Poppy Part 34

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 mind _where_, 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--_b.u.t.terton's Weekly_ is 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 a _b.u.t.terton's Weekly_, and brought it home for deep study. It is an odious paper. When she had read a few of its advertis.e.m.e.nts, nausea seized her. Was she one of the army of these asking for _secret_ and _confidential_ homes? And were these homes offered by _discreet nurses_ who could _get 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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! _His_ son should be born near Westminster Abbey!

The next day she sought the address--No. 10, Old Street--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 a.s.sorted 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 and _esteemed_ in 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 be _most_ comfortable," 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't _the gentleman_ help 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 s.h.i.+llings a week _until_, and two pounds a week _after_. Two guineas _for 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 was inoffensively plain and simple--the ordinary bedroom furniture with no adornments of any kind.

Straight facing the door was a little cas.e.m.e.nt-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 XVI

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 n.o.ble, 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, n.o.ble 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 cas.e.m.e.nt-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 of _The Cornfield_ had sent her a cheque for eight pounds seventeen s.h.i.+llings, in payment for a story which she had written in Sophie Cornell's bungalow and discovered of late at the bottom of a trunk. It was a story full of suns.h.i.+ne 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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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's _Hope_--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 G.o.d that she should have been brought to this pa.s.s.

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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble 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 see _that_ now, 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.