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 gra.s.s-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, pa.s.sionate 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 a.s.sociation'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 G.o.d 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, pa.s.sing 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 l.u.s.t; telling, too, of G.o.dly 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! n.o.body 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sage 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 enc.u.mbered 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, fict.i.tious, 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.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

_The Wages of Sin_

_A Counsel of Perfection_