"O to be in EnglandNow that Spring is there."But his emotion was neither for Spring nor England. Heled the talk to London with the hope of getting her to speak of her destination; but she went off at a tangent and began to tell him about the wonderful shades of blue to be found in the interior of a glacier. He ignored that, and made occasion to give her his card with a Kensington address written on it, saying in rather strained fashion:"If ever you want a friend—doctors are sometimes useful people, you know."She thanked him and took his card, holding it carefully in her hand. But she offered no information on the subject which so engrossed his thoughts. An uncomfortable pause followed. Suddenly in the darkness she felt a hand hot on hers."Miss Chard ... Rosalind ..." he had discovered her name—"I will do anything for you."It was far from being a surprise to her that he should make some kind of avowal. But his words seemed to her rather odd—and somehow in keeping with his odd looks at her. She very gently drew away her hand from under his and put it behind her head. The other was quite out of his reach."Thank you, Dr. Newnham," she said kindly, but with no particular fervour."Do you understand what I mean?" he said huskily, after another pause. "I can help you."He could not see the expression on her face, but he saw that she turned her head to look at him as she answered:"What can you mean?""Oh, you needn't beat about the bush with me," he spoke with coarse irritation. "I know what you have to face.""You must be wonderfully clever," she said, with a touch of sarcasm; "but I should like to know just what you mean."Irritation now became anger."You know well enough," he said brutally. "What is the good of playing pure with me! It is my business to see what isn't plain to other people."In the darkness she grew pale with anger at his tone, but she had fear too, of she knew not what. Her wish was to rise and leave him at once; but curiosity chained her—curiosity and creeping, creeping fear. Dimly she became conscious of the predestined feeling that once or twice before in her life had presaged strange happenings. What was she going to hear? She sat very still, waiting.The man leaned close to her and spoke into her ear. His breathing was quick and excited, but he had some difficulty with his words; he muttered and his sentences were halting and disjointed.But Poppy heard everything he said. It seemed to her that his lowest whisper pierced to the inmost places of her being, and reverberated through her like the echoing and resounding of bells. Afterwards there was a terrible quiet. He could not see her face. She appeared almost to be crouching in her chair, all bundled up, but he did not venture to touch her—some instinct kept him from that. Pity, mingled with his base passion and scorn. He regretted that he had spoken so violently. He feared he had been brutal. At last she spoke, in a faint voice, that seemed to come from far away."I don't know what you mean ... I think you must be mad."Newnham laughed—derisively, devilishly."I'll bet that's what you are going home for, all the same."While he was furiously laughing, with his hand flung above his head, she flamed up out of her chair, and spoke for a moment down at him in a low, vibrating voice:"You vile man! Never dare speak to me again. You are not fit to live!"Then she was gone.After a time he got up and stumbled towards the smoke-room, intending to get drunk; but he changed his mind before he reached it, and went to his cabin instead. Having closed his door, he sat in the berth and stared at his boots. He said at last:"H——! What a beast I am! But what is worse, I am a fool. I am no good any longer. I made a mistake in my diagnosis. That girl is straight! Pure as the untrodden snow! I had better cut my throat."However, he did not.Poppy, lying on her face in her cabin, was tasting shame. Bitter-sweet, mysterious, terrifying knowledge was hers at last—and with it was shame. Shame that the knowledge should come to her from profane and guilty lips! Shame that the child of the king of her heart should be unworthily born; that a king's child should be robbed of its kingdom; that the mother of her child should be one to whom men might throw vile words. Shame that she was a transgressor.CHAPTER XIVLONDON was not new to Poppy. She had lived there for months at a time, but always at the best hotels and under luxurious conditions. Now, she hardly knew where to seek a home in accord with her limited means, but she had heard of Bloomsbury as being the resort of writers and artists and people whose riches are rather to be found in their heads and hearts than in their purses; so she took her way thither.She walked the old-fashioned squares the day after her arrival and found them all green-tracery, and darts of spring sunshine that touched the gloomy houses with the gilt of past romance. After much roaming, and knocking, and climbing of stairs, and making of awkward adieus to angry, disappointed landladies, she eventually discovered a tall, white house, whose front windows overlooked the pigeons pecking in the straggly grass that grows in the courtyard of the British Museum. A room on the top floor but one seemed likely to suit her purse and her tastes, and she seized upon it eagerly. It was big and bare, with no noise overhead, except the footsteps of two tired maids, who crept to bed at eleven o'clock with very little to say to each other. It seemed to Poppy that she could not have found any better place to start hard work in, and yet, from the first day there, a dreariness crept over her spirit—a kind of mental numbness she had never known before, oppressed her. She supposed it must have something to do with her physical condition and the shock she had lately received, and that after a fewdays it would pass. Instead, it increased. Her nights became indescribably weird and unhappy. Always it seemed to her that she heard someone calling somewhere, and she used to wake up, thinking that she had been urgently roused to fetch something. Sometimes, still half asleep, she would get up and begin to dress to go out; then, gradually becoming conscious of what she was doing, she would light the gas and stare round the room, looking for the person who had been speaking to her. In the daytime it became impossible to work, though she perpetually goaded herself to her writing-table. The only time she could get any ease from the intolerable restlessness and depression that filled her, was when she was half out of her window, leaning above the street, watching the intermittent stream of uninteresting-looking people who passed up and down the broad, dingy steps of the Museum, and listening to the roar of London afar. Trying to interpret the street calls was an idle amusement, too, wondering why the coal-carters should shoutKo-bel, and the cry of the oyster-man be exceeding dolorous like the cry of a soul in the depths.Clam ... Clam ... clamavi.In the afternoons, when still haunting sadness obsessed her, she would put on her hat and visit a picture-gallery, or walk in the park, or roam the streets looking at the shop-windows and into the strained, anxious faces of the hurrying passers-by. She speculated as to whether she would ever get that look, and always she wondered what was worth it; then one day, as she walked, she felt what seemed tiny fluttering fingers clutching at her heart-strings, and sheknew! Flying home on swift feet, she nailed herself once more to her work-table. Shemustwork, she told herself feverishly; and when she could not, frenzy seized her, then terror, then despair. Yes, those were the things she had seen in the strained, hurrying faces that passed along—frenzy, terror, despair; not for themselves, but forothers.She must work!But Inspiration hid Her face; and shadows came out of the four corners of the room and closed in upon her.Breakfast was always brought on a tray by a maid called Kate. For the rest of her meals she frequented A.B.C. shops, and the like, existing on cups of tea and boiled eggs and glasses of milk, after the manner of women who live alone and have to economise. But sometimes in a wild burst of extravagance she would wend her way to Soho and order a little Italian meal allhors-d'œuvresand thin Chianti. She loved to hear the French and Italian chatter about her, and felt more at home there than anywhere, not minding the men's bold, dark glances, for in her travels with Abinger she had learnt to know that there was really little of harm in them. Of course, she attracted much attention and often had uncomfortable adventures in her lonely goings and comings; but she did not let these ruffle her greatly, telling herself that all such things were part and parcel of the fight. She minded nothing, in fact, except the tragic atmosphere of her room, which engulfed her spirit as soon as she entered. The nights began to be even more eerie. She lay awake often until dawn, and presently longings and urgings came upon her to procure something that would produce sleep. She had never known anyone who took drugs or sleeping-draughts, and could not imagine what put such an idea into her head—indeed, having read De Quincey'sConfessions, she had a horror of such things, and so, fought the suggestion with all her might. But still it returned. Once when she was sitting at her table, with a throbbing head, biting her pencil before a blank sheet of paper, she distinctly heard someone softly say:"Go andbuysome inspiration."She stared about the empty room."What can be the matter with me?" she demanded of herself, after a time, and strove with all her strength to work and drive such insane thoughts from her. But the writer within her was mute, the poet dumb, and her woman's body was very weary.One day, she had been striving with herself for many hours, writing down dry, banal words that she almost dug out of the paper a moment afterwards. At intervals she sat with her head on her arms, wondering what had ever caused her to dream that she was born to the pen; brooding over the possibilities of her chances as a shop-girl, a waitress in a tea-shop, a chorus-girl, a housemaid—asanythingbut a writer of poems and romantic fiction, at which she was obviously a dismal failure.At last she flung papers and pencils to the four corners of the room, and left the house. Out of doors it was raining fearsomely. After tramping for an hour or so, soaked through, she found herself back near home, in Theobald's Row—a hateful street that smells of fish and rank cheese, where men bawl out the price of pork-chops, and women come furtively stealing from side-doors, wiping their lips. She made haste to get into Southampton Row, which has a sweeter savour to the nostrils and a staid, respectable air. At a corner she passed a paper shop, which had many news-boards exposed, with the "sheets" hanging dripping and torn from them. One yellow sheet stood out boldly with the words "South Africa" in black letters across it. A pang of joy shot through her. She could have fallen down before that tattered paper and kissed the magic words. The name of her own land! The land that had beaten her and bruised her and flung her out to seek a living and safety in another country—but her own land! Some words came to her lips:"She said: God knows they owe me naught.I tossed them to the foaming sea,I tossed them to the howling waste,Yet still their love comes home to me."So far she had forbidden herself entirely the luxury of journals and magazines, saying that she could not afford them; but now she went into the shop and recklessly bought up everything that had any connection with South-African affairs.Afterwards, going home, she saw a flower-girl crouching in a doorway with a bale of wet daffodils and narcissi in her arms. Flowers, too, were luxuries, concerning which she had laid down a law unto herself; but the girl made a piteous appeal, and without a thought of dwindling funds, Poppy bought up the whole wet fragrant bale. Before she reached home she was reproaching herself bitterly."HowcanI be buying magazines and flowers with money I have not earned?... I am becoming degraded! ... a parasite!"Only the smell of the narcissi reassured her, and changed the trend of her thoughts, for they reminded her of Charles Bramham and his acres of flowers seen from the hilltops."He would be glad to think that his money brings this rift of blue into my grey sky," she thought; and she turned her dreary room into an enchanted spring garden, extravagantly ordered a fire and sat before it, tearing the news out of the papers with her eyes, searching for the name of Evelyn Carson. She had not far to look. In every paper she found news of him. His party had arrived at Borwezi, a spot in Central Africa, the last civilised touching-place before they plunged into the savage unknown. He had made a long stay there—for it was on the banks of a "fever river," second only to thePungwe. Carson was reported to have been laid up with malarial fever for a week, and a doctor who had joined the expedition at Mombassa had been so ill from the same cause as to be obliged to abandon his intention and to be taken back to civilisation under the care of people who had accompanied the expedition as far as Borwezi. One paper mentioned the names of Mr. and Mrs. Nick Capron as being of the returning party. This was as far as the actual news went. Rumours there were in plenty. One arresting story, brought into Borwezi by native runners, was that the natives of Borapota were departing from every part of their country to assemble in the capital, where the King would receive Carson and his men—whether in a friendly or hostile spirit was unknown. Several papers devoted articles to Carson himself, dealing with his achievements in different parts of Africa, his personality, his influence with the Zulus and Basutos, and other less-known tribes. One journal headed an article with the word—Intandugaza: fortunately the writer did not attempt to translate the Zulu word, nor explain how Carson came to bear it. (Perhaps that was "one of the untoward things about him not compatible with reverence," thought Poppy sadly.) After she had drunk in every word of him, the papers lay scattered at her feet, and she, lapsing from the decree she had made not to think of him, lost herself at last in dreams of him. She had lived according to the rules of Alice Meynell'sRenouncement:"I must not think of thee; and tired yet strongI shun the thought that dwells in all delight,The thought of thee: and in the heaven's blue height:And in the sweetest passage of a song——"Now she forgot the fine, firm words, and long, long sat dreaming by the fire, with her hands before her face. Anyone looking into the room would merely have seena girl lying back in her chair resting, asleep perhaps. But only the lesser part of Poppy Destin was there. The spirit of her wandered in a moonlit Natal garden, listening to a voice with a rustle in it, and from thence ... far, far!Afterwards, she reconstructed all the chapters of her life since the magic night that began so wonderfully and ended in despair with the uttering of another woman's name. Of that woman—Loraine, she thought little now, having fought down and killed the bitter hatred of her, as once she had wished to kill the woman. There was no room in her awakened heart for hatred—only Love could be there. Love of the man who had awakened it, and to whom, whether he loved her or not, she believed herself to be secretly linked for ever; and to whom, whether she saw him again or not, her hopes, her future, her life were dedicated. But shewouldsee him again!—of that she was blindly, fatalistically certain: and he would know her for his mate, as she knew him—or of what use her beauty, her wit, her charm, her life at all? All things would entangle themselves, she told her heart. As soon as she had money enough she meant to free herself from the marriage with Luce Abinger that was no marriage at all; and from which he knew a Court of Justice would free her as an innocent, unwitting victim. As she sat thinking, many things that had been dark became clear. The meaning of Abinger's fearsome conduct was plain to her now—heknew! Kykie had told him. That was what she had stayed up for, supposing herself to be the herald of glad tidings.It made the girl recoil and quiver to think that those two had known and spoken of what had been hidden fromher; of what, even now, she dared hardly consider with herself because of its wonder and terror—something that no one in the world should know except just two people: so it seemed to her."But, oh, Mother of God!" she cried aloud and bitterly. "Why is this thing so sweet, and yet so terrible to bear?"Even while she asked she knew, and gave herself the answer."I am a Transgressor——"At last, far into the night, she undressed and went to bed; so tired from emotion that she fell at once into dead slumber. But no sooner was she asleep than she was dreaming that a woman lay by her side on the bed whispering into her ear, pleading, asking for something, begging, urgently demanding. With a wrench Poppy threw off sleep and sat up staring into the darkness of the room. She was only half-awake, but she was certain—she could haveswornthat a shadowy figure rose, too, from the bed, and slipped into the far shadows.Beads of fright sat on her forehead."I am going mad!" she thought. "There was a woman on my bed ... she is still in the room. I am going mad!"She was afraid to lie down again, and afraid to get out of bed. She sat there in cold terror until she thought herself turned to stone. Then, slowly, reason reasserted itself, and courage. She clenched her teeth and nerved herself to move, to get from the bed and from the room. The whole house was wrapped in darkness. Instinctively she made for the room above her, where she knew the servants were. Reaching the door she knocked and then entered. One of them was awake at once."Who's there? What do you want?" said an excited voice, ready to scream."Don't be afraid, Kate ... I am the girl who sleeps in the room below ... Miss Chard.... I don't want to disturb you—only—let me stay here until morning, will you?... I'm afraid to be in my own room."Kate was "a good sort." She struck a match and stared at the intruder before answering; then she said: "Lock the door," and was obeyed with alacrity.The maid hopped out and soon had a blanket round Poppy's trembling form. She made room on the bed, and they sat whispering together. The other maid slept on like the dead."What did you see?" asked Kate."See? I don't know ... there was something strange——""It was'er, sure enough!""What do you mean, Kate?" Poppy felt her spine curling."I'm new here," whispered Kate mysteriously; "but I got five minutes' talk with the last girl, though the missis tried hard to keep us from meeting. Miss—no one ever sleeps in that room long. A lydy cut her throat there!""What!""Yes—sure as I'm sitting here. I've been afraid to creep up the stairs at night for fear ofher. How you could aslepthere, Heavin knows!" She lowered her voice to a whisper: "She used to take them drugs. She was a hactress, and she and her 'usbin had that room. She was very clever, they said, but she hadn't had no work for a long time, and she used to eat away at them drugs night and day, and 'er 'usbin never knew. And at last, one day he found 'er out, and there was an awful shindy and he said as 'e'd leave her if she didn't knock it off. And she tried and tried. For a whole three days she did without ... walked the room all day and would go out and no sooner out than in again ... she told the girl it was'ell. Every time anyone came to the door she would stand up and just say, ''ell! 'ell! ell!' very quiet to herself all the time they was speaking. Then on the third night she went out and gotit. And the 'usbinfound out as soon as he came in. She was so gentle and sweet-like, and began to 'elp 'im off with his coat. He gave her a look ... likehanythink, then 'e put his hat and coat on again and walked out. And that very night she done for 'erself with one of the razors 'e left behind.She done it in the very bed you bin sleeping in.I says to cook I says it's a shime of the missis to do it!—but there! she's one of them would sell 'er mother's shroud for sixpence. I shan't stay here no more after this, don't you believe it, miss—not for a thousand pound; and nor won't you, I reckon."Poppy's reckoning came to much the same sum. When she stole down in the morning light, it was to dress herself and pack her belongings swiftly for departure. Kate stayed by the door until all was done, casting fearsome glances about her, ready to fly at a sound. They left the flower-decked room then, to the poor, disquieted spirit that haunted it, and sought the mistress of the house. But she discreetly excused herself from an interview, and only sent the cook to demand a week's extra money in lieu of the notice that should have been given. Poppy expostulated, but it was of no use: she was told that it was the rule under which rooms were let and that her luggage could be detained. When she had paid, she realised that this extra expense would force her to seek still cheaper lodgings. That evening found her installed in a dingy room in Hunter Street—another top-floor-but-one.How she wished at this time, that she had betaken herself from the first to Paris, where, she had been told all top-floors are white-and-gold rooms, with faded true-lovers' knots festooning the ceiling, and wide oak fireplaces in which burnt little brightbriquettefires. Once, wishing to have a picture in the Louvre copied for Luce, she had visited a clever but penniless girl-artist in such aroom, in quite a poor part of theQuartier; and the girl had carelessly told her that there were plenty of the same kind to be had.In her new quarters Poppy had barely room to turn round: but she was more content. No tragic ghosts kept vigil there, it was certain. A healthy scent of Irish stew pervaded the atmosphere, and the walls were decorated with smiling faces and charming figures. The landlady, a stout, breezy woman on the right side of forty-five, had once been a chorus girl at the Gaiety, and her circle of acquaintances had evidently been large. Little now remained to her of beauty, but she had an attractivebonhomieand a wide charity for the world of women.CHAPTER XVIN Hunter Street, Poppy put the finishing touches to her book of poems—as far as anything is ever finished until it appears in print. For it is certain that a writer will always find something new to do to a book as long as it is in MS. and within reach. But with Poppy, time pressed. She knew that shortly she would be wanting money. Moreover, she was horrified to reflect that after nearly four months in England she had nothing ready for publication but the poems, which had been the work of years. The thought came to her that if she could get this book accepted and published it would bring courage and inspiration back, and so spur her on that she would presently come to her own on a full tide. With this hope high in her, she sent the poems to a publisher whom she had read of in a literary journal as having a reputation for encouraging new authors on new subjects. The journal in question had omitted to mention that the new authors got very little out of the processbeyondthe encouragement, so poor Poppy went home gay of heart from posting her precious manuscript and essayed to start work on a batch of short stories. She had six of them in a skeleton condition; some of them consisting of no more than half a dozen startling phrases which were almost stories in themselves. These she intended to finish and get into the magazines.Afterwards, she would complete her book and fire it off at the world. She knew she could write. All sheneeded was time—and peace of mind. Alas! Time began to press terribly; and peace of mind was anywhere but in a little fourth-floor room in Hunter Street. Inspiration appeared to have fled from so commonplace an atmosphere; and again the lurking shadows came out of their corners, and cast themselves across the pages she could not fill.Her physical condition began to oppress her sorely, too, and she no longerwantedto work, for sitting at her desk caused headaches and dizziness. She longed for fresh air and bracing walks across grass and in the wind: for peaceful and beautiful scenes. But London was stifling in the grip of summer, and Bloomsbury was the hottest, most stifling place in it. The little room was suffocating, and out-of-doors the conditions were not much better. The streets gave up a white, afflicting dust; the pavements burned the feet. The best Poppy could do was to take a 'bus to some park where she could seek the quiet little unfrequented walks. Most of all, she loved the river when it swelled serene and full-bosomed from Chelsea onwards to Putney and the upper reaches. Along the Embankment how often she lingered before the beaten-copper lilies on Whistler's door, wishing dreamfully that she might see that master of paint and satire come forth, eye-glass perched in eye and cane in hand: but he never did—for her. From thence she would go to the statue of grey old Carlyle, who sits always in his little green garden watching Mother Thames flow by. On, past the Rossetti Fountain, and the house where the poet lived; and George Eliot's dull and drearsome residence. The Clock House charmed her, and she thought that if shecouldlive in London she would choose to live there. Always she trembled a little when she passed Tite Street, thinking of the tragic genius who had made it famous and who was eating out his heart in Reading Gaol. She would neverpass through the street, or look at No. 16, for fear her action might seem to savour of the cruel curiosity that lifts the cere-cloth from a dead face to seek upon it the marks that life has made and death been unable to erase.At last she would be home again, braced and fresh from her long walk and her thoughts—until she sat to her table. Then slowly, but unfailingly, physical weariness would steal upon her, and mental depression that could not be shaken off.The facts were to be faced at last that the six stories had sped no further ahead than the first few startling phrases; and that living with the utmost frugality she was down to the bare cold sum of ten pounds. She had long ago decided that she could make no further demand on Bramham, although he had urged her to do so if she found herself in need "before her ship came home" laden with the rewards of labour. She had received several kind and cheery letters from him, and answered them in the same spirit. Afterwards, she had let the correspondence lapse, for he wrote of a trip "home" before long, and she was afraid that he might seek her out.She possessed no valuables to realise on, except the piece of Spanish lace which had been valued by a pawnbroker at thirty shillings. She had nothing, in fact, but her literary genius, which had gone back upon her in her hour of need. Terrible doubts of her powers assailed her now. Could she really write? Or was she merely a scribbling woman whomightbe successful as the editress of a woman's dress paper?No! no! She denied it vehemently. Sheknewthat she had the "restless heart and plotting brain" of the born writer; the cunning hand for the swift, smiting word; the fine eye for the terse or sonorous sentence; the tuned ear for the phrase that, like a chord of music, caused her exquisite pleasure. And she had knowledgeof a magic land full of strange people and cruel ghosts and dear delights: and an imagination: and a vocabulary.Of these things she was certain, when she was sane and calm; but she was not often sane and calm. No woman in her state ever is, even under the kindliest circumstances. Terrors, pleasures, fears, hopes—all are seen through the blurred, exaggerating glass of emotion.The fear began to haunt her that she would not have enough money in hand to pay the expenses of her approaching illness. Sometimes she threw fear down and trampled on it; but other times it overcame her, swept her off her feet, engulfed her. Lest she should succumb entirely and ignobly she would wrench herself free, and, hastening out of doors, spend the remainder of the day wandering, resting sometimes in the Abbey, sometimes in the Brompton Oratory, seeking always a scene of peace and beauty.One day her breezy landlady approached her, using all the tact and kindness she had command of, yet taking the girl cruelly unawares."My dear," she said pleasantly, "I hope you have found a place to go to when your time comes?"Poppy sat paling and reddening before her, speechless with confusion."Ah, my dear, you needn't mind me," said Miss Drake kindly. "I've lived among 'theatricals' all my days, and I know what life is for a lovely girl like you—and I can see you're a good girl, too!"Poppy got up and walked away to the window, so unnerved she knew not what to do or say. The kind woman's words threw her into a state of misery. She had no idea that her secret was shared by others yet."What I wanted to say, dear," continued Miss Drake, "was, that if you haven't made your arrangements, you ought to do so at once: because it would be very inconvenient if anything happened here. You can see yourself,dear, the kind of house this is, full of quiet business people, who wouldn't like things to be upset—a doctor coming and going on the stairs and a nurse and all that fuss, you know. So, much as I shall regret losing you——""Oh, don't say anything more, Miss Drake," Poppy interposed hastily. "Of course, I shall go—I am going quite soon; I haven't made up my mindwhere, but I will do so at once—I'll find out as soon as I can——""Yes, yes, of course—don't worry; don't upset yourself, dear—Butterton's Weeklyis a good paper to find a nursing home in, if you haven't the address of any woman. But there! I expect you will get along all right."The moment she had gone Poppy flew out to the nearest paper-shop, bought aButterton's Weekly, and brought it home for deep study. It is an odious paper. When she had read a few of its advertisements, nausea seized her. Was she one of the army of these asking forsecretandconfidentialhomes? And were these homes offered bydiscreet nurseswho couldget the baby adopted if desired, meant for people like her? Again shame flushed her, flooded her. She crushed the paper into a ball, hid it, and went out for the whole day. But when she came in she uncrushed it, and read in it again with dull eyes.One little shabby advertisement drew her at last. The address it gave was a little mean street in Westminster. But the advertiser with great subtlety, and doubtless at the cost of extra pence, had added the magic words, "Near Westminster Abbey."Those little words redeemed the whole of the wretched sordid rag for Poppy. Her soul lifted up its head once more. Westminster Abbey! The sight of that beautiful place was for all the poor creatures who wanted these homes—it was for her!Hisson should be born near Westminster Abbey!The next day she sought the address—No. 10, OldStreet—and found it after long wandering. It was, indeed, near Westminster Abbey, but the street was terribly poor. The minute she got into it, she cried out within herself:"No: it cannot be here: I will not have it here—." But at last she found the number staring at her from a dingy door. At that she turned and looked for Westminster Abbey—but there was no sign of it: only tall, narrow, sad houses, with frowsily-curtained windows; bleak children playing in the gutter and a knife-grinder wailing out his chant:"Knives to grind.Scissors to grind.Pots and tea-Kittles to mend.""I shall die if I come here," she said desperately, and turned to fly, but the door opened suddenly and a woman came out and ran an eye over her."Good-evening, lady. I see it is me you want," was her laconic greeting. "Step inside."And Poppy found herself doing as she was bidden, following the woman into a tawdry sitting-room, which a seething gas-jet lighted with a blue and pallid glare. She and the woman faced each other over a plum-coloured table-cloth that had a border of yellow-floss flowers in hideous free-hand design."Are you Nurse Selton?" Poppy asked; and Mrs. Selton smilingly acknowledged her name. She was a little dark villain of a woman, with a hard mouth full of assorted teeth, and shrewd, black eyes. Her expression, however, was good-tempered, and the nursing costume she wore gave her an air of respectability, even refinement. She proceeded to inform Poppy that she was well known andesteemedin the neighbourhood; that the house was quiet and private "in the extreme"; and that,as a nurse, she possessed all the necessary diplomas and certificates. (Whether this last was true or not her listener never discovered.)"You will bemostcomfortable," she finished. Poppy shuddered."What are your terms?" she asked, in a dull voice, having entirely made up her mind not to stay with this hateful woman in this hateful house. But she wished to parley and give herself time to rest, for she felt strangely ill. The woman named a sum ridiculously high."I could not afford to pay that," she answered; and Nurse Selton regarded her coldly."That is not much for a lady of your sort—first, I presume? You won't get lower terms anywhere else. Won'tthe gentlemanhelp you?"When Poppy realised the meaning of this question, the best she could do was to bite her lips and avert her eyes from the odious woman, who discontentedly continued:"Well—I'll make it thirty shillings a weekuntil, and two pounds a weekafter. Two guineasfor the little affair—and if you want a doctor, a guinea extra.""I don't think I care to stay," said the girl in a low voice. "You said in your advertisement that your house was near Westminster Abbey, but I see that it is nothing of the kind.""Well, you make a great mistake," said the nurse perkily. "I'll show you a room where you can see the Abbey as plain as the nose on my face. Follow me."And Poppy followed again, through the hall that smelled of frying herrings and soapsuds, up a narrow, oil-clothed staircase; across two landings; higher and higher, darker and darker, stumbling and kicking the narrow steps, to the top landing of all. There were three doors upon it, and one of them Mrs. Selton opened and drove forward to light a gas-jet. It smelled close and dank, but yet wasinoffensively plain and simple—the ordinary bedroom furniture with no adornments of any kind. Straight facing the door was a little casement-window, with a wide ledge to lean upon; this the nurse approached and threw open."There you are," said she stormily; and Poppy looked forth, and looked again, and stayed looking, for it was well worth having "clomb the deadly stair" to see. There was the grey old spired pile, lying lovely against the pale evening light."I will stay," she said simply.The woman thought her a fool."Everything paid in advance," said she in a business-like tone. Being satisfied on that point they descended. Presently, after answering a few more odiously piercing questions, Poppy escaped.CHAPTER XVIIN the room overlooking the Abbey were spent many dark and ominous hours. By direction of Nurse Selton, Poppy presented herself at No. 10 one dreary October day, and while she stood knocking at the door of the mean house, the grey, sad shadows of Westminster fell across her, and were not lifted by day or night.Each part of London has its own peculiar atmosphere. Chelsea is cheerful; Kensington reserved; Bayswater extremely refined; Bloomsbury vulgar and pathetic—and a number of other things. Westminster is essentially sad—sad with a noble, stately sadness."It cannot grieve as them that have no hope," but its high towers and spires, its statues, cloisters, yards, hospitals, and ancient walls—all have an aloof air of haunting melancholy. Beautiful but unsmiling, Westminster dreams always and sadly of the great, noble past.So, when Poppy came into it that October day, its brooding spirit enfolded her, and all her life after she was never quite able to lift from her heart the sad, lovely hand of Westminster.At night, when she could open her little casement-window and gaze out at the profile of the Abbey, and hear sometimes the bells of "sweet St. Margaret's," life went kindly with her. Before leaving Hunter Street, at the last moment, a fair thing had happened. The editor ofThe Cornfieldhad sent her a cheque for eight pounds seventeen shillings, in payment for a story which she hadwritten in Sophie Cornell's bungalow and discovered of late at the bottom of a trunk. It was a story full of sunshine and gay, gibing wit, and the editor asked her for more work in the same vein. She had none, indeed, to send, but the request put her in good heart for the future. She essayed to write a little from day to day in the upper chamber; but the atmosphere was wrong for the romantic sun-bitten tales of her own land that seethed within her, and yet evaded her pen when she sought to fasten them to paper. Also, though she had but to close her eyes to see Africa lying bathed in spring sunshine, and to remember every detail of scents and sounds, it broke her heart to write of these things in a room dim with fog and full of a piercing smell that found its way from the kitchen up four flights of stairs and through closed doors—the smell of bloaters.She brightened her room as much as possible with flowers, and taking down Mrs. Selton's tawdry pictures, had the walls bare, except for a blue print of Watts'sHope—a statuesque-limbed woman, with blindfolded eyes, who sits at the top of the world sounding the last string of a broken viol. On a day when hope was bright in her, Poppy had bought the picture at a little shop in Victoria Street, and now she counted it one of her dearest possessions. Always it comforted and cheered her on.Days came when she needed all the comfort she could get. There were other women in the house who were apparently in the same case as herself, but they were haggard, furtive creatures, holding converse with none, shutting doors swiftly at the approach of anyone but Nurse Selton, creeping out for air under the cloak of night.Sometimes the woman in the adjoining room moaned all night, railing at Fate and God that she should have been brought to this pass.Once through an open door Poppy heard haggling going on about the premium to be paid with a baby that was to be "adopted."The sordidness of life, and the meanness of human nature, pressed around her. It was hard to keep ideals in such an atmosphere; hard to flaunt the green flag of love and hope, when there were so many hands eager to pull it down and trample it in the mire. A joyful spirit seemed out of place here. To the people she had got among, the thing that she thought wonderful and lovely was a curse and a bane! The mean house in the back street and the common-minded people seemed in a conspiracy to make her feel low, and shameful, when she wished only to be proud and happy."This must be part of the terror that comes of breaking the moral law," she whispered to herself. "One's act can bring one into contact with sordid people, and squalor and vice—one may become degraded and soiled in spite of oneself." She looked around her with hunted eyes. "There is nothing fine or noble anywhere here, except Watts's picture!" she thought; but when she opened her window and saw the grand old Abbey, she could think it no longer. There it lay in the gloom, grand and silent, standing for great, proud things: the long pile with the hunch at one end of it and at the other the stately twin pinnacles facing Palace Yard, where Raleigh's head fell, and where London goes rolling by to East and to West.Yes: it stood for all high and noble things and thoughts! All grand ideals! Nothing squalid there, or shameful! Surely it belonged to her—belonged to everyone who loved it, and loved what it meant. But did it? Was she cut off from it because—? She drew in her breath, and thought for a long time with closed eyes and clasped hands."... I suppose morality is one of the high things—and I am not moral. I am one of the Magdalenes of the earth now!... whoever knows, will call me an immoral woman! I think I am only a mistaken one. I can seethatnow, thinking not of myself, but of my son to be. I should, if I had no moral instincts, at least have thought of consequences to my child! Well-brought-up girls are trained to think of these things, I suppose. But I was not well brought up—I was never brought up at all. I was a child of Nature. A poppy, blowing and flaming in the field—and plucked. If I had been anything else I should not have been in the garden that night at a time when well-brought-up girls were in bed! And I should have flown at the first sound of danger—but I didn't. Not because I did not recognise danger; but because Ididrecognise something I had been looking for all my life—Love. And I put out both arms and embraced it.Nowit seems revealed to me that I should not have done this ... I should have fenced and fended ... guarded myself ... given nothing ... until he had asked for me and taken me, before all the world ... and made a nest for me somewhere away from the squalor of the world where no begriming thoughts could touch me and smirch the mother ofhisson.ThenI suppose the Abbey would have been for me too!—--"She twisted her lips and flung out her fingers."And I wouldn't change a thing that is done. Not for all the world could give would I forget or have undone that radiant hour!... And yet ... and yet ... how I should love the nest for my child ... the peace and fine honour of a wife's bed to layhisson upon! Oh! why does life tear the hearts of women in half like this?" She rested her head on her hands and shed passionate tears for herself and for all women like her. At last she said:"Good-night, old Abbey! You aremineall the same—mine because, moral or immoral, I love the things you stand for. You cannot rob even bad people of the love of beauty. And no one can rob me of the peace you have put into my heart night after night."At last illness descended upon her. She had often known torment of mind, now she knew torment of body, and her mind did not suffer at all; but was possessed of a kind of exultation that supported and refreshed her through terrible gaps of time.Nurse Selton came in often, but the girl preferred to be alone. Most of the day was spent betweenHopeover the mantelpiece and the casement-window. Often she thought of the native women in her own land, who, when the time comes to bring forth, go quietly away and make a soft green bed in some sheltered place, and there suffer in silence and alone; then, after a few hours, return as quietly to every-day work and go serenely on with life, the new-born child slung behind the shoulders. The thought appealed to Poppy. She said:"That is the way I should have borne my son if I had stayed in Africa ... out in the air—with the sun shining. But oh! these terrible walls that shut one in!... and without—cold, fog, mud!"When evening fell, sickly and grey-green, she opened her casement-window and leaned upon its sill. The roar of London heard through the fog was like the dull boom of the breakers on the Durban back beach. Far away, the sky above Trafalgar Square was spasmodically lit by electric advertisements.In the street below, a woman's raucous voice pathetically shrieked:
"O to be in EnglandNow that Spring is there."
"O to be in EnglandNow that Spring is there."
But his emotion was neither for Spring nor England. Heled the talk to London with the hope of getting her to speak of her destination; but she went off at a tangent and began to tell him about the wonderful shades of blue to be found in the interior of a glacier. He ignored that, and made occasion to give her his card with a Kensington address written on it, saying in rather strained fashion:
"If ever you want a friend—doctors are sometimes useful people, you know."
She thanked him and took his card, holding it carefully in her hand. But she offered no information on the subject which so engrossed his thoughts. An uncomfortable pause followed. Suddenly in the darkness she felt a hand hot on hers.
"Miss Chard ... Rosalind ..." he had discovered her name—"I will do anything for you."
It was far from being a surprise to her that he should make some kind of avowal. But his words seemed to her rather odd—and somehow in keeping with his odd looks at her. She very gently drew away her hand from under his and put it behind her head. The other was quite out of his reach.
"Thank you, Dr. Newnham," she said kindly, but with no particular fervour.
"Do you understand what I mean?" he said huskily, after another pause. "I can help you."
He could not see the expression on her face, but he saw that she turned her head to look at him as she answered:
"What can you mean?"
"Oh, you needn't beat about the bush with me," he spoke with coarse irritation. "I know what you have to face."
"You must be wonderfully clever," she said, with a touch of sarcasm; "but I should like to know just what you mean."
Irritation now became anger.
"You know well enough," he said brutally. "What is the good of playing pure with me! It is my business to see what isn't plain to other people."
In the darkness she grew pale with anger at his tone, but she had fear too, of she knew not what. Her wish was to rise and leave him at once; but curiosity chained her—curiosity and creeping, creeping fear. Dimly she became conscious of the predestined feeling that once or twice before in her life had presaged strange happenings. What was she going to hear? She sat very still, waiting.
The man leaned close to her and spoke into her ear. His breathing was quick and excited, but he had some difficulty with his words; he muttered and his sentences were halting and disjointed.
But Poppy heard everything he said. It seemed to her that his lowest whisper pierced to the inmost places of her being, and reverberated through her like the echoing and resounding of bells. Afterwards there was a terrible quiet. He could not see her face. She appeared almost to be crouching in her chair, all bundled up, but he did not venture to touch her—some instinct kept him from that. Pity, mingled with his base passion and scorn. He regretted that he had spoken so violently. He feared he had been brutal. At last she spoke, in a faint voice, that seemed to come from far away.
"I don't know what you mean ... I think you must be mad."
Newnham laughed—derisively, devilishly.
"I'll bet that's what you are going home for, all the same."
While he was furiously laughing, with his hand flung above his head, she flamed up out of her chair, and spoke for a moment down at him in a low, vibrating voice:
"You vile man! Never dare speak to me again. You are not fit to live!"
Then she was gone.
After a time he got up and stumbled towards the smoke-room, intending to get drunk; but he changed his mind before he reached it, and went to his cabin instead. Having closed his door, he sat in the berth and stared at his boots. He said at last:
"H——! What a beast I am! But what is worse, I am a fool. I am no good any longer. I made a mistake in my diagnosis. That girl is straight! Pure as the untrodden snow! I had better cut my throat."
However, he did not.
Poppy, lying on her face in her cabin, was tasting shame. Bitter-sweet, mysterious, terrifying knowledge was hers at last—and with it was shame. Shame that the knowledge should come to her from profane and guilty lips! Shame that the child of the king of her heart should be unworthily born; that a king's child should be robbed of its kingdom; that the mother of her child should be one to whom men might throw vile words. Shame that she was a transgressor.
LONDON was not new to Poppy. She had lived there for months at a time, but always at the best hotels and under luxurious conditions. Now, she hardly knew where to seek a home in accord with her limited means, but she had heard of Bloomsbury as being the resort of writers and artists and people whose riches are rather to be found in their heads and hearts than in their purses; so she took her way thither.
She walked the old-fashioned squares the day after her arrival and found them all green-tracery, and darts of spring sunshine that touched the gloomy houses with the gilt of past romance. After much roaming, and knocking, and climbing of stairs, and making of awkward adieus to angry, disappointed landladies, she eventually discovered a tall, white house, whose front windows overlooked the pigeons pecking in the straggly grass that grows in the courtyard of the British Museum. A room on the top floor but one seemed likely to suit her purse and her tastes, and she seized upon it eagerly. It was big and bare, with no noise overhead, except the footsteps of two tired maids, who crept to bed at eleven o'clock with very little to say to each other. It seemed to Poppy that she could not have found any better place to start hard work in, and yet, from the first day there, a dreariness crept over her spirit—a kind of mental numbness she had never known before, oppressed her. She supposed it must have something to do with her physical condition and the shock she had lately received, and that after a fewdays it would pass. Instead, it increased. Her nights became indescribably weird and unhappy. Always it seemed to her that she heard someone calling somewhere, and she used to wake up, thinking that she had been urgently roused to fetch something. Sometimes, still half asleep, she would get up and begin to dress to go out; then, gradually becoming conscious of what she was doing, she would light the gas and stare round the room, looking for the person who had been speaking to her. In the daytime it became impossible to work, though she perpetually goaded herself to her writing-table. The only time she could get any ease from the intolerable restlessness and depression that filled her, was when she was half out of her window, leaning above the street, watching the intermittent stream of uninteresting-looking people who passed up and down the broad, dingy steps of the Museum, and listening to the roar of London afar. Trying to interpret the street calls was an idle amusement, too, wondering why the coal-carters should shoutKo-bel, and the cry of the oyster-man be exceeding dolorous like the cry of a soul in the depths.
Clam ... Clam ... clamavi.
In the afternoons, when still haunting sadness obsessed her, she would put on her hat and visit a picture-gallery, or walk in the park, or roam the streets looking at the shop-windows and into the strained, anxious faces of the hurrying passers-by. She speculated as to whether she would ever get that look, and always she wondered what was worth it; then one day, as she walked, she felt what seemed tiny fluttering fingers clutching at her heart-strings, and sheknew! Flying home on swift feet, she nailed herself once more to her work-table. Shemustwork, she told herself feverishly; and when she could not, frenzy seized her, then terror, then despair. Yes, those were the things she had seen in the strained, hurrying faces that passed along—frenzy, terror, despair; not for themselves, but forothers.She must work!
But Inspiration hid Her face; and shadows came out of the four corners of the room and closed in upon her.
Breakfast was always brought on a tray by a maid called Kate. For the rest of her meals she frequented A.B.C. shops, and the like, existing on cups of tea and boiled eggs and glasses of milk, after the manner of women who live alone and have to economise. But sometimes in a wild burst of extravagance she would wend her way to Soho and order a little Italian meal allhors-d'œuvresand thin Chianti. She loved to hear the French and Italian chatter about her, and felt more at home there than anywhere, not minding the men's bold, dark glances, for in her travels with Abinger she had learnt to know that there was really little of harm in them. Of course, she attracted much attention and often had uncomfortable adventures in her lonely goings and comings; but she did not let these ruffle her greatly, telling herself that all such things were part and parcel of the fight. She minded nothing, in fact, except the tragic atmosphere of her room, which engulfed her spirit as soon as she entered. The nights began to be even more eerie. She lay awake often until dawn, and presently longings and urgings came upon her to procure something that would produce sleep. She had never known anyone who took drugs or sleeping-draughts, and could not imagine what put such an idea into her head—indeed, having read De Quincey'sConfessions, she had a horror of such things, and so, fought the suggestion with all her might. But still it returned. Once when she was sitting at her table, with a throbbing head, biting her pencil before a blank sheet of paper, she distinctly heard someone softly say:
"Go andbuysome inspiration."
She stared about the empty room.
"What can be the matter with me?" she demanded of herself, after a time, and strove with all her strength to work and drive such insane thoughts from her. But the writer within her was mute, the poet dumb, and her woman's body was very weary.
One day, she had been striving with herself for many hours, writing down dry, banal words that she almost dug out of the paper a moment afterwards. At intervals she sat with her head on her arms, wondering what had ever caused her to dream that she was born to the pen; brooding over the possibilities of her chances as a shop-girl, a waitress in a tea-shop, a chorus-girl, a housemaid—asanythingbut a writer of poems and romantic fiction, at which she was obviously a dismal failure.
At last she flung papers and pencils to the four corners of the room, and left the house. Out of doors it was raining fearsomely. After tramping for an hour or so, soaked through, she found herself back near home, in Theobald's Row—a hateful street that smells of fish and rank cheese, where men bawl out the price of pork-chops, and women come furtively stealing from side-doors, wiping their lips. She made haste to get into Southampton Row, which has a sweeter savour to the nostrils and a staid, respectable air. At a corner she passed a paper shop, which had many news-boards exposed, with the "sheets" hanging dripping and torn from them. One yellow sheet stood out boldly with the words "South Africa" in black letters across it. A pang of joy shot through her. She could have fallen down before that tattered paper and kissed the magic words. The name of her own land! The land that had beaten her and bruised her and flung her out to seek a living and safety in another country—but her own land! Some words came to her lips:
"She said: God knows they owe me naught.I tossed them to the foaming sea,I tossed them to the howling waste,Yet still their love comes home to me."
"She said: God knows they owe me naught.I tossed them to the foaming sea,I tossed them to the howling waste,Yet still their love comes home to me."
So far she had forbidden herself entirely the luxury of journals and magazines, saying that she could not afford them; but now she went into the shop and recklessly bought up everything that had any connection with South-African affairs.
Afterwards, going home, she saw a flower-girl crouching in a doorway with a bale of wet daffodils and narcissi in her arms. Flowers, too, were luxuries, concerning which she had laid down a law unto herself; but the girl made a piteous appeal, and without a thought of dwindling funds, Poppy bought up the whole wet fragrant bale. Before she reached home she was reproaching herself bitterly.
"HowcanI be buying magazines and flowers with money I have not earned?... I am becoming degraded! ... a parasite!"
Only the smell of the narcissi reassured her, and changed the trend of her thoughts, for they reminded her of Charles Bramham and his acres of flowers seen from the hilltops.
"He would be glad to think that his money brings this rift of blue into my grey sky," she thought; and she turned her dreary room into an enchanted spring garden, extravagantly ordered a fire and sat before it, tearing the news out of the papers with her eyes, searching for the name of Evelyn Carson. She had not far to look. In every paper she found news of him. His party had arrived at Borwezi, a spot in Central Africa, the last civilised touching-place before they plunged into the savage unknown. He had made a long stay there—for it was on the banks of a "fever river," second only to thePungwe. Carson was reported to have been laid up with malarial fever for a week, and a doctor who had joined the expedition at Mombassa had been so ill from the same cause as to be obliged to abandon his intention and to be taken back to civilisation under the care of people who had accompanied the expedition as far as Borwezi. One paper mentioned the names of Mr. and Mrs. Nick Capron as being of the returning party. This was as far as the actual news went. Rumours there were in plenty. One arresting story, brought into Borwezi by native runners, was that the natives of Borapota were departing from every part of their country to assemble in the capital, where the King would receive Carson and his men—whether in a friendly or hostile spirit was unknown. Several papers devoted articles to Carson himself, dealing with his achievements in different parts of Africa, his personality, his influence with the Zulus and Basutos, and other less-known tribes. One journal headed an article with the word—Intandugaza: fortunately the writer did not attempt to translate the Zulu word, nor explain how Carson came to bear it. (Perhaps that was "one of the untoward things about him not compatible with reverence," thought Poppy sadly.) After she had drunk in every word of him, the papers lay scattered at her feet, and she, lapsing from the decree she had made not to think of him, lost herself at last in dreams of him. She had lived according to the rules of Alice Meynell'sRenouncement:
"I must not think of thee; and tired yet strongI shun the thought that dwells in all delight,The thought of thee: and in the heaven's blue height:And in the sweetest passage of a song——"
"I must not think of thee; and tired yet strongI shun the thought that dwells in all delight,The thought of thee: and in the heaven's blue height:And in the sweetest passage of a song——"
Now she forgot the fine, firm words, and long, long sat dreaming by the fire, with her hands before her face. Anyone looking into the room would merely have seena girl lying back in her chair resting, asleep perhaps. But only the lesser part of Poppy Destin was there. The spirit of her wandered in a moonlit Natal garden, listening to a voice with a rustle in it, and from thence ... far, far!
Afterwards, she reconstructed all the chapters of her life since the magic night that began so wonderfully and ended in despair with the uttering of another woman's name. Of that woman—Loraine, she thought little now, having fought down and killed the bitter hatred of her, as once she had wished to kill the woman. There was no room in her awakened heart for hatred—only Love could be there. Love of the man who had awakened it, and to whom, whether he loved her or not, she believed herself to be secretly linked for ever; and to whom, whether she saw him again or not, her hopes, her future, her life were dedicated. But shewouldsee him again!—of that she was blindly, fatalistically certain: and he would know her for his mate, as she knew him—or of what use her beauty, her wit, her charm, her life at all? All things would entangle themselves, she told her heart. As soon as she had money enough she meant to free herself from the marriage with Luce Abinger that was no marriage at all; and from which he knew a Court of Justice would free her as an innocent, unwitting victim. As she sat thinking, many things that had been dark became clear. The meaning of Abinger's fearsome conduct was plain to her now—heknew! Kykie had told him. That was what she had stayed up for, supposing herself to be the herald of glad tidings.
It made the girl recoil and quiver to think that those two had known and spoken of what had been hidden fromher; of what, even now, she dared hardly consider with herself because of its wonder and terror—something that no one in the world should know except just two people: so it seemed to her.
"But, oh, Mother of God!" she cried aloud and bitterly. "Why is this thing so sweet, and yet so terrible to bear?"
Even while she asked she knew, and gave herself the answer.
"I am a Transgressor——"
At last, far into the night, she undressed and went to bed; so tired from emotion that she fell at once into dead slumber. But no sooner was she asleep than she was dreaming that a woman lay by her side on the bed whispering into her ear, pleading, asking for something, begging, urgently demanding. With a wrench Poppy threw off sleep and sat up staring into the darkness of the room. She was only half-awake, but she was certain—she could haveswornthat a shadowy figure rose, too, from the bed, and slipped into the far shadows.
Beads of fright sat on her forehead.
"I am going mad!" she thought. "There was a woman on my bed ... she is still in the room. I am going mad!"
She was afraid to lie down again, and afraid to get out of bed. She sat there in cold terror until she thought herself turned to stone. Then, slowly, reason reasserted itself, and courage. She clenched her teeth and nerved herself to move, to get from the bed and from the room. The whole house was wrapped in darkness. Instinctively she made for the room above her, where she knew the servants were. Reaching the door she knocked and then entered. One of them was awake at once.
"Who's there? What do you want?" said an excited voice, ready to scream.
"Don't be afraid, Kate ... I am the girl who sleeps in the room below ... Miss Chard.... I don't want to disturb you—only—let me stay here until morning, will you?... I'm afraid to be in my own room."
Kate was "a good sort." She struck a match and stared at the intruder before answering; then she said: "Lock the door," and was obeyed with alacrity.
The maid hopped out and soon had a blanket round Poppy's trembling form. She made room on the bed, and they sat whispering together. The other maid slept on like the dead.
"What did you see?" asked Kate.
"See? I don't know ... there was something strange——"
"It was'er, sure enough!"
"What do you mean, Kate?" Poppy felt her spine curling.
"I'm new here," whispered Kate mysteriously; "but I got five minutes' talk with the last girl, though the missis tried hard to keep us from meeting. Miss—no one ever sleeps in that room long. A lydy cut her throat there!"
"What!"
"Yes—sure as I'm sitting here. I've been afraid to creep up the stairs at night for fear ofher. How you could aslepthere, Heavin knows!" She lowered her voice to a whisper: "She used to take them drugs. She was a hactress, and she and her 'usbin had that room. She was very clever, they said, but she hadn't had no work for a long time, and she used to eat away at them drugs night and day, and 'er 'usbin never knew. And at last, one day he found 'er out, and there was an awful shindy and he said as 'e'd leave her if she didn't knock it off. And she tried and tried. For a whole three days she did without ... walked the room all day and would go out and no sooner out than in again ... she told the girl it was'ell. Every time anyone came to the door she would stand up and just say, ''ell! 'ell! ell!' very quiet to herself all the time they was speaking. Then on the third night she went out and gotit. And the 'usbinfound out as soon as he came in. She was so gentle and sweet-like, and began to 'elp 'im off with his coat. He gave her a look ... likehanythink, then 'e put his hat and coat on again and walked out. And that very night she done for 'erself with one of the razors 'e left behind.She done it in the very bed you bin sleeping in.I says to cook I says it's a shime of the missis to do it!—but there! she's one of them would sell 'er mother's shroud for sixpence. I shan't stay here no more after this, don't you believe it, miss—not for a thousand pound; and nor won't you, I reckon."
Poppy's reckoning came to much the same sum. When she stole down in the morning light, it was to dress herself and pack her belongings swiftly for departure. Kate stayed by the door until all was done, casting fearsome glances about her, ready to fly at a sound. They left the flower-decked room then, to the poor, disquieted spirit that haunted it, and sought the mistress of the house. But she discreetly excused herself from an interview, and only sent the cook to demand a week's extra money in lieu of the notice that should have been given. Poppy expostulated, but it was of no use: she was told that it was the rule under which rooms were let and that her luggage could be detained. When she had paid, she realised that this extra expense would force her to seek still cheaper lodgings. That evening found her installed in a dingy room in Hunter Street—another top-floor-but-one.
How she wished at this time, that she had betaken herself from the first to Paris, where, she had been told all top-floors are white-and-gold rooms, with faded true-lovers' knots festooning the ceiling, and wide oak fireplaces in which burnt little brightbriquettefires. Once, wishing to have a picture in the Louvre copied for Luce, she had visited a clever but penniless girl-artist in such aroom, in quite a poor part of theQuartier; and the girl had carelessly told her that there were plenty of the same kind to be had.
In her new quarters Poppy had barely room to turn round: but she was more content. No tragic ghosts kept vigil there, it was certain. A healthy scent of Irish stew pervaded the atmosphere, and the walls were decorated with smiling faces and charming figures. The landlady, a stout, breezy woman on the right side of forty-five, had once been a chorus girl at the Gaiety, and her circle of acquaintances had evidently been large. Little now remained to her of beauty, but she had an attractivebonhomieand a wide charity for the world of women.
IN Hunter Street, Poppy put the finishing touches to her book of poems—as far as anything is ever finished until it appears in print. For it is certain that a writer will always find something new to do to a book as long as it is in MS. and within reach. But with Poppy, time pressed. She knew that shortly she would be wanting money. Moreover, she was horrified to reflect that after nearly four months in England she had nothing ready for publication but the poems, which had been the work of years. The thought came to her that if she could get this book accepted and published it would bring courage and inspiration back, and so spur her on that she would presently come to her own on a full tide. With this hope high in her, she sent the poems to a publisher whom she had read of in a literary journal as having a reputation for encouraging new authors on new subjects. The journal in question had omitted to mention that the new authors got very little out of the processbeyondthe encouragement, so poor Poppy went home gay of heart from posting her precious manuscript and essayed to start work on a batch of short stories. She had six of them in a skeleton condition; some of them consisting of no more than half a dozen startling phrases which were almost stories in themselves. These she intended to finish and get into the magazines.
Afterwards, she would complete her book and fire it off at the world. She knew she could write. All sheneeded was time—and peace of mind. Alas! Time began to press terribly; and peace of mind was anywhere but in a little fourth-floor room in Hunter Street. Inspiration appeared to have fled from so commonplace an atmosphere; and again the lurking shadows came out of their corners, and cast themselves across the pages she could not fill.
Her physical condition began to oppress her sorely, too, and she no longerwantedto work, for sitting at her desk caused headaches and dizziness. She longed for fresh air and bracing walks across grass and in the wind: for peaceful and beautiful scenes. But London was stifling in the grip of summer, and Bloomsbury was the hottest, most stifling place in it. The little room was suffocating, and out-of-doors the conditions were not much better. The streets gave up a white, afflicting dust; the pavements burned the feet. The best Poppy could do was to take a 'bus to some park where she could seek the quiet little unfrequented walks. Most of all, she loved the river when it swelled serene and full-bosomed from Chelsea onwards to Putney and the upper reaches. Along the Embankment how often she lingered before the beaten-copper lilies on Whistler's door, wishing dreamfully that she might see that master of paint and satire come forth, eye-glass perched in eye and cane in hand: but he never did—for her. From thence she would go to the statue of grey old Carlyle, who sits always in his little green garden watching Mother Thames flow by. On, past the Rossetti Fountain, and the house where the poet lived; and George Eliot's dull and drearsome residence. The Clock House charmed her, and she thought that if shecouldlive in London she would choose to live there. Always she trembled a little when she passed Tite Street, thinking of the tragic genius who had made it famous and who was eating out his heart in Reading Gaol. She would neverpass through the street, or look at No. 16, for fear her action might seem to savour of the cruel curiosity that lifts the cere-cloth from a dead face to seek upon it the marks that life has made and death been unable to erase.
At last she would be home again, braced and fresh from her long walk and her thoughts—until she sat to her table. Then slowly, but unfailingly, physical weariness would steal upon her, and mental depression that could not be shaken off.
The facts were to be faced at last that the six stories had sped no further ahead than the first few startling phrases; and that living with the utmost frugality she was down to the bare cold sum of ten pounds. She had long ago decided that she could make no further demand on Bramham, although he had urged her to do so if she found herself in need "before her ship came home" laden with the rewards of labour. She had received several kind and cheery letters from him, and answered them in the same spirit. Afterwards, she had let the correspondence lapse, for he wrote of a trip "home" before long, and she was afraid that he might seek her out.
She possessed no valuables to realise on, except the piece of Spanish lace which had been valued by a pawnbroker at thirty shillings. She had nothing, in fact, but her literary genius, which had gone back upon her in her hour of need. Terrible doubts of her powers assailed her now. Could she really write? Or was she merely a scribbling woman whomightbe successful as the editress of a woman's dress paper?
No! no! She denied it vehemently. Sheknewthat she had the "restless heart and plotting brain" of the born writer; the cunning hand for the swift, smiting word; the fine eye for the terse or sonorous sentence; the tuned ear for the phrase that, like a chord of music, caused her exquisite pleasure. And she had knowledgeof a magic land full of strange people and cruel ghosts and dear delights: and an imagination: and a vocabulary.
Of these things she was certain, when she was sane and calm; but she was not often sane and calm. No woman in her state ever is, even under the kindliest circumstances. Terrors, pleasures, fears, hopes—all are seen through the blurred, exaggerating glass of emotion.
The fear began to haunt her that she would not have enough money in hand to pay the expenses of her approaching illness. Sometimes she threw fear down and trampled on it; but other times it overcame her, swept her off her feet, engulfed her. Lest she should succumb entirely and ignobly she would wrench herself free, and, hastening out of doors, spend the remainder of the day wandering, resting sometimes in the Abbey, sometimes in the Brompton Oratory, seeking always a scene of peace and beauty.
One day her breezy landlady approached her, using all the tact and kindness she had command of, yet taking the girl cruelly unawares.
"My dear," she said pleasantly, "I hope you have found a place to go to when your time comes?"
Poppy sat paling and reddening before her, speechless with confusion.
"Ah, my dear, you needn't mind me," said Miss Drake kindly. "I've lived among 'theatricals' all my days, and I know what life is for a lovely girl like you—and I can see you're a good girl, too!"
Poppy got up and walked away to the window, so unnerved she knew not what to do or say. The kind woman's words threw her into a state of misery. She had no idea that her secret was shared by others yet.
"What I wanted to say, dear," continued Miss Drake, "was, that if you haven't made your arrangements, you ought to do so at once: because it would be very inconvenient if anything happened here. You can see yourself,dear, the kind of house this is, full of quiet business people, who wouldn't like things to be upset—a doctor coming and going on the stairs and a nurse and all that fuss, you know. So, much as I shall regret losing you——"
"Oh, don't say anything more, Miss Drake," Poppy interposed hastily. "Of course, I shall go—I am going quite soon; I haven't made up my mindwhere, but I will do so at once—I'll find out as soon as I can——"
"Yes, yes, of course—don't worry; don't upset yourself, dear—Butterton's Weeklyis a good paper to find a nursing home in, if you haven't the address of any woman. But there! I expect you will get along all right."
The moment she had gone Poppy flew out to the nearest paper-shop, bought aButterton's Weekly, and brought it home for deep study. It is an odious paper. When she had read a few of its advertisements, nausea seized her. Was she one of the army of these asking forsecretandconfidentialhomes? And were these homes offered bydiscreet nurseswho couldget the baby adopted if desired, meant for people like her? Again shame flushed her, flooded her. She crushed the paper into a ball, hid it, and went out for the whole day. But when she came in she uncrushed it, and read in it again with dull eyes.
One little shabby advertisement drew her at last. The address it gave was a little mean street in Westminster. But the advertiser with great subtlety, and doubtless at the cost of extra pence, had added the magic words, "Near Westminster Abbey."
Those little words redeemed the whole of the wretched sordid rag for Poppy. Her soul lifted up its head once more. Westminster Abbey! The sight of that beautiful place was for all the poor creatures who wanted these homes—it was for her!Hisson should be born near Westminster Abbey!
The next day she sought the address—No. 10, OldStreet—and found it after long wandering. It was, indeed, near Westminster Abbey, but the street was terribly poor. The minute she got into it, she cried out within herself:
"No: it cannot be here: I will not have it here—." But at last she found the number staring at her from a dingy door. At that she turned and looked for Westminster Abbey—but there was no sign of it: only tall, narrow, sad houses, with frowsily-curtained windows; bleak children playing in the gutter and a knife-grinder wailing out his chant:
"Knives to grind.Scissors to grind.Pots and tea-Kittles to mend."
"Knives to grind.Scissors to grind.Pots and tea-Kittles to mend."
"I shall die if I come here," she said desperately, and turned to fly, but the door opened suddenly and a woman came out and ran an eye over her.
"Good-evening, lady. I see it is me you want," was her laconic greeting. "Step inside."
And Poppy found herself doing as she was bidden, following the woman into a tawdry sitting-room, which a seething gas-jet lighted with a blue and pallid glare. She and the woman faced each other over a plum-coloured table-cloth that had a border of yellow-floss flowers in hideous free-hand design.
"Are you Nurse Selton?" Poppy asked; and Mrs. Selton smilingly acknowledged her name. She was a little dark villain of a woman, with a hard mouth full of assorted teeth, and shrewd, black eyes. Her expression, however, was good-tempered, and the nursing costume she wore gave her an air of respectability, even refinement. She proceeded to inform Poppy that she was well known andesteemedin the neighbourhood; that the house was quiet and private "in the extreme"; and that,as a nurse, she possessed all the necessary diplomas and certificates. (Whether this last was true or not her listener never discovered.)
"You will bemostcomfortable," she finished. Poppy shuddered.
"What are your terms?" she asked, in a dull voice, having entirely made up her mind not to stay with this hateful woman in this hateful house. But she wished to parley and give herself time to rest, for she felt strangely ill. The woman named a sum ridiculously high.
"I could not afford to pay that," she answered; and Nurse Selton regarded her coldly.
"That is not much for a lady of your sort—first, I presume? You won't get lower terms anywhere else. Won'tthe gentlemanhelp you?"
When Poppy realised the meaning of this question, the best she could do was to bite her lips and avert her eyes from the odious woman, who discontentedly continued:
"Well—I'll make it thirty shillings a weekuntil, and two pounds a weekafter. Two guineasfor the little affair—and if you want a doctor, a guinea extra."
"I don't think I care to stay," said the girl in a low voice. "You said in your advertisement that your house was near Westminster Abbey, but I see that it is nothing of the kind."
"Well, you make a great mistake," said the nurse perkily. "I'll show you a room where you can see the Abbey as plain as the nose on my face. Follow me."
And Poppy followed again, through the hall that smelled of frying herrings and soapsuds, up a narrow, oil-clothed staircase; across two landings; higher and higher, darker and darker, stumbling and kicking the narrow steps, to the top landing of all. There were three doors upon it, and one of them Mrs. Selton opened and drove forward to light a gas-jet. It smelled close and dank, but yet wasinoffensively plain and simple—the ordinary bedroom furniture with no adornments of any kind. Straight facing the door was a little casement-window, with a wide ledge to lean upon; this the nurse approached and threw open.
"There you are," said she stormily; and Poppy looked forth, and looked again, and stayed looking, for it was well worth having "clomb the deadly stair" to see. There was the grey old spired pile, lying lovely against the pale evening light.
"I will stay," she said simply.
The woman thought her a fool.
"Everything paid in advance," said she in a business-like tone. Being satisfied on that point they descended. Presently, after answering a few more odiously piercing questions, Poppy escaped.
IN the room overlooking the Abbey were spent many dark and ominous hours. By direction of Nurse Selton, Poppy presented herself at No. 10 one dreary October day, and while she stood knocking at the door of the mean house, the grey, sad shadows of Westminster fell across her, and were not lifted by day or night.
Each part of London has its own peculiar atmosphere. Chelsea is cheerful; Kensington reserved; Bayswater extremely refined; Bloomsbury vulgar and pathetic—and a number of other things. Westminster is essentially sad—sad with a noble, stately sadness.
"It cannot grieve as them that have no hope," but its high towers and spires, its statues, cloisters, yards, hospitals, and ancient walls—all have an aloof air of haunting melancholy. Beautiful but unsmiling, Westminster dreams always and sadly of the great, noble past.
So, when Poppy came into it that October day, its brooding spirit enfolded her, and all her life after she was never quite able to lift from her heart the sad, lovely hand of Westminster.
At night, when she could open her little casement-window and gaze out at the profile of the Abbey, and hear sometimes the bells of "sweet St. Margaret's," life went kindly with her. Before leaving Hunter Street, at the last moment, a fair thing had happened. The editor ofThe Cornfieldhad sent her a cheque for eight pounds seventeen shillings, in payment for a story which she hadwritten in Sophie Cornell's bungalow and discovered of late at the bottom of a trunk. It was a story full of sunshine and gay, gibing wit, and the editor asked her for more work in the same vein. She had none, indeed, to send, but the request put her in good heart for the future. She essayed to write a little from day to day in the upper chamber; but the atmosphere was wrong for the romantic sun-bitten tales of her own land that seethed within her, and yet evaded her pen when she sought to fasten them to paper. Also, though she had but to close her eyes to see Africa lying bathed in spring sunshine, and to remember every detail of scents and sounds, it broke her heart to write of these things in a room dim with fog and full of a piercing smell that found its way from the kitchen up four flights of stairs and through closed doors—the smell of bloaters.
She brightened her room as much as possible with flowers, and taking down Mrs. Selton's tawdry pictures, had the walls bare, except for a blue print of Watts'sHope—a statuesque-limbed woman, with blindfolded eyes, who sits at the top of the world sounding the last string of a broken viol. On a day when hope was bright in her, Poppy had bought the picture at a little shop in Victoria Street, and now she counted it one of her dearest possessions. Always it comforted and cheered her on.
Days came when she needed all the comfort she could get. There were other women in the house who were apparently in the same case as herself, but they were haggard, furtive creatures, holding converse with none, shutting doors swiftly at the approach of anyone but Nurse Selton, creeping out for air under the cloak of night.
Sometimes the woman in the adjoining room moaned all night, railing at Fate and God that she should have been brought to this pass.
Once through an open door Poppy heard haggling going on about the premium to be paid with a baby that was to be "adopted."
The sordidness of life, and the meanness of human nature, pressed around her. It was hard to keep ideals in such an atmosphere; hard to flaunt the green flag of love and hope, when there were so many hands eager to pull it down and trample it in the mire. A joyful spirit seemed out of place here. To the people she had got among, the thing that she thought wonderful and lovely was a curse and a bane! The mean house in the back street and the common-minded people seemed in a conspiracy to make her feel low, and shameful, when she wished only to be proud and happy.
"This must be part of the terror that comes of breaking the moral law," she whispered to herself. "One's act can bring one into contact with sordid people, and squalor and vice—one may become degraded and soiled in spite of oneself." She looked around her with hunted eyes. "There is nothing fine or noble anywhere here, except Watts's picture!" she thought; but when she opened her window and saw the grand old Abbey, she could think it no longer. There it lay in the gloom, grand and silent, standing for great, proud things: the long pile with the hunch at one end of it and at the other the stately twin pinnacles facing Palace Yard, where Raleigh's head fell, and where London goes rolling by to East and to West.
Yes: it stood for all high and noble things and thoughts! All grand ideals! Nothing squalid there, or shameful! Surely it belonged to her—belonged to everyone who loved it, and loved what it meant. But did it? Was she cut off from it because—? She drew in her breath, and thought for a long time with closed eyes and clasped hands.
"... I suppose morality is one of the high things—and I am not moral. I am one of the Magdalenes of the earth now!... whoever knows, will call me an immoral woman! I think I am only a mistaken one. I can seethatnow, thinking not of myself, but of my son to be. I should, if I had no moral instincts, at least have thought of consequences to my child! Well-brought-up girls are trained to think of these things, I suppose. But I was not well brought up—I was never brought up at all. I was a child of Nature. A poppy, blowing and flaming in the field—and plucked. If I had been anything else I should not have been in the garden that night at a time when well-brought-up girls were in bed! And I should have flown at the first sound of danger—but I didn't. Not because I did not recognise danger; but because Ididrecognise something I had been looking for all my life—Love. And I put out both arms and embraced it.Nowit seems revealed to me that I should not have done this ... I should have fenced and fended ... guarded myself ... given nothing ... until he had asked for me and taken me, before all the world ... and made a nest for me somewhere away from the squalor of the world where no begriming thoughts could touch me and smirch the mother ofhisson.ThenI suppose the Abbey would have been for me too!—--"
She twisted her lips and flung out her fingers.
"And I wouldn't change a thing that is done. Not for all the world could give would I forget or have undone that radiant hour!... And yet ... and yet ... how I should love the nest for my child ... the peace and fine honour of a wife's bed to layhisson upon! Oh! why does life tear the hearts of women in half like this?" She rested her head on her hands and shed passionate tears for herself and for all women like her. At last she said:
"Good-night, old Abbey! You aremineall the same—mine because, moral or immoral, I love the things you stand for. You cannot rob even bad people of the love of beauty. And no one can rob me of the peace you have put into my heart night after night."
At last illness descended upon her. She had often known torment of mind, now she knew torment of body, and her mind did not suffer at all; but was possessed of a kind of exultation that supported and refreshed her through terrible gaps of time.
Nurse Selton came in often, but the girl preferred to be alone. Most of the day was spent betweenHopeover the mantelpiece and the casement-window. Often she thought of the native women in her own land, who, when the time comes to bring forth, go quietly away and make a soft green bed in some sheltered place, and there suffer in silence and alone; then, after a few hours, return as quietly to every-day work and go serenely on with life, the new-born child slung behind the shoulders. The thought appealed to Poppy. She said:
"That is the way I should have borne my son if I had stayed in Africa ... out in the air—with the sun shining. But oh! these terrible walls that shut one in!... and without—cold, fog, mud!"
When evening fell, sickly and grey-green, she opened her casement-window and leaned upon its sill. The roar of London heard through the fog was like the dull boom of the breakers on the Durban back beach. Far away, the sky above Trafalgar Square was spasmodically lit by electric advertisements.
In the street below, a woman's raucous voice pathetically shrieked: