"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.