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.