But Smyth came close to her, pushing his face into hers. He was shaking with excitement, hysterical with mingled fear and relief.
"I am not ungenerous, my dear girl," he whispered. "I am willing to condone the past—to take you back, to acknowledge you as my wife and let you share my success. There is a part in the new play which might have been written for you. You could become world-famous in it. I am not ungenerous, I am willing to make matters up."
"Do you want me to murder you, after all?" Poppy asked. "If you try me much further, I tell you plainly, I can't answer for myself. Therefore, as you value your life, let me alone. Get out of my sight."
CHAPTER XXVII
During the watches of the ensuing night, amid bellowings of wind in the chimneys, long-drawn complaint of the great cedar tree, rattle of sleet, and those half-heard whisperings and footsteps—as of inhabitants long since departed—which so often haunt an old house through the hours of dark, Dominic Iglesias' mind, for cause unknown, was busied with reminiscences of the firm of Barking Brothers & Barking, and the many years he had spent in its service. He had no wish to think of these things. They came unbidden, pushing themselves upon remembrance. All manner of details, of little histories and episodes connected both with the financial and human affairs of the famous banking-house, occurred to him. And from thoughts of all this, but transmogrified and perverted, when, towards dawn, the storm abating, he at length fell asleep, his dreams were not exempt. For through them caracoled, in grotesque and most irregular inter-relation, those august personages, the heads of the firm, along with his fellow-clerks, living and dead, that militant Protestant, good George Lovegrove, and the whole personnel of the establishment, down to caretaker, messenger-boys, porters and the like. Never surely had been such wild doings in that sedate and reputable place of business—doings in which gross absurdity and ingenious cruelty went hand in hand; while, by some queer freak of the imagination, poor Pascal Pelletier, of hectic and pathetic memory, appeared as leader of the revels, at which the Lady of the Windswept Dust, sad-eyed, inscrutable of countenance, her dragon-embroidered scarf drawn closely about her shoulders, looked on.
Dominic arose from his brief uneasy slumbers anxious and unrefreshed. The phantasmagoria of his dream had been so living, so vivid, that it was difficult to throw off the impression produced by it. Moreover, he was slightly ashamed to find that, the restraining power of the will removed, his mind was capable of creating scenes of so loose and heartless a character. He was displeased with himself, distressed by this outbreak of the undisciplined and unregenerate "natural man" in him. Later, coming into his sitting-room, he unfortunately found matters awaiting him by no means calculated to obliterate displeasing impressions or promote suavity and peace.
For the pile of letters and circulars lying beside his plate upon the breakfast-table was topped by a note directed in de Courcy Smyth's nervous and irritable hand. Dominic opened it with a curious sense of reluctance. Only last week he had lent the man ten pounds; and here was another demand, couched in terms, too, so bullying, so almost threatening, that Dominic's back stiffened considerably.
Smyth requested, or rather commanded, that fifty pounds should be delivered to him without delay. "It was conceivable that Mr. Iglesias had not that amount by him in notes. But, since he had really nothing to do, it would be a little occupation for him to go and procure them." Smyth insisted the money should be paid in a lump sum, adding that, his time being as valuable as Iglesias' was worthless, he could not reasonably be expected to waste it in perpetual letters respecting a subject so essentially uninteresting and distasteful to him as that of ways and means. Such correspondence annoyed him, and put him off his work; and, as it clearly was very much to Iglesias' interest that the play should be finished as soon as possible, it was advisable that he should accede to Smyth's present request without parley and pay up at once.
Reading this mandatory epistle, Dominic was gravely displeased and hurt. Poppy St. John had warned him against the insatiable and insolent greed of persons of this kidney. He had discounted her speech somewhat, supposing it infected with such prejudice as the recollection of private wrongs will breed even in generous natures. Now he began to fear her strictures had been just. The egoism of the unsuccessful is a moral disease, destructive of all sense of proportion. Those suffering from it must be reckoned as insane; not sick merely, but actually mad with self-love. Smyth, to gain his play a hearing, would beggar him—Iglesias—without scruple or regret. But Dominic had no intention of being beggared in this connection. Thrice-sacred charity is one story; the encouragement of the unlimited borrower, the fostering of so colossal a selfishness quite another. A point had been reached where to accede to Smyth's demands was culpable, a consenting, indeed, to wrongdoing. Here then was occasion for careful consideration. Iglesias gravely laid the offensive missive aside, and proceeded to eat his breakfast before opening the rest of his letters. In the intervals of the meal he glanced at the contents of the morning paper.