to the drawing-room, and--Mrs. Porcher happened to be out--note
the hour and, with the door discreetly half open, await the descent of
the intruder from the floor above.

"I can just catch darling Peachie, too," she said to herself, "and draw
her aside. To meet such a person unexpectedly, on the stairs or in the
hall, would be enough to make her turn quite faint."




CHAPTER XXV


Poppy St. John laid her hands lightly on Mr. Iglesias' shoulders and
smiled at him. She looked very young, yet very worn; and the corners of
her mouth shook.

"If you were anybody else," she said, "I believe I should give you a
kiss. But I am not going to, so don't be nervous, dear man. I'll be
perfectly correct, I promise you--only I had to come. I have been good,
absolutely tiptop beastly good, I tell you. I have washed the slate. It
is as clean as a vacuum, as the inside of an exhausted receiver. And I
feel as dull as empty space before the creation got started."

Poppy shivered a little, putting one hand over her eyes, and resting
her head with its great black hat and sweeping plumes against Mr.
Iglesias' chest. And Iglesias quietly put his arm round her, supporting
her. The day had been full of experiences. This last, though of a
notably different complexion to the rest, promised to be by no means
the least searching and surprising. Iglesias steadied himself to take
it quite calmly, in his stride; yet his jaw grew rigid and his face
blanched in dread of that which might be coming.

"I have sent Alaric Barking about his business," Poppy continued
hoarsely. "Sent him back to his soldiering, helped to cart him off to
that rotten hole, South Africa. He is a smart officer, and he'll make a
name, if he don't get shot. And he won't get shot--I should feel it in
my bones if he was going to, and I don't feel it. I broke with him more
than a month ago. But I had to see him again to say good-bye, this
morning, before he sailed."

Poppy moved a step or two away, turning her back on Iglesias.

"And it hurt a jolly lot more than I expected. I don't suppose I am in
love"--she looked around inquiringly at him, as though expecting him to
solve the complicated problem of her affections. "It's not likely at
this time of day, is it? But I was fonder of Alaric than I quite knew.
He is a good sort, and we have had some ripping times together. He had
become a sort of habit, you know; and when you have knocked about a
lot, as I have, you get rather sick at the notion of any change."

She stood, looking down, leisurely unbuttoning and pulling off her long
gloves.

"I don't know that I should have made up my mind to sack him in the
end, but that I wanted to please Fallowfeild."

Mr. Iglesias became very tall. His expression was hard, his eyes
alight. This the lady noted. She returned and patted him gently on the
back again.

"There, there, don't sail off on a wrong tack, my beloved fire-eater.
Fallowfeild was quite right. The game was up, really it was; and he
wanted me to walk out, like the gentlemanlike dog, so as to avoid being
kicked out. I always knew the break was bound to come some time; and
it's a long sight pleasanter to break than to be broken with, don't you
think so?--You see, Alaric has formed a virtuous attachment." Poppy's
lips took a cynical twist. "It was time, high time, he should, if he
meant to go in for that line of business at all. The young lady is a
niece of Fallowfeild's--a pretty little girl, really quite pretty--I
saw her that night we were both at the play--all new, and pink and
white, and well-bred, and _ingénue_, and in every respect perfectly
suitable."

Poppy looked mutinously, even mischievously, at Dominic Iglesias.

"Poor, dear old Alaric," she said. "I don't quarrel with him. His elder
brother's no children, and there are pots and pots of money. That he
should want to marry, and that his people should press it on him, is
perfectly natural, and obvious, and proper."

"But," Dominic asked fiercely, "if this young man, Captain Barking,
proposes to marry, why has he not married you--always supposing you
were willing to entertain his suit?"

Poppy flung her long gloves upon the table, unhooked her sable cape and
sent it flying to join them.

"Pou-ah! I'm hot!" she exclaimed. "I think I'll sit down, if you have
no objection. Yes, that chair, thanks--it looks excellently
comfortable. By the way, you've got an uncommonly nice lot of things in
this room. I am going to make a tour of inspection presently. It
pleases me frightfully to see where you live and look at your
possessions." She stared absently at the furniture and pictures.--"But
about my marrying Alaric Barking," she continued. "Well, you see--you
see, dear man, there is an inconvenient little impediment in the shape
of a husband."

As she finished speaking Poppy folded her hands in her lap. She sat
perfectly still, her lips pressed together, watching Mr. Iglesias over
her shoulder but without turning her head. He had crossed the room and
stood at one of the tall narrow windows, looking out into the bright
windy afternoon.

For here it was in plain English, at last, that underlying secret thing
which he had known yet dreaded to know. It begot in him an immense
regret and inevitable repulsion at admitted wrongdoing. He made no
attempt to juggle with the meaning of her words. Yet, along with them,
came a feeling of gladness that Poppy St. John would remain Poppy St.
John still; and a movement of hope--intimate and very tender--since in
this tragic hour of her history she had come directly to him, asking
comfort and sympathy. Dominic, cut to the quick by the defection of the
heretofore ever-faithful George Lovegrove, hailed with a peculiar
thankfulness this mark of confidence and trust. Sinful, greatly erring,
still the Lady of the Windswept Dust had returned to him; and thereat
he soberly, yet very deeply, rejoiced. In truth, the sharp-edged breath
of persecution he had encountered this morning, while paining him, had
braced him to high endeavour. The Catholic Church, so he argued, must
indeed be a mighty and living power since men fear her so much. And
this power he felt to be behind him, sustaining him, inciting him to
noble undertakings--he strong in virtue of her strength, fearless
through the courage of her saints, able with the energy of their
accumulated merit and their prayers. Again, as on his way home that
morning from hearing Mass, the spirit was dominant, his whole nature
and outlook purified and exalted by the Divine Indwelling. To fail any
human creature calling on him for help would be contemptible, and even
dastardly, in one blessed as he himself was. Thus his relation to Poppy
St. John fell into line. He could afford to love and serve her well,
since he loved and purposed, in all things, to serve Almighty God best.

These meditations occupied but a few moments, yet Poppy's patience ran
short.

"Dominic Iglesias," she cried suddenly, sharply, "I am tired of
waiting."

He crossed the room and stood in front of her, serious but light of
heart.

"See here, it is all right between us?" she asked imperatively.

"Yes, all is perfectly right between us," he answered. "Your coming
gives me the measure of your faith in me. I am grateful and I am very
glad."

"Ah!" Poppy said softly.

She sat forward in her chair, making herself small, patting her hands
together, palm to palm, between her knees, and swaying a little as she
spoke.

"You see," she went on, "to be quite honest, I didn't break with Alaric
simply to enable him to marry and live happy ever after. Nor did I do
it exclusively to please Fallowfeild. It would take a greater fool than
I am to be as altruistic as all that. I always like to have my run for
my money. I--I did it more to get you back."

She paused and raised her head, looking full at him.

"And I have got you back?" she said.

"Yes," he answered, smiling. "I ask nothing better than to come back."

"Do you mean that you are prepared to take everything on trust--after
what I have just told you--without wanting explanations?"

"Friendship has no need of explanations," Iglesias said, with a touch
of grandeur--"that is, as I understand friendship. It accepts what is
given without question, or cavilling as to much or to little, leaving
the giver altogether free. Friendship, as I understand it, should have
honourable reticences, not only of speech but of thought; wise
economies of proffered sympathy. In its desire of service it should
never approach too near or say the word too much; since, if it is to
flourish and obtain the grace of continuance, it must be rooted in
reverence for the individuality of the person dear to it. This is my
belief." His bearing was courtly, his expression very gentle.
"Therefore rest assured that whatever confidence you repose in me is
sacred. Whatever confidence you withhold from me is sacred likewise."

Poppy mused a little, a smile on her lips and an enigmatic look in her
singular eyes.

"You're beautiful, dear man," she murmured. "You're very beautiful.
You're worth chucking the devil over for; but you'll take a jolly lot
of living up to. So see here, you're bound to look me up pretty
constantly just at first, for I tell you life is not going to be
exactly a toy-shop for me for some little time to come. You hear? You
promise?"

"I promise," Iglesias returned.

"And there's another thing," she continued rather proudly, "a thing men
too often blunder over--with the very best intentions, bless them, only
they do blunder, and that leads to ructions. Please put the question of
money out of your head once and for all. I have a certain amount of my
own, nothing princely well understood, but quite possible to live on.
It was to prevent his playing ducks and drakes with it that I finally
left the jackal of a fellow whom I married. Well, I have that, and I
have made a little more, one way and another."--Poppy permitted herself
a wicked grimace.--"Poor old Alaric used to tell me I was a great
financier wasted, that I should have been invaluable as partner in
their family banking concern--that's more than he'll ever be, poor
chap, unless marriage makes pretty sweeping changes in him. Some of my
sources of income naturally are cut off through the cleaning of the
slate. For I have been tiptop beastly good--indeed I have, as I told
you! No more cards, and oh dear, no more racing. But no doubt
Cappadocia will contribute in the way of puppies. _Noblesse
oblige_--she realises her duty towards posterity, does Cappadocia. So I
shall scrape along quite tidily. And then, as long as I keep my voice
and my figure, at a push there's always my profession.--You hadn't
arrived at the fact that I had a profession? Such is fame, dear man,
such is fame. Why, I started as a child-actress at thirteen; and went
on till the jackal made that impossible, like virtue, and self-respect,
and a decent home, and a few kindred trifles in favour of which every
clean-minded woman has, after all, a strongish prejudice."

Poppy's voice shook. She had much ado to maintain an indifferent and
matter-of-fact manner. Iglesias drew up a chair and sat down beside
her. She put out her hand, taking his and holding it quietly.

"There, that's better," she said. "I feel babyish. I should like a good
square cry. But I won't have one. Don't be afraid. The motto is 'No
snivelling, full steam ahead.'--But as to the stage, I'm not sure that
won't prove the solution of most difficulties in the end. Sometimes it
pulls badly at my heartstrings, and I shouldn't be half sorry for an
excuse for taking to it again. It's a rotten profession for a man, and
not precisely a soul-saving one for a woman. But it gives you your
opportunity; and, at bottom, I suppose that's the main thing one asks
of life--one's opportunity. Too, your art is your art; and if it is
bred in you, you sicken for it. I was awfully glad that night to see
you at the play, though in a way it shocked me. It seemed incongruous.
Tell me, do you really care for the theatre?"

"To a moderate extent I do," Dominic answered. She wanted, so he
divined, to give a lighter tone to the conversation. He tried to meet
her wishes.--"I am not a very ardent playgoer, I am afraid. But at the
present time I happen to be involved indirectly in theatrical
enterprise. I am interested in the production of a play, which I am
assured will prove a remarkable success."

"You're not financing it?" Poppy asked sharply.

"Within certain limits I am," he answered, smiling. "An appeal was made
to me for help which it would have been cruel to refuse."

Poppy's expression had become curiously sombre, not to say stormy. She
got up and began to roam about the room.

"I hope to goodness the limits are clearly defined, and very narrow
ones, then," she exclaimed. "For my part I don't believe in talent
which can't find a market in the ordinary course of business. I grant
you managers sometimes put a play on which is no good; and sometimes
cripple what might be a fine play by doctoring it, in deference to the
rulings of that archetype of all maiden aunts and incarnation of
British hypocrisy, the censor; but they very rarely, in my experience,
reject a play which has money in it. Why should they? Poor brutes, they
are not exactly surfeited with masterpieces. The play which requires
private backing, though a record-breaker in the opinion of its author,
is usually rubbish in that of the public. And the public, take it all
round, is very fairly level-headed and just; you must not judge it by
the stupidities of the censor. He represents only an extreme section of
it, if at this time of day he really represents anybody--a section
which does the screaming sitting sanctimoniously at home, getting its
information at second-hand through the papers, and never darkens the
doors of a play-house at all. Moreover, you must remember that the
public is master. There is no getting behind its verdict."

Poppy's peregrinations had brought her back beside Mr. Iglesias again.
She patted him on the shoulder.

"See here, my beloved no-longer-nameless one," she said. "Be advised.
Learn wisdom. For I tell you I've been through that gate if ever a
woman has. The jackal--I wish to heaven we could keep him out of our
talk, but, for cause unknown, he persistently obtrudes himself--he
invariably does so when I'm hipped and edgy--well, you see, he was an
unappreciated genius in the way of a dramatist, from which fact I
derived first-hand acquaintance with the habits of the species. What I
don't know about those animals is not worth knowing. They're just
simply vermin, I tell you. Their utter unprofitableness is only
equalled by their lunatic vanity. They imagine the whole world, lay and
professional, is in league to balk and defraud them. So don't touch
them, I entreat you, as you value your peace of mind and your pocket.
They'll bleed you white and never give you a penn'orth of thanks--more
likely turn on you and make out, somehow or other, you are responsible
for the failure of their precious productions.--Now let's try to forget
them, and talk of pleasanter subjects. These obtrusions of the jackal
always bring me bad luck. I'm downright scared at them.--Tell me about
your goods, your books and your pictures. And show me something which
belonged to your mother--that is, if it wouldn't pain you to do so. I
should like to hold something she had touched in my hands. It would be
comforting, somehow. And just set that door wider open, there's a dear.
I want to have a look into the other room and see where you sleep."

For the ensuing half hour Poppy was an enchanting companion, wholly
womanly, gentle and delicate; eager, too, with the pretty spontaneous
eagerness of a child, at the recital of stories and exhibition of
treasures beloved by her companion. The lonely cedar tree, lamenting
its exile as the wind swept through the labyrinth of its dry branches,
moved her almost to tears.

"It is tragic," she said; "still, I am glad you have it. It's very much
in the picture, and lifts the sentiment of the place out of the awful
suburban rut. It's a little symbolic of you yourself, too,
Dominic--there's style, and poetry, and breeding about it. Only, thank
the powers, you differ from it mightily in this, that its best days are
over, while you are but in the flower of your age. And your rooms are
delightful--they're like you, too.--The rest of the house? My dear
soul, the manservant ushered me into a drawing-room, when I arrived,
the colours of which were simply frantic. I bolted. If I'd stayed
another five minutes they'd have given me lockjaw.--Now I must go." She
smiled very sweetly upon Mr. Iglesias. "I'm better, ten thousand times
better," she said. "When I came I was rather extensively nauseated by
my own virtuous actions. Now it's all square between them and me. I'm
good right through, I give you my word I am. If only it'll last!"

Poppy's lips quivered, and she looked Iglesias rather desperately in
the face.

"Never fear," he answered, "but that it will last."

"Still you'll come and see me often, very often, till I settle down
into the running? It will be beastly heavy going--must be, I'm
afraid--for a long while yet."

Dominic Iglesias, holding her hand, bent low and kissed it.

"I will serve you perfectly, God helping me, as long as I live," he
said.

Five minutes later Mrs. Porcher, supported by the outraged and
sympathetic Eliza, watched, through the aperture afforded by the rising
hinge of the dining-room door, an unknown lady, escorted by Mr.
Iglesias, sweep in whispering skirts and costly sables across the hall.

Passing out and down the white steps, Poppy, usually so light of foot
and deft of movement, stumbled, and but for Iglesias' prompt assistance
would have fallen headlong. At that same moment de Courcy Smyth,
slovenly in dress, with shuffling footsteps, crossed the road, and then
slunk aside, his arm jerked up queerly almost as though warding off a
blow.

"No, no, I'm not hurt, not in the least hurt," Poppy said breathlessly,
in response to Iglesias' inquiry. "But it's given me a bad fright. I'll
go straight home. Put me into the first hansom you see.--No, I'll go by
myself. I'd far rather. I give you my word I'm not hurt; but I've a lot
of things to think about--I want to be alone. I want to be quiet. Come
soon. I was very happy. Good-bye--good-night."




CHAPTER XXVI


A featureless landscape of the brand of ugliness peculiar to the
purlicus of a great city, to that intermediate region where the streets
have ended and the country has not yet fairly begun. A waste of
cabbagefields--the dark lumpy earth between the rows of yellowish
stumps strewn with ill-smelling refuse of decaying leaves--seen through
the rents in a broken, unkempt, quickset hedge. Running parallel with
the said hedge, shiny blacktarred palings, shutting off all view of the
river. Between these barriers, a long stretch of drab-coloured high
road, flanked by slightly raised footpaths, a verge of coarse weedy
grass to them in which a litter of rags, torn posters, and much other
unloveliness found harbourage. To the northwest and north, a sky piled
to the zenith with mountainous swiftly moving clouds, inky,
blue-purple, wildly white, from out the torn bosoms of which rushed,
now and again, flurrying showers of hail and sleet driven by a
shrieking wind. March was in the act of asserting its proverbial
privilege of "going out like a lion"; but the lion, as seen in this
particular perspective, was a frankly ignoble and ill-conditioned beast.

And Poppy St. John, heading up against wind and weather along the
left-hand footpath, felt frankly ignoble and ill-conditioned, too. Her
poor soul, which had made such valiant efforts to spread its wings and
fly heavenward--a form of exercise sadly foreign to its habit--crawled,
once more, soiled and mud-bespattered, along the common thoroughfare of
life. At this degradation, her heart overflowed with bitterness and
disgust, let alone the blind rage which possessed her, as of some
trapped creature frustrated in escape. She had broken gaol, as she
fondly imagined, and secured liberty. Not a bit of it! In the hour of
reconciliation, of sweetest security, she met her gaoler face to face
and heard the key grind in the lock.

Save for the occasional passing of a market waggon, or high-shouldered
scavenger's cart, the road was deserted. Once a low-hung two-wheeled
vehicle rattled by, on which, insufficiently covered by sacking, lay a
dead horse, the great head swinging ghastly over the slanting
tail-board, the legs sticking out stark in front. A man, perched
sideways on the carcass, swore at the rickety crock he was driving, and
lashed it under the belly with a short-handled heavy-thonged whip. He
was collarless, and the scarlet and orange handkerchief, knotted about
his throat, had got shifted, the ends of it streaming out behind him as
he lifted his arm and swayed his whole body madly using his whip. Poppy
shut her eyes, sickened by the sound and sight. Just then a scourging
storm of sleet struck her, causing her to turn her back and pause,
where a curve in the range of paling offered some slight shelter. For
strong though she was, and well furnished against the inclement weather
in a thick coaching coat, buttoned up to her chin and down to her feet,
her cloth cap tied on with a thick veil, the stinging wind and sleet
were almost more than she could face. Her depression was not physical
merely, but moral likewise. For over and above her personal and private
sources of trouble, it was a day and place whereon evil deeds seemed
unpleasantly possible. The swearing driver and dangling head of the
dead horse had served to complete her discomfiture; and presently, the
storm slackening a little, hearing footsteps behind her, she wheeled
round, her chin bravely in the air, but her heart galloping with
nervous fright, while her fingers closed down on the butt of the small
silver-plated revolver which rested in the right-hand waist pocket of
her long coat.

De Courcy Smyth was close beside her. Poppy set her lips together and
braced herself to endure the coming wretchedness. It was some years
since she had had speech of him--some years, indeed, since she had seen
him, save during that brief moment, twenty-four hours previously, as
she descended the steps of Cedar Lodge. Even in his most prosperous
days he had been unattractive in person, at once untidy and theatrical
in dress. Now Poppy registered a distinct deterioration in his
appearance. His puffy face, red-rimmed eyes, and shambling gait were
odious to her. She noted, moreover, that he was poorly clad. His grey
felt hat was stained and greasy; his ginger-coloured frieze overcoat
threadbare at the elbows, thin and stringy in the skirts. The soles of
his brown boots were splayed, the upper leathers seamed and cracked.
This might denote poverty. It might, also, only denote carelessness and
sloth. In any case, it failed to move her to pity, provoking in her
uncontrollable irritation; so that, forgetful of diplomacy, stirred by
memories of innumerable kindred provocations in the past, Poppy spoke
without preamble, asking him sharply as he joined her:

"Have you no better clothes than that?"

Smyth paused before answering, looking her up and down furtively yet
deliberately, wiping the wet of his beard and face, meanwhile, with a
frayed green silk pocket-handkerchief.

"It offends your niceness that your husband should dress like a tramp,
does it?" he said hoarsely. "And pray whose fault is it that he is
reduced to doing so? Judging by your own costume, you can easily remove
that cause of offence if you choose. It does not occur to you, perhaps,
that while you live on the fat of the land I, but for the charity of
strangers--which it is loathsome to me to accept--should not have
enough to pay for the food I eat or for the detestable garret in which
I both work and sleep? Under these circumstances I am scarcely prepared
to call in a fashionable tailor to replenish my wardrobe, lest its
meagreness should, on the very rare occasions on which I have the
honour of meeting you, offer an unpleasing reflection upon your own
super-elegance."

To these observations, delivered with a somewhat hysterical volubility,
Poppy made no direct reply. Surely it was cruel, cruel, that at this
juncture, when she had so honestly striven to refuse the evil and
choose the good, this recrudescence of all that was most hateful to her
should take place? Moreover, now as always, just that modicum of truth
underlay Smyth's exaggerated accusations and perverted statements which
made them as difficult to combat as they were exasperating to listen
to. For a minute or so Poppy could not trust herself to speak, lest she
should give way to foolish invective. His looks, manner, intonation,
the phrases he employed were odiously familiar to her. She fought as in
a malicious dream, to which the squalor of the surrounding landscape
offered an only too appropriate setting. Turning, she walked slowly in
the direction whence she had come--namely, in that of Barnes village
and Mortlake. There the quaint riverside houses would afford some
shelter and sense of comradeship.

"I am sorry to make you come farther out," she said, with an attempt at
civility.

"That is unexpectedly considerate," he commented.

"But it is impossible to talk in the teeth of this wind," she
continued, "and I imagine we're neither of us particularly keen to
prolong our interview."

"Excuse me, speak for yourself," Smyth interrupted. "I find it
decidedly interesting to meet my wife again. She has gone up in the
world, and climbed the tree of fashion in the interval. I have gone
down in the world, as every scholar and gentleman, every man with
brains and high standards of art and culture, is bound to go down
sooner or later, in this hideous age of blatant commercialism and
Mammon rampant. I don't quarrel with it. I would far rather be one of
the downtrodden, persecuted minority. But, just on that account, my
wife is all the more worth contemplating, since she offers a highly
instructive object-lesson in the advantages which accrue from allying
oneself with the victorious majority. See--"

A rush of wind and flurry of cold rain rendered the concluding words of
his tirade inaudible. It was as well, for Poppy was growing wicked,
anger dominating every more humane and decent feeling in her.

"Look here," she said, when the storm had somewhat abated. "I know that
sort of talk as well as my old shoe. Haven't I listened to it for
hours? For goodness' sake, quit it. It doesn't wash. Let us come to the
point at once without all this idiotic brag and gassing. You wrote me a
letter shouting danger and ruin. What did it mean? Anything real, or
merely a melodramatic blowing off of steam? Tell me. Let us have it out
and have finished with it. What do you want?"

The softening medium of a gauze veil failed to hide the fact that
Poppy's expression was distinctly malignant, her great eyes full of
sombre fury, her red lips tense. Smyth backed away from her against the
palings in genuine alarm.

"I--I believe you'd like to murder me," he said.

"So I should," Poppy answered. "I should very much like to kill you.
And I've the wherewithal here, in my pocket, and there's no one on the
road. But you needn't be anxious. I'm not going to murder you. The
consequences to myself would be too inconvenient."

As she spoke she thought of yesterday, of the renewal of her friendship
with Dominic Iglesias, and of all that he stood for to her in things
pure, lovely, and of good report. A sob rose in her throat, for
nothing, after all, is so horrible as to feel wicked; nothing so hard
to forgive as that which causes one to feel so. Poppy walked on again
slowly.

"What do you want?" she repeated miserably. "Be straight with me for
once, if you can, de Courcy, and tell me plainly--if there's anything
to tell. What is it you want?"

"I have my chance at last," he said hurriedly, "of fame, and success,
and recognition--of bringing those who have despised me to their knees.
I thought I was safe. But yesterday I found that you--yes, you--come
into the question, that you may stand between me and the realisation of
my hopes--more than hopes, a certainty, unless you play some scurvy
trick on me. I had to have your promise, and there was no time to
lose--so I wrote."

Poppy looked at him contemptuously.

"What does all that mean?--more money?" she asked. "Haven't you grown
ashamed of begging yet? I raised your allowance last year, and it's
being paid regularly--Ford & Martin have sent me on your receipts. To
give it you at all is an act of grace, for you've no earthly claim on
me, and you know it. From the day I married you I never cost you a
farthing; I've paid for everything myself, down to every morsel of
bread I put into my mouth. You, talked big about your income
beforehand, when you knew you were up to your eyes in debt. Well, in
debt you may stay, as far as I am concerned. I'll give you that
seventy-five a year if you'll keep clear of me; but I won't give you a
penny more, for the simple reason that I shan't have it to give. It'll
be an uncommonly close shave in any case--I have myself to keep."

"Yourself to keep?" Smyth snarled. "Since when have you taken to
wholesale lying, my pretty madam? That is a new development."

"I'm not lying," Poppy blazed out. "I am speaking honest, sober truth."

Smyth laughed. It was not an agreeable sound.

"Is not that a little too brazen?" he asked. "Even with such a
negligible quantity as a deserted husband, it is a mistake to overplay
the part."

Then, frightened by her expression, he slunk aside again. But Poppy did
not linger. Slowly, steadily, she walked on down the rain-lashed
footpath.

"For God's sake tell me what you want--tell me what you want," she
cried, "and let me get away from all this rottenness."

"You do not believe in me," Smyth replied sullenly, "and that is why it
is so difficult to speak to you about this matter. You have always
depreciated my powers and scoffed at my talents. No thanks to you I
have any self-confidence left."

"All right, all right," Poppy said. "We can miss out the remainder of
that speech. I know it by heart. Come to the point--what do you want?"

"I was just filling in the sketch of the third act."

Poppy shrugged her shoulders and raised her hands with a despairing
gesture.

"Oh, heavens," she ejaculated, "a play again! Are you mad? You know,
just as well as I do, every manager Mill refuse it unread."

"It will be unnecessary to approach any manager. I go straight to the
public this time. I have the promise of money to meet the expenses of
two matinees at least. I have no scruple in accepting--it is an
investment, and an immensely profitable one--for I know the worth of my
own work. It is great, nothing less than great--"

"Of course," Poppy said. "But pray where do I come in?" Then she
paused. Suddenly she pieced the bits of the puzzle together, saw and
understood. Misery, deeper than any she had yet experienced, overflowed
in her. "Ah, it is you, then, you who are bleeding Dominic Iglesias,"
she cried. "Robbing him by appeals to his charity and lying assurances
of impossible profits. You shall not do it. I will put a stop to it.
You shall not, you shall not!"

"Why?" Smyth inquired. "Do you want all his money yourself?"

"You dirty hound," Poppy said under her breath.

"I did not know of your connection with him till yesterday," Smyth
continued--in proportion as Poppy lost herself, he became cool and
astute--"though we have lived in the same house for the last eighteen
months. I supposed you to be in pursuit of larger game than
superannuated bank-clerks. However, your modesty of taste, combined
with your charming attitude towards me, might, as I perceived, lead to
complications. I ascertained how long you had been at Cedar Lodge
yesterday. Then I wrote to you."

Poppy stood still in the wind and wet, listening intently.

"For once," he went on exultantly, "it is my turn to give orders, my
fine lady, and yours to obey. If you interfere, in the smallest degree,
between Iglesias and me, I will call his attention to certain facts,
the appearance of which is highly discreditable to him. He will pay to
save his reputation, if he ceases to pay out of charity--not that it is
charity. He is making an investment of which, as a business man, he
fully appreciates the worth. If you interfere I will make his position
a vastly uncomfortable one. The women who keep Cedar Lodge are as
jealous as cats. It would not require much blowing to make that fire
burst into a very lively flame, I promise you."

"You live there, then?" Poppy said absently. "You live there?"

"Yes," he answered. "Does that offend your niceness, too? Do you
consider the place too good for me? You need not distress yourself. I
have only one room, a small one--on the second floor immediately above
your friend's handsome sitting-room, but only half the size of it. The
floors are old. I can gather a very fair sense of any conversation
taking place below."

Poppy moved on again.

"May I inquire what you propose to do?" Smyth asked presently--"warn
your mature commercial admirer and compel me, in self-protection, to
blast his reputation, or hold your tongue like a reasonable woman?"

They had reached the end of the tarred palings. Upon the left the
quaintly irregular bow-windowed rose-and-ivy-covered houses of Barnes
Terrace--no two of them alike in height or in architecture--fronted the
road. Upon the right was the river, dull-coloured and wind-tormented. A
cargo of bricks, supplying a strong note of red in the otherwise
mournful landscape, was being unloaded from a barge; carts backed down
the slip to within easy distance of the broad bulwarkless deck, horses
shivering as they stood knee-deep in the water. The bricks grated
together when the men, handling them, tossed them across. With
long-drawn thunderous roar and shriek, a train, heading from Kew
Station, rushed across the latticed iron-built railway bridge. Poppy
waited, watching the progress of it, watching the unloading of the
barge. The one perfectly pure and beautiful gift which life had given
her was utterly profaned, so it seemed to her; that which she held
dearest and best hopelessly entangled with that which to her was most
degrading and abhorrent. And what to do? To be silent was to be
disloyal. To speak was to expose Dominic Iglesias to dishonour and
disgust far deeper than that which loss of money could inflict. Poppy
weighed and balanced, clear that her thought must be wholly for him,
not letting anger sway her judgment. Of two evils she must choose that
which, for him, was least.

"I will not give you away. I will say nothing," she said at last.

"You swear you will not?"

"Yes, I swear," Poppy said.

"I want it in writing."

"Very well, you shall have it in writing, witnessed if you like," she
answered. "The precious document shall be posted to you to-night. Now
are you satisfied, you contemptible animal? Have you humbled me enough?"

But Smyth came close to her, pushing his face into hers. He was shaking
with excitement, hysterical with mingled fear and relief.

"I am not ungenerous, my dear girl," he whispered. "I am willing to
condone the past--to take you back, to acknowledge you as my wife and
let you share my success. There is a part in the new play which might
have been written for you. You could become world-famous in it. I am
not ungenerous, I am willing to make matters up."

"Do you want me to murder you, after all?" Poppy asked. "If you try me
much further, I tell you plainly, I can't answer for myself. Therefore,
as you value your life, let me alone. Get out of my sight."




CHAPTER XXVII


During the watches of the ensuing night, amid bellowings of wind in the
chimneys, long-drawn complaint of the great cedar tree, rattle of
sleet, and those half-heard whisperings and footsteps--as of
inhabitants long since departed--which so often haunt an old house
through the hours of dark, Dominic Iglesias' mind, for cause unknown,
was busied with reminiscences of the firm of Barking Brothers &
Barking, and the many years he had spent in its service. He had no wish
to think of these things. They came unbidden, pushing themselves upon
remembrance. All manner of details, of little histories and episodes
connected both with the financial and human affairs of the famous
banking-house, occurred to him. And from thoughts of all this, but
transmogrified and perverted, when, towards dawn, the storm abating, he
at length fell asleep, his dreams were not exempt. For through them
caracoled, in grotesque and most irregular inter-relation, those august
personages, the heads of the firm, along with his fellow-clerks, living
and dead, that militant Protestant, good George Lovegrove, and the
whole personnel of the establishment, down to caretaker,
messenger-boys, porters and the like. Never surely had been such wild
doings in that sedate and reputable place of business--doings in which
gross absurdity and ingenious cruelty went hand in hand; while, by some
queer freak of the imagination, poor Pascal Pelletier, of hectic and
pathetic memory, appeared as leader of the revels, at which the Lady of
the Windswept Dust, sad-eyed, inscrutable of countenance, her
dragon-embroidered scarf drawn closely about her shoulders, looked on.

Dominic arose from his brief uneasy slumbers anxious and unrefreshed.
The phantasmagoria of his dream had been so living, so vivid, that it
was difficult to throw off the impression produced by it. Moreover, he
was slightly ashamed to find that, the restraining power of the will
removed, his mind was capable of creating scenes of so loose and
heartless a character. He was displeased with himself, distressed by
this outbreak of the undisciplined and unregenerate "natural man" in
him. Later, coming into his sitting-room, he unfortunately found
matters awaiting him by no means calculated to obliterate displeasing
impressions or promote suavity and peace.

For the pile of letters and circulars lying beside his plate upon the
breakfast-table was topped by a note directed in de Courcy Smyth's
nervous and irritable hand. Dominic opened it with a curious sense of
reluctance. Only last week he had lent the man ten pounds; and here was
another demand, couched in terms, too, so bullying, so almost
threatening, that Dominic's back stiffened considerably.

Smyth requested, or rather commanded, that fifty pounds should be
delivered to him without delay. "It was conceivable that Mr. Iglesias
had not that amount by him in notes. But, since he had really nothing
to do, it would be a little occupation for him to go and procure them."
Smyth insisted the money should be paid in a lump sum, adding that, his
time being as valuable as Iglesias' was worthless, he could not
reasonably be expected to waste it in perpetual letters respecting a
subject so essentially uninteresting and distasteful to him as that of
ways and means. Such correspondence annoyed him, and put him off his
work; and, as it clearly was very much to Iglesias' interest that the
play should be finished as soon as possible, it was advisable that he
should accede to Smyth's present request without parley and pay up at
once.

Reading this mandatory epistle, Dominic was gravely displeased and
hurt. Poppy St. John had warned him against the insatiable and insolent
greed of persons of this kidney. He had discounted her speech somewhat,
supposing it infected with such prejudice as the recollection of
private wrongs will breed even in generous natures. Now he began to
fear her strictures had been just. The egoism of the unsuccessful is a
moral disease, destructive of all sense of proportion. Those suffering
from it must be reckoned as insane; not sick merely, but actually mad
with self-love. Smyth, to gain his play a hearing, would beggar
him--Iglesias--without scruple or regret. But Dominic had no intention
of being beggared in this connection. Thrice-sacred charity is one
story; the encouragement of the unlimited borrower, the fostering of so
colossal a selfishness quite another. A point had been reached where to
accede to Smyth's demands was culpable, a consenting, indeed, to
wrongdoing. Here then was occasion for careful consideration. Iglesias
gravely laid the offensive missive aside, and proceeded to eat his
breakfast before opening the rest of his letters. In the intervals of
the meal he glanced at the contents of the morning paper.

The war news was unimportant. A skirmish or two, leaving a few more
women's lives maimed and hearts desolate. A lie or two of continental
manufacture, tending to blacken the fair fame of the most humane and
good-tempered army which, in all probability, ever took the field. A
shriek or two from soft-handed sentimentalists at home, who--for
reasons best known to themselves--are ardent patriots of every country
save their own. Such items formed too permanent a part of the daily
menu, during the year of grace 1900, to excite more than passing
notice. At the bottom of the column a paragraph of a more unusual
character attracted Iglesias' attention. It announced it had authority
for stating that Alarmist rumours, current regarding the unstable
financial position of a certain well-known and highly respected London
bank, were grossly exaggerated. No doubt the losses suffered by the
bank in question had been severe, owing to its extensive connection
with land and mining property in South Africa, and the disorganisation
of business in that country consequent upon the war. The said losses
were, however, of a temporary character, and had by no means reached
the disastrous proportions commonly reported. Granted time, and a
reasonable amount of patience on the part of persons most nearly
interested, the storm would be successfully weathered, and the bank
would resume the leading position which it had so long and honourably
enjoyed. No names were given, but Iglesias had small difficulty in
supplying them. It appeared to him that Barking Brothers must be in
considerable straits or they would never, surely, put forth disclaimers
of this description. His mind went back upon the dreams which had left
such disquieting impressions upon his mind. In the light of that
newspaper paragraph they took on an almost prophetic character.
Absently he turned over the rest of the pile of letters, selected one,
the handwriting upon the envelope of which was at once well-known and
perplexing to his memory, opened it, and turned to the signature to
find that of no less a personage than Sir Abel Barking himself.

During the next quarter of an hour Dominic Iglesias lived hard in
thought, in decision, in struggle with personal resentment bred by
remembrance of scant courtesy and ingratitude meted out to him. He
learned that Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking's embarrassments did,
in point of fact, skirt the edge of ruin. Their affairs were in
apparently inextricable confusion, owing to Reginald Barking's reckless
speculations, while, to add to the general confusion, that strenuous
young man had broken down utterly from nervous verstrain, and was, at
the present time, incapable of the slightest mental or physical
exertion. Things were at a deadlock. "Under these terrible
circumstances," Sir Abel Barking wrote, "I turn to you, my good friend,
as a person intimately acquainted with the operation of our firm. Your
experience may be of service to us in this crisis, and, in virtue of
the many benefits you have received from us in the past, I
unhesitatingly claim your assistance. In my own name and that of my
partners, I offer to reinstate you in your former position, but with
enlarged powers. It has always been my endeavour, as you are well
aware, to reward merit and to treat those in our employment with
generosity and consideration. You will be glad, I am sure, to embrace
this opportunity of repaying, in some small measure, your debt towards
me and mine." More followed to the same effect. Neither the taste of
the writer nor his manner of expression was happy. Of this Dominic was
quite sensible. Patronage, especially after his period of independence,
was far from agreeable to him. Yet behind the verbiage, the platitudes
and bombastic phrases, his ear detected a very human cry of fear and
cry for help. Should he accede, doing his best to allay that fear and
render that help?

He rose, still holding the wordy letter in his hand, and paced the
room. Of his own ability to render effective help, were he allowed
freedom of action, Iglesias entertained little doubt--always supposing
that the situation did not prove even worse than he had present reason
for supposing. It was not difficult to see how the trouble had come
about. The senior partners, lulled into false security by lifelong
prosperity, had grown supine and inert. Sooner, in their opinion, might
the stars fall from heaven than the august house of Barking prove
unsound of foundation or capable of collapse! To hint at this, even as
a remote possibility, was little short of blasphemous. Their amiable
nephew, meanwhile, had regarded them as a flock of silly fat geese
eminently fitted for plucking. He let them complacently hiss and
cackle, congratulate themselves upon their worldly wisdom and
conspicuous modernity, while, all the time, silently, diligently,
relentlessly plucking. Now, awakening suddenly to the fact of their
nudity, they were in a terrible taking; scandalised, flustered, very
sore, poor birds, and quite past recollecting that feathers grow again
if the system is sound and the cuticle health. To Iglesias these
purse-proud, self-righteous, middle-aged gentlemen presented a
spectacle at once pathetic and humorous in their present sad plight. A
calm head and clear judgment might do much to ameliorate their
position, and a calm head and cool judgment he was confident of
possessing. Only was he, after all, disposed to place these useful
possessions at their service?

For in the last nine months Dominic Iglesias' habits and outlook had
changed notably. The values were altered. It would be far harder to
return to the monotonous routine of business life now--even though a
fine revenge, a delicate heaping of coals of fire, accompanied that
return--than it had been to part company with it last year. Loneliness,
the emptiness induced by absence of definite employment, no longer
oppressed him. Holy Church had cured all that, giving him a definite
place, and definite purpose, beautiful duties of prayer and worship,
the restrained, yet continuous, excitement of the pushing forward of
soul and spirit upon the fair, strange, daily, hourly journey towards
the far horizon and the friendship of Almighty God. His retirement had
become very dear to him, since it afforded scope for the conscious
prosecution of that journey. Dominic's state of mind, in short, was
that of the lover who dreads any and every outside demand which may,
even momentarily, distract his attention from the object of his love.
Threadneedle Street, the glass and mahogany walled corridors, and the
moral atmosphere of them--money-getting and of this world conspicuously
worldly--were not these ironically antagonistic to the journey upon
which he had set forth and the habit of mind necessary to the
successful prosecution of it? There was Poppy St. John, too, and the
closer relation of friendship into which he had just entered with her.
This must not be neglected. And, thinking of her, he could not but
think of that younger son of the great banking-house, Alaric Barking,
and his dealings with her--enjoying her as long as it suited him to do
so, leaving her as soon as his passion cooled and a more advantageous
social connection presented itself. Towards the handsome young soldier
Iglesias was, it must be owned, somewhat merciless. Why should he go to
the rescue of this young libertine's family, and indirectly facilitate
his marriage, and increase its promise of happiness, by helping to
secure him an otherwise vanishing fortune? Let him pay the price of his
illicit pleasures and become a pauper. Such a consummation Dominic
admitted he, personally, could face with entire resignation.

And yet--yet--on closer examination were not these reasons against
undertaking the work offered him based upon personal disinclination,
personal animosity, rather than upon plain right and wrong, and,
consequently, were they not insufficient to justify abstention and
refusal? That earlier dream of his, on the night following his
dismissal last year, came back to him, with its touching memories of
the narrow town garden behind the old house in Holland Street,
Kensington--the golden laburnum, the shallow stone basin beloved of
sooty sparrows, poor, dear Pascal Pelletier and his Huntley & Palmer's
biscuit-box infernal machine and very crude methods of adjusting the
age-old quarrel between capital and labour. On that occasion the lonely
little boy, though at risk of grave injury to himself, had not
hesitated to save the ill-favoured chunk-faced grey cat--which bore in
speech and appearance so queer a likeness to Sir Abel Barking--from the
ugly fate awaiting it. He had gathered it tenderly in his arms, pitying
and striving to heal it. Was the child, by instinct, finer, nobler,
more self-forgetful, than the man in the full possession of reason,
instructed in the divine science, fortified by the example and merits
of the saints? That would, indeed, be a melancholy conclusion. And so
it occurred to him, not merely as conceivable but as incontestable,
that the road to the far horizon, instead of leading in the opposite
direction to the city banking-house, for him, at this particular
juncture, led directly into and through it; so that to refuse would be
to stray from the straight path and risk the obscuring of the blessed
light by a cowardly and selfish lust of the immediate comfort of it.

He would go and help those distracted plucked geese to grow new
feathers. Only to do so meant time, labour, unremitting application, a
wholesale sacrifice of leisure; so he must see Poppy St. John first.




CHAPTER XXVIII


"I did not call yesterday," Iglesias said, "in consequence of your
prohibitory telegram. But to-day I have come early and without
permission, first because I was anxious to assure myself you were
really unhurt, and secondly because something has occurred regarding
which I wish to consult you. I must have your sanction before taking
action in respect of it."

Entering from the blustering wind and keen, fitful sunshine without,
the little drawing-room struck Iglesias as both stuffy and dingy. And
Poppy, standing in the centre of it, huddled in a black brocade
tea-gown, a sparse pattern of bluey mauve rosebuds upon it, which hung
in limp folds from her bosom to her feet, concealing all the outline of
her figure, came perilously near looking dingy likewise. The garment,
cut square at the neck, had long seen its first youth. The big
outstanding black ribbon bow between her shoulders and that upon her
breast was creased and crumpled. Beneath the masses of her dark hair
her face looked almost unnaturally small, sallow and bloodless, while
her eyes were enormous--dusky dwelling-places, as it seemed to her
visitor, of some world-old sorrow. Her face did not light up, neither
did she make any demonstration of gladness or greeting, but stood, one
toy spaniel tucked under either arm, their forelegs lying along her
wrists, their fringed paws resting upon her palms. Dominic had a
conviction she had snatched up the little dogs on hearing his voice,
and held them so as to render it impossible for him to take her hand.
Less than ever, looking upon her, had he any mercy for Alaric Barking.
Less than ever did the prospect of spending weeks, perhaps months, in
shoring up the imperilled fortunes of that young gentleman's family
prove alluring to him.

"You were hurt," he broke out, almost fiercely. "You are suffering,
and, worse, you are unhappy. It makes me very angry to see you thus. I
wish I could reach those who are guilty of having distressed and
injured you."

Poppy's face went a shade paler, and alarm mingled with the sorrow in
her eyes, but she made a courageous effort to patter as usual.

"You'd give them the what for, dear man, wouldn't you?" she said. "But
you would have to go way back in the ages for that, and get behind the
seed-sowing of which this gay hour is the harvest. Still, I love to see
you ferocious. It is very flattering to me, and it's mightily becoming
to you. Don't snore, Cappadocia. Manners, my good child, manners. All
the same, I wasn't hurt slipping on those gorgeous white steps of
yours. Upon my honour, I wasn't. But I had to go out yesterday
afternoon, and I got caught in one of those infernal hailstorms. It was
altogether too cold for comfort, and I feel a bit cheap this morning in
consequence. That's why I put on this odious gown. I always try to
dress for the part, and the part just now is dismality. From the start
this gown has been a disappointment. I counted on the roses fading
pink, but the beasts faded blue instead. I feel as if I was dressed in
a bruise, and that's appropriate--for I also feel as if I had been
beaten all over. Merely the hail--I give you my word. Nothing more than
that. I'm never ill." Poppy paused, dropped the little dogs on the
floor. They cowered against her, looking up woefully at her. "No, I
don't want you," she said. "You're heavy. I'm tired of you."

Then she blew her nose, and, over the top of her hand-kerchief, looked
full at Iglesias for the first time.

"Well, what is it? What do you want my sanction for?"

Without waiting for his answer she swept aside, knelt down, crouching
over the fire, extending both hands to the heat of it, while her open
sleeves falling back showed her arms bare to the elbow.

"Tell me, and, if you don't mind, shove along. I own I am a trifle
jumpy--only the weather--but I need humouring, so shove along, there's
a good dear," she said.

Whereupon, in as few words as possible, Dominic unfolded to her the
contents of Sir Abel Barking's letter. As she listened, Poppy raised
herself, turned round, stood upright, her hands clasped behind her.

"Oh! that's it, is it?" she said. She looked less bloodless, more
animated, more natural. "I'm not altogether surprised. The poor old
lads have found out the cuckoo in their nest at last, have they? Alaric
had a notion Reginald Barking--not a nice person Reginald--I saw him
once and he looked a cross between a pair of forceps and a bag of
shavings--I didn't trust him--you don't, do you? Alaric had a notion
this precious cousin was making hay of the whole show. But it was
utterly useless for him to intervene. In the eyes of the elder
generation he is the original dog with a bad name, only fit for
hanging."

Poppy paused, took a long breath, smiled a little.

"What do you think? Is it a very bad business?"

"I cannot tell till I have gone into details," Iglesias replied. He was
slightly put about by the lady's change of demeanour, by the interest
she displayed, by the alteration in her expression and bearing.

"And they howl to you to save the sinking ship?" Poppy continued
lightly. "Shall you go?"

"That is the question I have come to ask you."

"To ask me?" she said. "But, heart alive, dear man, where do I come in?"

"My duty to you stands before every other duty," Iglesias answered
gravely. "Those who have caused you sorrow and injured you, are my
enemies. How can it be otherwise? A member of this family--I do not
choose to name him--has, in my opinion, played a detestable part by
you; therefore only with your sanction, freely given, can I consent to
be helpful to his relatives."

The colour leaped into Poppy's cheeks, the light into her eyes, her
lips parted in pretty laughter; yet she still kept her hands clasped
behind her back.

"Ah! I see--I see," she cried. "But how did you contrive to get left
behind, most beloved lunatic, and be born five or six centuries out of
your time into this shouting, pushing, modern world which knows not
chivalry? Do you imagine this is the fashion most men treat women? Here
I am laughing, yet I could cry that you should come to me--me, of all
people--on such a lovely, fine, fanciful errand."

"My conduct appears to me perfectly obvious and simple," Iglesias
replied rather coldly.

"I know it does, my dear, and there's the pathetic splendour of it,"
Poppy declared, soft mothering tones in her voice. "All the same we
must keep our heads screwed on the right way. So, tell me, will it be
of any personal advantage to you to help pull these elderly plungers
out of the quagmire?"

"None whatever."

"At least they will make it worth your while by paying up handsomely?"

"No doubt they will make me some offer, but I shall decline it,"
Iglesias said. "I draw a pension. I will continue to do so. That is
just. I have a right to it in virtue of my past work. But I shall
refuse to accept any salary over and above that. I shall make it a
condition that I give my services. And that which I give I give,
whether it be to king or to beggar. To make profit out of my giving
would be intolerable to me."

Poppy mused, her head bent, pushing away the tiny dogs with her foot as
they fawned upon her.

"Don't bother! you little miseries," she said, "don't bother! I'm busy
now. I've no use for you." Presently she glanced up at Mr. Iglesias,
who held himself proudly, as he stood waiting before her. "Do you care
for these barking people? Is it a question of affection between any of
them and you?"

"I am afraid not," he answered. "Ours has been a purely business
connection throughout. How should it be otherwise? The social interval
between employers and employed is not easily bridged."

"Stuff-a-nonsense!" Poppy put in scornfully. "They might feel honoured
to tie your shoe."

"Any attempt to ignore differences of wealth and station, which others
are pleased to remember, would be unbecoming," he continued. "Nor do I
relish condescension on the part of my social betters. It does not suit
me. I prefer to remain within my own borders. Still, there is the tie
of long association with these merchant princes and their undertakings,
and this, I own, influences me strongly. It would be shocking to me to
witness the failure or ruin of those with whom I have been in daily
intercourse. Then, too, there is a certain challenge in the present
position which appeals to the fighting instinct in me. If not
altogether by nature, still by habit I am a business man. Affairs
interest me, and consequently the more embarrassed and apparently
hopeless the existing state of things is, the greater would be my
satisfaction in mastering the intricacies of it and reducing them to
order. These practical matters are not without very real excitement and
drama to those who have the habit of handling them." Iglesias paused,
and then added quietly, "But I am contented enough as I am, and should
not voluntarily have touched business again had there not been another
consideration over and above those I have enumerated--namely, the plain
obligation of right doing, whether the said doing be congenial to one
or not. This obligation is supreme, or should be so, in the case of one
who, like myself, has bound himself by definite acts of obedience and
self-dedication."

His expression had changed, taking on something of exaltation. He no
longer looked at Poppy, but away to the far horizon and the light
thereon resident.

And the Lady of the Windswept Dust was quick to realise this, though
upon what fair unseen object the eyes of his spirit did, in fact, rest
she was ignorant. Against it the vanity inherent in her womanhood
rebelled. She was piqued and jealous of the unnamed, unknown object
which absorbed his attention more than she herself and her friendship
did. From the first Iglesias had appealed to her very various nature in
a threefold manner. To the artist in her he appealed by the clearness
of his individuality, his finish of person and of feature, his gravity
and poise--these last taking their rise not in insensibility, but in
reasoned will, in passionate emotion held, as she had learned,
austerely in check. He appealed to the motherhood in her by his
unworldliness, by his ignorance of base motives, thus making her
attitude towards him protective; she instinctively trying to stand
between him and a naughty world, to stand, too, between him and her own
too often naughty self. He appealed to the child in her by the exotic
and foreign elements in him, which captivated her fancy, endowing him
with an effect of mystery, making him seem to hail from some region of
legend and high romance. But the events of the last few days had been
far from beneficial to Poppy St. John. They had demoralised her, so
that the artistic, maternal, and childlike aspects of her nature were
alike overlaid by the bitterness, the cynicism, the recklessness
engendered by her unhappy childless marriage and the irregular life she
had led. Poppy's feet were held captive in the quicksands of the things
of sense; her outlook was concrete and gross. Finer instincts lit up
but momentary flickering fires in her, speedily dying out into the
gloom begotten by the deplorable scene of yesterday with her husband,
and shame at the conspiracy of silence into which, as the lesser of the
two evils presented to her, she had entered, remembrances of which, on
his first arrival, had made her feel unworthy and a traitor in the
presence of Iglesias. This demoralisation worked in her to rebellion
against just all that which, in her happier moods, rendered Iglesias
delightful to her. His exaltation, his calm, the mystery which so
delicately surrounded him, the very distinction of his appearance
irritated her, so soon as she became conscious that she was no longer
the sole object of his thoughts. She was pushed by a bad desire to
force from him a more complete self-revelation, to cheapen him in some
way and break him up.

"Dominic Iglesias," she cried suddenly and imperatively, "you are a
trifle too empyrean. I don't quite believe in you. Be more ordinary,
more vulgarly human. For who are you, after all? What are you?" she
said.

And he, his thoughts recalled from a great distance, regarded her
questioningly and as without immediate recognition. Her voice was
harsh, and the transition was so abrupt from the radiant land of the
spirit to the dingy realities of Poppy's drawing-room, her tired,
black, bluey-mauve patterned tea-gown, and her absurdly artificial
little dogs. It took him some few seconds to adjust himself. Then he
smiled in apology, and spoke very courteously and gently.

"Who am I, what am I, dear friend? Why this, I think--a commonplace,
very ordinary person who, long ago, in early childhood, by mournful
accident, for which it would be an impiety to hold those on whom he was
dependent responsible, lost his sight. Through all the years which men
count, and rightly, the best of life--when courage is high and the hand
strong, and opportunity fertile, circumstance as a block of precious
many-coloured marble out of which to carve fine fortune for ourselves
and those we love--he wandered in darkness, insecure of footing,
missing the very end and object for which earthly existence has been
bestowed upon us mortals. He was sad and homesick for that which he had
not; yet ignorant of the nature of his own loss, disposed to blame the
constitution of things, rather than his own incapacity, for that which
he suffered."

"And then?" Poppy put in sharply. Listening, she had started to mock,
the cynic and worldling being hot in her, but, looking at the speaker,
somehow, she dared not mock.

"And then--recently--since I have known you in short, it has pleased
Almighty God by degrees to restore my sight."

Poppy regarded him intently, her singular eyes wide with question and
with doubt, her lips pressed together.

"I see--you have got religion," she said. "But do you seriously mean to
tell me that I--I--have had anything to do with that?"

"Yes," Iglesias answered. "You have had much to do with it. First by
love--for your friendship woke up my heart. Then by sorrow"--he paused,
divided by the desire to spare her and to tell her the whole of his
thought--"sorrow, when I came to know you better and value your
character and gifts at their true worth, because I saw noble things put
to ignoble uses, which of all pitiful sights is perhaps the most
profoundly pitiful."

Silence followed, broken only by minute and reproachful snorings on the
part of Cappadocia and her spouse. The little dogs, sensible of
neglect, had become the victims of wounded self-love, that most
primitive, as it is the most universal, of passions throughout all
grades of living things. Poppy meanwhile turned her head aside, unable
or unwilling to speak. Again she blew her nose with complete disregard
of the unromantic quality of that action, then said huskily:

"I have cleaned the slate. I shall keep it clean." Her voice grew
steadier. A touch of malice came into her expression. "I like
compliments, and you have paid me about the biggest I ever had. It will
take a little time to digest. So I think--I think, dear man, I will not
stand in the way of your going back to the City, and saving the sinking
ship--that is, if the work won't be too hard for you?"

"No," he answered, touched by her more gracious aspect, yet slightly
confused. "I have had nearly a year's holiday and rest; I am quite
equal to work. But I am afraid the hours must necessarily be long, and
that my opportunities of coming to see you will not be very frequent."

"Perhaps that's just as well," she said, "while I am still in process
of digesting the big compliment."

Then impulsively she swept up to him and laid her hands on his
shoulders, looking him full in the face.

"See here, you thrice dear innocent, since you have mentioned that
terrible word 'love,' the complexion of our relation has changed
somewhat. Don't you understand, made as I am, I must fight seven devils
within me if I'm to continue to play fair with you, as I swore I would?
And so, just because you are so very much to me, I had best not see you
too often until I have settled down into my new scheme of life. In a
sense Alaric was a safeguard. That safeguard's gone."

She moved a step back, letting her hands fall at her sides, while her
eye grew hard and dark.

"And there are other reasons, brutal, unworthy, sordid reasons, why it
is wiser that you should not come here often at present. They did not
exist--at least I had not the faintest conception that they did--when
we last met. They have rushed into hateful prominence since. Don't ask
me--I cannot tell you. You must trust me, and you must not let my
silence alienate you. I can't be explicit, but I give you my word I am
perfectly straight. And you must not let your religion alienate you
either. By the way, what form of faith is it?"

"The faith of my own people," Dominic answered. "The faith of the
Catholic Church."

Poppy smiled.

"Then I am not so afraid I shall lose you," she said, "for that's the
only brand of religion I've ever come across which isn't too nice to
reckon with human nature as it really is. It can save sinners, just
because it knows how to make saints--and it has made them out of jolly
unpromising material at times, there's the comfort of it."

She held out her hand in farewell.

"Good-bye till next time. You've done me good, as you always do. Now, I
am going to re-study some of my old parts, just to get the hang of the
whole show again."

But the door once shut, she flung herself down on the broad settee,
while the tiny dogs, whimpering, crowded upon her lap.

"Poppy St. John, you're not such a bad lot after all," she cried. "But
oh! oh! oh! it's beastly rough to be so young, and have gone so far,
and know so much. There, Willie Onions, don't snivel. It's both
superfluous and unpleasant." She sat up and wiped her eyes. "Upon my
honour, I think it was just as well I gave Phillimore the little
revolver last night, to lock up in the plate chest," she said.




CHAPTER XXIX


It followed that Dominic Iglesias walked on across the common to Barnes
Station and travelled Citywards, solaced and uplifted in spirit, yet
greatly troubled by the idea of those newly arrived complications at
which the Lady of the Windswept Dust had hinted. He did not permit
himself to inquire what they might be. Doubtless she knew best--in her
social sense he had great confidence--so he acquiesced in her silence
about them. Still, as he reflected, it is not a little lamentable that
even friendship, the angelic relation between man and woman, should be
thus beset by perils from within and pitfalls without. Where lay the
fault--with over-civilisation and the improper proprieties resultant
therefrom? Or was it of far more ancient origin, resident in the very
foundations of human nature? Woman, eternally the vehicle of man's
being, eternally the inspiration of quite three-fifths of his action;
yet, at the same time, the eternal stumbling block and danger to the
highest of his moral and intellectual attainment! Mr. Iglesias smiled
sadly and soberly to himself as the train rolled on into Waterloo. In
any case she remains the most astonishing of God's creatures. It would
be dull enough here on earth without her, though, to employ one of
Poppy's characteristic phrases, "it's most infernally risky" with!

But once inside the bank, such far-ranging meditations gave place to
considerations immediate and concrete, Iglesias' whole mind being
focussed to arrive at the facts of the case. And this was far from
easy. For alarm stalked those usually self-secure and self-complacent
rooms and glass and mahogany-walled corridors; men looking up from
their desks as he, Iglesias, passed, with anxious faces, or moving with
hushed footsteps as though someone lay sick to death within the house.
In Sir Abel Barking's private room the drama reached its climax, panic
sitting there sensibly enthroned. Her chill presence had visibly
affected Sir Abel, causing the contrast between the overblown portrait
upon the wall and the subject of it to be ironical to the point of
cruelty. For Sir Abel was aged and shrivelled. His clothes hung loose
upon him. Hardly could he rally his tongue to the enunciation of a
single platitude even of the most obviously staring sort. The mighty,
indeed, were fallen and the weapons of wealth-getting perished! Yet
never had Iglesias felt so drawn in sympathy towards his late employer,
for the spectre of possible ruin had made Sir Abel almost humble,
almost human.

"I am obliged to you for responding to my summons so promptly--yes, sit
down, my good friend, sit down," he said. "It is necessary that I
should converse with you at some length, and I refuse to keep you
standing. Our present position is inexplicable to me. Granting that my
nephew Reginald is unworthy of the trust we reposed in his ability and
probity, there was still our own judgment in reserve, and our own
unquestioned capacity to meet any strain upon our resources. That our
confidence in these last was misplaced is still incredible to me. I am
completely baffled. The past few months, indeed, with their reiterated
discovery of difficulty and of loss, have been a terrible tax upon my
fortitude. Veteran financier though I am, I own to you, Iglesias, there
have been moments when I feared that I, too, should give way. Only my
sense of the duty I owe to my own reputation has supported me." Sir
Abel turned sideways in his chair. His eyes sought the derisive
portrait upon the wall, contemplation of which appeared to reanimate
his self-confidence somewhat, for he continued in his larger manner,
"Nor has the sting of private anxiety been lacking. My younger son has
been called away to the seat of war under circumstances of a peculiarly
affecting character. My earnest hopes for his future, in the shape of a
very desirable marriage, touched on fulfilment--."

But here Iglesias intervened. For his temper began to rise at the
mention of the loves of Alaric Barking. If the springs of Christian
charity, just now welling up so sweetly within him, were not to run
incontinently dry, the conversation, he felt, must be steadied down to
themes of other import. So he civilly but definitely requested Sir Abel
to "come to Hecuba," and to Hecuba the poor man, haltingly yet very
obediently, came. He and his ex-head-clerk seemed, indeed, to have
changed places, so that, before the end of the interview, Iglesias
began to measure himself as never before, to realise his own business
acumen, his quickness of apprehension, his grasp of the issues
presented to him and his own fearlessness of judgment. Whatever the
upshot as to the eventual saving of the credit of Messrs. Barking
Brothers & Barking, Iglesias became increasingly confident of his own
power, and quietly satisfied in the exercise of it.

And so it happened that, although tired in brain and body, his mind
weighted with thought, as were his arms with bundles of papers--which
he carried home for more leisurely inspection--Iglesias came rapidly up
the white steps of Cedar Lodge that night. He was buoyant in spirit,
content with his day's work, keenly interested in the development of
it. Using his latchkey he entered the square panelled hall
silently--with results, for revels were in progress within.

Dinner was over. Mrs. Porcher and the great Eliza, linked arm in arm,
stood near the dining-room door watching, while those two gay young
sparks, Farge and Worthington, inspired by memories of a recent visit
to the Hippodrome, played at lions. It was a simple game, still it gave
pleasure to the players. Clad in an easy-fitting dark blue "lounge
suit," with narrow white cross-bar lines on it, an aged and faded
orange sheep-skin hearthrug thrown gallantly across his shoulders,
Farge, on all fours, with the mildest roarings imaginable, made rushes
from under the dinner-table at the devoted Worthington, who withstood
his fiery onslaught with lungings and brandishings of that truly
classic weapon, the humble necessary umbrella. At each rush the ladies
backed and tittered, clinging together with the most engagingly natural
semblance of terror.

"Ha! caitiff wretch, beware!" declaimed Worthington nobly. "Only across
my prostrate corse shall you reach your innocent victims. Say, Charlie
boy," he added in a hurried aside, "I didn't poke you in the eye by
mistake just now, did I?"

"Wurra--wurra--wurra," roared Farge. "Never touched me, Bert, by a
couple of inches--wurra."

But there the would-be ferocious animal paused, squatted upon its
haunches, pointing its finger dramatically towards the front door, thus
causing the whole company to wheel round and gaze nervously in the
direction indicated.

"Oh, Mr. Iglesias, how you did startle me!" Mrs. Porcher cried
plaintively, laying her hand upon her heart.

"Pardon me," he answered. "I had no idea the hall was occupied or I
would have rung instead of letting myself in. I must apologise further
for being so late, and for not having telephoned that I should be
unable to be back in time for dinner."

"We all know that there are counter-attractions, which may easily
account for unpunctuality," Miss Hart put in, with a toss of her head.

"Hush, hush, dear Liz," murmured Mrs. Porcher, while the two young men
made round eyes at each other, and de Courcy Smyth, leaning against the
balusters on the landing of the half-flight, announced his presence by
a sarcastic laugh.

Mr. Iglesias looked from one to another in surprise. He had been
thinking so very little--perhaps, as he told himself, insolently
little--about all these good people for some time past. Now he became
aware of a hostile atmosphere. For cause unknown he was in disgrace
with them all. Possibly they resented his indifference, possibly they
were justified in so doing. Hence he did not feel angry, but merely
sorry and perplexed. He addressed his hostess with increased
courtliness of bearing.

"I hope I have not caused you inconvenience, Mrs. Porcher," he said. "I
was summoned suddenly upon business to the City this morning. The
business in question proved more complicated than I had anticipated,
and I was detained by it till late. This leads me to tell you, if you
will forgive my troubling you with personal matters, that I shall be
compelled to go to the City daily for some weeks to come. I shall not,
therefore, be able to give myself the pleasure of joining you at
luncheon, or probably at dinner, either."

"Indeed," Mrs. Porcher remarked. "This is rather unexpected, Mr.
Iglesias."

"To me wholly unexpected," he answered, "and in some respects
unwelcome; but it is unavoidable, unfortunately."

He bowed gravely to the two ladies and, ignoring the rest of the little
company, went on his way upstairs. At the half-flight Smyth stood aside
to let him pass; then, after a moment's hesitation, followed him.

"Mr. Iglesias," he said, "may I be permitted so far to presume upon our
acquaintance as to remind you that you received a letter from me this
morning requiring an answer?"

Dominic paused at the stair-head.

"Yes, I received it," he replied coldly.

"And you condescended to read it, so I venture to imagine,
notwithstanding that you were summoned on important business to the
City. We are all impressed by that interesting fact--vastly impressed
by it, needless to state. I specially so, of course, since commerce in
all its branches, as you know, commands my profoundest admiration and
respect. Literature and art are but as garbage compared with it--no one
ever recognised that gratifying truth more thoroughly than I do myself.
Still, the shopkeeper--I beg your pardon, financier I should have
said--is not wholly exempted, by the ideal character of his calling,
from keeping his promises even to poor devils of scholars and literary
men such as myself."

Smyth swaggered, his hands in his trouser pockets, his glance at once
impertinent and malevolent, his manner easy to the point of insolence.

"I venture to remind you of my letter, therefore, and I may add I shall
feel obliged if you'll just hand me over those notes without delay."

"I read your letter," Iglesias answered. "It required consideration."

"Oh! did it, really? I supposed that I had expressed myself with
perfect lucidity. But if any point appeared to you to need explanation,
I am disengaged at the present time--I am quite willing to explain."
"Thank you," Iglesias answered, "no explanation is necessary on your
part, I believe, though perhaps a little is on mine. I must ask you to
remember that I promised to help you within reasonable relation to my
means. What constitutes a reasonable relation it is for me to judge,
since I alone know what my means are. I regret to tell you that your
last demand greatly exceeded that reasonable relation. I am therefore
reluctantly obliged to refuse it."

"To refuse it?" Smyth exclaimed incredulously.

"Yes, to refuse it," Iglesias said calmly. "When your play is ready for
production I am prepared to bear the cost of two representations, as I
have already told you. But I am not prepared to make you unlimited
advances meanwhile. To do so would be no kindness to you--"

"Wouldn't it?" Smyth broke out excitedly. "No kindness to me? Do you
imagine I want kindness, that I would accept or even tolerate kindness
from any man, and particularly from you? I offer you a magnificent
investment, and you speak to me as though I was a beggar asking alms in
the street. No kindness to me? This high moral tone does not become you
in the very least, let me tell you, Mr. Iglesias. Do you suppose I am
such a stoneblind ass as not to see what has been happening. Doesn't it
occur to you that I hold your reputation in my two hands?"

"My reputation?" Iglesias repeated, a very blaze of pride and
indignation in his eyes.

Smyth backed hastily away from him, with a livid face and shaking knees.

"No, no, Mr. Iglesias," he protested. "I was a fool to say that. But I
am utterly beaten by work and by worry. I do not deny that you have
behaved handsomely to me. But persistent injustice and cruelty have
soured me. Is it wonderful? And then to-night those blatant young
idiots, Farge and Worthington, have set my nerves on edge by their
imbecility and conceit, till I really am not accountable for what I
say. I had better go. We can talk of this at another time. I dare say I
can manage for a day or two, though it will not be easy to do so.
However, I am accustomed to rubbing shoulders with every created
description of undeserved indignity and wretchedness. I will go.
Good-night."

Iglesias entered his sitting-room, turned up the gas, and looked round
at the orderly aspect of the place with a movement of relief. He ranged
the bundles of papers upon the table. If he was to master their
contents he would have to work far into the night, and the day had been
a long one, full of application and of very varied emotions. He stood
for a little space thinking of it all. The return to his familiar
quarters at the bank had affected him less than he had expected. He had
not felt it as a return to slavery.

"Thanks to the Church," he said gratefully, "which confers on her
members the only perfect freedom, namely, freedom of soul, freedom of
heavenly citizenship."

Then he thought of Poppy--thought very tenderly of that strangely
captivating woman of many moods! How clever she was, how accurately she
knew the ways of men! Her warnings regarding his dabbling in matters
theatrical, for instance, and charities to unsuccessful
playwrights.--And at that point Dominic Iglesias drew himself up short.
For, in a flash, the truth came to him that Poppy St. John's hated
"jackal of a husband" was none other than his fellow-lodger, de Courcy
Smyth, whose shuffling footsteps he heard even now, nervelessly
crossing and recrossing the floor of the room immediately above.




CHAPTER XXX


"I could not write, Rhoda, because of course I could not be sure
beforehand whether, when I came to London, I should really wish to see
you and George again or not." This from Serena, loftily and with
rustlings. "But as Lady Samuelson was driving in this direction to-day,
and offered to drop me here if I could find my own way back, I thought
I had better come, as I knew it was your afternoon at home."

"And I am sure for my part I am very pleased to have you come," Mrs.
Lovegrove replied, leading the way towards the seat of honour upon the
Chesterfield sofa. "I always do hold with letting bygones be bygones,
particularly as between relatives, when there has been any little
unpleasantness. And perhaps your calling will cheer poor Georgie up. He
is very tenacious of your and Susan's affection, is Georgie."

Here the speaker proceeded to swallow rather convulsively, pressing her
handkerchief against her lips.

"Perhaps I should be wiser to keep it all to myself," she added, not
without agitation. "But the sight of you does bring up so much. And I
am sorry to tell you, Serena, things are not as happy as they used to
be in this house."

The office of ministering angel was not, it must be conceded, exactly
native to Serena, her sympathies being restricted, the reverse of
acute. But, at a push, "curiosity has been known to supply the place of
sympathy very passably; and of curiosity Serena had always a large
stock at the service of her friends and acquaintance.

"I wonder why," she therefore observed in reply to her hostess's
concluding remark--"I mean I wonder why things should not be as happy
as they used to be?"

"I trace the commencement of it all to the time when you were visiting
here last November--not that I mean you were in any way to blame--"

Serena interrupted with spirit:

"No, pray do not connect anything which occurred then with me, Rhoda. I
think it would be most misplaced. After all that I have had to go
through I really should have thought it only delicate on your part
never to refer to what took place during my visit. I certainly should
have hesitated about coming here to-day if I had supposed either you or
George would have referred to it.--What dreadfully bad taste of Rhoda!"
she added mentally. "I believe I had better go. That would mark my
displeasure, and teach her to be more guarded with me in future. But
then perhaps she has something to say which I really ought to know.
Perhaps it would be a mistake to go. Perhaps I had better stay. I do
not want to be too harsh with Rhoda."

The truth being that she actually itched to hear more. For, to Serena,
her wholly imaginary love episode with Mr. Iglesias represented the
most vivid of all the very limited experiences of her life. Her
affections had not been engaged, since she possessed no affections in
any vital sense of that word. But she had been flattered and excited.

She had seemed to herself to occupy a most interesting position,
demanding infinite tact. During the months which had elapsed she had
rehearsed the history of every incident, of every hour of intercourse,
with Dominic Iglesias, a thousand times; weighing each word,
discounting every look of his, indulging in unlimited speculation and
analysis, until the proportions of that which had occurred were
magnified beyond all possibility of recognition, let alone of sane
relation to fact. To herself, therefore, Serena had become the heroine
of an elaborate intrigue. This greatly increased her importance in her
own eyes; and, though she was studiously silent regarding the subject
save in indirect allusion, the said self-importance, reacting upon
those about her, gained both for herself and her opinions a degree of
consideration to which she was unaccustomed and which she highly
relished. Never had Serena presented so bold a front to her
philanthropic and very possessive elder sister. Never had she enjoyed
so much attention in the small and rigidly select circle of Slowby
society, in which she and Miss Susan moved. Serena spoke with authority
upon all subjects, on the strength of a purely fictitious affair of the
heart. She is not the first woman who has made capital out of the
non-existent in this kind, nor will she probably be the last!
Nevertheless, she was very far from admitting the great benefit which
Mr. Iglesias had so unconsciously conferred upon her. She regarded
herself as a deeply injured person--irreparably injured, but for her
own diplomacy, admirable caution, knowledge of the world and
self-respect.

"I am well aware it is a trying subject to approach," Mrs. Lovegrove
replied, with praiseworthy mildness. "And I am far from blaming you for
turning from it, Serena. I am sure it has weighed sadly on my mind and
on George's, too. Not that he has said much, but I could see how he
felt; and then a great deal has come out since. That is why I am so
gratified to have you call here to-day, and so will Georgie be. He has
taken it dreadfully to heart finding how we have all been taken in, and
seeing how wrong it must put him with you and with Susan."

"It is very proper that you should say that, Rhoda," the other observed
with condescension. "I think you owe it to me to express regret. I
should have been sorry if George had proved indifferent, for I have
been very careful in what I have told Susan. Of course, I might have
spoken strongly. I think anyone would admit I should have been quite
justified in doing so. But I wished to spare George. Mamma was very
much attached to him, and of course he was constantly with us in old
days, before his marriage."

It was significant of the wife's humble state that she received this
thrust without a murmur.

"Poor Georgie was too upset to tell even me for a long time," she
continued somewhat irrelevantly, "and you may judge by that how badly
he felt. He knew how shocked I should be, and that I should take it as
such an insult to the dear vicar, after all his kindness, that any
friend of ours whom he had talked to in this house should turn
Romanist."

"Who? What?" cried Serena. She had determined to maintain a superior
and impassive attitude, but at this point curiosity became rampant,
refusing further circumlocution or delay.

"Why, Mr. Iglesias, to be sure," Mrs. Lovegrove answered, hardly
restraining evidences of satisfaction. The news was lamentable, no
doubt; but to have it miss fire in the recital of it would have made it
ten times more lamentable still. "And the worst of it was," she
continued, refreshed by the effect upon her hearer, "he kept it dark
for we don't in the least know how long. He mentioned no dates, and
poor Georgie was too upset to ask him. Of course it is well known how
double Romanists are always taught to be--not that I was ever
acquainted with any. You never meet them out, I am glad to think, where
we visit. Still, that Mr. Iglesias, who was quite one of ourselves, as
you may say, so intimate and always appearing the perfect gentleman, so
open and honest--"

"Ah! there you are wrong, Rhoda," the other lady put in with decision,
while making a violent effort to recover her impassivity and
superiority. "You and George may be surprised, but I am not. I always
had my suspicions of Mr. Iglesias. I told you so more than once. At the
time you and George were annoyed. Now you see I was right. I am seldom
mistaken. Even Susan admits I am very observant. After his
extraordinary behaviour to me I should not be surprised at anything
which Mr. Iglesias might do." She paused, breathless but triumphant.
"Have you seen him since all this came out, Rhoda?"

"Oh, no. He has called twice, but fortunately Georgie was out walking.
He goes out walking a great deal now, does Georgie." The speaker heaved
a voluminous sigh. Her satisfaction had been short-lived. "And I told
the girl, if Mr. Iglesias asked for me, to say I was particularly
engaged. He has written to Georgie. I know that--a long letter--but I
have not been asked to read it."

Mrs. Lovegrove pressed her handkerchief against her lips again,
agitation gaining her.

"After all these years of marriage, you know, Serena, it is a very
cutting thing to have any concealment between me and Georgie. I should
not mention it to you but that you were here when it commenced. I never
supposed--no, never, never--there could be any coldness between him and
me. When I have heard others speak of trouble with their husbands, I
have always pitied the poor things from my heart, but held them mainly
responsible. Now I think differently--"

"Miss Eliza Hart, mum." This shrilly from the little house-parlourmaid.

Serena rose as well as her hostess. Superiority counselled departure;
curiosity urged remaining.

"Of course, I should feel justified in staying if Rhoda pressed me to
do so," she said to herself. And Rhoda, in the very act of greeting her
new guest, did press her to do so.

"Surely you are not leaving yet?" she said plaintively.

"It would hurt me not to have you stay to tea, and Georgie would be
sadly disappointed to think he had missed you."

Thus admonished, Serena graciously consented to remain Miss Hart, as
last arrival, being necessarily invited to assume the place of honour
upon the sofa, Serena selected a chair at as great a distance from that
historic article of furniture as the exigencies of conversation
permitted. "I must show her that I stay not to see her, but solely on
Georgie's account," she commented inwardly. "I have been very cold in
manner. I think she must have observed that."

But the great Eliza was in a militant humour, not easily abashed. She
had called with intentions, in the interests of which she plunged
volubly into talk.

"You will excuse my coming without Peachie Porcher, Mrs. Lovegrove,"
she began. "She was all anxiety to come, too, fearing you might think
her neglectful. But I prevented it. She overrates her strength, does
Peachie, and to-day her neuralgia is cruel. 'I'll run across and
account for you,' I said to her. 'You just lie down and take a nap, and
let the housemaid bring you up a little something with your tea, and
take it early.' 'It's not more nourishment I require, but less worry,
Liz dear,' she said. And so it is, Mrs. Lovegrove."

"We all have our troubles, Miss Hart, and often unsuspected ones which
call for silence."

The wife's large cheeks quivered ominously, while Serena rustled--but
whether in sympathetic agreement with the sentiments expressed by the
last speaker, or in protest against the presence of the former one, it
would be difficult to determine.

"I wonder whether that is not best, Rhoda--I mean I wonder whether it
is not best to be silent," she remarked reflectively. "I think people
are not usually half cautious enough what they tell. So many
disagreeables can be avoided if you are really on your guard. Mamma
impressed that upon us when we were children. I am very careful, but I
often think Susan is hardly careful enough. Most troubles arise through
trusting other people too much."

"And that's poor darling Peachie all over," Miss Hart declared, with a
fine appreciation of opportunity. "Too great trustfulness has been her
worst fault, as I always tell her, the generous pet. Not that all our
gentlemen are ungrateful, Mrs. Lovegrove. I would not have you suppose
that. Poor Mr. Smyth, for instance, whom I'm afraid I have accused of
being very surly and bearish at times, has come out wonderfully lately.
But it must be a hard nature, indeed, which Peachie's influence would
not soften. One such nature I am acquainted with." Eliza paused,
looking from one to other of her hearers with much meaning. "But it is
not the case with poor Mr. Smyth. He has yielded. Then there is the tie
of an unfortunate domestic past between him and Peachie, which helps to
bring them together.--Of course that means nothing to you, Mrs.
Lovegrove."

The lady addressed swallowed convulsively.

"But all are not blessed with such good fortune as yours," the great
Eliza continued. "Mr. Smyth has been very open with Peachie recently.
He has some surprising tales to tell, knowing very well all that is
going on in society. And that reminds me of a certain gentleman who
does not live a thousand miles from here. Mr. Smyth has hinted at much
that is very startling in that direction."

The speaker paused again.

"Would it be intrusive to ask whether you have been favoured with much
of Mr. Iglesias' company during the last few weeks, Mrs. Lovegrove?"
she added.

Ruddy mottlings bespread the wife's kindly countenance. Serena moved
slightly upon her chair. She was conscious, of growing excitement.

"Perhaps not quite so much as formerly; but then Mr. Lovegrove has been
out walking most evenings. The warmer weather always causes him to feel
the need of exercise," the excellent woman returned, putting heroic
restraint upon herself. "And I have been very occupied with the spring
cleaning. I make it a duty to look into everything myself, you know,
Miss Hart. Not but what my girls are very good. I think all the talk
about trouble with the servants is very much exaggerated. Our cook,
Fanny, has been with us quite a number of years. Still, I hold it is
well for them to have a mistress's supervision if the cleaning is to be
thorough. If you see to it yourself, then you can have nobody to blame.
And so I have had frequently to deny myself to visitors."

She gave a sigh of relief, trusting she had loyally steered the
conversation into safer channels. But the great Eliza was not thus to
be thwarted.

"I asked on Peachie Porcher's account," she declared, "not on my own,
Mrs. Lovegrove. It is all of less than no consequence to me, except for
the sake of Cedar Lodge, how a certain gentleman spends his time. But
Peachie's interests must be protected. With an establishment such as
ours a good name is everything. 'You cannot be too particular; for any
talk of fastness, and the place must go down,' as she says to me--"

But here, the wife's natural rectitude and sense of justice triumphed
over prejudice and wounded sensibilities.

"I am sure I could never believe anyone would have occasion to accuse
Mr. Iglesias of fastness," she said. "Of course, the change of religion
is dreadful, particularly in one who should have known better, though a
foreigner, having had the advantage of being brought up in England.
Nobody can be more aware of that than myself and Mr. Lovegrove. It has
been a sad grief to us"--her voice quavered--"and no doubt early rising
and fish meals do make a lot of work and unpleasantness in a
house-hold. But as to fastness, well, Miss Hart, I cannot find it in my
conscience to agree to anything as bad as that."

With preternatural solemnity the great Eliza shook her head.

"Seeing is believing, Mrs. Lovegrove," she replied. "And when ladies
call, dressed in the tiptop of the fashion! Very stylish, no doubt, but
not quite the style Peachie Porcher can countenance, circumstanced as
we are with our gentlemen guests. Then there is what Mr. Smyth hinted
at subsequently, just in a friendly way. He did not say he was actually
acquainted with the lady, but intimated that he could say very much
more if he chose. No, Mrs. Lovegrove, I regret to speak, knowing how
long you and a certain gentleman have been acquainted, but there can be
no question Peachie Porcher's interests have been trifled with, and her
affections also."

Here aggressive rustlings on the part of Serena arrested the flow of
Miss Hart's eloquence.

"You spoke, I believe, Miss Lovegrove?" she inquired.

"No, I did not speak," Serena cried.--"Vulgar, designing person, what
presumption!" she cried to herself. "Anyone would feel insulted by her
manner. She thinks she has put me at a disadvantage. But she is
mistaken. I know more than she supposes." She was greatly enraged; for,
unreasonable though it may appear, if trifling were about on the part
of Dominic Iglesias, Serena reserved to herself a monopoly in respect
of it. Few things, perhaps, are more galling to a woman than the
assertion that a Lovelace has been guilty of misleading attentions to
others besides herself. If she is not the solitary object of his
affections, let her at least be the solitary victim of his perfidy. And
that Mrs. Porcher should aspire to share her _role_ of betrayed one
was, to Serena, a piece of unheard-of impertinence. She refused to
bestow further attention upon Miss Hart, and turned haughtily to her
hostess.

"Have you any idea when George will be in, Rhoda? I am quite willing to
wait a reasonable time for him, but I cannot be expected to wait
indefinitely. I must consider Lady Samuelson. It is a long distance to
Ladbroke Square--of course Trimmer's Green is very far out--and I have
to dress for dinner. Everything is very well done at Lady Samuelson's,
and she makes a great point of punctuality. Of course it is no
difficulty to me to be punctual. I was brought up to be so. Mamma was
always extremely particular about our being in time. She said it was
very rude to be late. I think it is rude, and so, of course,
punctuality is quite natural to me. But I do object to being hurried;
and so, unless George is likely to be in almost directly, I really must
go, Rhoda."

"I should be very mortified to have you leave before he comes back. It
would be a sore disappointment to Georgie to find you had been here and
he had missed you," the good creature pleaded.

"And it's something quite new for Mr. Lovegrove to be out on your
at-home day, isn't it?" Eliza put in, not without covert sarcasm. "I
never remember to have known it happen before."

"Mrs. and Miss Ballard, please, mum"--this from the house-parlourmaid.

Mrs. Lovegrove arose with alacrity, retail trade and nonconformity
alike forgiven.

"I am afraid Miss Hart grows very spiteful," she said to herself. "I
wish she would go. I should be vexed to have her outsit Serena.--Well,
Mrs. Ballard, very pleased, I am sure, to see you"--this aloud--"and
your daughter, too. The spring is coming on nicely, is it not? Quite
warm this afternoon, walking? I dare say it is. You and my husband's
cousin, Miss Lovegrove, have met, I believe? Miss Ballard, Miss
Lovegrove.--Are you going, Miss Hart? Kind regards to Mrs. Porcher, and
sincere hopes she may soon lose her neuralgia. Very trying complaint,
Mrs. Ballard, is it not?--and very prevalent, so they tell me, this
year.--Why, you're never going to leave, too, Serena? You'll come
again, or Georgie will be so troubled."

But Serena held out small hope of her reappearance.

"Of course I should be glad to see George, but I could not bind myself
to anything, Rhoda. You see, Lady Samuelson"--the Ballard ladies,
mother and daughter, looked at one another, fluttered and
impressed--"Lady Samuelson," Serena repeated, her voice rising a
little, "has such a number of engagements, and of course if she wishes
to take me with her I cannot refuse. At home she always likes me to
help entertain. I really have very little time to call my own, and so I
should not feel justified in making any promise. Of course it was just
a chance my being able to come to-day. You can tell George I am sorry
not to have seen him. I should like him to know that I am sorry."

"You are very kind, Serena," the other said humbly.

"I think Rhoda has improved," Serena said to herself, as she walked
across Trimmer's Green between the black iron railings. "I think she
has more sense of my position than she did. I wonder whether she thinks
that if Mr. Iglesias had proposed I should have accepted him. Of course
she thinks I was very badly treated. I think her manner shows that.
Certainly she took his part rather against that odious Miss Hart. But I
don't believe she really sided with him. I think she only appeared to
do so to snub Miss Hart. Of course if she had stayed, I should have had
to stay, too. I should have owed it to myself to do so. But, as she
went, there was no object in staying; and it was wiser to seem quite
indifferent about seeing George. I hope he won't attempt to call upon
me at Lady Samuelson's! I should hardly think he would presume to do
that. I must tell the butler, if a gentleman calls, to say I am not at
home. If it was only George it would not so much matter, but I could
not run the chance of having Lady Samuelson and Rhoda meet. It would
not do at all to have Rhoda climbing into society through me. I think
it is too bad to have people make use of you like that. And Rhoda has
no tact. I see I must be on my guard with George and Rhoda. I wonder
whether I had better tell Susan Mr. Iglesias has become a Roman
Catholic? Of course she would think I had had a great escape; but in
any case that does not excuse him. He behaved very badly. I don't
believe for an instant he ever took any notice of Mrs. Porcher. I
believe that is an entire invention. I wonder if the lady who called is
the same lady we saw at the theatre--"

And so on, and so on, all the way home by the Uxbridge Road, and
Netting Hill, and then northward to the august retirement of Lady
Samuelson's large corner house in Ladbroke Square. For a deeply injured
person Serena had really enjoyed herself very much.




CHAPTER XXXI


The burden of August, dense and heavy, lay upon London. Radiating
outward in lifeless and dull-glaring sunshine, it involved the nearer
suburbs; so that Dominic Iglesias, sitting on a bench beside the
roadway crossing Barnes Common, notwithstanding the hour--past six
o'clock--and the open space surrounding him, found the atmosphere
hardly less oppressive than that of the streets. The great world, which
plays, had departed. The little world, outnumbering the great by some
five or six millions, which works, remained. And Dominic Iglesias,
since he too worked, remained likewise, sharing with it the burden of
the August heat and languor; and sharing also, to-day being Sunday, its
weekly going forth over the face of the scorched and sun-seared land
seeking rest, and, too often, finding none.

For the past two months he had seen Poppy St. John but seldom, nor had
he heard from her. Whether by accident or by design he knew not, she
had rarely been at home on those occasions when he had been free to
call. For the last three weeks she had been away up the river, so he
understood, with her friend Dot Parris--_alias_ Miss Charlotte
Colthrust. A blight seemed to Iglesias to have fallen upon his and her
friendship, ever since the day of his return to Messrs. Barking
Brothers & Barking; and his discovery, or rather divination, of the
relation in which de Courcy Smyth stood to her. While her husband
remained nameless, an unknown quantity, Dominic deplored the fact of
her marriage, but as an abstraction. So soon as that fact had acquired
in his mind--whether rightly or wrongly--a name and local habitation,
now that he was liable to meet it daily incarnate--and that in most
unsavoury shape--liable to be constantly reminded of its near
neighbourhood, to witness a thousand and one unpleasing peculiarities
of speech, habit, and manner, unlooked-for emotions arose in Iglesias,
and those of a character of which he was by no means proud. Resentment
took him, indignation, strange movements of jealousy and hatred; all
very natural, no doubt, but decidedly bad for the soul. It was idle for
him to remind himself that his belief regarding de Courcy Smyth was
based upon supposition, upon circumstantial evidence which might prove
merely coincident. He could not rid himself of that belief, nor of the
emotional consequences of it; and these so vexed him that he questioned
whether it would not be better to remove from Cedar Lodge and seek a
domicile uninfected by the perpetual provocation of the man's presence.
But it was not easy to give a plausible reason to his hostess for any
immediate change of residence; nor was it easy, in the present stress
of business at the bank, to find time or energy for house-hunting. The
atmosphere of Cedar Lodge had become inimical. His rooms had ceased to
be a place of security and repose. Yet whither should he go? The great
wilderness of London seemed vastly inhospitable when it came to the
question of selecting a new dwelling-place.

Meanwhile, he was grievously conscious of the growing estrangement
between himself and Poppy St. John, which he connected, in some way,
with this haunting yet unspoken suspicion of her relation to de Courcy
Smyth--a suspicion which tended to rob intercourse of all spontaneity
by introducing into it a spirit of embarrassment and constraint. He
would have given so very much to know the truth and be able to reckon
finally with it; but he judged it unpermissible that he should approach
the ugly subject first. It was Poppy's affair, her private and unlovely
property. While she elected to keep silence, therefore, it would be
disloyal for him to speak. Still it distressed him, adding to his
mental and emotional unrest. The happiness might have gone out of their
intercourse, yet there were times when he wearied for sight and for
speech of her more than he quite cared to admit. George Lovegrove still
held aloof. Dominic rallied his faith in the divine purpose, rallied
his obedience to the divine ruling, fixed his eyes more patiently upon
the promise of the far horizon; yet it must be owned he felt very
friendless and sad at heart.

To-day, driven in part by that friendliness, he had come out on the
chance of gaining some news of Poppy. Disappointment, however, awaited
him. For the discreet Phillimore, though receiving him graciously,
reported her mistress resident at home again, it is true, but gone into
town on business, probably theatrical, and unlikely to return until
late. Therefore Dominic had walked on to Barnes Common, and finding the
uncomfortable bench by the roadside--whereon Cappadocia, the toy
spaniel, had sought his protection more than a year ago--untenanted,
had sat down there to meditate. Cedar Lodge was no longer a refuge. He
preferred to keep away from it as long as might be. Perhaps, too, as
the sun dropped the air would grow cooler, and the southeasterly
draught, parched and scorching as from the mouth of a furnace, which
huffled at times only to fall dead, might shift to some more merciful
quarter. A coppery haze hung over London, above which the rusty white
summits of a range of cumulus cloud towered into the thick grey-blue of
the upper sky. Possibly the cloud harboured thunder and the refreshment
of rain amid its giant crags and precipices. On the chance of such
refreshment he would stay.

For in good truth he needed refreshment, and that speedily, being very
tired, fagged by long hours in the City, by heavy responsibilities, by
the burden of the airless August heat, let alone those more intimate
causes of disturbance already indicated. Iglesias could not disguise
from himself that the close application to business was beginning to
tell injuriously upon his health. This same morning, coming back from
early Mass, passing through the flagged passage which leads from
Kensington Palace Green into Church Street, he had become so faint from
exhaustion, that reaching--and not without difficulty--his former home
in Holland Street, he had summoned the neat bald-headed little
caretaker and asked permission to enter the house and rest. The
ground-floor rooms were cool and dusky, sheltered by closed shutters
from the summer sun. Only the French-window of the back dining-room
stood open, on to the flight of wrought-iron steps leading down into
the garden. Beside it the caretaker, not without husky coughings,
placed a kitchen chair for Iglesias and fetched him a glass of water.

"I could wish I had something better to offer you, sir," he said, "but
I am an abstainer by habit myself; and I have no liquor of any kind,
unfortunately, in the house."

The water, however, was pleasantly cold, and Dominic drank it
thankfully. He could have fancied there was virtue in it--the virtue of
things blessed by long-ago mother-love. And, thinking of that, his eyes
filled with tears as he looked out over the small neglected garden. Of
the once glorious laburnum there remained only an unsightly stump, but
jasmine still clothed the enclosing walls, the dark green of its
straggling shoots starred here and there with belated white blossoms.
About the lip of the empty stone basin, vigorously chirruping, sparrows
came and went, while in the far corner a grove of starveling sunflowers
lifted their brown and yellow-rayed faces towards the light. Dominic,
resting gratefully in the cool semi-darkness of the empty room, until
the faintness which had attacked him was passed, found the place very
gentle, soothing, and sweet. The sadder memories had died out here, so
he noted. Only gracious and tender ones remained. He wished he could
stay on indefinitely. As the years multiply, and the chequered story of
them lengthens, it is comforting to dwell in a place where, once on a
time, one had been greatly loved.

Dominic turned to the waiting caretaker, who regarded him with mingled
solicitude, admiration, and deference.

"So the house is still unlet?" he said.

"Yes, sir, and is likely to remain so, I apprehend. The lease, as I
understand, falls in a very few years hence, and the landlord is
unwilling to make any outlay on the house, which will probably then be
pulled down; while no tenant, I opine, would be willing to rent a
residence so wanting in modern decoration and modern conveniences.
Weeks pass, sir, without any persons calling to view."

"Yet the rent is low?" Iglesias said.

"Very low for so genteel a district--I am a native of Kensington, 'the
royal village,' myself, sir--and no premium is asked."

Now, sitting on the uneasy bench upon the confines of Barnes
Common--while the little many-millioned world, which works, in gangs,
and groups, and amatory couples, and somewhat foot-weary family
parties, sauntered by--that same oppression of faintness came over
Dominic Iglesias, along with a great nostalgia for the cool, dusky,
low-ceilinged rooms, and the neglected yet still bravely blossoming
garden of the little house in Holland Street.

"It would be pleasant to spend one's last days and draw one's last
breath there," Iglesias said to himself; "when the sum of endeavour is
complete, when the last cable has been sent, the last column of figures
balanced and audited, when the ledgers are closed and one's work being
fairly finished one is free to sit still and listen--not fearfully, but
with reverent curiosity--for the footsteps of Death and the secrets he
has in his keeping."

And there he paused, for the scorched dusty land and pale dense sky,
even the rusty white summits of the great range of cloud, slowly,
slowly climbing high heaven--even the light dresses of passing women
and children--went suddenly black, indistinct, and confused to his
sight, so that he seemed to be falling through some depth of dark and
untenanted space, while the dust, thick, stifling, clinging, fell with
him, encircling, enveloping him with a horror of suffocation, of
crushing, impalpable, yet unescapable, dead weight.

Then out of the darkness, out of the dust, in voluminous dusty drab
motor veil and dusty drab motor coat, the Lady of the Windswept Dust
herself came towards him, bringing consolation and help.




CHAPTER XXXII


"You are coming round, dear man. You really look better. What you
wanted was a sensible Christian meal. For, I tell you, you were most
uncommonly done, and it was a near shave whether I should get you home
here without having to call on the populace for assistance. Don't go
and worry now. You were superb as usual, with enough personal dignity
to supply a whole dynasty, and have some left over for washing-day into
the bargain. You should give lessons in the art of majestic
collapse--not that you did collapse, thank goodness! But you came
precious near it.--Yes, I mean it, I mean it, dear man"--Poppy nodded
her head at him, leaned across the corner of the table and patted his
arm with the utmost friendliness. "I want to terrify you into being
more careful. There are plenty of people one could jolly well spare;
but you're not among them. So lay that to heart, or I shan't have an
easy moment. And then as to personal dignity, if you will excuse my
entering into details of costume, in that grey top-hat, grey
frock-coat, et cetera, et cetera, you looked more fit for the Ascot
Royal Enclosure than for Barnes Common on a broiling August Sunday. The
populace eyed you with awe.--Don't be offended, there's a dear. You
can't help being very smart and very beautiful; and you oughtn't to
want to help it even if you could, since it gives me so much pleasure.
Your tailor's a gem. But how he must love you, must be ready to dress
you free of cost for the simple joy of fitting on."

The little dinner had been excellent. The clear soup hot, and the
ninety-two Ayala, extra dry, chilled to a nicety--and so with the rest
of the menu. Glass, silver, china, were set forth daintily upon the
fine white damask, under the glow of scarlet-shaded candles. The double
doors connecting the small drawing-room and dining-room stood open;
this, combined with the fact that lights were limited to the
dinner-table, giving an agreeable effect of coolness and of space.
While, as arrayed in a crisp black muslin gown--the frills and panels
of it painted with shaded crimson roses and bronze-green leaves--Poppy
St. John ministered to her guest, chattered to, and rallied him, her
eyes were extraordinarily dark and luminous, and her voice rich in soft
caressing tones. Never had she appeared more engaging, more natural and
human, never stronger yet more tenderly gay. Dominic Iglesias yielded
himself up gladly, gratefully, to the charm of the woman and to the
comfort of his surroundings. Temperate in all things, he was temperate
in enjoyment. Yet he was touched, he was happy. Life was very sweet to
him in this hour of relief from physical distress, of renewed
friendship, and of pretty material circumstance.

"It was such a mercy I had a decent meal to offer you," Poppy went on.
"Often the commissariat department is a bit sketchy on Sunday,
in--well, in these days of the cleaned slate. But you see, Lionel
Gordon, of the Twentieth Century Theatre, was to tell me, this
afternoon, what decision he had come to about the engagement I have
been spelling to get. He is an appalling mongrel, three-parts German
Jew and one part Scotchman--sweet mixture of the Chosen and Self-Chosen
people! He never was pretty, and increasing years have not rendered his
appearance more enticing; but he's the cleverest manager going, on
either side of the Atlantic, and he doesn't go back on his word once
given, as too many of them do. Well, he was to let me know; and to tell
the truth, beloved lunatic, I was rather keen about this engagement. I
knew if he did not give it me I should be a little hipped, and should
stand in need of support and consolation; while, if he did, I should be
rather expansive, and should want suitably to celebrate the event. So I
ordered a good dinner to be ready in either case"--Poppy laughed
gently. "Queer thing the artist," she said, "with its instinct of
falling back on creature comforts. Whatever happens, good luck or bad
luck, it always eats."

"And they gave you the engagement?" Iglesias inquired.

Poppy nodded her head in assent.

"Yes, dear man, Lionel gave it me. He'd have been a fool if he hadn't,
for he knows who I am and what training I've had. And then Fallowfeild
has made things easy. He's a thundering good friend, Fallowfeild is;
and in view of late events--once I had told him to go, I wouldn't, of
course, take a penny of Alaric's--I had no conscience about letting
Fallowfeild be useful. He was lovely about it. I shall only draw a
nominal salary for the first six months until I have proved myself.
What I want is my opportunity; and money matters being made easy helped
materially. Both the Chosen and Self-Chosen People have a wonderfully
keen eye to the boodle, bless their little hearts and consciences!"

She paused, leaning her elbows on the table and looking sideways at
Iglesias, her head thrown back.

"I am dreadfully glad to have you here to-night," she went on, "because
you see it's a turning-point. I have pretty well climbed the ridge and
reached the watershed. The streams have all started running in the
other direction--towards the dear old work and worry, the envy, hatred,
malice, and all uncharitableness, and all the fun, too, and good
comradeship, and ambition, and joy, of the theatre. Can you understand,
I at once adore and detest it, for it's a terribly mixed business.
Already I keep on seeing the rows of pinky-white faces rising, tier
above tier, up to the roof, which turn you sick and give you cold
shivers all down your spine when you first come on. And then I go hot
with the fight against their apathy or opposition, the glorious fight
to conquer and hold an audience, and bend its emotions and its
sympathies, as the wind bends the meadow grass, to one's will."

Poppy stretched out her hand across the corner of the table again,
laying it upon Iglesias' hand. Her eyes danced with excitement, yet her
voice shook and the words came brokenly.

"But, dearly beloved, I have your blessing on this new departure,
haven't I?" she asked. "After all, it's you, just simply you, that
sends me back to an honest life and to my profession. So I should like
to have your blessing--that, and your prayers."

"Can you doubt that you have them," Iglesias answered, and his voice,
too, shook, somewhat, "now and always, dearest of friends?"

For a little minute Poppy sat looking full at him, he looking full at
her. Then, with a sort of rush, she rose to her feet.

"Come along, this won't do," she said. "Sentiment strictly prohibited.
It's not wholesome for you after the nasty turn you had on Barnes
Common--and it's not particularly wholesome for me either, though for
quite other reasons. Moreover, it's fiendishly hot in here. So see,
dear man, you're not going just yet. I telephoned to the Bell Inn
stables for a private hansom to be on hand about ten thirty for you.
Meanwhile, you're to take it easy and rest. It is but five steps
upstairs, and that won't tire you. Come up into the cool and have your
coffee on the balcony."

And so it came about that Dominic Iglesias followed Poppy St. John
upstairs--she moving rapidly, in a way defiantly--followed her into a
bedchamber, where a subtle sweetness of orris-root met him; and a
fantastic brightness of gaslight and moonlight, coming in through open
windows, chequered the handsome dark-polished brass-inlaid furniture,
the green silk coverlet and hangings, the dimly patterned ceiling and
walls. Without hesitation or apology, Poppy walked straight through
this apartment, and passed out on to the white-planked and white-railed
balcony.

The dome of the sky was immense and had become perfectly clear, the
great clouds having boiled up during the afternoon only to sink away
and vanish at sunset, as is their wont in seasons of drought. North and
east the glare of London pulsed along the horizon; and above it the
stars were faint, since the radiant first-quarter moon rode high,
drenching roadway and palings, the stretch of the polo-ground, the
shrubberies and grove of giant elms, with white light blotted and
barred, here and there, by black shadow. The air was still, but less
oppressive, the cruelty of sun-heat having gone out of it and only a
suavity remaining. The _facade_ of the terrace of smirking,
self-conscious, much-be-flowered and be-balconied little houses had
taken on a certain worth of picturesqueness, suggestive of the bazaar
of some far-away Oriental city rather than of a vulgar London suburb,
the summer night even here producing an exquisiteness of effect and
making itself very sensibly felt. Poppy silently motioned her guest to
the further of the two cane deck-chairs set in the recess, arranged a
cushion at his back, drew up a little mother-of-pearl inlaid table
beside him, poured coffee into two cups. Then she moved across to the
rail of the balcony, and stood there, her head thrown back, her hands
clasped behind her, facing the moonlight, which covered her slender
rounded figure from head to foot as with a pale transparent veil of
infinite tenuity. Iglesias could see the rise and fall of her bosom,
the flutter of her eyelids, the involuntary movement of her lips as she
pressed them together, restraining, as might be divined, words to which
she judged it wiser to deny utterance.

And this hardly repressed excitement in Poppy's bearing and aspect,
along with the peculiar scene and circumstances in which he found
himself, worked profoundly upon Dominic Iglesias. In passing through
that scented, half-discovered, fantastically lighted bedchamber and
stepping out into the magic of the night, he had stepped out, in
imagination, into regions dreamed of in earlier years--when reading
poetry or hearing music,--but never fairly entered, still less enjoyed,
since all the duties and obligations of his daily life militated
against and even forbade such enjoyment. The weariness of his work in
the City, the petty annoyances he suffered at Cedar Lodge, the haunting
disgust of de Courcy Smyth's presence, fell away from him, becoming for
the time as though they were not. He never had been, nor was he now, in
any degree self-indulgent or a sentimentalist. The appeal of the
present somewhat enchanted hour was to the intellect and the spirit,
rather than sensuous, still less sensual. Nevertheless, an almost
passionate desire of earthly beauty took him--of the beauty of things
seen, of things plastic, beauty of the human form; beauty of
far-distant lands and the varied pageant of their aspect and history;
of great rivers flowing seaward; of tombs by the wayside; of the
glorious terror of the desert's naked face; of languorous
fountain-cooled gardens, close hid in the burning heart of ancient
cities; beauty of sound, beauty of words and phrases, above all, of the
eternal beauty of youth and the illimitable expectation and hope of it.

And it was out of all this, out of the mirage of these vast elusive
prospects and apprehensions, that he answered Poppy St. John, as with
serious eyes yet smiling lips she turned, and coming across the white
floor sat down beside him, saying:

"How goes it, Dominic? Are you rested?"

"Yes," he answered, "I am rested. And more than that, I am alive and
awake, strangely awake and full of vision--thanks to you."

Poppy's expression sweetened, becoming protective, maternal. She leaned
back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap; yet there was still
a certain tension in her expression, an intensity as of inward
excitement in her gaze.

"Tell me things, then," she said, "tell me things about yourself, if
the gift of seeing is upon you.--There's no one to overhear. The
neighbours on both sides are away for the holidays, thank the powers!
and their houses stand empty. While the voices and footsteps down in
the road only make us more happily alone. So tell me things, Dominic. I
am a trifle stirred up with all this affair of the theatre, and you
always quiet me. I'm really a very good child. I deserve a treat. And
there are things I dreadfully want to know."

"Alas! there is so absurdly little to tell," Iglesias answered, "that,
here and now, in face of my existing sense of life and of vision, I am
humbled by my own ignorance and poverty of achievement. That poverty, I
suppose, is all the more apparent to me, because twice to-day I have
been--so I judge, at least--within measurable distance of bidding
farewell to this astonishingly wonderful world and the fashion of it.
It comes home to me how little I have seen, how little I have profited,
how little I know. I would have liked to leave it; it would be more
seemly to do so, having profited more largely by my sojourn here."

Iglesias paused, excitement which his natural sobriety disapproved
gaining him, too, through that ache of unrealised beauty. For a moment
he struggled with it as with a rising tide, then resigned himself.

"And yet," he added, "in other respects I should not be sorry to hear
the hour strike, for curiosity of the unknown is very strong in me.
Opportunity may have been narrow, and one may have been balked of high
endeavour and rich experience, by lack of talent and by adverse
circumstances; but in the supreme, the crowning experience, that of
death and all which, for joy or sorrow, lies beyond it, even the most
obscure, the most uncultured and untravelled must participate."

"Don't be in too great a deuce of a hurry to satisfy that curiosity,
dear man," Poppy put in. "You must contrive to exercise patience for a
little while yet, please; always remembering that it is entirely
superfluous to run to catch a train which is bound not to start until
you are on board of it. And then, too, you see--well, there's me, after
all, and I want you."

Iglesias' face grew keen, as he looked at her through that encompassing
whiteness of moonlight.

"I am glad of that," he said very quietly, "because you are to me, dear
friend, what no other human being has ever yet been. The saddest thing
that could happen to me, save loss of faith, would be that you should
cease to want me. I only pray God, if it is not self-seeking, that you
may continue to want me as long as I live."

"But your religion?" she asked, a point of jealousy pricking her.

"My religion forbids sin, whether of body or mind; forbids violation of
the eternal spiritual proportion, by any placing of the creature before
the Creator in a man's action or in his heart. But my religion enjoins
love and stimulates it; since only through loving can we fulfil the
highest possibility of our nature, which is to grow into the likeness
of Almighty God."

"You believe that?" Poppy asked again.

"I do more," Iglesias said. "I know it."

Then both fell silent, having reached the place where words hinder
rather than help thought. And, as it happened, just then the stillness
was sensibly broken up, and the magic of the night encroached upon by
the passing of a couple of _char-a-bancs_ in the road below, loaded up
with trippers faring homewards from a day's outing at Hampton Court.
The tired teams jog-trotted haltingly. The wheels whispered hoarsely in
the muffling dust; and voices mingled somewhat plaintively in the
singing of a then popular khaki sing--"The Soldiers of the Queen."
Hearing all of which, as the refrain died away Londonwards up the great
suburban road, the compelling drama and pathos of life as the multitude
lives it--stupidly, without ideas, without any conscious nobility of
purpose, yet with a certain blundering and clumsy heroism--took Poppy
St. John by the throat. Those who stand aside from that democratic
everyday drama, rejecting alike the common joys and common sorrows of
it, have need--so it seemed to her--to account for and justify
themselves lest they become suspect. Therefore she looked at Dominic
Iglesias intently, questioningly, hesitated a moment, and then spoke.

"Still I don't understand you, in your determined detachment of
attitude. Tell me, if you are not afraid of love, why have you never
married?" she said.

And he, divining to an extent that which inspired her question, smiled
at her somewhat proudly as he answered.

"Be under no misapprehension, dear friend. I am a perfectly normal
piece of flesh and blood, with a man's normal passions, and his natural
craving for wife, and child, home, family, and the like. But during my
mother's lifetime I was bound to other service than that of marriage."

"But in these years since her death?" Poppy asked.

"There is a time for everything, as the Preacher testifies, a due and
proper time which must be observed if life is to be a reasoned
progress, not a mere haphazard stumbling from the weakness of childhood
to the incapacity of old age. And, can anything be more objectionably
at variance with that wise teaching than the spectacle of amorous
uxorious efflorescence in a man of well over fifty?"

Poppy permitted herself a lively grimace.

"All the same you have sacrificed yourself, as usual," she said.

"Not so very greatly, perhaps," Iglesias replied, with a soberly
humorous expression. "For I have always been very exacting and have
asked very much. I am culpably fastidious. My tastes are far beyond my
means, my desires out of all reasonable relation to my station and my
merits. And it should be remembered that my circle of acquaintances has
been a very limited one, until quite recently--I do not wish to appear
more glaringly arrogant or discourteous than I actually am. I had my
ideal. It happened that I failed to realise it; and I am very impatient
of compromise in matters of intimate and purely personal import. In
respect of them I hold I have an unqualified right to consult my own
tastes. It has always been easier to me to go without than to accept a
second-best."

"In point of fact no woman was good enough! Poor brutes!"

Poppy mused a little, with averted face.

"How beastly cheap they'd all feel--I've not forgotten the undulating
and aspiring withered leaf--if they knew how mightily they all fell
short!" she added naughtily. Suddenly she looked round at Dominic
Iglesias. Her eyes were as stars, but her lips trembled. "Bless me, but
you've extensively original methods of conveying information! It's
lucky for me I've a steady head. So--so it comes to this--I reign all
alone?" she said.

"Yes, dear friend, save for my love for my mother--such as the throne
is or ever has been--you reign alone," Iglesias answered quietly.

Poppy rested her elbows upon her knees, dropped her face into her
hands, and sat thus bowed together in the whiteness of the moonlight.

"Ah, dear!" she murmured presently, brokenly, "I've got my answer. It's
better and--worse, than I expected. All the same I'm content--that's to
say, the best of me is--royally, consummately content.--Thank you a
thousand times, thrice-beloved and very most exceedingly unworldy-wise
one," she said.

Then for a while both were silent, wrapped about by, and resting in,
the magic of the summer night. When Poppy roused herself at last to
speak, it was in a different key, studiously matter-of-fact.

"Look here, dear man, do you in the least realise how extremely far
gone you were when I arrived to you on Barnes Common this evening?
Because I tell you plainly I didn't in the very least like it. In my
opinion it is high time you gave up dragging that Barking Brothers &
Barking cart."

"I shall give up doing so very soon," Iglesias replied. "Just now I am
acting as manager. Sir Abel is at Marienbad, and the other partners are
out of town."

"I like that--lazy animals!" Poppy said.

"But the situation is in process of righting itself--has practically
righted itself already."

"Thanks to you."

"In part, no doubt. There was a disposition to panic, which rendered it
exceedingly difficult to get accurate and definite information at
first. However, I arrived at the necessary data with patience and
diplomacy, and was able to draw out a clear detailed statement. This
proved so far satisfactory that Messrs. Gommee, Hills, Murray & Co. and
Pavitt's Bank have considered themselves justified in undertaking to
finance Barking Brothers until business in South Africa has resumed its
ordinary course."

"Then the elderly plungers are saved?"

"Yes, I believe, practically they are saved," Iglesias said. "And,
therefore, as soon as Sir Abel has finished his cure and returns I
shall retire."

Poppy rose, clapping her hands together with irritation.

"Sir Abel's cure be hanged!" she cried. "What do I care about his
idiotic old liver or his gout, or anything else. Let him pay the price
of steadily over-eating himself for more than half a century. I've no
use for him. What I have a use for is you, dear man; more than ever
now, don't you see," her voice softened, became caressing, "after our
recent little explanation. And you shan't kill yourself. I won't have
it. I won't allow it. Therefore be reasonable, my good dear. Put away
your mania of self-immolation--or keep it exclusively for my benefit.
Write and tell the Barking man to hurry up with his liver and his gout.
Tell him you're being sweated to death dragging his rotten old banking
cart, and that he's just got to come home and set you free, and get
between the shafts and do the dragging and sweating himself.--Ah,
there's the hansom. You must go. I'd no notion it was so late."

And so it came about that, once more, Dominic Iglesias followed the
Lady of the Windswept Dust into the faintly scented bedchamber, where
fantastic brightness of gaslight and moonlight chequered the polished
surfaces of the dark furniture, the green silk coverlet and hangings,
the dimly-patterned ceiling and walls. His instinct was to pass on, as
quickly as might be, to the secure commonplace of the landing without.
But half-way across the room, at the foot of the low-pillared and
brass-inlaid bedstead, Poppy St. John stopped, and turned swiftly,
barring his passage with extended arms.

"Stay a minute, for probably we shall never meet in this poor little
house again, best beloved one," she said. "It is too far out. I must
move into town. Lionel puts the play into rehearsal next week, and I
must live near the theatre. And then, too--well, you know, since I've
made up my mind, it's best to clean the slate even in respect of one's
dwelling-place. Memories stick, stick like a leech; and they raise
emotions of a slightly disturbing character sometimes. I am sure of
myself; and yet I know it's safest to make a clean sweep of whatever
reminds me of all the forbidden dear damned lot. I regret
nothing--don't imagine that. I'm keen on my work. The artist, after
all, is the strongest thing in me. I'm quite happy, now I have made up
my mind. My nose is in the air. I can look creation in the face without
winking an eyelid. I can respect myself. And I'm tremendously grateful
to Lionel Gordon for taking me on spec, and to Fallowfeild for greasing
the creature's Caledonian-Teutonic-Hebraic palm for me.
Still--still--you can imagine, can't you, that, take it all round, it's
not precisely a Young Woman's Christian Association blooming picnic
party for me just at present?"

Poppy dashed her hand across her eyes, half laughing, half sobbing.

"Ah, love me, Dominic, love me, in your own way, the clean way--that's
all I ask, all that I want--only love me always," she said.

She laid her hands on Iglesias' shoulders and threw back her head. And
he, holding her, bending down kissed her white face, soft heavy hair,
over-red lips, her tragic and unfathomable eyes--which looking on the
evil and measuring the very actual immediate delights of it, still had
courage, in the end, to reject it and choose the good--kissed them
reverently, gravely, proudly, with the chastity and chivalry of perfect
friendship.

"Ah! that's better. I'm better. Bless you; don't be afraid. I'll play
fair to the finish--only keep well. Quit that rotten old bank.--Now go,
dear man, go," Poppy said.




CHAPTER XXXIII


During the past six weeks events had galloped. To Iglesias it appeared
that changes were in course of arriving in battalions. He neither
hailed nor deplored them, but met them with a stoical patience. To
realise them clearly, in all their bearings, would have been to add to
the sense of fatigue from which he too constantly suffered. More than
sufficient to each day was the labour thereof. So he looked beyond, to
the greater repose and freedom which, as he trusted, lay ahead.

Upon the morning immediately in question he had closed his work at the
bank. Sir Abel's demeanour had been characteristic. His clothes, it is
true, still hung loosely upon him. His library chair and extensive
writing-table appeared a world too big. For he was shrunken and had
become an old man. Yet, though signs of chastening thus outwardly
declared themselves, in spirit he had regained tone and returned to his
former high estate. Along with the revival of financial security had
come a revival of pomposity, an addiction to patronage in manner and
platitudes in speech. He had ceased to be humble and human,
self-righteous self-complacency again loudly announcing itself.

"So you propose to retire, you ask to be relieved of your duties, my
good friend?" he asked of Iglesias, who had requested the favour of an
interview in his private room. "Let us, then, congratulate ourselves
upon the fact that I have returned from my sojourn upon the continent
with so far renovated health that I feel equal to meeting the arduous
responsibilities of my position unaided; and am not, consequently,
compelled, out of a sense of duty either to myself or to my colleagues,
to offer any objection to your retirement. Before we part I should,
however, wish to place it clearly on record that my confidence, both in
the soundness of my own judgment and in our capacity, as capitalists,
to meet any strain put upon our resources, was not misplaced. This no
one can, I think, fail to admit. Our house emerges from this period of
trial with the hall-mark of public sympathy and esteem upon it. And, in
this connection, it is instructive to note the working of the law of
compensation. This war, for example, which to the ordinary mind might
have appeared an unmixed evil, since it threatened to jeopardise our
position among the leading financiers of the capital of the civilised
world, has, in the event, served, not only to consolidate our position,
but to unmask the practices of that unscrupulous and self-seeking
member of our firm, my unhappy nephew Reginald, and afford us
legitimate excuse for his removal. We appeared to touch on disaster;
but, by that very means, we have been enabled to rid ourselves of a
canker. Still this must remain a painful subject."

Sir Abel became pensive, fixing his gaze, the while, upon the portrait
adorning the wall over against him. To an acute observer the said
portrait had always been subtly ironical. Now it had become coarsely
so--a merciless caricature of the shrivelled old gentleman whom it
represented, and to whom it bore much the same resemblance as a balloon
soaring skywards, fully inflated, bears to that same object with half
the gas let out of it in a condition of flabby and wobbling
semi-collapse.

"A painful subject," he repeated nobly--"I refrain from enlarging upon
it, and pass to other matters. As to the part you yourself have borne
in the history of our recent anxieties, Iglesias, I feel I cannot do
less than tender you the thanks of myself and my co-partners. I do not
disguise from you that a tendency existed to criticise my action in
summoning you, to dub your business methods antiquated, and question
your ability to march with the times. But these objections proved, I am
happy to think, unfounded. The faith I reposed in you has been
justified. And I may tell you, in confidence, that, should the occasion
for doing so arise, my colleagues will in future have as little
hesitation in calling upon your services as I should have myself."

The speaker paused, as for applause. And Dominic, who had remained
standing during this prolonged oration--no suggestion having been made
on the present occasion that he should be seated--proceeded to
acknowledge the peculiar compliment just paid him, with somewhat
sardonic courtesy.

"Your words are extremely reassuring, Sir Abel," he remarked calmly.

The gentleman addressed regarded him sharply for a moment, as though
doubtful of the exact purport of his words. Then, suspicion of covert
sarcasm being clearly inadmissible, Sir Abel spoke again in his largest
platform manner, although the tones of his voice, like his person, were
shrunken, docked of the fulness of their former rotundity and unction.

"It has ever been my effort to reward merit by encouragement," he
replied. "And, were testimony to the wisdom of my practice, in this
particular, needed, I should point, I candidly tell you, my good
friend, to the excellent results of my recent demand upon your
cooperation and support." He leaned sideways in his chair, assuming the
posture of the portrait, conscious of having really said a very
handsome thing indeed to his ex-head-clerk. "For," he added, "I
sincerely believe in the worth of example. It is hardly too much to
assert that a generous and high-minded employer eventually stamps the
employed with a reflection, at least, of his own superior qualities."

Again he paused. But truth to tell, Dominic Iglesias had not only grown
very weary of discourse and discourser, but somewhat impatient also. He
had hoped better things of the man after the nasty shaking fortune had
recently given him. Consequently he was disappointed; for it was very
effectually borne in upon him that only absence of feathers makes for
grace in a goose. Once the nudity of the foolish bird covered, it
hisses, and that loudly, to the old tune. Hence, in the interests of
Christian charity, he agreed with himself to cut short the interview,
lest anger should get the better of toleration.

"I think we have now discussed all questions calling for your personal
attention, Sir Abel," he said, "and all documents and correspondence
relating to affairs during your absence have been placed in your hands.
If therefore you have nothing further to ask me, I need not encroach
any longer upon your valuable time."

With that, after a brief pause, he moved towards the door; but the
other man, half rising from his chair, called after him.

"Iglesias, your attention for one moment--that matter of a salary?"

"I supposed I had made my terms perfectly clear, Sir Abel," Dominic
remarked coldly.

"No doubt, in the first instance. But should you have reconsidered your
decision, and should you think the pension you enjoy an insufficient
remuneration, I am empowered to make you the offer, in addition, of a
fixed salary for the past six months."

Listening to which tardy and awkward recognition of his own rather
princely dealings, Mr. Iglesias' temper began to rise, his jaw to grow
rigid, and his eyes dangerously alight.

"I am not in the habit of changing my mind, Sir Abel," he said. "I
proposed to make you a free gift of my time and such experience as I
may possess. Nothing has occurred to alter or modify that intention.
There are circumstances, into which I do not choose to enter, which
would render it extremely distasteful to me to accept anything--over
and above my pension--from yourself or from any member of your family
or firm."

Here Sir Abel, who had been standing, sagged down,
half-empty-balloon-like, into his chair. Again he eyed Iglesias
sharply, doubtful of the exact purport of his speech. But again
suspicion of covert sarcasm, still more of covert rebuke, being to him
quite inconceivable, he rejoined with a condescension which he could
not but feel was altogether praiseworthy:

"Enough, enough, my good friend. That is sufficient. I will detain you
no longer; but will merely add that I commend your reticence while
appreciating the sentiments which dictate your refusal. These it is
easy to interpret. They shall not be forgotten, since they constitute a
very suitable acknowledgment of the advantages and benefits which have
accrued to you during you long association with my partners and myself."

Later, journeying westward upon the 'bustop, Dominic Iglesias meditated
in a spirit of humorous pity upon the above conversation. He was very
glad he had not lost his temper. Eyes blinded by self-worship, an
inpenetrable hide, these things, too, have their uses in time--very
practical uses, which it would be silly to ignore. Why, then, be angry?
The truly wise man, as Dominic told himself with a somewhat mournful
smile, learns to leave such time-wise fools as Sir Abel Barking to
Almighty God for chastisement, because--if it can be said without
irreverence--the Almighty alone has wit enough to deal with them. And,
for his comfort on lower levels, he reminded himself that though the
house of Barking might show him scant gratitude, and attribute its
financial resurrection to its own inherent virtue, this was not the
opinion held by outsiders. The manager of Pavitt's Bank, and certain
members of Goome, Hills, Murray & Co., had congratulated Iglesias,
personally, upon his admirable conduct of affairs during the crisis,
and assured him of the high respect they had conceived for his
judgment, his probity, and business acumen. In this there was
satisfaction of a silent but deep-seated sort--satisfaction of pride,
since he had accomplished that which he had set forth to accomplish:
satisfaction of honour through unbiassed and unsolicited commendation.
With that satisfaction he bade himself rest thankfully content, while
turning his thoughts to other and more edifying subjects.

And, in this connection, it was inevitable that a former journeying
westward upon a 'bustop should occur to him, with its strange record of
likeness and unlikeness in circumstance and outlook. Then, as now,
somewhat outworn in mind and in health, he had closed a period of
labour and faced new conditions, new habits, unaccustomed freedom and
leisure. But now on matters of vital, because of eternal, importance,
his mind was at rest. Loneliness and on-coming old age had ceased to
disquiet him. The ship of his individual fate no longer drifted
rudderless or risked danger of stranding, but steered steadily,
fearlessly, towards the promise of a secure and lovely harbourage. The
voyage might be long or short. At this moment Dominic supposed himself
indifferent in the matter, since he believed--not presumptuously, but
through the outreaching of a great faith--that the end was certain. And
meditating, just now, upon that gracious conviction, while the
red-painted half-empty omnibus fared onward down Piccadilly, a sense of
the unusual graciousness of things immediate and visible took hold on
him.

For to-day the monstrous mother, London-town, wore a pensive and
delicate aspect. The tender melancholy of early autumn was upon her,
she looking etherealised and even youthful, as does a penitent cleansed
from the soil of past transgressions by fasting and tears. No doubt she
would sin again and befoul herself, for the melting moods of a great
city are transient; yet for the moment she showed very meek and mild.
The atmosphere was clear, with the exquisite clarity which follows
abundant and welcome rain after a spell of heat and drought. The trees,
somewhat sparse in foliage, were distinct with infinite gradations of
blonde, golden, and umber tints, as of burnished metal, against their
black branches and stems. The endless vista of grey and red buildings,
outlined finely yet without harshness, towered up into a thin, sad,
blue sky overspread with long-drawn shoals and islands, low-shored and
sinuous, of pale luminous cloud. Upon the grey pavements the
bright-coloured dress of a woman--mauve, green, or pink--took on a
peculiar value here and there, amid the generality of darkly clad
pedestrians. And in the traffic, too, the white tilt of a van or rather
barbaric reds and yellows of the omnibuses, stood away from the sombre
hues of the mass of vehicles. The air, as Iglesias met it--he occupying
the seat on the right immediately behind that of the driver--was soft,
yet with a perceptible freshness of moisture in it; a cool, wistful
wind seeming to hail from very far, the wings of it laden less with
hopeful promise than with rare unspoken farewells, gentle yet
penetrating regrets; so that Dominic, even while welcoming the
refreshment of it, was moved in spirit with impressions of impending
finality as though it spoke to him of things finished, laid aside, not
wholly without sorrow relinquished and--so far as outward seeming
went--forgot.

Involuntarily his eyes filled with tears. Then he reproached himself.
Of what had he to complain? The will must indeed be weak, the spiritual
vision reprehensively clouded, if these vague voices of nature could so
disturb the serenity of the soul. Thus he reasoned with himself, almost
sternly. But, just then, the flaming rose-scarlet bill on the
knife-board of a passing omnibus attracted his attention, along with
the announcement, in big letters, which it set forth. To-night the
Twentieth Century Theatre opened its winter season with a new piece by
that admirable but all too indolent and intermittent dramatist, Antony
Hammond; and in it Poppy St. John played the leading lady's part.




CHAPTER XXXIV


Opposite St. Mary Abbott's church Mr. Iglesias lighted down from the
'bustop. His eyes were still dazzled by those flaming bills.--Lionel
Gordon was advertising handsomely. The knife-board of every second
omnibus displayed them, now he came to look.--His thought turned in
quickened interest towards the Lady of the Windswept Dust and all that
the said advertisements stood for in her case. He had seen her a few
days ago, after rehearsal, and she had warned him off being present
tonight.

"It's all going like hot cakes, dear man," she had said gaily, "still,
as you love me, don't come. I should be more nervous of you than ninety
dozen critics. I shall want you badly, all the same, don't doubt that;
and I shall play to you, all the while, though you're not there.
But--don't you understand?--if I actually saw you it might come between
me and my part. I shouldn't be sure who I really was, and that would
make me as jumpy as a sick cat. You shall know--I'll wire to you
directly the show's over; but I'd best have my first round quite alone
with the public. And then a first night is always a bit jungly--not
quite fair on the play or the company, or the audience either for that
matter. A play's the same as a ship, if there's any real art in it. It
needs time to find itself. So just wait, like a lamb, till we've all
shaken into place, and I'm quite at home in the saddle."

And in truth Dominic Iglesias had plenty to occupy his time and
attention at this particular juncture, irrespective of Poppy's _debut_
at the Twentieth Century Theatre. For tomorrow would close his
connection with Cedar Lodge, as to-day had closed his connection with
Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking. The mind in hours of fatigue, when
vitality is low and the power of concentration consequently deficient,
has a tendency to work in layers, so to speak, one strain of thought
overlying another. Hence it was that Iglesias' contemplation of those
gaudy advertisements, and of their bearing upon Poppy's fortunes,
failed to oust the premonitions of finality which had come to and
somewhat perturbed him as he looked upon the pensive tearwashed face of
London-penitent, cleansed by the breath of the wistful far-hailing
autumn wind. Involuntarily, and notwithstanding his repudiation of
them, he continued to question those premonitions and the clinging
melancholy of them, asking whether they bore relation merely to the two
not wholly unwelcome partings above indicated; or whether the
foreboding induced by them did not find its source in some sentiment,
some intuition of approaching change, far more intimate and profound
than cessation of employment or alteration of dwelling-place. Then, as
he walked on up Church Street another layer of thought presented
itself. For he could not but call to mind how many hundred times he had
trodden that pavement before close against the close-packed traffic,
the high barrack-wall on the right hand, the row of modest shop-fronts
on the left, on his way home to the little house in Holland Street.
Once more that house was home to him. He would cross its familiar
threshold to-day as master. Yet how differently to of old! How steep
the hill was! How languid and spent he became in ascending it--slowly,
deliberately, instead of with light-footed energy and indifference! And
this made him ask himself, what if these premonitions of finality, of
impending farewells, of compulsory relinquishment, had indeed a very
special and definite significance, being sent to him as heralds of the
approach of a common yet--to each individual being--unique and
altogether tremendous change? What if that haunting curiosity of the
unknown--concerning which he had spoken with Poppy St. John amid the
white magic of the moonlight during the enchanted hour of his and her
friendship--was to be satisfied very soon?

Iglesias drew himself up to his full height, fatigue and bodily
weakness alike forgotten, and stood for a little space at the turn into
Holland Street, hat in hand, facing the delicately chill wind and
looking away into the fine perspective of sky overspread by shoals and
islands of pale luminous cloud. Calmly--yet with the sharp amazement
inevitable when things taken for granted, tacitly and nominally
accepted throughout a lifetime, suddenly advance into the immediate
foreground, becoming actual, tangible, imperative--he asked himself,
was death so very near, then? At the church of the Carmelite Priory
just above--the high slated roofs and slender iron crockets of which
overtopped the parapets of the intervening houses--a bell tolled as the
officiating priest, in giving the Benediction, elevated the sacred
Host. And that note, at once austere and plaintive, striking across the
hoarse murmur and trample of the streets, was very grateful to Dominic
Iglesias. For it assured him of this, at least, that when for him the
supreme hour did indeed strike and he was called upon to go forth
alone--as every soul must go--to meet the impenetrable mystery which
veils the close of the earthly chapter, he would not go forth
unbefriended, but absolved, anointed, fortified, made ready--in so far
as readiness for so stupendous an ordeal is possible--by the rites of
Holy Church.

"_Fiat misericordia tua Domine super nos: quemad-modum speravimus te.
In te Domine speravi: non confundar in aeternum,_" he quoted half aloud.

And then could not forbear to smile, gravely and somewhat sadly,
registering the deep pathos of the fact that the majestic hymn of
praise and thanksgiving, dedicated by the use of Christendom throughout
centuries to the celebration of highest triumph, still ends brokenly
with a childlike sob of shrinking, of entreaty, and very human pain.

Meditating upon which, and upon much implied by it, not only of sorrow
but of consolation for whoso is not afraid to understand, Iglesias
moved onward. But so closely do things absurd and trivial jostle things
august and of profound significance in daily happenings--he was
speedily aroused from meditation and his attention claimed by example
of quite another order of pathos to that suggested by the concluding
verses of the _Te Deum_. Some little way ahead a brown-painted
furniture van was backed against the curb. From the cave-like interior
of it coatless white-aproned men bore a miscellaneous collection of
goods--among others a battered dapple-grey rocking-horse with flowing
mane and tail--across the yard-wide strip of garden, and in at the
front door of a small old-fashioned house. Bass mats were strewn upon
the pavement. Sheets of packing paper pirouetted down the roadway
before the wind. While, standing in the midst of the litter, watching
the process of unloading with perplexed and even agitated interest, was
a whimsical figure--large of girth, short of limb, convex where the
accredited lines of beauty demand, if not concavity, at least a refined
flatness of surface.

The Latin, unlike the Anglo-Saxon, does not consider it necessary as
soon as adolescence is past to extirpate his heart; or, failing
successful performance of that heroic operation, strictly to limit the
activities of it to his amours, legitimate or otherwise. Hence Dominic
Iglesias felt no shame that the sight of his old plaything, or of his
old school-fellow--now unhappily estranged from and suspicious of
him--should provoke in him a great tenderness. Upon the battered
rocking-horse his heart rode away to the dear sheltered happiness of
childhood, while towards his former school-fellow it went forth in
unmixed kindliness. For it appeared to him that for one who had so
lately held converse with approaching death, it would be a very scandal
of light-minded pettiness to nourish resentment against any fellow
creature. In near prospect of the eternal judgment, private and
temporal judgment can surely afford to declare a universal amnesty in
respect of personal slights and injuries. Therefore, after but a
moment's hesitation, he went on, laid his hand upon George Lovegrove's
shoulder, and called him affectionately by name.

"Dominic!" the latter cried, and stood staring. "Well to be sure--you
did surprise me! To think of meeting you just by accident to-day, like
this!"

He grew furiously red, gladness and embarrassment struggling within
him. Conscientiously he strove to be faithful to the menagerie of
ignorances and prejudices which he misnamed his convictions. For here
was the representative of the Accursed Thing--persecutor, enemy of
truth, of patriotism, of marriage, worshipper of senseless idols; but,
alas! how he loved that representative! How he honoured his
intelligence, admired his person, coveted his companionship! Beholding
Iglesias once again, George Lovegrove rejoiced as at the finding of
lost treasure. Hence, perplexed, perspiring, lamentably squinting, yet
with the innocent half-shy ecstasy of a girl looking upon her recovered
lover, he gazed up into Mr. Iglesias' face.

"I give you my word I was never more taken aback in my life," he
protested. "As it happened I was just thinking about old times,
observing that some family is moving into your former house. But I had
no notion of meeting you. Positively I am unable to grasp the fact. I
have not a word to say to you, because I require to say so much. I know
there is a great deal which needs explanation on my part. And then your
calling me by my name, too! I declare it went right through me, as a
voice from the grave might."

"Put aside explanations," Iglesias replied indulgently. "You are not
going to quarrel with me any more--let that suffice."

"No, I cannot quarrel with you any more. I am sure I don't know whether
it is unprincipled or not, but I cannot do it."

Regardless of observation, he pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his
face.

"If it is unprincipled I must just let it go." he said, quite
recklessly. "I cannot help myself. I give you my word, Dominic, I have
held out as long as I could."

This appeal to Iglesias, as against himself, appeared to him abundantly
unaffected and ingenuous.

"I cannot but believe you will find the consequences of renewed
intercourse with me less damaging than you suppose," he answered,
smiling.

"That is what the wife says," the other man stated. "She has veered
round completely in her opinion, has the wife. I do not understand why,
except that Mrs. Porcher and Miss Hart and she seem to have fallen out.
The workings of females' minds are very difficult to follow, even after
years of marriage, you know, Dominic. Opposition to one of their own
sex will make them warmly embrace opinions you supposed were just those
which they most strongly condemned. She has taken a very high tone, for
some time past, about the Cedar Lodge ladies, has the wife. And when I
came in, the evening of her last at-home day, I found her sadly upset
at having heard from one of them that you were about to leave. She
implied that I was to blame; whereas I can truthfully say my conduct
throughout has been largely influenced by the fear of hurting her
feelings." The speaker looked helplessly at Mr. Iglesias. "Of course we
do not expect the same reticence in speech from females we require of
ourselves. Still, such unfounded accusations are rather galling."

"I cannot be otherwise than very grateful to Mrs. Lovegrove for
espousing my cause, you see," Iglesias replied. This confused and
gentle being, struggling with the complexities of friendship, religious
prejudice, and feminine methods and amenities, was wholly moving.
"Circumstances have arisen which have made me decide to give up my
rooms at Cedar Lodge. To-night is the last upon which I shall occupy
them. But I do not wish Mrs. Lovegrove to be under any misapprehension
regarding my hostess and her companion. I have nothing to complain of.
During my long residence they have treated me with courtesy and
consideration. I wish them nothing but good. Still the time has come, I
feel, for leaving Cedar Lodge."

Here the worthy George's imagination indulged in wild flights. Visions
of a hideous and rugged cell--of the sort known exclusively to serial
melodrama--and of a beautiful woman, in voluminous rose-red skirts and
a costly overcoat, presented themselves to him in amazing juxtaposition.

"Of course, I have forfeited all right to question you as to your
plans, Dominic," he said hurriedly and humbly. "I quite realise that. I
believed I was acting on principle in keeping away from you, all the
more because it pained me terribly to do so. I believed I was being
consistent. Now I begin to fear I was only obstinate and cowardly. Your
kindness of manner has completely unmanned me. I see how superior you
are in liberality to myself. And so it cuts me to the quick, more than
ever, to part from you."

"Why should we part?" Iglesias asked.

"But you are going away. The wife told me she heard you were leaving
London altogether; whether to--I hardly like to mention the
supposition--to join some brotherhood or--or, to be married, she did
not know."

Mr. Iglesias shook his head, smiling sweetly and bravely.

"Oh! no, no, my dear fellow," he answered. "Rumour must have been
rather unpardonably busy with my name. I fear I am about equally
ill-fitted for monastic and for married life. The day of splendid
ventures, whether of religion or of love, is over for me; and I shall
die, as I have lived, a bachelor and a layman. Nor shall I cease to be
your neighbour, for I am only returning here"--he pointed to the open
door, in at which coatless white-aproned men carried that miscellaneous
collection of furniture--"to the little old Holland Street house.
Lately I have had a great craving upon me to be at home again--alone,
save for one or two precious friendships; with leisure to read and to
think; and, in as far as my poor mental powers permit, to become a
humble student of the awe-inspiring philosophy--reconciling things
natural and supernatural--of which the Catholic Church is the exponent,
her creeds its textbook, her ceremonies and ritual the divinely
appointed symbols of its secret truths." Iglesias' expression was
exalted, his speech penetrated by enthusiasm. "It would be profitable
and happy," he said, "before the final auditing of accounts, to be a
little better versed in this wonderful and living wisdom."

And George Lovegrove stood watching him, bewildered, agitated, full of
doubt and inquiry.

"Ah! it is all beyond me, quite beyond me," he exclaimed presently.
"Mistaken or not, I see you are in touch with thoughts altogether
outside my experience and comprehension. I supposed Romanism could only
be held by uneducated and superstitious persons. I see I was wrong. I
ask your pardon, Dominic. I see I quite undervalued it." Then his
manner changed, quick perception and consequent distress seizing him.
"Ah! but you are ill. That is the meaning of it all. You are ill. Now I
come to observe you, I see how thin and drawn your face is. How shall I
ever forgive myself for not finding that out sooner! I have differed
from you and blamed you. I have sulked, and thought bitterly of you,
and avoided you. I have even been envious, hearing how successfully you
carried through affairs this anxious time at the bank. I have been a
contemptibly mean-spirited individual. No, I can never forgive myself.
I have found you again, only to lose you. You are in bad health. You
have been suffering, and I never thought to inquire about that. I never
knew it."

But Dominic Iglesias made effort to comfort him, speaking not
uncheerfully, determining even to fight the fatigue and weakness which,
as he could not but own, daily increased on him, if only for the sake
of this faithful and simple adherent.

"Perhaps the sands are running rather low," he said; "but that does not
greatly matter. The conditions are in process of alteration. Now that I
am free of my City work, the strain is practically over. With care and
quiet, the sands that remain in the glass may run very slowly. I have a
peaceful time in prospect, here in my old home. When I left here, eight
years ago, I could not make up my mind to part with any of our family
belongings, so I warehoused all the contents of the house, save those
which I took to furnish my rooms at Cedar Lodge. Now these
half-forgotten possessions see the light once more. This in itself
should constitute a staying of the running sands, a putting back of the
hands of the clock. Then I have two good servants to care for me. I am
fortunate in that. And your friendship is restored to me. I should be
ungrateful if I did not live on for a while to enjoy all this kindly
circumstance. So do not grieve. There are many after-dinner pipes to be
smoked, many talks to be talked yet.--Come into the house, and see it
as you used to know it when we both were young. Surely it is a good
omen that you, my earliest friend, should be my first visitor when I
come home?"




CHAPTER XXXV


De Courcy Smyth was not drunk, but he had been drinking--persistently
nipping, as his custom was in times of mental excitement, in the
fallacious hope of keeping up courage and steadying irritable nerves.
The series of moods usually resultant on such recourse to spirituous
liquors, followed one another with clock-work regularity. He was
alternately hysterically elated, preternaturally moral, offensively
quarrelsome, maudlin to the point of tears. The first _matinee_ of his
long-promised play had prospered but very ill, notwithstanding large
advertisement and free list. The second had prospered even worse.
Mercifully disposed persons, slipping out between the acts, had been
careful not to return. Less amiably disposed ones had remained to
titter or hiss. Failure had been written in capital letters across the
whole performance--and deservedly, in the estimation of every one save
the unhappy author himself. The play had perished in the very act of
birth.

But of this tragic termination to so many extravagant hopes Dominic
Iglesias was still ignorant, as he entered the dismantled sitting-room
at Cedar Lodge that same night a little after half-past ten o'clock. He
had dined in the old house in Holland Street; served by Frederick, the
German-Swiss valet, who, some weeks previously, hearing of his intended
departure, had announced his intention of "bettering himself," had
given Mrs. Porcher warning, and, in moving terms and three languages,
implored employment of Iglesias, declaring that the other gentlemen
resident at Cedar Lodge were "no class," their clothes utterly unworthy
of his powers of brushing and folding.

Iglesias stayed on in Holland Street until late, the charm and
gentleness of old associations, the sight of familiar objects, the
gladness of restored friendship with George Lovegrove working upon him
to thankfulness. He was tranquil in spirit, serene with the calm
twilight serenity of the strong who have learned the secret of
detachment, and, who, while welcoming all glad and gracious
occurrences, have schooled themselves to resignation, and, in the
affairs of this world, do neither greatly fear nor greatly hope. And it
was in this spirit he had made his way back to Cedar Lodge and entered
the square panelled sitting-room. But, the door closed, he paused,
aware of some sinister influence, some unknown yet repulsive presence.
The room was nearly dark, the gas being lowered to a pin-point on
either side the mantelpiece. Dominic moved across to turn it up, and in
so doing stumbled over an unexpected obstacle. De Courcy Smith, who had
been dozing uneasily in the one remaining armchair, sat upright with an
oath.

"What are you at, you swine!" he shouted. Then as the light shone forth
he made an effort to recover himself.

"It's hardly necessary to announce your advent by kicking me, Mr.
Iglesias," he said thickly, and without attempting to rise from his
seat. "Not but that there is an appropriateness in that graceful form
of introduction. Only a kick from the benevolent patron, who professed
himself so charitably disposed towards me, was required to make up the
sum of outrage which has been my portion to-day.--Have you seen the
theatrical items in the evening papers?" With trembling hands he spread
out a newspaper upon his knees. "See the way that dirty reptile, Percy
Gerrard, who succeeded me upon _The Daily Bulletin_, has chopped me and
my play to mincemeat, cut bits of live flesh out of me and fried them
in filth, and washed down my wounds with the vitriol of hypocritical
compassion and good advice? That is the style of recognition a really
first-class work of art, fit to rank with the classics, with Wycherley,
and Congreve, and Sheridan, or Lytton--for there are qualities of all
these very dissimilar masters in my writing--gets from the present-day
press. As I have told you all along, the critics and playwrights hate
me because they fear me. I have never spared them. I have exposed them
and their ignorance, and want of scholarship, in print. They know I
spoke the truth. Their hatred is witness to my veracity. They have been
nursing their venom for years. Now with one consent they pour it forth.
It is a vile plot and conspiracy. They were sworn to swamp me, so they
formed a ring. They did not care what they spent so long as they
succeeded in crushing me. Every one has been bought, miserably,
scandalously bought. This is the only conceivable explanation of the
reception my play has met with. They got at the members of my company.
My actors played better at first, better at rehearsal. Yesterday and
to-day they have played like a row of wooden ninepins, of straw-stuffed
scarecrows, of rot-stricken idiots! They missed their cues, and forgot
their lines, or pretended to do so; and then had the infernal
impertinence to giggle and gag, blast them! I heard them. I could have
screamed. I tried to stop them; and the stage-manager swore at me in
the wings, and the scene-shifters laughed. It was a hideous nightmare.
The audience laughed--the sound of it is in my ears now, and it
tortures me, for it was not natural laughter. It was not
spontaneous--how could it be so? It was simply part of this iniquitous
conspiracy to ruin me. It was hired mockery, bought and paid for, the
mockery of subsidised traitors, liars, imbeciles, the inhuman mockery
of grinning apes!"

He crushed the newspaper together with both hands, flung it across the
room, and broke into hysterical weeping.

"For my play is a masterpiece," he wailed. "It is a work of genius. No
other man living could have written it. Yet it is damned by a brainless
public and vindictive press, while I know and they know--they must
know, the fact is self-evident--that it is great, nothing less than
great."

During this harangue Dominic Iglesias stood immovable, facing the
speaker, but looking down, not at him, rigid in attitude, silent. Any
attempt to stem the torrent of the wretched man's speech would have
been futile. Dominic judged it kindest just to wait, letting passion
tear him till, by force of its own violence, it had worn itself out.
Then, but not till them, it might be helpful to intervene. Still the
exhibition was a very painful one, putting a heavy strain upon the
spectator. For be a fellow creature never so displeasing in nature and
in habit, never so cankered by vanity and self-love, it cannot be
otherwise than hideous to see him upon the rack. And that de Courcy
Smyth was very actually upon the rack--a rack well deserved, may be,
and of his own constructing, but which wrenched his every joint to the
agony of dislocation nevertheless--there could be no manner of doubt.
Coming as conclusion to the long day, to the peaceful evening--the
thought of the Lady of the Windswept Dust, moreover, and her fortunes
so eminently and presently just now in the balance, in his mind--the
whole situation was horrible to Dominic Iglesias.

But Smyth's mood changed, his tears ceasing as incontinently as they
had begun. He ceased to slouch and writhe, passed his hands across his
blood-shot eyes, drew himself up in his chair, began to snarl, even to
swagger.

"I forget myself, and forget you, too, Mr. Iglesias--which is
annoying," he said; "for you are about the last person from whom I
could expect, or should desire to receive, sympathy. Persons of my
world, scholars and idealists, and persons of your world,
money-grubbing materialists, can, in the nature of things, have very
little in common. There is a great gulf fixed between them. I beg your
pardon for having so far forgotten myself as to ignore that fact, and
talked on subjects incomprehensible to you. What follows, however, will
be more in your line, I imagine, and it is this which has made me come
here to-night. You realise that your investment has turned out an
unfortunate one? You have lost, irretrievably lost, your money."

"I was not wholly unprepared for that," Dominic answered. His temper
was beginning to rise. Sodden with drink, maddened by failure, hardly
accountable for his words or actions, still the man's tone was rather
too offensive for endurance. "I had made full provision for such a
contingency. I accept the loss. Pray do not let it trouble you."

"Oh! you accept it, do you? You were prepared for it?" Smyth broke in.
"You can afford to throw way a cool three hundred pounds--the expenses
will amount to that at least in the bulk. How very agreeable for you!
Your late operations in the City must have been surprisingly
profitable. I was not aware, until now, that we had the honour of
numbering a millionaire among us at Cedar Lodge. But let me tell you
this extremely superior tone does not please me, Mr. Iglesias. It
smells of insult. I warn you, you had better be a little careful. Even
a miserable persecuted pauper like myself can make it unpleasant for
those who insult him. I must request you to remember that I am a
gentleman by birth, and that I have the feelings of my class where my
personal honour is concerned. Do you suppose I do not know perfectly
well that the benevolent attitude you have seen fit to assume towards
me has been a blind, from first to last; and that every penny you have
advanced me until now, as well as the three hundred pounds, the loss of
which you so amiably beg me not to let trouble me, is hush-money? Yes,
hush-money, I repeat, the price of my silence regarding your intrigue
with my wife--my wife who calls herself--"

"We will introduce no woman's name into this conversation, if you
please," Iglesias interrupted sternly.

The limit of things pardonable had been passed. His face was white and
keen as a sword. The weight of years and of failing health had
vanished, burned up by fierce disgust and anger, as is mist by the
sun-heat. He was young, arrogant in bearing, careless of consequence or
of danger as some fifteenth-century finely bred fighting man face to
face with his enemy and traducer, who, given honourable opportunity, he
would kill or be killed by, without faintest scruple or remorse. And of
this temper of mind his aspect was so eloquent that de Courcy Smyth,
muddled with liquor though he was, seeing him, was seized with panic.
He scrambled to his feet, flung himself behind the chair, clinging to
the back of it for support.

"Don't look at me like that, you Spanish devil!" he whimpered. "You
paralyse me. You hypnotise me. My brain is splitting. You're drawing
the life out of me. I shall go mad. If you come a step nearer I'll make
a scandal. I'll call for help. Ah! God in heaven, who's that?"

Only the housemaid entering, salver in hand, and leaving the door wide
open behind her. Upon the landing with out, Farge and Worthington, in
comic attitudes, stood at attention.

"A telegram for you, sir. Is the boy to wait?" she inquired, in a
stifled voice. "She could hardly keep a straight face," as she reported
downstairs subsequently, "that ridiculous Farge was so full of his
jokes."

Iglesias tore open the yellow envelope and held the telegraph-form to
the light.

"Glorious luck. Happy as a queen. Come to supper after performance
to-morrow. Love. Poppy."

His face softened.

"No answer," he said, and turned purposing to speak some word of mercy
to wretched de Courcy Smyth. But the latter had slunk out at the open
door, while Mr. Farge, in an ungovernable paroxysm of humour--levelled
at the departing housemaid--effectually covered his retreat by
cake-walking, with very high knee action, the length of the landing,
playing appropriate dance-music, the while, upon an imaginary banjo in
the shape of Worthington's new crook-handled walking stick.

For some time Dominic Iglesias heard shuffling, nerveless footsteps
moving to and fro in the room overhead. Then Smyth threw himself
heavily upon his bed. The wire-wove mattress creaked, and creaked again
twice. Unbroken silence followed, and Iglesias breathed more easily,
hoping the miserable being slept. For him, Iglesias, there was no
sleep. His body was too tired. His mind too vividly and painfully
awake. He lay down, it is true, since he did not care to remain in the
dismantled sitting-room or occupy the chair in which de Courcy Smyth
had sat. But, throughout the night, he stared at the darkness and heard
the hours strike. At sunset the wind had dropped dead. In the small
hours it began to rise, and before dawn to freshen, veering to another
quarter. Softly at first, and then with richer diapason, the cedar tree
greeted its mysterious comrade, singing of far-distant times and
places, and of the permanence of nature as against the fitful
evanescent life of man. That husky singing soothed Dominic Iglesias,
and calmed him, assuring him that in the hands of the Almighty are all
things, small and great, past, present, and to come. There is neither
haste, nor omission, nor accident, nor oversight in the divine plan;
but that plan is large beyond the possibility of human intellect to
grasp or comprehend, therefore humble faith is also highest wisdom.

As the dawn quickened into day Dominic drew aside the curtain and
looked out. Behind the dark branches, where they cleared the housetops
and met the open sky, thrown wide upward to the zenith, was the
rose-scarlet of sunrise, holding, as it seemed to him, at once the
splendour of battle and the peace of crowned achievement and--was it
but a pretty conceit or a truth of happiest import?--the colour of
certain flaring omnibus knifeboard bills and the colour of a certain
woman's name.




CHAPTER XXXVI


The narrow lane, running back at right angles to the great
thoroughfare, was filled with blurred yellowish light and covered in
with gloom, low-hanging and impenetrable. The high, blank buildings on
either side of it looked like the perpendicular walls of a tunnel, the
black roof they apparently supported being as solid and substantial as
themselves. The effect thereby produced was suspect and prison-like, as
of a space walled in and closed from open air and day. Outside the
stage entrance of the Twentieth Century Theatre a small crowd had
collected and formed up in two parallel lines across the pavement to
the curb, against which a smart single brougham and some half a dozen
four-wheelers and hansoms were drawn up. The crowd, which gathered and
broke only to gather again, was composed for the main part of persons
of the better artisan class, respectable, soberly habited, evidently
awaiting the advent of relations employed within the theatre. There was
also a sprinkling of showy young women, attended by undersized youths
flashily dressed. On the fringes of it night-birds, male and female, of
evil aspect, loitered, watchful of possible prey; while two or three
gentlemen, correct, highly-civilised, stood smoking, each with the air
of studied indifference which defies attempted recognition on the part
of friend or foe.

And among these last Dominic Iglesias must be counted; though, in his
case, indifference was not assumed but real. His surroundings were
novel, it is true, and produced on him clear impressions both pictorial
and moral; but those impressions were of his surroundings in and for
themselves, rather than in any doubtfulness of their relation to
himself. For his mind was occupied with problems painful in character
and difficult of solution; and to the said problems, heightening the
emotional strain of them, his surroundings--the sense of feverish life,
of all-encompassing restless humanity; the figures anxious, degraded,
of questionable purpose or merely frivolous, which started into
momentary distinctness; the scraps of conversation, caught in passing,
instinct with suggestion, squalid or passionate; along with the
ceaseless tramp of footsteps, and tumult of the great thoroughfare just
now packed with the turn-out of neighbouring places of
entertainment--supplied a background penetratingly appropriate.

For a good half-hour Mr. Iglesias stood there. At intervals the doors
of the stage entrance swung open, causing a movement of interest and
comment among the crowd. One by one hansoms and four-wheelers,
obtaining fares, rattled away over the stones. Yet the Lady of the
Windswept Dust tarried. It grew late, and Iglesias greatly desired her
coming, greatly desired to speak with her, and speaking to find
approximate solution, at least, of some of the problems which lay so
heavy upon his mind. Meanwhile, the crowd melted and vanished, leaving
him alone in the blurred yellowish light beneath the low-hanging roof
of impenetrable gloom, save for the haunting presence of some few of
those terrible human birds of prey.

He was about to turn away also, not particularly relishing the
remaining company, when, with a rush, Poppy was beside him, in stately
garments of black velvet and glimmering tissue of silver; her head and
shoulders draped with something of daring and magnificence, in her
blue-purple jewelled dragon-embroidered scarf. She caught Iglesias'
right hand in both of hers and held it a moment against her breast. And
during that brief interval he registered the fact that, notwithstanding
her beauty, the force of her personality and richness of her dress, she
did not look out of place in this somewhat cut-throat alley, with the
questionable sights and sounds of midnight London all about her; but
vivid, exultant, true daughter of great cities, fearless manipulator of
the very varied opportunities they offer, past-master, for joy and
sorrow, in the curious arts they teach.

"Get into the brougham, dear man," she said, "and let me talk. There,
put up the window on the traffic side. I have been in the liveliest
worry about you. Had the house turned out of windows to find you--and
gave things in general the deuce of a time.--The brougham's
comfortable, isn't it? Fallowfeild's jobbed it for the winter for
me.--All the same I played like an angel, out of pure desperation,
thinking you might be ill. I made the audience cry big, big tears,
bless 'em. And it wasn't the part--not a bit of it. It was you, just
simply you.--And then I dawdled talking to Antony Hammond about some
lines in the second act I want altered, so as to let myself down easy
before digesting the disappointment of driving back to Bletchworth
Mansions alone. I wanted so very badly to have you see me. Beloved and
most faithless of beings, why the mischief didn't you come?"

And Iglesias sitting beside her watching her joyous face, crowned by
her dark hair, set in the gleaming folds of her jewelled scarf, as
passing lights revealed it clearly, or shifting left it in soft shadow,
divined rather than actually seen, became sadly conscious that the
problems which oppressed him were not only hard of solution but hard of
statement likewise. It seemed heartless to propound them in this, her
hour of success. Yet, unless he was deeply mistaken, the statement of
them must tell for emancipation and relief in the end.

"The play has gone well, and you are happy?" he asked her.

"Gorgeously--I grant you I was a bit nervous as to whether during these
years of--well--love in idleness, I had not lost touch with my art. But
I haven't. I have only matured in mind and in method. I am not
conceited, dear man, truly I am not; but I am neither too lazy nor too
modest to use my brains. What I know I am not afraid to apply. I've
very little theory, but a precious deal of practice--and that's the way
to get on. Don't talk about your ideas--just use them for all you're
worth.--But this is beside the mark. You're trying to head me off. Why
didn't you come?"

"I would gladly have come," Iglesias answered. "My disappointment has
been quite as great as yours."

"Bless your heart!" Poppy murmured under her breath.

"But it was impossible for me to come. I was detained until it was too
late." He paused, uncertain how best to say that which had to be said.

"Oh! fiddle!" Poppy cried, with a lift of her head. "I stand first. You
ought not to have let yourself be detained. After all, it's not every
day someone you know blazes from a farthing dip into a star of the
first magnitude. You might very well have crowded other things aside. I
feel a trifle hurt, dear man, really I do."

"Believe me, no ordinary matter would have prevented my coming,"
Iglesias answered. To his relief the carriage just then turned into the
comparative peace of Langham Place. It became possible to speak softly.
"There was a death in the house last night," he went on, "that of a
person with whom I have been rather closely associated. He died under
circumstances demanding investigations of a distressing character. No
one save myself was qualified, or perhaps willing, to assume the
responsibility of calling in the authorities."

Iglesias glanced at his companion, conscious that while he spoke her
attitude and humour had altered considerably. She was motionless. He
saw her profile, dark against the square light of window-glass. Her
mouth was slightly open, as with intensity of attention.

"Well--well--what then?" she said.

"The man had just suffered a heavy reverse. He had staked all his
hopes, all his future, upon a single venture. It proved a failure. He
could not accept the fact, and believed himself the victim of gross
injustice and of organised conspiracy."

"Do you believe it, too?"

"No," Iglesias answered. "I have an immense pity for him, as who would
not. Still, I am compelled to believe that failure came from within,
rather than from without. He overrated his own powers."

Poppy held up her hand imperiously. "Wait half a minute," she said, in
an oddly harsh voice. Leaning forward she put down the front glass and
called to the coachman:--"Don't go to Bletchworth Mansions. Drive on.
Never mind where, so long as you keep to empty streets. Drive on and
on--do you hear?--till I tell you to stop."

She put the window up again and settled herself back in her place,
dragging the scarf from off her head and baring her throat. She looked
full at Mr. Iglesias, her face showing ghostly white against the dark
upholstery of the carriage. Her eyes were wide with question and with
fear, which was also, in some strange way, hope.

"Now you can speak, dear friend," she said quite steadily. "I shall be
glad to hear the whole of it, though it is an ugly story. The man was
miserable, and he is dead, and the circumstances of his death point
to--what--suicide?"

In reply Iglesias told her how that morning, the servants failing to
get any response to their knocking, the upper part of the house being,
moreover, pervaded by a sickening smell of gas, help had been called
in; and, de Courcy Smyth's door being forced open, he had been found
lying, fully clothed, stark and cold upon his bed, an empty phial of
morphia and an empty glass on the table beside him, both gas-jets
turned full on though not alight.

At the top of Portland Place the coachman took his way northwestward,
first skirting the outer ring of Regent's Park and then making the
gradually ascending slope of the Finchley Road. The detached houses on
either side, standing back in their walled gardens, were mostly blind.
Only here and there, behind drawn curtains, a window glowed, telling of
intimate drama gallant or mournful within. The wide grey pavements were
deserted; the place arrestingly quiet, save for the occasional heavy
tread of a passing policeman on beat, and the rhythmical trot of the
horse. And the Lady of the Windswept Dust was quiet likewise, looking
straight before her, sitting stiffly upright, her hands clasped in her
lap, the shifting lights and shadows playing queerly over her face and
her bare neck, causing her to appear unsubstantial and indefinite as a
figure in a dream. Yet a strange energy possessed her and emanated from
her, so that the atmosphere about her was electric, oppressive to
Iglesias as with a brooding of storm. Her very quietness was agitating,
weighed with meaning which challenged his imagination and even his
powers of reticence and self-control. Opposite Swiss Cottage Station,
where the main road forks, a string of market waggons--slouching,
drowsy car-men, backed by a pale green wall of glistening cabbages,
nodding above their slow-moving teams--passed, with a jingle of
brass-mounted harness and grind of wheels. This roused Poppy, and the
storm broke.

"Dominic," she said breathlessly, "do you at all know that you've just
told me means to me?"

"I have never known positively until now; but it was impossible that I
should not have entertained suspicions."

"Did he--you know who I mean--ever speak of me?"

"I think," Iglesias said, "he came very near doing so, more than once.
But I put a stop to the conversation."

"You frightened him," Poppy rejoined. "I know one could do that. It was
a last resource, a hateful one. Is there anything so difficult to
forgive as being driven to be cruel? One was bound to be cruel in
self-defence, or one would have been stifled, utterly degraded by
self-contempt, bled to death not only in respect of money but of
self-esteem."

She threw up her hands with a gesture at once fierce and despairing.

"Oh! the weak, the weak," she cried, "of how many crimes they are the
authors! Crimes more particularly abominable when the weak one is the
man, and woman--poor brute--is strong."

She settled herself sideways in the corner of the carriage, turning her
face once more full upon her companion.

"Look here," she said, "I don't want to whitewash myself. What I've
done I've done. I don't pretend it's pretty or innocent, or that I
haven't jolly well got to pay the price of it--though I think a good
deal has been paid by now. But it seems to me my real crime was in
marrying him, rather than in leaving him. It was a crime against
love--love, which alone, if you've any real sense of the inherent
decencies of things, makes marriage otherwise than an outrage upon a
woman's pride and her virtue. But, then, one doesn't know all that when
one's barely out of one's teens. And, you see, like a fool I took the
first comer out of bravado, just that people mightn't see how awfully
hard hit I was by his people interfering and preventing my marrying the
poor, dear boy who gave me this"--Poppy spread out the end of her
dragon scarf--"I've told you about him.--Stage people are absurdly
simple in some ways, you know. They live in such a world of pretences
and fictions that they lose their sense of fact, or rather they never
develop it. They're awfully easily taken in. Words go a tremendous long
way with them. And de Courcy could talk. He was appallingly fluent,
specially on the subject of himself. He made be believe he was rather
wonderful, and I wanted to believe he was wonderful. I wanted to
believe he was all the geniuses in creation rolled into one. All the
more I wanted to believe it because I wasn't one scrap in love with
him."

Poppy beat with one hand almost roughly on Mr. Iglesias' arm.

"Do you see, do you see, do you see?" she repeated. "Do you understand?
I want you so badly to understand."

And he answered her gently and gravely: "Do not be afraid, dear friend.
I see with your eyes. I feel with your heart. As far as one human being
can enter into and share the experience of another, I do understand."

"But the nuisance is," she went on, the corners of her mouth taking a
wicked twist, "you know so very much more about a man after you've
married him. Other people are inclined to forget that sometimes.
Consuming egoism is hideous at close quarters. It comes out in a
thousand ways, in mean little tyrannies and absurd jealousies which
would never have entered into one's head.--I don't want to go into all
that. It's better forgot.--Only they piled up and up, till the shadow
of them shut out the sunshine; and I got so bored, so madly and
intolerably bored. You see, I had tried to believe in him at first. In
self-defence I had done so, and stood by him, and done my very best to
put him through. But when I began to understand that there was nothing
to stand by or put through, that his talent was not talent at all, but
merely a vain man's longing to possess talent--well, the situation
became pretty bad. I tried to be civil. I tried to hold my tongue,
indeed I did. But to be bullied and grumbled at, and expected to work,
so as to give him leisure and means for the development of gifts which
didn't exist--it wasn't good enough."

Poppy put up her hands and pushed the masses of her hair from her
forehead. And all the while the shifting lights and shadows played over
her white face and bare neck, and the horse trotted on, past closed
shops and curtained windows, farther out of London and into the night.

"He didn't do anything which the world calls vicious," she continued
presently. A great dreariness had come into the tones of her voice. "He
was faithful to me, as the world counts faithfulness, simply because he
didn't care for women--except for philandering with sentimental sillies
who thought him an unappreciated eighth wonder of the world, and pawed
over and pitied him. La! La! The mere thought of it makes me sick! But
he was too much in love with himself to be capable of even an animal
passion for anybody else. And he made a great point of his virtue. I
heard a lot about it--oh! a lot!"

For a minute or two Poppy sat silent. Then she turned to Mr. Iglesias,
smiling, as those smile who refuse submission to some cruel pain.

"I wasn't born bad, dear man," she said, "and I held out longer than
most women in my profession would, where morals are easy and it's
lightly come and lightly go in respect of lovers and love. But one fine
day I packed up my traps and cleared out. He'd been whining for years,
and some little thing he said or did--I really forget exactly
what--raised Cain in me, and I thought I'd jolly well give him
something to whine about. I knew perfectly well he wouldn't divorce me.
He wanted me too much, at the end of a string, to torment, and to get
money from when times were bad. Not that I cared for a divorce. I
consider it the clumsiest invention out for setting wrongs right. I
have too great a respect for marriage, which ought, if it means
anything, to mean motherhood and children, and a clean, wholesome start
in life for the second generation. When a woman breaks away and crosses
the lines, she only makes bad worse, in my opinion, by the hypocritical
respectability of a marriage while her husband is still alive. Let's be
honest sinners any way, if sin we must."

Again she paused, looking backward in thought, seeing and hearing
things which, for the honour of others, it was kindest not to repeat.
The carriage moved slowly, the horse slackening its pace in climbing
the last steep piece of hill which leads to the pond on Hampstead Heath.

"And now it's over," Poppy said, letting her hands drop in her lap.
"Done with. The poor wretched thing's dead--has killed himself. That is
a fitting conclusion. He was always his own worst enemy.--Well, as far
as I am concerned, let him rest in peace."

"Amen," Iglesias responded, "so let him rest. 'Shall not the judge of
all the world do right,' counting his merits as well as his demerits,
making all just excuses for his lapses and wrong-doings; knowing, as we
can never know, exactly how far he was and was not accountable for his
own and for others' sins. And now, dear friend, as you have said, this
long misery is over and done with. Whatever remains of practical
business you can leave safely to me. His memory shall be shielded as
far as foresight and sympathy can shield it, and your name need not
appear."

The Lady of the Windswept Dust took his hand and held it.

"I don't know," she said brokenly, "why all this should all come upon
you."

"For a very simple reason," he answered. "What did you tell me
yourself? You stand first. And that is true."

But it may be remarked in passing that there are limits to the passive
obedience of even the best-trained of men-servants. Those of Poppy's
coachman had been reached. At the top of the hill he drew up,
vigorously determined to drive no farther into the wilderness, without
renewed and very distinct information as to why and where he went,
perceiving which Dominic Iglesias opened the carriage door and stepped
out.

"The night is fine and dry," he said. "Let us walk a little, and then
let us drive home. You have your work to-morrow--or, rather,
to-day--and you must have a reasonable amount of rest first. The stream
of your life has been arrested, diverted from its natural channel; but
it still runs strong and clear yet. You have genius, real, not
imagined, so you must husband your energies.--Come and walk. Let the
air soothe and calm you; and then, leaving all the past in Almighty
God's safe keeping, go home and rest."

Here the high-road stretches along the ridge of the hill, a giant
causeway, the broken land of the open heath falling away sharply to
left and right. It was windless. The sky was covered, and the
atmosphere, though not foggy at this height, was thick as with smoke;
so that the road, with its long avenue of sparse-set lamps--dwindling
in the extreme distance to faintest sparks--was as a pale bridge thrown
across the void of black unsounded space. All, save the road itself,
the lamps, and seats, and broken fringe of grass edging the raised
footpath of it, was formless and vague, peopled by shapes, dark against
darkness, such as the eye itself fearfully produces in straining to
penetrate unyielding obscurity. The effect was one of intense
isolation, of divorce from humanity and the works and ways of it, so
present and overpowering it might well seem that, reaching the far end
of that pale bridge, the wayfarer would part company with the things of
time altogether and pass into another state of being.

And this so worked upon Poppy that, some fifty yards along the
causeway, her black and silver skirts gathered ankle-high about her,
she stopped, drawing very close to Iglesias and laying her hand upon
his arm.

"Listen to the silence," she said. "Look at the emptiness. I don't
quite like it, even with you. It's too suggestive of death, death with
no sure hope of life beyond it.--I am quite good now, quite sane and
reasonable. I have put aside all bitterness. I'll never say another
hard word of him, or, in as far as I can, think a hard thought."

Then turning, suddenly she gave a cry, perceiving that east and south
all London lay below them--formless, too, indefinite, enormous, a City
of the Plains, unseen in detail but indicated through the gloom as a
vast semi-circle of smouldering fire.

Poppy stretched out both arms, letting her splendid draperies trail in
the dust.

"Ah! how I love it, how I love it," she cried. "Let us go back, dear
man. For it belongs to me and I belong to it. In the name of my art I
must try conclusions with it. I must play to it, and conquer it, and
enchant, and possess it, since I am free at last--I am free."




CHAPTER XXXVII


Serena's manner, though gracious, was lofty, almost regal. She had,
indeed, lately looked upon crowned heads, and the glory of them seemed,
somehow, to have rubbed off on her.

"Yes," she said, "I came up for the Queen's funeral. Lady Samuelson
felt it was a thing I ought not to miss, and I agreed with her. It was
inconvenient to leave home, because I had a number of engagements.
Still, I felt I might regret it afterwards if I did not see it. And
then, of course, Lady Samuelson was so kind the year before last, when
I had so very much to worry me, that I feel I owe it to her to stay
with her whenever she asks me to do so. Where did you see the
procession from, Rhoda?"

"Well, on the whole I thought it better to remain at home," Mrs.
Lovegrove confessed, "though Georgie was most pressing I should go with
him. You are slender, Serena, and that makes a great deal of difference
in going about. But I find crowds and excitement very trying. And then
it must all have been very affecting and solemn. I doubted if I could
witness it without giving way too much and troubling others. It is
mortifying to feel you are spoiling the pleasure of those that are with
you, and I wanted poor Georgie to enjoy himself as much as he could."

"In that case it was certainly better to remain at home," Serena
rejoined. "I have my feelings very much under control. Even when I was
quite a child that used to be said of me. It used to irritate Susan."

"Susan has a more impetuous nature," Mrs. Lovegrove observed. The day
of domestic eclipse was happily passed. She had come into her own
again; consequently she was disposed to be slightly argumentative,
sitting here upon her own Chesterfield sofa in her own drawing-room,
even with Serena.

"I wonder if she has--I mean I wonder whether Susan really has a more
impetuous nature," the latter rejoined, "or whether she is only more
wanting in self-control. I often think people get credit for strong
feelings, when it is only that they make no effort to control
themselves. And that is unfair. I never have been able to see why it
was considered so creditable to have strong feelings. They usually give
a lot of inconvenience to other people. I am not sure that it is not
self-indulgent to have strong feelings.--We had excellent places just
opposite the Marble Arch. Of course Lady Samuelson has a great deal of
interest; and we saw everything. In some ways I think, as a sight, the
procession was overrated. But I am glad I went. You can never tell
whether anything is worth seeing or not until you have seen it; and so
I certainly might have regretted if I had not gone. Still, I think you
were quite wise in not going, Rhoda, if you were likely to be upset;
and then, as you say, it must be unpleasant getting about if one is
very stout. Of course, I cannot really enter into that. I take after
mamma's family. They are always slender. But the Lovegroves often grow
stout. George, of course, has, and I should not be surprised if Susan
did when she is older. But then Susan and I are entirely different in
almost everything."

"I suppose you have heard of our dear vicar being appointed to the new
bishopric of Slowby, Serena," Mrs. Lovegrove remarked. The amplitude,
or non-amplitude, of the family figure was beginning to get upon her
nerves.

"Oh! dear, yes, of course I have," Serena answered with raised eyebrows
and a condescending expression of countenance. "Not that it will make
very much difference to me, I suppose. I am so little at home now. But
naturally people, hearing we knew the Nevingtons, came to us for
information about them. I don't think anybody had ever heard of Dr.
Nevington at Slowby, and so they were very glad to learn anything we
could tell them. Of course it is a very great rise for Dr. Nevington,
though he will only be a suffragan bishop. Still, he must be very much
flattered, after merely having a parish of this kind. Susan is very
pleased at the appointment. She wrote to Dr. Nevington immediately and
has had a number of letters from him. I was quite willing she should
write, but she told him how popular his appointment was in
Midlandshire. And I thought that was going rather far, because Susan
has no real means of knowing whether it is popular or not. She could
only know that she thought she liked it herself, and had praised him
among her friends. And I wonder whether she is right--I mean I wonder
whether she really will like it. Of course Susan has been very
prominent and has had everything her own way with most of the
clergymen's wives in Slowby. I think that has been rather bad for Susan
and given her an undue idea of her own importance. Now naturally Mrs.
Nevington will be the head of everything and the clergymen's wives will
go for advice to her. I do not see how Susan can help disliking that.
And then Mrs. Nevington is said to be a very good public speaker. I am
perfectly certain Susan will dislike that. For I always observe that
people who speak a great deal themselves, like Susan, never get on well
with other good speakers."--She moved a little, throwing back the
fronts of her black beaded jacket--her complimentary mourning was
scrupulously correct--and adjusting the black silk tie at her throat.
"Of course I may be mistaken," she added, "but if you ask me, Rhoda, I
fancy you will find that Susan and Mrs. Nevington will not remain
friends for very long."

"I am distressed to hear you express such an opinion, Serena," Mrs.
Lovegrove returned. The tone of mingled patronage and possession in
which her guest spoke of her own two particular sacred totems, vicar
and vicaress, incensed her highly. She wished she had not introduced
the subject of the Slowby bishopric.--"When the object in view is a
truly good one," she added, with some severity, "I should suppose all
right-meaning people would strive to sink petty rivalries and
cooperate. I should quite believe it would prove so in Susan's case."

"Of course she would not give Mrs. Nevington's speaking well as her
reason, if they did not remain on friendly terms," Serena returned
negligently. "But then people so very seldom give their real reasons
for what they do, Rhoda. Surely you must have observed that. I think
they are generally very willing to deceive themselves a good deal."

"I am afraid it is so with too many, Serena, and with some who would be
the last to own it when applied to themselves."--Then the wife
determined by a piece of daring strategy to carry the war into the
enemy's country.--"And that reminds me," she said. "I suppose you have
heard that Mr. Iglesias has left Trimmer's Green?"

"I do not the least know what right you have to suppose anything of the
kind, Rhoda," the lady addressed replied with a haste and asperity far
from regal. "You must have very odd ideas of the people I meet, either
at Lady Samuelson's or at Slowby, if you imagine I am likely to hear
anything about Mr. Iglesias from them. If I had not met him here, of
course, I should never have heard of him at all; and if I had never
heard of him I should have been spared a great deal. Still, after all
that has occurred, I can quiet see that Mr. Iglesias might find it
better to leave Trimmer's Green."

"Miss Eliza Hart, if you please, ma'am," this from the
house-parlourmaid.

In accordance with established precedent, Serena should have risen from
the place of honour, upon the sofa, making room for the newcomer. But
she defied precedent. Acknowledging the said newcomer with the stiffest
of bows, she sat tight. Her hostess, however, proved equal to the
occasion.

"Dear me, Miss Hart," she began, "I am sure you are quite the stranger.
Take that chair, will you not? And how is Mrs. Porcher? The numbers, I
trust, filling up again at Cedar Lodge? Mr. Lovegrove and myself did
truly sympathise in Mrs. Porcher's trouble in the autumn. Such a
terrible occurrence to have in your house! Of course very damaging, for
a time, to all prospects. And I shall always believe it was the great
exertions he made then that broke down poor Mr. Iglesias' health.--Yes,
indeed, Miss Hart, I regret to say he does remain very ailing. Mr.
Lovegrove sees him almost daily. He has run round to Holland Street
now, has Georgie; but I expect him back any minute.--We were just
speaking of Mr. Iglesias--were we not, Serena?--and I was about to tell
Miss Lovegrove what a sweet pretty house he has. You have seen it often
no doubt, Miss Hart."

But here Serena arose, with much dignity, and retired in the direction
of the window.

"Pray do not think about me, Rhoda," she said over her shoulder, "or
let me interrupt your and your friend's conversation. I am going to see
if the carriage is here. Lady Samuelson said she might be able to send
it for me. She could not be sure, but she might. And I told her I would
be on the watch, as she objects to the horses being kept standing in
this weather. But pray do not think about me. Until it comes I can
quite well amuse myself."

Holding aside the lace curtain she looked out. Upon the rawly green
grass remnants of discoloured snow lay in unsightly patches, while the
bare branches of the plane-trees and balsam-poplars shuddered in the
harsh blast. The prospect was far from alluring, and Serena surveyed it
with a wrathful eye.

"Really, Rhoda's behaviour to me is most extraordinary," she said to
herself. "I had to mark my displeasure. For poor George's sake she
ought not to be allowed to go too far. She has grown so very
self-assertive. Last year her manner was much better. I suppose she and
George have made it up again. People who are not really ladies, like
Rhoda, are always so very much nicer when they are depressed. I wonder
what has happened to make George make it up with her!"

And then she fell very furiously to listening.

"We did talk it over, did Peachie Porcher and myself," the great Eliza
was saying, "for I do not deny, at the time of our trouble, a certain
gentleman came out very well. He may have had his reasons, but I will
not go into that, Mrs. Lovegrove. I am all for giving everybody his
due. But Peachie felt when he left it would be better the connection
should cease as far as visiting went. 'Should Mr. Iglesias call here,
dear Liz,' she said to me, 'I should not refuse to see him. But, after
what has passed and situated as I am, I cannot be too careful. And
calling on a bachelor living privately, with whom your name has been at
all associated, must invite comment. Throughout all,' she said, 'my
conscience tells me I have done my duty, and in that I must find my
reward.' Very affecting, was it not?"

"Yes," the other lady admitted, candour and natural goodness of heart
getting the better alike of resentment and diplomacy. "I always have
maintained there were many sterling qualities in Mrs. Porcher."

"So there are, the sweet pet!" Eliza responded warmly. "And I sometimes
question, Mrs. Lovegrove, whether a certain gentleman, now that he has
cut himself adrift from her, may not be beginning to find that out and
wish he had been less stand-offish and stony. Not that it would be any
use now. For, if he did not appreciate Peachie Porcher, there are other
and younger gentlemen, not a thousand miles from here, who do. I am not
at liberty to speak more plainly at present, as the poor young fellow
is very shy about his secret. A long attachment, and some might think
it rather derogatory to Peachie's position to entertain it. But straws
tell which way the wind blows; and a little bird seems to twitter to
me, Mrs. Lovegrove, that if Charlie Farge did come to the point--why--"

Miss Hart shook her leonine mane and laid her finger on her lip in an
arch and playful manner. But before her hostess could rally
sufficiently from the stupor into which this announcement plunged her
to make suitable rejoinder, a fine booming clerical voice and large
clerical presence invaded the room.

"How d'ye do, Mrs. Lovegrove? I come unannounced but not unsanctioned.
I met with your good husband in the street just now, and he encouraged
me to look in on you. Good-day to you, Miss Hart. All is well, I trust,
with our excellent friend Mrs. Porcher.--Ah! and here is Miss Serena
Lovegrove.--An unexpected piece of good fortune."

Promptly Serena had emerged from her self-imposed exile; and it was
with an air of assured proprietorship that she greeted the clergyman.

"Mrs. Nevington heard from your kind sister only this morning," he
continued. "Full of active helpfulness as usual, Mrs. Lovegrove.--She
proposes that we should quarter ourselves upon you and her for a few
days, Miss Serena, while we are seeking a temporary residence. She
kindly gives us the names of several houses which she considers worth
inspection."

Here by an adroit flank movement, rapidly executed, Serena managed to
possess herself once again of the seat of honour upon the sofa, thereby
interposing a thin but impenetrable barrier between her hostess and the
latter's own particular fetish, the bishop-designate.

"You have enough room? I do not crowd you, Rhoda?" she remarked
parenthetically. Then turning sideways, so as to present an expanse of
neatly clad back and shoulder to her outraged relative, she
continued:--"I wonder which, Dr. Nevington--I mean I wonder which
houses Susan has recommended. Of course there is the Priory. But nobody
has lived in it for ages and ages. It is in a very low neighbourhood,
close to the canal and brickfields on the Tullingworth Road. I should
think it was dreadfully damp and unwholesome. And there is old Mrs.
Waghorn's in Abney Park. That is well situated and the grounds are
rather nice. But the reception-rooms are poor, I always think. Susan
was fond of Mrs. Waghorn. I cannot say I ever cared for her myself; but
there is a tower to it, of course."

"Ah! we hardly need towers yet, Miss Lovegrove. A 'suffering
bishop'--you recall the well-worn joke?--such as myself, must not
aspire to anything approaching castles or palaces, but be content with
a very modest place of residence."

Here his unhappy hostess, sitting quite perilously near the edge of the
sofa, craned round the interposing barrier.

"But that is only a matter of time, Dr. Nevington," she said, "surely.
There is but one voice all round the Green, and through the parish
generally, that this is but the first step for you; and that it will
lead on--though I am far from wishing to hasten the death of the
present archbishop--to the primacy."

"Hardly that, hardly that," he rejoined with becoming modesty. Yet the
speech was not unpalatable to him. "Out of the mouth of babes," he said
to himself, leaning back in his chair, and eyeing--in imagination--the
chaste outline of an episcopal apron and well-cut black gaiter, while
visions of Lambeth and Canterbury floated enticingly before
him.--"Hardly that. This is little more than an embryo bishopric.
Still, though it is a wrench to leave my dear old congregation, here in
this wonderful London of ours, I cannot refuse the call to a wider
sphere of usefulness. My views as a churchman are well known. I have
never, even though it might have been professionally advantageous to me
to do so, attempted any concealment."

"No, truly," Rhoda put in, still balancing and craning. "Everyone, I am
sure, must bear witness you have always been most nobly outspoken."

"I trust so," he returned. "I have never disguised the fact that I take
my stand upon the Reformation Settlement. Therefore I cannot but think
it a most hopeful sign of the times that I should receive this call to
the episcopate.--Ah, here is Lovegrove. You find us deep in matters
ecclesiastical. I only hope I am not taxing your ladies' patience too
heavily by talking on such serious subjects.--In Slowby itself that
grand old stalwart, the late Dr. Colthurst--a positively Cromwellian
figure--has left a sound Protestant tradition. But I hear--your good
sister confirms the rumour, Miss Serena--that there is a strong
ritualistic party at Tullingworth. I shall deal very roundly with
persons of that persuasion. My conviction is that we must suit our
teaching to the progressive spirit of this modern world of ours.
Personally I am willing, if necessary, to sacrifice very much so-called
dogma to conciliate our worthy Nonconformist brethren; while I shall
lose no opportunity of cutting at the roots of those Romanising
tendencies which are so lamentably and insidiously active in the very
heart of our dear old National Church."

While the great drum-like voice was thus rolling and booming, George
Lovegrove had shaken hands with Serena. But there was none of the
accustomed respectful enthusiasm in his greeting. He wore a preoccupied
and dejected air. For once he looked upon that pearl of spinsterhood
with a lack-lustre and indifferent eye.

"I wonder what can have happened to George," the lady in question said
to herself, in high displeasure. "I think his manner is really very
odd--nearly as odd as Rhoda's. I wish I had not come. But then if I had
not come I should have had no opportunity of showing Rhoda what
intimate terms Susan and I are upon with the Nevingtons. And I think it
is right she should know.--Oh! that detestable Miss Hart is going. What
a dreadfully vulgar purple blouse she has on! And her hair is so
unpleasant. It always looks damp and shows the marks of the comb. I
wonder why hair of that particular colour always does look damp." Here
she bowed stiffly without rising.--"I shall simply ignore George, and
not speak to him. I think that will be sufficiently marked. But I shall
stay as long as Dr. Nevington does--I don't for one moment believe
Miranda Samuelson really intended to send the carriage--so I will just
wait and go when he goes. I think I owe it to myself to show George and
Rhoda that they cannot drive me away against my will, however much they
may wish to do so."

Having come to which amiable decision Serena turned her mind and
conversation to questions of house-hunting in Slowby. The subject,
however, began to pall, before long, upon her companion. Dr. Nevington
changed his position more than once. His replies became vague and
perfunctory, while his attention evidently strayed to the conversation
taking place at the other end of the sofa.

"I fear you did not find Mr. Iglesias very bright then to-day?" the
wife was inquiring in her kindliest tones.

George Lovegrove shook his head sadly. "No, my dear, I am sorry to say
not. I have been rather broken up. I will tell you all later."

The clergyman had risen.

"Iglesias?--ah yes," he said. "I remember meeting a person of that name
here once, eh, Lovegrove? One of our parochial oversights,
unfortunately. He proved to be a dweller. His appearance pleased me and
I proposed to call on him; and then in the press of my many duties the
matter was forgotten."

Serena had risen likewise. A spot of colour burned on either of her
cheeks. Her eyes snapped. She carried her small head high. Her presence
asserted itself quite forcibly. Her skirts rustled. At that moment she
was young and very passably pretty--an elegant spirited Serena of
eighteen, rather than a faded and, alas! spiteful Serena of close upon
fifty.

"Oh! really, I think it was just as well you did not call, Dr.
Nevington," she cried. "I do not think it would have been in the least
suitable. Of course I may be wrong, but I do not think you would have
found anything to like in Mr. Iglesias. There was so much that was
never really explained about him.--You know you acknowledged that
yourself at one time, Rhoda. But now you and George seem to have gone
round again completely.--One cannot help knowing he associated with
such very odd people; and then the way in which he turned Roman
Catholic, all of a sudden, really was disgraceful."

Dr. Nevington's cold, watchful glance steadied on to the speaker, then
travelled to the two other members of the little company in sharp
inquiry. George Lovegrove's innocent countenance bore an expression of
agonised entreaty, of yearning, of apology, yet of defiance. The
corners of Rhoda's mouth drooped, her large soft cheeks shook; yet she
stood firm, her sorrow tempered, and her whole warm-hearted person
rendered stubborn, by virtuous indignation.

"You forget yourself greatly, Serena," she said, "and when you have
time to think it over will repent having passed such cruel remarks.
They are liable to create a very wrong impression, and cannot fail to
cause severe pain to others."

For an appreciable space the clergyman hesitated. But Slowby and the
bishopric were ahead of him; Trimmer's Green and all its quaint
unimportant little inhabitants behind. She was tedious, no doubt; but
her sister promised to be very useful, so he threw in his lot with
Serena.

"Ah, well, ah, well, for I my part I admire zeal, I must confess, Mrs.
Lovegrove," he said. "No doubt these terrible lapses will occur.
Superstition and bigotry will claim their victims even in our
enlightened century, and this free England of ours. I would not judge
the case of this poor fellow, Iglesias, too harshly. Race influences
are strong; and we of the Anglo-Saxon stock, with our enormous
advantages of brain, and grit, and hard-headed manliness of character,
can afford--deeply though we deplore their weakness and errors--to be
lenient toward the less favoured foreigner. Our mission is to educate
him.--And this I think you should not have forgotten, Lovegrove. You
should have acted upon it. You should have brought your unfortunate
friend to me. I should have been quite willing to give him half an
hour, or even longer. A few facts, a little plain speaking, might have
saved him from more than I quite care to contemplate, both here and
hereafter.--However, good-bye to you, Mrs. Lovegrove. You are starting,
too, Miss Serena? Assure your good, kind sister, when you write, how
gladly Mrs. Nevington and I shall avail ourselves of her proffered
hospitality."

"Don't fret, don't take it too much to heart, Georgie dear," the wife
said soothingly later. "The vicar did seem very stern, but that was
owing to Serena. I am afraid she's a terrible mischief-maker, is
Serena. She turns things inside out so in saying them, that you do not
recognise your own words again. All this afternoon she was most trying.
If Dr. Nevington heard the real story, he would never blame you. You
must not fret."

"I am not fretting about Dr. Nevington," he answered, "but about
Dominic. I am afraid we shall not have him with us very much longer,
Rhoda."

"Oh! dear, oh! dear, you don't mean it? Never!" she cried in accents of
genuine distress. "Did you see him, Georgie?"

"No, Miss St. John was there."

The wife's large cheeks shook again.

"You know," she said, "I am never very partial to hearing anything
about that Miss St. John. Actresses are all very well in the theatre, I
daresay, but they are out of place in private houses. And from what I
hear, though there may be nothing really wrong with many of them, they
are all sadly free in their manners. I should be very hurt if you got
into the habit of frequenting their society much, Georgie.--But there,
I'm sure I cannot tell what is coming to all the women nowadays! You
don't seem as if you could be safe with any one of them. To think of a
middle-aged person like Mrs. Porcher, for instance, taking up with that
little snip of a Farge, and she old enough to be his mother!"

The wife bustled about the room straightening the chairs, patting
cushions into place, folding up the handkerchief which, in the
interests of human conversation, had been thrown over the cage of the
all-too-articulate parrot.

"I feel terribly stirred up somehow," she said, "what with the vicar,
and Serena, and all the talk about Roman Catholics and Protestants, and
Mrs. Porcher's engagement, too, and then this bad news of Mr.
Iglesias--not but that I am sure enough we shall meet him in heaven
some day, if we can ever contrive to get there ourselves in all this
chatter and worry--"

She laid the handkerchief away in the drawer of the work-table.

"Such an afternoon," she declared, "what with one thing and another! I
always do say there's nothing for making unpleasantnesses like religion
and marriages.--But, thank God, through all of it you are spared to me,
Georgie."




CHAPTER XXXVIII


Outside, the slanting spring sunshine visited the sheltered strip of
garden in clear lights and transparent shadows. The small grass-plat
surrounding the rockery was brightly green. In the stone basin the
surface of the water trembled, glistening in broken curves of silver
white. Along the narrow border, beneath the soot-stained eastern wall,
yellow and mauve crocuses and yellow aconites opened wide, greeting the
gentle warmth. Trees in the neighbouring gardens were thick with bud.
Busily the sparrows and starlings came and went.

Within, the house--though not uncheerful, thanks to a scrupulous
cleanliness, warm colourings, and the peculiar mellowness which comes
to rooms and furnishings that, through prolonged association, have
grown in a great mutual friendliness of aspect--was very still, with
the strange, almost eerie, stillness which seems to listen and to
wait.--A singular stillness, from which the rough utilitarian
activities of ordinary life are banished, the rude noise of them
suspended, while spiritual presences, rare apprehensions, exquisite
memories and hopes, mysterious invitations of mingled alarm and
ecstasy, come forth, taking on form and voice, passing lightly to and
fro--an enchantment, yet in a manner fearful from the subtlety of their
being and piercing intimacy of their speech. Personality, that supreme
moral and emotional factor in human life, must of necessity create an
atmosphere about it, permeated with its individual tastes and mental
attributes, distinct and powerful in proportion to its individual
distinction and its strength. And, without being overfanciful, it may
be confidently asserted that, for some weeks now, ever since indeed the
specialists--summoned in consultation at the good Lovegroves' and the
Lady of the Windswept Dust's urgent request--had pronounced the cardiac
affection, from which Dominic Iglesias suffered, likely to terminate
fatally in the near future, this living stillness, this alert
tranquillity, had been more or less sensible to all those who entered
the house, offering an arresting contrast to the multitudinous rush and
clamour of London without. But to-day the impression was no longer an
intermittent and fugitive one, as heretofore. It was constant and
complete, those spiritual visitants being, as it would seem, in full
possession; so that the hours appeared to move reluctantly, and as
though enjoining watchfulness, a carefulness and economy even in
prevailing repose, lest any remaining moment and the message of it
should be overlooked and lost.

It was characteristic of Iglesias that learning, in as far as the
consultant doctors could diagnose it, the exact conditions of his
physical state, he should refuse all experiment, however humane in
intention or plausible in theory. For he had no sympathy with the
modern greediness and worship of physical life, which is willing to
sacrifice the decencies and dignities of it to its possible
prolongation. Courteously but plainly he bade his advisers depart. The
body, though an excellent servant, is a contemptible master; and
Iglesias proposed that, while his soul continued to inhabit it, it
should, as always before, be kept very much in its place. It must
remain unobtrusive, obedient, not daring to usurp, in its present hour
of failure and impediment, an interest and consideration to which, in
its full usefulness and vigour, it had not presumed to aspire.
Therefore Dominic Iglesias held calmly on his way, seeing the circle of
his occupations, pleasures, and activities dwindle and decrease, yet
maintaining not only his serenity of mind, but his accustomed
self-respecting outward refinement of bearing and habit. To meet death
with a gracious stoicism, well-dressed and standing upright, is,
rightly considered, a very fine art, reflecting much credit upon the
successful professor of it.

And it was thus that, on the day in question, Mr. Iglesias sat waiting,
in the quaint irregularly shaped drawing-room of the old house in
Holland Street, himself the centre of that peopled stillness, that
alert tranquillity, which so strangely and sensibly filled it. Looking
out of the low window, he could see the shadow of the houses shrink and
the light broaden in the little garden below, as the sun travelled
westward. Looking into the room itself, the many familiar objects and
rich sober colours of it, quickened by a flickering of fire-light, were
pleasant to his sense. The images which passed before him, whether
actually visible or not he hardly knew, appeared beautiful. Words and
phrases which occurred to him were beautiful likewise. But all were
seen and heard remotely, as through some softly dazzling medium which,
while heightening the charm of them, produced a delicate confusion
leaving him uncertain whether he really slept or woke. More than once,
not without effort, he roused himself; but only to slip back again into
the same state of fair yet gently distracted vision.

At last the sound of opening casements in the dining-room underneath
and of a voice, touched with laughter, reached him.

"There, you absurdities--skip, scuttle, take exercise, catch birds,
improve your figures!" Poppy cried, clapping her hands encouragingly as
she stood at the head of the flight of iron steps down which, with her
foot, she shot the toy spaniels unceremoniously into the sunny garden
below.

The little creatures, welcoming their freedom, forgetful for once of
their languid overbred airs, scampered away yapping and skirmishing in
the merriest fashion about the grass-plat and flower-beds. The window
closed again and there followed a sound of voices, interjectional on
Poppy's part, low and continuous on that of Mrs. Peters, the
house-keeper. Then a pause, so prolonged that Iglesias, who had rallied
all his energy and prepared to rise and to go forward to meet his
guest, sank away once more into half-consciousness which neither
actually sleeps or wakes. When he came fully to himself Poppy was
sitting on the low window-seat close beside him. Her back was to the
light and his sight was somewhat clouded, so that at first he failed to
see her clearly; but he knew that her mood had changed and her laughter
departed, through the sympathy of her touch, she holding his hand as it
lay along the arm of the chair. He would have spoken, but she stopped
him.

"No, dear man, don't hurry," she said. "I know already. Peters has just
told me, now, downstairs, that you received the Last Sacraments this
morning. That's why I didn't come up sooner. I couldn't see you
directly, somehow. I had--well, I had to get my second wind, dearly
beloved, so to speak. You see it's such a heavenly day that I couldn't
help feeling happier about you. I had persuaded myself those doctors
were a pack of croaking old grannies whose collective wisdom had
eventuated in a wild mistake, and that, given time and summer weather,
you would be better again--you know you have had ups and downs lots of
times before--and that then, when the theatre closes and I have my
holiday, I'd carry you off, somewhere, anywhere, back to your own
fierce, passionate Spain, perhaps, and nurse and coax and care for you
till living grew so pretty a business you really wouldn't have the
conscience to quit."

Poppy's voice was sweet with caressing tones, sympathetic in quality as
her lingering touch.

"Haven't you, perhaps, been a little premature after all?" she said.
"Has it really and truly come to that? Mightn't you have put off those
last grim ceremonies a trifle longer, and let them wait?"

"They are not grim, dearest friend, but full of strong consolation,"
Iglesias answered, smiling. He began to see her face more clearly. Her
expression was tragic, a world of anguish in it, for all the restraint
of her manner and playful glibness of her speech. "Nor, in any case,"
he added, "can they hasten the event."

"I'm not altogether sure of that," Poppy declared rebelliously.

"I could not quite trust myself as to what the day might bring forth,"
Iglesias continued. "In point of fact, I have gained strength as it has
gone on.--And so it seemed wisest and most fitting to ask for the
performance of those sacred rites while I was still of sound mind, and
ready in my perception of that in which I was taking part."

"You have suffered?" Poppy said.

"Nothing unendurable. The nights are somewhat wearisome, since I cannot
lie down, in ordinary fashion, to rest. But I sit here, or wander
through the quiet, kindly house, contentedly enough. And I am well
cared for--have no fear as to that. Peters is a faithful creature. She
nursed my mother at the last, and her presence is grateful to me, for
association's sake."

Iglesias straightened himself up.

"There, there," he said, "do not be too sad. The road is not such a
very hard one to tread. The last few months have been the happiest I
remember since my childhood. Any anxieties I felt concerning you are
set at rest. You are famous, and will be more famous yet, and I know I
shall live in your remembrance while you live. It is no slight thing,
after all, for a man to have been loved so well by the two women whom
he loved. And for the rest, dearest friend, as one draws near to the
edge of the great shadow, which we call death, one begins to trust more
and fuss less; looking to the next step only, so that one may take it
neither with faltering nor with presumptuous haste."

"Ah!" Poppy cried, "that's all very well for you. But where do I come
in? I lose you."

Iglesias smiled, lifting his shoulders slightly and raising his hands.

"Yes," he said, "it seems that sorrow, here on earth, is always, sooner
or later, the guerdon of love. Why, I know not; but so it is, as the
most sacred and august of all examples testifies. Only let us be
thankful, you and I, that to us this parting, and the inevitable pain
of it, comes while love is still in its full strength, having endured
nothing unworthy, no shame, or diminution, or disillusionment. The more
bitter the wrench, the finer the memory, and the more desirable the
meeting which lies ahead, however far distant in time it may be and in
difference of condition."

"Yes, dear man, yes, I dare say--no doubt," Poppy answered brokenly.
"Only I can't rise to these philosophic heights. I'm right here, don't
you see, my feet well on the floor, planted in brutal commonplace. I
shall want you--just simply I shall want you, and you won't be there,
and I shall be most cut-throat horribly lonely and sad. But, looking at
you, still I don't believe it. I won't believe it. I shall keep you a
long while yet."

She leaned over and kissed him gently on the cheek.

"Now I must go," she said, "if I'm to get any dinner before the
theatre. I would have liked to stay, and put my poor little understudy
on, so as to give her a chance. She's a nice little girl--not half
stupid, and really keen to learn and to work. But I can't. I'm in
honour bound to appear to-night. You see, it's our second century--the
first one we could not observe, because it came at the end of January
just in the general mourning--so there's an awful to-do and tomasha
to-night, souvenir programmes and I don't know what all, also a rather
extra special audience. It would be little too bad if I played them
false. But," she added, rising, "when it's over I shall come back--yes,
I will, I will, I tell you. Don't flatter yourself you can prevent me,
beloved lunatic, for you jolly well can't.--I shall come back directly
the performance is over, and watch with you, through the bad hours till
the dawn."

Dominic Iglesias had risen, too. He crossed the room, going to the door
and holding it open for her; then, standing on the little landing, he
watched her as she went down the narrow crooked stairs. And so doing,
it came to him, with a movement of thankfulness and of satisfied pride,
how very fully in the past six months the Lady of the Windswept Dust
had realised and fulfilled all the finer promise of her complex nature.
Just as her figure had matured, retaining its admirable proportions and
suppleness while gaining in distinction and dignity, her mind had
matured likewise. Her splendid fearlessness was no longer that of
naughty dare-devil audacity, but of secure position and recognised
success. Indeed, she had grown into a somewhat imperial creature, for
whom the world, and rightly, is very willing to make place.

At the bottom of the flight Poppy paused, looking up and kissing her
hand.

"Till to-night," she cried. "Now I go to herd those two small miseries,
W. O. and Cappadocia.--Take most precious care of yourself until I come
back, dear man. Good-bye and God keep you, till to-night."

Mr. Iglesias crossed the drawing-room, glad at heart, erect and stately
as in the fulness of health. For a minute or so he stood looking out
into the garden, at the stone basin full to the lip--in which the
sparrows, relieved of the presence of the toy spaniels, washed with
much fluttering of sooty wings--and at the spring flowers, beginning to
close their delicate blossoms as the sun declined towards its setting
in the gold and grey of the west. In the recovered stillness, those
same spiritual presences, rare apprehensions, exquisite memories,
mysterious invitations, once again obtained possession, coming forth,
passing lightly to and fro, filling all the place. In aspect and
sentiment they were benign, all fearfulness having gone from out
them--they telling of fair things only, of human relations unbroken by
treachery or self-seeking, unsullied by lust; telling, too, of godly
endeavour faithfully to travel the road which leads to the far horizon
touched by the illimitable glory of the Uncreated Light.

But presently Dominic Iglesias became aware that he was very, very
tired. He sat down in the chair again.

"Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy," he murmured, crossing himself. "I
think the day's work is over. I will sleep."

That night Poppy St. John played as she had never played before; and
her audience, taking her astonishing manifestation of talent as a
compliment to themselves, cried with her and laughed with her in most
wholehearted fashion.

Antony Hammond, in the stage box on the right, turned to Adolphus Carr,
his companion, saying:

"Did I really write such admirable drama as this? I have girded at that
term, 'creating a part,' as an example of the colossal vanity of the
actor, and his very inadequate reverence for his maker, the playwright.
But, I give you my word, after to-night I hide my diminished head. The
player and playing are greater than any fondest conception of mine,
when I put those words on paper."

And Lionel Gordon, his habitual imperturbability altogether broken up
by excitement, stamped up and down stammering:

"Ge-ge-hanna, gehanna, what possesses the woman? I'd tour creation with
her. She must be made to sign a three years' contract. If she can act
like this there's nothing less than a cool half-million sterling in
her."

And Alaric Barking, lean and haggard, invalided home from South Africa,
escaping for one evening from the ministrations of gentle Lady
Constance Decies and his pretty _fiancee_, sat huddled together at the
end of a row at the back of the pit, hoping, "The deuce! nobody would
see him," with a choke in his throat. He would love, honour, and
cherish his pretty, high-bred, innocent maiden; but Poppy's voice tore
at his very vitals. And he asked himself how had he ever borne to give
her up, forgetting, as is the habit of civilised man in such slightly
humiliating circumstances, that it was Poppy herself, not he, who loved
and rode away.

Twice the curtain was raised at the end of the performance, and the
Lady of the Windswept Dust made her bow with the rest of the
company.--Now she could depart; thank heaven! she could go back to the
strangely still house in Holland Street and fulfil her promise to
Dominic Iglesias to watch with him till dawn. All through the play, the
passion and excitement and pathos and mirth of it, her anxiety had
deepened, her yearning increased, so that the joy of her public triumph
was barred and seared by intimate pain. Now she could go. Already the
carpenters were beginning their nightly work of destruction,
metamorphosing the so-lately brilliant stage into a vast unsightly
cavern of gaunt timbers, creaking pulleys, noisy mechanical
contrivances, gaudy painted surfaces of canvas and paper, piled-up
properties, of uncertain lights and draughts many and chill. Careless
of all save that determination of going, Poppy moved away. But still
the unseen audience clamoured. A fury had taken it, a madness such as
will sometimes attack even the soberest and most aristocratic crowd,
excitement reacting upon itself and stimulating excitement, till the
demand which had begun in kindly enthusiasm became oddly violent, even
brutal, men and women standing up, applauding, drumming, shouting a
single name.

"There, it's over, thank the powers! Now let me get out of all this
infernal din," she said, putting her hands over her ears as she pushed
into the wings.

But Lionel Gordon met her, barring her passage, his face working with
nervous agitation, and caught hold of her unceremoniously by both arms.

"What's the matter?" she cried angrily. "I can't stay. I have a case of
illness on hand."

"Hang illness!" he answered. "My good girl, pull yourself together. Go
back. Don't be a blooming fool. Listen--it's you they're splitting
their throats for--yes, you--about the most fastidious audience in
Europe yelling like a pack of drunken bookies! Gehenna! you're the
luckiest woman living. You're made, great heavens, you're made!"

He dragged her aside, pushing her into the mouth of the narrow passage
between the curtain and the footlights, where the roar of the house and
the welter of faces met her like a breaking wave.

       *       *       *       *       *

Standing against the edge of the pavement in front of Mr. Iglesias'
house, in Holland Street, was a covered van. As Poppy drove up a couple
of men came down the steps, in the black and white of the moonlight.
Their dark clothing and somewhat sleek appearance were repulsive to
her. She swept past them, swept past Frederick holding open the door,
and on up the stairs. Her hands were encumbered by her trailing
draperies of velvet and silver tissue, and by an extravagant bouquet of
orchids, lilies, and roses, with long yellow satin streamers to it. She
had not stayed even to wash the grease paint off her face. Just as she
was, the stamp of her calling upon her, eager, fictitious, courageous,
triumphant, pushed by a great fear, she came. But in the doorway she
faltered, set her teeth, bowed her head, and paused.

For in the centre of the room a bier was dressed, and on either side of
it stood lighted tapers of brownish wax, in tall black and gold
candlesticks. At the foot, some distance apart, two low-seated
rush-bottomed high-backed _prie-dieu_ had been placed. Upon the one on
the left a little nun knelt, her loose black habit concealing all the
outline of her figure. The white linen pall was turned back, across the
chest of the corpse, to where the shapely long-fingered hands were
folded upon an ebony and silver crucifix. By some harsh irony of
imagination Lionel Gordon's voice rang in Poppy's ears: "My good girl,
pull yourself together. Gehenna! you're the luckiest woman living.
You're made, great heavens, you're made!"--while, blank despair in her
heart, she went forward, the little nun looking up momentarily from her
prayers, and stood beside the bier. Beautiful in death as in life,
serene, proud, austere, but young now with the eternal youth of those
who have believed, and attained, and reached the Land of the Far
Horizon, Dominic Iglesias lay before her.

Presently a sound of sobbing broke up the stillness, and turning, Poppy
descried good George Lovegrove, sitting in the dusky far corner of the
room, his knees wide apart, his shiny forehead showing high above the
handkerchief he pressed against his eyes. She backed away from the
corpse, as in all reverence from the presence of a personage august and
sacred. Coming close to him, she laid her hand gently upon George
Lovegrove's shoulder. "Go home, my best beetle," she said, very
tenderly. "You're worn out with sorrow. Come back in the morning if you
will. I promised Dominic I would watch with him till the dawn. I keep
my promise."

Then the Lady of the Windswept Dust laid her extravagant bouquet with
its yellow streamers, on the floor, at the foot of the bier; and
kneeling upon the vacant _prie-dieu_, beside the little nun, buried her
painted face in her hands and wept.