"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
It followed that Dominic Iglesias walked on across the common to Barnes Station and travelled Citywards, solaced and uplifted in spirit, yet greatly troubled by the idea of those newly arrived complications at which the Lady of the Windswept Dust had hinted. He did not permit himself to inquire what they might be. Doubtless she knew best—in her social sense he had great confidence—so he acquiesced in her silence about them. Still, as he reflected, it is not a little lamentable that even friendship, the angelic relation between man and woman, should be thus beset by perils from within and pitfalls without. Where lay the fault—with over-civilisation and the improper proprieties resultant therefrom? Or was it of far more ancient origin, resident in the very foundations of human nature? Woman, eternally the vehicle of man's being, eternally the inspiration of quite three-fifths of his action; yet, at the same time, the eternal stumbling block and danger to the highest of his moral and intellectual attainment! Mr. Iglesias smiled sadly and soberly to himself as the train rolled on into Waterloo. In any case she remains the most astonishing of God's creatures. It would be dull enough here on earth without her, though, to employ one of Poppy's characteristic phrases, "it's most infernally risky" with!
But once inside the bank, such far-ranging meditations gave place to considerations immediate and concrete, Iglesias' whole mind being focussed to arrive at the facts of the case. And this was far from easy. For alarm stalked those usually self-secure and self-complacent rooms and glass and mahogany-walled corridors; men looking up from their desks as he, Iglesias, passed, with anxious faces, or moving with hushed footsteps as though someone lay sick to death within the house. In Sir Abel Barking's private room the drama reached its climax, panic sitting there sensibly enthroned. Her chill presence had visibly affected Sir Abel, causing the contrast between the overblown portrait upon the wall and the subject of it to be ironical to the point of cruelty. For Sir Abel was aged and shrivelled. His clothes hung loose upon him. Hardly could he rally his tongue to the enunciation of a single platitude even of the most obviously staring sort. The mighty, indeed, were fallen and the weapons of wealth-getting perished! Yet never had Iglesias felt so drawn in sympathy towards his late employer, for the spectre of possible ruin had made Sir Abel almost humble, almost human.
"I am obliged to you for responding to my summons so promptly—yes, sit down, my good friend, sit down," he said. "It is necessary that I should converse with you at some length, and I refuse to keep you standing. Our present position is inexplicable to me. Granting that my nephew Reginald is unworthy of the trust we reposed in his ability and probity, there was still our own judgment in reserve, and our own unquestioned capacity to meet any strain upon our resources. That our confidence in these last was misplaced is still incredible to me. I am completely baffled. The past few months, indeed, with their reiterated discovery of difficulty and of loss, have been a terrible tax upon my fortitude. Veteran financier though I am, I own to you, Iglesias, there have been moments when I feared that I, too, should give way. Only my sense of the duty I owe to my own reputation has supported me." Sir Abel turned sideways in his chair. His eyes sought the derisive portrait upon the wall, contemplation of which appeared to reanimate his self-confidence somewhat, for he continued in his larger manner, "Nor has the sting of private anxiety been lacking. My younger son has been called away to the seat of war under circumstances of a peculiarly affecting character. My earnest hopes for his future, in the shape of a very desirable marriage, touched on fulfilment—."
But here Iglesias intervened. For his temper began to rise at the mention of the loves of Alaric Barking. If the springs of Christian charity, just now welling up so sweetly within him, were not to run incontinently dry, the conversation, he felt, must be steadied down to themes of other import. So he civilly but definitely requested Sir Abel to "come to Hecuba," and to Hecuba the poor man, haltingly yet very obediently, came. He and his ex-head-clerk seemed, indeed, to have changed places, so that, before the end of the interview, Iglesias began to measure himself as never before, to realise his own business acumen, his quickness of apprehension, his grasp of the issues presented to him and his own fearlessness of judgment. Whatever the upshot as to the eventual saving of the credit of Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking, Iglesias became increasingly confident of his own power, and quietly satisfied in the exercise of it.
And so it happened that, although tired in brain and body, his mind weighted with thought, as were his arms with bundles of papers—which he carried home for more leisurely inspection—Iglesias came rapidly up the white steps of Cedar Lodge that night. He was buoyant in spirit, content with his day's work, keenly interested in the development of it. Using his latchkey he entered the square panelled hall silently—with results, for revels were in progress within.