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 a.s.sociation 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 embarra.s.sed 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 pa.s.sionate 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 att.i.tude 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, circ.u.mstance 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 const.i.tution 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 G.o.d 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 n.o.ble things put to ign.o.ble 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 pa.s.sions 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