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.