Poppy Part 27

she spoke vaguely, but she stood up, arranging her veil and pulling on her gloves. Clem came with her through the garden, and they stood for a moment with the low double gate between them, bidding each other good-bye. Mrs. Portal kissed her and told her to come again soon, but the girl answered nothing. Suddenly a visionary look pa.s.sed like a veil across Clementine Portal's face.

"Poppy," she said in a dreamy, yet intent way; "there will be deep waters around you soon! ... you will need courage, resolution, _and_ silence ... those are a woman's greatest friends in this world ... but, in so far as one human being can count on another--count on me, too, for a friend."

Already the swirl of the waters was in Poppy's ears, but the kind, brave message came to her like a friendly oar in the dark sea of trouble. For a moment she clung to the older woman's hand like a child afraid; then they parted. Poppy walked away through the vapoury, delicate light shed by a slender fragment of moon, and Clem Portal stayed staring abstractedly over the gate. It was three years before they met again.

CHAPTER X

Poppy lay upon her bed like a drowned woman. She had come in almost fainting, and Kykie, meeting her on the stairs and seeing her face, had flown after her to her bedroom with water and brandy. The old woman had taken the girl in her arms bodily, and placing her on the bed, proceeded to drench her face and hair with ice-cold water and eau-de-Cologne, and to force doses of brandy between the white lips.

At last, reviving somewhat under this vigorous treatment, Poppy found breath and sense to remonstrate:

"What do you mean, Kykie? Do you want to choke me? Stop that ... I'm nearly drowned."

"You were drownded enough before you came in," responded Kykie with asperity; "your dress is soaking. Where have you been?"

Poppy had been lying in the dew-drenched gra.s.s of the garden for some two hours or more after her return from Mrs. Portal's, but she was not conscious of the fact.

"... And, Luce coming home without warning, and you not in to dinner, and everything in the world to aggravate a gracious Christian woman!"

continued Kykie, panting like a stout sheep.

"Luce? Dinner?" said Poppy vaguely. "What is the time, Kykie?"

"I think you're going cracked," said Kykie with fresh ire, "not to know the time! Half-past nine it is, indeed, and me not in bed yet, when you _know_ what I suffer if I don't get my night's rest. You and Luce simply haven't the consideration of a _cow_ for me."

"Oh, go to bed!" said Poppy wearily.

"I'll do nothing of the sort, thank you, extremingly. I will not go to my bed until you have eaten some dinner. Do you think I want all the trouble of a funeral in the house? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Poppy, not taking any care of yourself, knowing what you do----"

The old woman paused with some significant intention, but Poppy only waved a pale hand in her direction.

"Go away and hold your peace, Kykie, for the love of Heaven!"

"I'll only go away to get you some food ... and you're to eat it, Poppy dear," she began to coax. "I'll bring you some nice hot soup, lovey, and a little chicken mayonnaise, and you _will_ try and eat it, won't you?

and a little gla.s.s of champagne."

"I couldn't Kykie ... only leave me alone...."

The old woman promptly seated herself upon the side of the bed with the air of an immovable rock.

"Well.... Oh, all right, then ... _anything_ ... why can't you leave me alone?"

Kykie did; but she took the precaution of removing the bedroom door-key and taking it with her, for she knew her mistress's ways well. In a few moments she was back again, with half a pint of champagne and a little pile of caviare sandwiches, which she warranted to put life into a corpse if she could only force them down its throat. She almost proceeded to this extreme measure with Poppy, threatening, cajoling, and complaining all the while.

Eventually she took her departure with an empty plate and gla.s.s, and as she went she threw back a last menacing remark to the bed.

"And _I shall stay up to speak to Luce_ when he returns from the Club."

What she could mean by this Poppy neither knew nor cared. Revived a little by the wine and food, but with a body and mind demanding rest, she closed her eyes and fell into dead slumber.

When the candles which Kykie had lighted in the tall silver sticks on the dressing-table had burnt far down from their scarlet shades, Poppy awakened to the fact that someone was moving about her bedroom. She opened her eyes, but did not stir or make a sound.

A man was standing by her writing-table humming softly to himself while he took up each little ornament and article upon it, and gently broke it between his hands. There were several paper-knives of wood and silver and tortoise-sh.e.l.l; quaint pens, and two gold-set rose-gla.s.ses. He broke them all gently between his hands, and the snapping of them was like the snapping of little bones. He then tore up some photographs, and a black-and-white etching of the Bay of Naples, and piled the pieces into two little heaps. As he walked away from the writing-table towards the lighted dressing-table, the candles gleamed on his profile, and Poppy saw that it was, as she supposed, the profile of Luce Abinger. He was humming between his teeth, a little tune--an odd noise resembling much the sort of monotonous hum made by black fighting ants when they go out seeking battle with other ant tribes.

Something resembling panic stole over the girl as she listened, and once she saw his distorted mouth smiling terribly, and could have cried aloud, but she controlled herself and continued to lie still with half-closed eyes, watching his strange proceedings. From the dressing-table he took up her two beautiful ivory brushes with her name written in silver across their backs, and bending them in his hands, snapped off their handles, laying the broken bits down. Then carefully and methodically he broke every one of the silver articles on the table. The sound of them snapping seemed to give him acute pleasure.

Even two tall vases of silver and cut-gla.s.s were not too strong for his skilful hands; nor was a little porcelain trinket-tray, with a scene from the _Tokaido_ inlaid upon it (for which he had paid thirty pounds at Yokohama), spared.

A handful of rings and bracelets, which Kykie had removed from her fainting mistress and placed in a little heap upon the table, he dropped upon the floor and ground his heel upon.

With no look towards the bed where Poppy lay, he left the table then, and sauntered to the walls, from which he stripped the wonderful chalk drawings and flung them in ribbons to the floor. His eye caught the silver and ivory crucifix.

"Ah, Christ! I had forgotten you," said he, speaking for the first time, in a soft and pleased tone, and picking up a boot-tree left carelessly by a chair he approached, and struck a ringing blow upon the beautiful ivory face, shattering it. Again and again he struck until it lay in a hundred tiny splinters on the ground. Poppy's eye had sought the door and found it closed; the lock gleamed and there was no key to be seen.

She came to the conclusion that she was locked in with a man who had gone mad. The house was absolutely silent.

"If he chooses to kill me, he can; no one will hear my calls," she thought, and she continued to lie very still.

In smas.h.i.+ng the crucifix Abinger had for the first time made a noise louder than the gentle cracking and crunching of bones; but he had now awakened to the charm of breaking things with a crash. He beat the boot-tree full into the smiling face of _Monna Lisa_.

"Stop smiling, you leaden-jawed Jewess," he said softly.

The gla.s.s flew in jingling showers in every direction, but the strong, quiet face remained on the wall in its frame; and though the mouth was full of splintered gla.s.s, the eyes smiled gravely on--the eyes of a woman who had seen many such violent scenes come and go.

There was a tiny bronze bust of Daniel O'Connell, standing on a little cedar-wood shelf, which Abinger caught up and flung with a calm, sure aim at the long gilt-edged mirror, making a great white radiating asterisk full in the centre of it.

All vases and flower-bowls he took from their places and dropped upon the floor. The sound of their breaking was not unmusical.

He still continued to hum. At last there was nothing left to destroy except the books arranged in their shelves round the room. A few he pulled from their cases and tore them across, but the sound of their tearing was tame and had no charm for him after so much exciting noise.

Leisurely he left them at last and came to the foot of the bed and stood looking down upon the girl lying there. She met his eyes with a calm and quiet glance, though the soul within her was apprehensive enough.

The smile on his mouth was like the carved smile on the mouth of some hideous j.a.panese mask, and his eyes resembled the eyes of a gargoyle. He was in full evening-dress and very immaculate, and his fair hair lay as smooth and sleek upon his head as a sleeping child's.

"Awake?" he asked, with continual and unfailing pleasantness.

"You hardly expected me to have remained asleep?" asked Poppy equably.

She saw very well now that he had not lost his reason. His eyes were not an insane man's eyes, though they were lit by some frightful emotion, and he was plainly in the grip of one of his extraordinary rages: the worst she had ever witnessed. It did not occur to her that she could in any way be the cause of his anger, and she felt wearily indignant that it should be obtruded upon her at this time. She did not mind much about all her beautiful things with which he had made such holocaust, though her possessions had always had for her that pathetic value and meaning which the lonely attach to inanimate things. But her whole life was _bouleverse_ now, and she understood that such things mattered little.

Abinger was looking at her with a tinge of something that might have been expectancy in his fury. Was he waiting for her to demand what he meant by this unprecedented outrage on her privacy? Ill and careless of life as she felt, she still had strength to rebel against this new form of tyranny, and to meet it with courage and disdain. It seemed to her that it would be more insolent not to ask him what he meant, but to simply take such vile and brutal conduct as a matter of course. So she stared back calmly at him from her pillows, not knowing what a strange picture she presented, lying there. Her arms wide from her, revealing the long, curved line of her boyish young form; her subtle face, pale, with strong ivory tints in it against the whiteness of the pillows, the blue scornful light of her eyes, and her drowned black hair lying like gorgon ropes about her. Pa.s.sion-racked and pale as Magdalene, she was a sight to kindle the fires of pity and chivalry in any good man; but the l.u.s.t of Luce Abinger's eyes was for the grace and bloom and beauty of her, that even misery and fatigue could not rub out, and these things kindled his blood to such a fury of savagery and desire that he scarce knew what he did. With one quick movement he had left the foot of the bed and was sitting beside her with an iron hand on each of hers. So she lay there, like a pinioned bird, with his tormented face above her.

"Harlot!" he whispered, still smiling; and the word leapt from his lips like a shrivelling flame and scorched across her face.

"Harlot!" he repeated softly. "Tell me the name of your lover!"

That bleached her. Disdain departed from her looks and she lay there quivering under his hands; her dry lips parted, but her tongue was stiff in her mouth. The blow was so utterly and profoundly unexpected. What did he mean? What could he mean? How could he know of that secret idol in that secret grove of her heart, before whose altar she had slain her girlhood--and his honour? How could he know of that sweet shameful secret that she shared with a mad or drunken man--but mad or drunk, the man she loved? Had she not buried the secret deep and sworn that no one should ever drag it from the depths of her? Was it possible that she had not buried it deep enough? Was it written across her face for all the world to see? She searched the scorching eyes above her and then at last she was afraid; her own fell and the lids closed over them.

Vile epithets fell again and again from his lips, and under each her face blenched and shrank as though little flickering flames or drops of corrosive acid had touched it; but her eyes were sealed and her lips gave forth no word.